' He was thus led to plunge into a life of excitement and
vicissitude, in which exhausting studies, tutorships, secretaryships,
professorships, offices in princely households, mortal enmities and
perils, luxury and beggary, boundless admiration and boundless
contempt, followed confusedly one upon the other, and in which the most
solid worth and learning were often pushed aside by superficial
impudence. But the worst of all was, that the position of the humanist
was almost incompatible with a fixed home, since it either made
frequent changes of dwelling necessary for a livelihood, or so affected
the mind of the individual that he could never be happy for long in one
place. He grew tired of the people, and had no peace among the enmities
which he excited, while the people themselves in their turn demanded
something new. Much as this life reminds us of the Greek sophists of
the Empire, as described to us by Philostratus, yet the position of the
sophists was more favourable. They often had money, or could more
easily do without it than the humanists, and as professional teachers
of rhetoric, rather than men of learning, their life was freer and
simpler. But the scholar of the Renaissance was forced to combine great
learning with the power of resisting the influence of ever-changing
pursuits and situations.
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