Even if we
grant the justice of all that has been said against his character, we
must nevertheless admit that in few other men was the picture of the
age and its culture so fully reflected, and that few came nearer to the
normal type of the men of the early Renaissance. It may be added
parenthetically, that even in respect to his moral character he will
not be fairly judged, if we listen solely to the complaints of the
German Church, which his fickleness helped to balk of the Council it so
ardently desired.
He here claims our attention as the first who not only enjoyed the
magnificence of the Italian landscape, but described it with enthusiasm
down to its minutest details. The ecclesiastical State and the south of
Tuscany--his native home--he knew thoroughly, and after he became Pope
he spent his leisure during the favourable season chiefly in excursions
to the country. Then at last the gouty man was rich enough to have
himself carried in a litter across the mountains and valleys; and when
we compare his enjoyments with those of the Popes who succeeded him,
Pius, whose chief delight was in nature, antiquity, and simple, but
noble, architecture, appears almost a saint. In the elegant and flowing
Latin of his 'Commentaries' he freely tells us of his happiness.
His eye seems as keen and practiced as that of any modern observer.
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