BRACCIOLINI SETTING ABOUT THE FORGERY OF THE ANNALS.

I. The Proposal made in February, 1422, by a Florentine, named Lamberteschi, and backed by Niccoli.—II. Correspondence on the matter, and Mr. Shepherd\'s view that it referred to a Professorship refuted.—III. Professional disappointments in England determine Bracciolini to persevere in his intention of forging the Annals.—IV. He returns to the Papal Secretaryship, and begins the forgery in Rome in October, 1423.

I. About this period Bracciolini commenced the forgery of the Annals. In noticing the preliminary steps to that fabrication, and then glancing back at a few circumstances peculiar to his age, while touching upon some incidents hitherto passed over in his biography, we shall have all the necessary lights and shades in his life that will be of use to us in the maintenance and illustration of our theory.

Although he received in exchange for the living of 120 florins a year another of the annual worth of ￡40 with slighter duties attached to it, he still continued to express dissatisfaction at his fortunes, and desire a sinecure canonry in England that would enable him to live in literary ease at home. When, however, an alternative was presented to him of returning to the Pontifical Secretariate, through the intercession of one of his powerful Italian friends, Cardinal Adimari, Archbishop of Pisa, he rudely scouted the overture upon these grounds: that he would "rather be a free man than a public slave"; that he had "a smaller opinion of the Papacy and its limbs than the world believed"; that "if he had thought as highly of the Secretaryship to the Pope, as many did, he would long before have gone back to it; and that if he lost everything, from what he now had, he would not want."—"Video quae Cardinalis Pisanus scribit de Secretariatu. Sane si ego illud officium tantum existimarem, quantum nonnulli, ego jamdudum istuc rediissem: sed si omnia deficerent, hoc quod nunc habeo, non deerit mihi. Ego minus existimo et Pontificatum et ejus membra quam credunt. Cupio enim liber esse, non publicus servus" (Ep. I. 17).

Just as he was in this bad humour, disgusted with his patron and the world, and in the most cynical of moods, a proposal reached him from Florence, which, as set forth to view by himself in communications to his friend Niccoli, is so dimly disclosed as to be capable of two interpretations: The Rev. William Shepherd in his Life of him understands his ambiguous terms as having reference to a professorship, the words of Mr. Shepherd being:

—"Piero Lamberteschi … offered him a situation, the nature of which is not precisely known, but which was probably that of public professor in one of the Italian Universities" (Life of Poggio Bracciolini, p. 138). Now I conceive, and shall attempt to prove that the proposal was not about a "situation," but to forge additional books to the hopelessly lost History of Tacitus.

Niccolo Niccoli seems to have been at the bottom of the business; at any rate, he appears to have advised his bosom friend to undertake the task; for Bracciolini says that he "thinks he will follow his advice, while writing to him from the London Palace of Cardinal Beaufort, in a letter dated the 22nd of February, 1422, respecting "a suggestion" and "an offer" made by his fellow- countryman, Piero Lamberteschi, who, he says, "will endeavour to procure for me in three years 500 gold sequins. If he will make it 600, I will at once close with his proposal. He holds forth sanguine hopes about several future profitable contingencies, which, I am inclined to believe, may probably be realized; yet it is more prudent to covenant for something certain than to depend on hope alone." "Placent mihi quae Pierus imaginatur, quaeque offert; et ego, ut puto, sequar consilium vestrum. Scribit mihi se daturum operam, ut habeam triennio quingentos aureos: fient sexcenti, et acquiescam. Proponit spem magnam plurium rerum, quam licet existimem futuram veram, tamen aliquid certum pacisci satius est, quam ex sola spe pendere" (Ep. I. 17).

Speaking further on in the letter about Lamberteschi, he says: "I like the occupation to which he has invited me, and hope I shall be able to produce something WORTH READING; but for this purpose, as I tell him in my letters, I require the retirement and leisure that are necessary for literary work." "Placet mihi occupatio, ad quam me hortatur, et spero me nonnihil effecturum DIGNUM LECTIONE; sed, ut ad eum scribo, ad haec est opus quiete et otio literarum."

II. The expression of his hope that he would "produce something worth reading," and the mention of his want, in order that he should accomplish what was required of him, "retirement and leisure for literary work," quite set at rest Mr. Shepherd\'s theory that the proposal had reference to a Professorship. In the first place, professors in those days did not collect their lectures and publish them for the behoof of those who had not the privilege of hearing them delivered. They did not give their addresses an elaborate form, nor introduce into them the novel views and profound and accurate thought with which Professors now dignify their vocation from chairs in Universities, especially those of Oxford and Cambridge, or places of public instruction, as the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, with its Professor Tyndall, or the Royal School of Mines and Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street, with its Professor Huxley. They could not then "produce something worth reading." In the second place they did not require the "retirement and leisure necessary for literary work"; they talked about what they knew in the most simple and artless manner; made no preparations beforehand; walked into a class room, and, book in hand, Greek or Roman classic, discoursed to their pupils about the meaning of this or that passage or the rendering of this or that word benefiting the juvenile class with the spontaneous harvest of their cultivated minds, and giving the opinions of others a great deal more freely than they gave their own: all that they said, too, was detached and trite; and if books are valuable, as consisting of perfectly combined parts, and new or extraordinary contents, the lectures of the fifteenth century professors would not have been worth the paper on which they were written. Bracciolini, then, would never, in the contemplation of turning a professor, have spoken of "producing something worth reading"; nor, for the discharge of professorial duties, would he speak of requiring "retirement and leisure for literary work." It is clear that Mr. Shepherd is altogether wrong in his conjecture.

And now as to mine. If the dim revelations concerned a plan about forging the Annals, then "something worth reading" Bracciolini certainly did produce; for the Annals is,—taking the circumstances under which it was composed into consideration— about one of the most wonderful literary creations that we have; on every page there is indication of the "labour limae,"—the filing and polishing that are the result of the "retirement and leisure necessary to literary work"; and, though not bearing a very striking resemblance to the History of Tacitus, of which it is intended to be the supplement, it was, nevertheless, contrived with so much artfulness that, for more than four hundred years, it has deceived the scholars of Europe: yes, indeed, the author

    "Gave out such a seeming
    To seal their eyes up,—close as oak,—
    They thought \'twas Tacitus."

The more the passages in these interesting letters are considered, the stronger becomes the impression that they are all about a scheme for forging the Annals of Tacitus. Even those which seem to give a colouring to Mr. Shepherd\'s view in reality favour mine.

A part of the original scheme appears to have been that Bracciolini was to go to Hungary: what for is not mentioned. It then becomes a matter of conjecture. Mine is, that, on account of the belief current in those days that singular treasures of ancient history were to be found more readily than elsewhere in barbarous countries, and that the more barbarous the country the greater the chance of recovering an ancient classic, so Bracciolini was to go, or feign that he had gone to Hungary, and then on returning give out that he had there found some of the lost books of the History of Tacitus. If this be not the right conjecture, it can barely be understood why Bracciolini should make a mystery about this visit. "If I undertake a journey to Hungary," he says, "it will be unknown to everybody but a few, and down the throats of these I shall cram all sorts of speeches, since I will pretend that I have come from here," that is, from England. "Si in Hungariam proficiscar, erit ignotum omnibus, praeter paucos; quin simulabo me huc venturum, et istos pascam verbis." (Ep. I. 18). This intention to keep the journey to Hungary a secret looks as if his going there were connected with the wrong act suggested, seeing that men usually resort to concealment when they commit a wrong act, and endeavour to lead people astray with respect to it (as Bracciolini showed an inclination to do) by misstatements and falsehoods: then Bracciolini knew well that the commission of a forgery would be immediately suspected were it bruited abroad that he had come from Hungary where he had found a long-lost classic because those were days when book-finders were in the habit of first forging works, and then visiting far distant lands to report on their return that they had there recovered MSS. which they themselves had written.

Another passage strengthens my view, though, at a first glance, it favours Mr. Shepherd\'s. After observing that his friend "knew well how he preferred liberty and literary leisure to the other things which the vast majority held in the highest estimation and made the objects of their ambition," Bracciolini proceeds thus: "And if I were to see that I should get that which our friend Picro expects, I would go not only to the end of Europe but as far as to the wilds of Tartary, especially as I should have the opportunity of paying attention to Greek literature, which it is my desire to devour with avidity, were it but to avoid those wretched translations, which so torment me that there is more pain in reading than pleasure in acquiring knowledge."—"Id primum scias volo, me libertatem et otium litterarum praeponere rebus caeteris, quae plures existimant permaximi, atque optant. Sique videro id me consecuturum, prout sperat Pierius noster, non solum ad Sarmatas, sed Scythas usque proficiscar, praesertim proposita facultate dandi operam Graecis litteris, quas avide cupio haurire, ut fugiam istas molestas translationes, quae ita me torquent, ut pluris sit molestiae in legendo, quam in discendo suavitatis." (Ep. I. 18.)

This is the passage that must have particularly induced Mr. Shepherd to think that what was offered to Bracciolini was a Professorship; and as Bracciolini spoke of the opportunity that would be afforded to him of studying Greek literature, that the Professorship was of Greek. But Mr. Shepherd ought not to have conjectured that the Professorship must have been in some Italian University; it is clear that if Bracciolini was to carry out the proposal of Lamberteschi, he was, from the original plan, to have gone to Hungary. The Professorship must, therefore, have been in Hungary. But in 1422 no professor was wanted in that country, because it had no university: Hungary then was, and remained a wilderness of unlettered barbarism for nearly half a century after, it not being until 1465, half a dozen years from the death of Bracciolini, that Matthias Corvinus established in Buda the first Hungarian University, filling it with valuable works which he got copied from rare manuscripts in the principal cities of Italy, especially Rome and Florence, and inviting to it men as learned as Bracciolini, not only from Italy, but also France and Germany. What Bracciolini really alludes to is not a professorship, but the money he was to get for his forgery,—the 500 or 600 gold sequins; and as money was then worth about twenty times more than it is now, it was a moderate fortune of ten or twelve thousand pounds; and when he should have such means at his disposal, he would have quite sufficient for his purpose; he could then forsake the clerical duties which were so onerous and distasteful to him, to devote himself in peace and comfort to his favourite study of Greek literature, with which he became specially captivated just at this period of his life from reading for the first time in the magnificent library of Cardinal Beaufort the works of the Greek fathers, above all, Chrysostom, whom he looked upon as the greatest of all writers; for writing to Niccoli from the London palace of Cardinal Beaufort in the summer of 1420, he speaks of "preferring Chrysostom to everybody else whom he had ever read,"—"Joannes Chrysostomus, quem omnibus, quos ego unquam legerim, praefero" (Ep. I. 7); and, on another occasion, in a letter to the same friend, again referring to Chrysostom, he bursts into the enthusiastic exclamation: "this man by a good shoulder, or more, overtops everybody":—"hic vir longe humero supereminet omnes" (Ep. I. 8). A still greater, nay, "the greatest reason for his desire of returning to Greek literature," he gives in a letter to Niccoli dated London, the 17th of July, 1420, that, in "skimming over Aristotle during the spring of that year, not for the purpose of studying him then, but reading and seeing what there was in each of his works,"—he had found that sort of "perusal not wholly unprofitable, as he had learnt something every day, superficial though it might be, from understanding Aristotle in his own language, when he found him in the words of translators either incomprehensible or nonsensical." "Ego jam tribus mensibus vaco Aristoteli, non tam discendi causa ad praesens, quam legendi, ac videndi, quid in quoque opere contineatur: nec est tamen omnino inutilis haec lectio; disco aliquid in diem, saltem superficie tenus, et haec est causa potissima, cur amor graecarum litterarum redierit, ut hunc virum quasi elinguem, et absurdum aliena lingua, cognoscam sua."

III. As Bracciolini gave his assent to the fabrication of additional books to the History of Tacitus, his friends Niccoli and Lamberteschi as well as himself were of opinion that his presence was required in Italy, in order that the three should take counsel together, and, discussing the matter in concert, deliberate fully what was best to be done: "nam maturius deliberare poterimus, quid sit agendum," he says in a letter addressed to Niccoli from............