struse doctrines of the Roman law, which began to engage the general attention from the recent discovery of the Pandects at Amalfi, 1137. The amusements of the vulgar in those periods were metrical and prose romances, unin telligible prophecies, and fables of giants and enchanters.

5. In the middle of the 13th century appeared a distinguished genius, Roger Bacon, an English friar, whose comprehensive mind was filled with all the stores of ancient learning, who possessed a discriminating judgment to separate the precious ore from the dross, and a power of invention fitted to advance in every science which was the object of his study. He saw the insufficiency of the school philosophy, and first recommended the prosecution of knowledge by experiment and the observation of nature. He made discoveries of importance in astronomy, in optics, in chemistry and medicine, and mechanics. He reformed the calendar, discovered the construction of telescopic glasses, forgotten after his time, and revived by Galileo, and has left a plain intimation of his knowledge of the composition of gunpowder. Yet this most superior genius believed in the possibility of discovering an elixir for the prolongation of life, in the transmutation of metals into gold, and in judicial astrology.*

6. A general taste prevailed for poetical composition in the 12th and 13th centuries. The troubadours of Provence wrote sonnets, madrigals, and satirical ballads, and excelled in extempore dialogues on the subject of love, which they treated in a metaphysical and Platonic strain. They contended for the prize of poetry at solemn meetings, where prines, nobles, and the most illustrious ladies, attended to decide between the rival bards; and some of those princes, Richard I. of England, Frederick I. emperor of Germany, are celebrated themselves as troubadours of eminence. Many fragments yet remain of their compositions.

7. The transference of the papal seat to Avignon in the 14th century, familiarised the Italian poets with the songs of the troubadours, and gave a tincture of the Provençal style to their compositions, which is very observable in

The mind of Roger Bacon was strangely compounded of almost prophetic gleams of the future course of science, and the best principles of the inductive philosophy, with a more than usual credulity in the superstitions of his own time.-Hallam's Introd. Literature of Europe, chap.

ii.

33.

the poetry of Petrarch and of Dante. The Divina Comedia of Dante first introduced the machinery of angels and devils in the room of the Pagan mythology, and is a work containing many examples of the terrible sublime. The sonnets and canzoni of Petrarch are highly tender and pathetic, though vitiated with a quaintness and conceit, which is a prevalent feature of the Italian poetry. The Decamerone of Boccaccio, a work of the same age, is a masterpiece for invention, ingenious narrative, and acquaintance with human nature. These authors have fixed the standard of the Italian language.

8. Contemporary with them, and of rival merit was the English Chaucer [born in 1328], who displays all the talents of Boccaccio through the medium of excellent poetry. The works of Chaucer discover an extensive knowledge of the sciences, an acquaintance both with ancient and modern learning, particularly the literature of France and Italy, and, above all, a most acute discernment of life and manners.

9. Of a similar character are poems of Gower, [Chaucer's cotemporary] but of a graver cast, and a more chastened morality. Equal to these eminent men, in every species of literary merit, was the accomplished James I. of Scotland, of which his remaining writings bear convincing testimony. The doubtful Rowley of Bristol, is said to have adorned the 15th century.*

10. Spain at this period began to emerge from ignorance and barbarism, and to produce a few of those works which are enumerated with approbation in the whimsical but judicious criticism of Cervantes (Don Quixote, B. 1, c. 6.)

11. But although poetry attained in those ages a considerable degree of splendour, there was but little advancement in general literature and science. History was disgraced by the intermixture of miracle and fable; though we find much curious information in the writings of Matthew of Westminster, of Walsingham, Everard, Duysburg, and the Chronicles of Froissart and Monstrelet. Philip de Comines happily describes the reigns of Louis XI. and Charles VIII. of France. Villani and Platina are valuable recorders of the affairs of Italy.

Thomas Chatterton, was the author of the poems published under the name of Rowley. This unfortunate genius having long endured the distresses of poverty, and made an ineffectual application to Horace Walpole for relief, terminated a miserable existence by committing suicide, 1770. -ED.

12. A taste for classical learning in the 15th century, led to the discovery of many of the ancient authors. Poggio discovered the writings of Quintilian and several of the compositions of Cicero, which stimulated to farther research, and the recovery of many valuable remains of Greek and Roman literature. But this taste was not generally diffused. [The first half of the 15th century has been sometimes called the age of Poggio Bracciolini, which it expresses not very inaccurately as to his literary life, since he was born in 1381 and died in 1459; but it seems to involve too high a compliment. The chief merit of Poggio was his diligence, aided by good fortune, in recovering lost works of Roman literature, that lay mouldering in the repositories of convents. Hence we owe to this man eight orations of Cicero, a complete Quintilian, Columella, part of Lucretius, three books of Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Tertullian, and several less important writers; twelve comedies of Plautus were also recovered in Germany through his directions. Poggio besides this was undoubtedly a man of considerable learning for his time, and still greater sense and spirit as a writer, though he never reached a very correct or elegant style.-Hallam's Introd. Lit. of Europe, chap. ii. §2.] France and England were extremely barbarous. The library at Oxford contained only 600 volumes, and there were but four classics in the royal library at Paris. But a brighter period was approaching. The dispersion of the Greeks, on the fall of the eastern empire, in the end of the 15th century, diffused a taste for polite literature over all the west of Europe. A succession of popes, endowed with a liberal and enlightened spirit, gave every encouragement to learning and the sciences and, above all the noble discovery of the art of printing contributed to their rapid advancement and dissemination, and gave a certain assurance of the perpetuation of every valuable art, and the progressive improvement of human knowledge.

13. The rise of dramatic composition among the moderns, is to be traced to the absurd and ludicrous representation in the churches of the scripture histories, called in England mysteries, miracles, and moralities. These were first exhibited in the 12th century, and continued to the 16th, when in England they were prohibited by law. Of these we have amusing specimens in Warton's history

R

f English poetry. Profane dramas were substituted in heir place; and a mixture of the sacred and profane ppears to have been known in France as early as 1300. In Spain the farcical mysteries keep their ground to the present day; nor was it till the end of the 16th century, that any regular composition for the stage was known in that country. The Italians are allowed by their own writers to have borrowed their theatre from the French and English.

XXXV.-View of the Progress of Commerce in Europe before the Portuguese Discoveries.

1. Before giving an account of the discoveries of the Portuguese in the 15th century, in exploring a new route to India, we shall present a short view of the progress of commerce in Europe down to that period.

The boldest naval enterprise of the ancients was the Periplus of Hanno, who sailed (570 B.C.) from Carthage to the coast of Guinea, within four or five degrees of the line. Africa was not known by the ancients to be almost circumnavigable. They had a very limited knowledge of the habitable earth. They believed that both the torrid and frigid zones were uninhabitable; and they were but very imperfectly acquainted with a great part of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Denmark, Sweden, Prussia, Poland, the greatest part of Russia, were unknown to them. In Ptolemy's description of the globe, the 63rd degree of latitude is the limit of the earth to the north, the equinoctial to the south.

2. Britain was circumnavigated in the time of Domitian. The Romans frequented it for the purpose of commerce; and Tacitus mentions London as a celebrated resort of merchants. The commerce of the ancients was, however, chiefly confined to the Mediterranean. In the flourishing periods of the Constantinopolitan empire, the merchandise of India was imported from Alexandria; but, after the conquest of Egypt by the Arabians, it was carried up the Indus, and thence by land to the Oxus, which then ran into the Caspian sea; thence to was brought up to the Wolga, and again carried over land to the Don, whence it descended into the Euxine.

3. After the fall of the western empire, commerce was

long at a stand in Europe. When Attila was ravaging Italy, the Veneti took refuge in the small islands at the northern extremity of the Adriatic, and there founded Venice, A.D. 452, which began very early to equip small fleets, and trade to the coasts of Egypt and the Levant, for spices and other merchandise of Arabia and India. Genoa, Florence, and Pisa, imitated this example, and began to acquire considerable wealth; but Venice retained her superiority over these rival states, and gained considerable territories on the opposite coast of Illyricum and Dalmatia.

4. The maritime cities of Italy profited by the crusades, in furnishing the armies with supplies, and bringing home the produce of the east. The Italian merchants established manufactures similar to those of Constantinople. Rogero, king of Sicily, brought artisans from Athens, and established a silk manufacture at Palermo in 1130. The sugar-cane was planted in Sicily in the 12th century, and thence carried to Madeira, and finally made its way to the West Indies.

5. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the Italians were the only commercial people of Europe, Venice set the first example of a national bank in 1157, which has maintained its credit to the present times. The only trade of France, Spain, and Germany, at this time, was carried on at stated fairs and markets, to which traders resorted from all quarters, paying a tax to the sovereign or the lords of the territory. The more enterprising bought a privilege of exemption, by paying at once a large sum, and were thence called free traders.

6. In the middle ages, the Italian merchants, usually called Lombards, were the factors of all the European nations, and were enticed by privileges granted by the sovereigns, to settle in France, Germany, and England. They were not only traders in commodities, but bankers, or money-dealers; but they found in this last business a severe restraint from the canon-law prohibiting the taking of interest; and hence, from the necessary privacy of their bargains, there were no bounds to exorbitant usury. The Jews, too, who were the chief dealers in money, brought disrepute on the trade of banking, and frequently suffered, on that account, the most intolerable persecution and confiscation of their fortunes. To guard against these injuries, they invented bills of exchange.