Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/129

Rh the Latin, it was clear that the latter had already lost its monopoly.

The humanists had nevertheless in their own domain the great advantage of being first in the field. They could hardly advance in any direction without initiating some movement momentous in its effect upon culture, Emanuel Chrysoloras brought the Greek language to Florence; his son-in-law, Filelfo, voyaged to Constantinople, and returned with a Greek library. Poggio Bracciolini, a most elegant Latinist and epistolographer—unfortunately best remembered by his virulent invectives, and by a book of facetiæ which does more credit to his gaiety than to his morals—rendered the greatest service by his assiduity in the collection of manuscripts. Leonardo Bruni accomplished even more by the simple step of making accurate translations of Plato and Aristotle, and thus delivering Western science from bondage to the Arabians, through whose paraphrases these writings had hitherto been chiefly known. Lorenzo Valla, an acute and intrepid critic and original thinker, enthusiastic for truth in the abstract, but not generally actuated by high principle, became the father of modern negative criticism by his overthrow of the scandalous Papal imposture of the Donation of Constantine. Gemistus Pletho, though a visionary, introduced Plato to Italy, and powerfully stimulated thought through the controversies aroused by his writings. Flavio Biondo was the first scientific archæologist, describing the monuments of pagan and Christian Rome, and investigating the topography of ancient Italy, Vittorino da Feltre showed practically by his school at Mantua what education ought to be, and Vespasiano da Bisticci wrote the lives of his fellows. Even men like Filelfo, whose restless pens