INTRODUCTION

Francis Bacon set forth his idea for reforming the entire realm of knowledge in The Proficience and Advancement of Learning Divine and Human (first published in 1605), which he offered as a “fixed memorial” and “immortal monument” to the magnificence of James I (111, 261-4). It was divided into two books, the first dealing with the merit of augmenting learning, and the second with mapping out parts of knowledge, indicating which parts were extant, absent, or in need of revision in order to facilitate the advancement of learning explained in the first book. It is in the second book that we find Bacon's classification of knowledge. He revised parts of it in 1612 (Description of the Intellectual Globe V, 503-44)) and further in 1623, when he translated The Advancement of Learning into Latin as the De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum (The Dignity and Advancement of Learning). Bacon now reviewed the entire scope of learning in eight books.

Given the important place occupied by rhetoric in Bacon's career, one might imagine that by this late date an abundance of serviceable studies would exist. But, perhaps as another proof of his observation that “the opinion of plenty is amongst the causes of want” (111, 327-8)) such is not the case. There are three book-length studies frequently cited: Karl R. Wallace's pioneering study, Francis Bacon on Communication and Rhetoric, Lisa Jardine's revised Cambridge dissertation, Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse, and the overall history by W. S. Howell, Jr., Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500-1700. There are also some shorter essays, of varying value.' But it is not being unkind to say that none of these offers a satisfactory account of either Bacon's theory or practice of rhetoric. In some cases major emphases in Bacon's theory have simply not been registered, or were misunderstood. In others, the writers' evaluation of Bacon was adversely affected by their general conception of rhetoric, and the place it held in European intellectual life.

Induction and Form belong to the most “technical” core among the concepts elaborated by Francis Bacon in his reflections on human knowledge, as counterdistinct from the more “ideological” tenets concerning his ideal of collective utility or his desideratum of a state-sponsored model for scientific research. Yet, a mere glance at Bacon's fortunes reveals a profound discontinuity between the reception of inductivism and experimentation on the one hand and of his theory of Forms on the other. Though not paramount among the canonical version of Baconianism presented by Thomas Sprat in his History of the Royal Society of 1667 (where the notions of natural history and theory-free experimenting seem to enjoy pride of place), reflections on inductive processes have been traditionally linked to the doctrines expounded in the Novum organum and, more generally, to the overall orthodox mapping of modern physical science.

The first thing that needs to be said about Bacon's ideas on morality and moral knowledge is that they do not constitute a systematic moral philosophy. Primarily, this is because the project of initiating a great lnstauration of learning represented for Bacon not a new philosophy but a new task: “a work to be done,” as he put it, “not an opinion to be held” (IV, 21). Such an opposition of works to words, of action to contemplation, entails a dismissal of all that is merely philosophy on the grounds that the relief of man's estate depends less on philosophical belief than on rigorous investigation. Only in the sweat of our brow could we reap the fruits of science.

In the De augmentis, Bacon divides the kinds of learning into three primary categories - history, poetry, and philosophy - which correspond to the three faculties of the rational soul - memory, imagination, and reason. He then divides history into two kinds - civil and natural - each of which is further subdivided into subcategories (IV, 292-300). History is not only given a very wide domain in Bacon's division of knowledges, but because he identifies historia with experientia, its role in his inductive philosophy is also fundamental: of the reconstruction of the sciences, he claims, “the foundation must be laid in natural history” (IV, 28). As for civil history, Bacon claims that its “dignity and authority are pre-eminent among human writings. For to its fidelity are entrusted the examples of our ancestors, the vicissitudes of things, the foundations of civil policy, and the name and reputation of men” (IV, 302).

Humanists were brought up with the same Christian beliefs as scholastics. Many of them received a scholastic training and became members of the clergy, either regular or secular. True, humanists had a different attitude towards non-Christian sources. Yet for both humanists and scholastics the Bible remained a fundamental text. We may thus wonder why it took so long before the Scriptures were submitted to a scholarly and philological treatment and why the somewhat misleading term Christian humanism is applied only to the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century.

The problem was, in fact, formulated at an early stage by Petrarch. He himself seems to have realized the importance of the Scriptures only relatively late in life, when he was over forty. For what he described as this 'damnable lateness', he felt he should apologize. He had, he said, been led back to the Bible by reading the Church Fathers, particularly his own favourite, Augustine, who appears as a character in one of his dialogues, but also by Ambrose, Gregory, Lactantius and, of course, Jerome, the saint to whom the accepted Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, was attributed. What made the Church Fathers so attractive to Petrarch and later humanists was that they reconciled classical and Christian views of human life and morals, and that they presented them in an elegant style. Rather than use a Father such as Augustine as the source of a theological system in the way that scholastics were accustomed to do, humanists saw him as a model of rhetorical skill, a Christian counterpart to Cicero. Petrarch regarded Augustine as a master of self-analysis and followed him in his itinerary from worldly concerns and classical texts to a state of spiritual enlightenment and repose in God.

There was no humanism without books. They were the prime material on which the movement was founded and the natural medium through which it was transmitted. All humanists were consumers, and usually also producers, of books in manuscript. Many humanists first gained a reputation by seeking out and accumulating books. Humanists early associated themselves with the printing press when it came into being in the mid-fifteenth century and provided authors, editors and market for its products. Some, preeminently Erasmus, so thoroughly harnessed the great power of print that they were able to project themselves on to a European stage. In a less controlled way, this had happened a century and more before with the manuscript diffusion of the works of the early Italian humanists. Throughout the Renaissance, secular and ecclesiastical princes with cultural pretensions built themselves up with libraries as much as any other trappings of civilization. A book was often the vehicle of an alliance between culture and power, in the form of translations or dedications of original works, commissioned or unsolicited.

The common bond of humanism, uniting many disparate strands of interest, was the study, absorption and imitation of the classics, and the common style was a classicizing humanistic Latin. What was distinctive about the humanistic book? In the first place, it was a new manner of the preparation and writing of manuscripts: new in that it turned against current practice in these matters, but backward-looking in its attempt to recover classical virtues of clarity and purity.

Despite the many changes which were made during the Renaissance, humanist Latin represented a development of both the forms and the functions of medieval Latin. Latin was the language of the educated and of, if not the ruling, at least the governing classes. Not knowing Latin demonstrated that one did not belong to these social groups. In the Middle Ages, Latin was the international language of secular and ecclesiastical administration, of diplomacy, of liturgy and of the educational institutions where students were prepared for positions in these spheres. Interest in Latin was motivated by practical concerns. Official correspondence in Latin was the most important task of those engaged in church and secular administration. The ars dictaminis, of art of letter-writing, had been a central feature of late medieval education in Italy, but less so north of the Alps, where university education was directed towards theological rather than legal training. In post-medieval Italy, Latin retained all these functions, and the art of writing letters and composing orations remained important aspects of Latin education.

In no area were prestige and presentation of greater importance than in matters of state. International affairs were transacted in Latin through the exchange of letters and through orations delivered by envoys. Humanist Latin emerged in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in Italy among men in the highest ranks of ecclesiastical or civil administration. Chancellors of Florence, such as Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini, both of whom had also served as secretaries to the pope, were prominent exponents.

Constantijn Huygens was one of the most virtuous of the seventeenth-century virtuosi who collected antiquities, devised scientific instruments and cultivated a taste for natural curiosities. He painted, wrote poetry in several languages and played the lute for the king of England. The most modern English thinkers and writers appealed to him: he translated John Donne into Dutch and copied out Francis Bacon's theories about progress. He loved the humanist art of Rubens, but recognized the young Rembrandt's supremacy as a history painter. His unfinished classic in Dutch, the Dagwerck, celebrated the discoveries of the new science, which he tried to connect with the domestic life of the Dutch Golden Age, the sunny world of scrubbed tile floors, tables covered by rich rugs and crystalline windows so memorably depicted by Vermeer.

Huygens came honestly by his wide range of skills and interests: he was raised to have them. His father had him taught to speak French by the direct method as a child and encouraged him to study science, music and painting. As a teenager he enrolled at Leiden, the most modern university of his day.

In the Renaissance the discipline of philosophy was based on ancient systems of thought: Aristotelianism predominantly, and to a lesser extent Platonism, Stoicism, Epicureanism and Scepticism. This continued to be the case well into the seventeenth century. As specialists in the study of classical antiquity, humanists were therefore able to make an important contribution to philosophy in this period: rediscovering ancient philosophical texts that had been lost or neglected for centuries and supplying editions, translations and commentaries both for these works and for other classical texts which had been part of the philosophical curriculum since the Middle Ages.

Though philosophers and humanists shared an interest in the same texts, their methods of approaching this material differed radically. Humanists believed that philosophical discourse, like all forms of learned communication, should be composed in a Latin style modelled on the best classical authors. The stress they laid on clarity, persuasiveness and, above all, eloquence was a deliberate challenge to the scholastics, who monopolized university teaching of philosophy and who wrote in a technical, jargonladen language, incomprehensible to non-philosophers. More importantly, humanists studied philosophical works in the same manner that they dealt with literary or historical texts, that is, as philologists.

Before the beginning of the sixteenth century, the humanist movement produced no political thinkers who could be ranked with figures like Plato or Thomas Hobbes. This is not surprising. Unlike modern political scientists or medieval scholastic philosophers, Renaissance humanists were not occupied with political theory as such. Professionally, humanists acted as teachers, diplomats, political propagandists, courtiers and bureaucrats. The writings they produced on politics were not cast in the form of summae or professional monographs intended for specialized audiences. Rather, they fell into the ancient tradition of moral-rhetorical literature aiming at the reform of individuals and society. Their models were Cicero and Seneca, not Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas; their virtues stylistic elegance, urbanity and learning, not subtlety. Such writings were intended for a general audience of liberally educated readers, which under Renaissance conditions meant mostly wealthy merchants, professionals and aristocrats. But 'political reflection need not be systematic analysis, and rarely is', as Sir Moses Finley has remarked. Though the humanists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries produced no great work of political philosophy, they did change fundamentally the intellectual world within which political thought would henceforward have to live. Their importance lay in producing not a system of thought, but a climate of thought.

In 62 BC Cicero defended in court a Greek poet, Archias, whose citizenship had been challenged. The version of his speech that he later circulated expatiates on the service that poets render to the state by conferring immortality on heroes and thereby encouraging public spirit. Even historians, he says (Pro Archia 24), achieve less: Alexander the Great took many on his campaign, and yet, when he came to the tomb of Achilles near Troy, he exclaimed: 'lucky young man, to have had your prowess advertised by Homer!' - and he was right, because without the Iliad the tomb would have closed not only over his body but over his name.

William of Malmesbury, who died about 1143, tells the same story about Alexander. Had he read it in Cicero's speech for Archias? Though the Latin literature of republican and imperial Rome spans over 600 years (from about 200 BC to the early fifth century), not a single autograph survives; and the poems of Virgil, the plays of Terence and Livy's account of the war against Hannibal are unusual in being preserved by manuscripts even as old as the fourth or fifth century, written for collectors not obviously affected by the conversion of the empire to Christianity. After that, the historical record dwindles until the end of the eighth century, when Charlemagne created a successor to the Roman empire in the west and ruled it from the lower Rhine. In ways hard to trace, monastic and royal libraries then began to acquire old manuscripts, not least of pagan texts, and to make copies, usually in a new script that modern printers have inherited with little change.

This chapter will examine the ways in which Italian literature was influenced by the humanist movement in the crucial period in which the studia humanitatis dominated the intellectual agenda in Italy, broadly speaking from the time of Petrarch to the age of Lorenzo de' Medici. The two centuries surveyed here embrace a period which begins with the embryonic 'medieval' humanism of Dante Alighieri and terminates in the early sixteenth century, when Italian humanists ceased to form part of the mainstream of creative literature in Italy and the studia humanitatis became institutionalized in the university system.

At the outset it is important to distinguish between the classical tradition in general and the humanist movement in particular. To consider every Italian work inspired by the legacy of antiquity in this classicizing age of Italian literature is beyond the scope of this chapter and this book. Instead, I shall focus on vernacular literature in Italy which was either written by humanists or informed by humanist values.

Although Dante is not usually regarded as a humanist, the Divina commedia (c. 1307-18) presents a number of features which indicate that to a certain extent the poem derives from a humanist matrix. In a sense Dante 'discovered' the Aeneid, in that he was the first to make Virgil talk again to his age after centuries of silence. As he himself was aware, he was the first Italian writer to read the Roman poet in both a political and intertextually creative way - the latter is alluded to in Dante's famous address to Virgil when he meets him in the first canto of the whole Commedia: 'You are the single author from whom I derived the fine style which has brought me such honour' (Inferno 1.86-7).

The scholar-diplomat John Florio, translator of Michel de Montaigne's Essais into English (1603), copied this sonnet of his friend Matthew Gwinne into a presentation-copy of his Italian-English dictionary (1598) destined for the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, Sir Thomas Egerton. The language used points to a late humanistic context. The central idea is still the discovery and use of ancient wisdom, compared here to the gathering of secrets by 'inteligence'. Humanist logic's classification of the two aspects of all intellectual activity is prominent: the finding and storing, or inventio ('invention'), of philosophical matter; and the choice and deployment, or iudidum ('judgement') of that matter in specific contexts - the whole process amounting to the successful mediation of ancient wisdom (lines 8-11).

Any account of the past is necessarily coloured by the preconceptions, the aspirations and, above all, the knowledge or ignorance of the scholar who produces it. The terms and concepts that historians use to order and explain the objects of their inquiry are neither fixed nor value-free, but are evolving and often highly subjective elements in that process of revealing the past that gradually leads us to a better understanding of it. Labels such as Dark Ages or Renaissance, which are affixed to whole periods of European history, while they are convenient for the purposes of historiographical exposition, may tell only part of the truth about those segments of the past that they purport to characterize. The more we learn about the period following the decline of Rome, the less dark and uncultured it appears; the more we inquire into what was reborn in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the more we become aware of vital continuities with the past.

The history of humanism exemplifies both those continuities and a sense of renewal. The term itself owes its origin to the Latin humanitas, used by Cicero and others in classical times to betoken the kind of cultural values that one would derive from what used to be called a liberal education: the studia humanitatis constituted the study of what we might now think of as 'arts' subjects - language, literature, history and moral philosophy in particular. Even if Cicero was not widely read in the Middle Ages, he and his terminology were well known to certain fourteenth-century scholars (notably Petrarch, who regarded him as his favourite author); by the following century, the studia humanitatis were firmly enshrined in the university curriculum.

Two phenomena are always seen as central to the Renaissance, particularly in Italy: one is the new interest in classical Latin and Greek associated with humanism; the other the dramatic change that occurred in the visual arts, characterized by Giorgio Vasari in his Vite ('Lives', 1550 and 1568) as a process of rebirth and development to a level unsurpassed even by the ancients. Historians have often supposed that the two were closely related, yet it is not immediately obvious why this should be so. Humanism, after all, was an intellectual movement whose origins lie in the fourteenth century; it was principally concerned with texts which few if any artists would have read, not least because they did not possess adequate knowledge of Latin. By contrast, the revival of the arts began in the late thirteenth century; and Renaissance writers tended to parallel it not so much with humanism as with the birth of vernacular literature, especially given that Cimabue and Giotto were both mentioned in Dante's Divina commedia and Simone Martini featured in two famous sonnets of Petrarch. Nor is there much reason to suppose that the preoccupations of humanists would have had direct bearing on the normal activity of artists: the production of paintings and sculptures on religious themes and the design of traditional types of building, such as churches and palaces.

Because he has 'watch'd men, manners too / Heard what times past have said, seen what ours doe', the humanist antiquary earns the praise of the humanist poet. The balanced rhythm of attention that Ben Jonson here ascribes to John Selden is an idealization of what might be called the neoclassical habit of mind, with its alternation between censorious inspection of the present and studious review of the past. Other rhythms support this central one - of collection and dissemination, exemplification and dismissal, learning and teaching:

Jonson represents Selden's classicism as an ideal personal discipline, an ethics. Oddly, however, the ethical poise asserted here is represented without perfect aesthetic poise; the poem seems a less balanced thing than its subject. It is not just the unfortunate effect of the hectic exclamation marks; it is more a matter of the Ciceronian exclamations, with their ellipses constricting the praise as much as the repetitions extend it.