[241] The Hodopœricon of Traversari, though not of importance as a literary work, serves to prove, according to Bayle (Camaldoli, note D), that the author was an honest man, and that he lived in a very corrupt age. It is an account of the visitation of some convents belonging to his order. The life of Ambrogio Traversari has been written by Mehus very copiously, and with abundant knowledge of the times: it is a great source of the literary history of Italy. There is a pretty good account of him in Niceron, vol. xix., and a short one in Roscoe; but the fullest biography of the man himself will be found in Meiners, Lebenbeschreibungen berühmter Männer, vol. ii. pp. 222-307. [242] Baillet, Jugemens des Savans, ii. 376, &c. Blount, Censura Auctorum, in nominibus nuncupatis. Hody, sæpies. Niceron, vol. ix. in Perotti. See also a letter of Erasmus in Jortin’s Life, ii. 425. Filelfo tells us of a perplexity into which Ambrogio Traversari and Carlo Marsuppini, perhaps the two principal Greek scholars in Italy after himself and Guarino, were thrown by this line of Homer:-- Βούλομ᾽ ἐγὼ λαὸν σόον ἔμμεναι, ἢ ἀπόλεσθαι. [Boulom egô laon soon emmenai, ê apolesthai.] The first thought it meant populum aut salvum esse aut perire; which Filelfo justly calls, inepta interpretatio et prava. Marsuppini said ἢ ἀπόλεσθαι [ê apolesthai] was, aut ipsum perire. Filelfo, after exulting over them, gives the true meaning. Philelph. Epist. ad ann. 1440. Traversari complains much, in one of his letters, of the difficulty he found in translating Diogenes Laertius, lib. vii. epis. ii.; but Meiners, though admitting many errors, thinks this one of the best among the early translations, ii. 290. |Public encouragement delayed.| 19. They did not uniformly find any great public encouragement in the early stages of their teaching. On the contrary, Aurispa met with some opposition to philological literature at Bologna.[243] The civilians and philosophers were pleased to treat the innovators as men who wanted to set showy against solid learning. Nor was the state of Italy and of the papacy, during the long schism, very favourable to their object. Ginguéné remarks, that patronage was more indispensable in the fifteenth century than it had been in the last. Dante and Petrarch shone out by a paramount force of genius, but the men of learning required the encouragement of power, in order to excite and sustain their industry. [243] Tiraboschi, vii. 301. |But fully accorded before 1440.|