[246] Savigny thinks the price of books in the middle ages has been much exaggerated; and that we are apt to judge by a few instances of splendid volumes, which give us no more notion of ordinary prices than similar proofs of luxury in collectors do at present. Thousands of manuscripts are extant, and the sight of most of them may convince us, that they were written at no extraordinary cost. He then gives a long list of law books, the prices of which he has found recorded. Gesch. des Römischen Rechts, iii. 519. But unless this were accompanied with a better standard of value than a mere monetary one, which last Savigny has given very minutely, it can afford little information. The impression left on my mind, without comparing these prices closely with those of other commodities, was that books were in real value very considerably dearer (that is, in the ratio of several units to one) than at present, which is confirmed by many other evidences. [247] Tiraboschi, iv. 72-80. The price for copying a bible was eighty Bolognese livres; three of which were equal to two gold florins. |Exclusive study of antiquity.| 24. The love of Greek and Latin absorbed the minds of these Italian scholars, and effaced all regard to every other branch of literature. Their own language was nearly silent; few condescended so much as to write letters in it; as few gave a moment’s attention to physical science, though we find it mentioned, perhaps as remarkable, in Victorin of Feltre, that he had some fondness for geometry, and had learned to understand Euclid.[248] But even in Latin they wrote very little that can be deemed worthy of remembrance, or even that can be mentioned at all. The ethical dialogues of Francis Barbaro, a noble Venetian, on the married life (De Re Uxoria),[249] and of Poggio on nobility, are almost the only books that fall within this period, except declamatory invectives or panegyrics, and other productions of circumstance. Their knowledge was not yet exact enough to let them venture upon critical philology; though Niccolì and Traversari were silently occupied in the useful task of correcting the text of manuscripts, faulty beyond description in the later centuries. Thus we must consider Italy as still at school, active, acute, sanguine, full of promise, but not yet become really learned, or capable of doing more than excite the emulation of other nations. [248] Meiners, Lebensbesch, ii. 293.