[312] Ad calcem postea majore ex parte exterminatum. |Account of the East, by Conti.| 5. In the fourth book of this treatise, De Varietate Fortunæ, Poggio has introduced a remarkable narration of travels by a Venetian, Nicolo di Conti, who, in 1419, had set off from his country, and after passing many years in Persia and India, returned home in 1444. His account of those regions, in some respects the earliest on which reliance could be placed, will be found rendered into Italian from a Portuguese version of Poggio, in the first volume of Ramusio. That editor seems not to have known that the original was in print. |Laurentius Valla.| 6. A far more considerable work by Laurentius Valla, on the graces of the Latin language, is rightly, I believe, placed within this period; but it is often difficult to determine the dates of books published before the invention of printing. Valla, like Poggio, had long earned the favour of Alfonso, but, unlike him, had forfeited that of the court of Rome. His character was very irascible and overbearing; a fault too general with the learned of the fifteenth century; but he may, perhaps, be placed at the head of the literary republic at this time; for, if inferior to Poggio, as probably he was, in vivacity and variety of genius, he was undoubtedly above him in what was then most valued and most useful, grammatical erudition. |His attack on the court of Rome.| 7. Valla began with an attack on the court of Rome, in his declamation against the donation of Constantine. Some have in consequence reckoned him among the precursors of Protestantism; while others have imputed to the Roman see, that he was pursued with its hostility for questioning that pretended title to sovereignty. But neither of these representations is just. Valla confines himself altogether to the temporal principality of the pope; but in this his language must be admitted to have been so abusive as to render the resentment of the court of Rome not unreasonable.[313]