[313] A few lines will suffice as a specimen. O Romani pontifices, exemplum facinorum omnium cæteris pontificibus, et improbissimi scribæ et pharisæi, qui sedetis super cathedram Moysi, et opera Dathan et Abyron facitis, itane vestimenta apparatûs, pompa equitatus, omnis denique vita Cæsaris, vicarium Christi decebit? The whole tone is more like Luther’s violence, than what we should expect from an Italian of the fifteenth century. But it is with the ambitious spirit of aggrandisement as temporal princes, that he reproaches the pontiffs; nor can it be denied, that Martin and Eugenius had given provocation for his invective. Nec amplius horrenda vox audiatur, partes contra ecclesiam; ecclesia contra Perusinos pugnat, contra Bononienses. Non contra Christianos pugnat ecclesia, sed papa. Of the papal claim to temporal sovereignty by prescription, Valla writes indignantly. Præscripsit Romana ecclesia; o imperiti, o divini juris ignari. Nullus quantumvis annorum numerus verum abolere titulum potest. Præscripsit Romana ecclesia. Tace, nefaria lingua. Præscriptionem quæ fit de rebus mutis atque irrationalibus, ad hominem transfers; cujus quo diuturnior in servitute possessio, eo detestabilior. |His treatise on the Latin language.| 8. The more famous work of Valla, De Elegantiis Latinæ Linguæ, begins with too arrogant an assumption. “These books,” he says, “will contain nothing that has been said by any one else. For many ages past, not only no man has been able to speak Latin, but none have understood the Latin they read: the studious of philosophy have had no comprehension of the philosophers,--the advocates of the orators,--the lawyers of the jurists,--the general scholar of any writers of antiquity.” Valla, however, did at least incomparably more than any one who had preceded him; and it would probably appear, that a great part of the distinctions in Latin syntax, inflection, and synonymy, which our best grammars contain, may be traced to his work. It is to be observed, that he made free use of the ancient grammarians, so that his vaunt of originality must be referred to later times. Valla is very copious as to synonyms, on which the delicate, and even necessary understanding of a language mainly depends. If those have done most for any science who have carried it furthest from the point whence they set out, philology seems to owe quite as much to Valla as to any one who has come since. The treatise was received with enthusiastic admiration, continually reprinted, honoured with a paraphrase by Erasmus, commented, abridged, extracted, and even turned into verse.[314] [314] Corniani, ii. 221. The editions of Valla de Elegantiis, recorded by Panzer, are twenty-eight in the fifteenth century, beginning in 1471, and thirty-one in the first thirty-six years of the next. |Its defects.|