When the wish of acquiring knowledge was excited, the numerous copies of the works of the ancients, which were scattered throughout Italy, afforded ample means of instruction; while the penury of Britain in this respect repressed the exertions of inquiry, and excluded the nascent scholar from the cultivated regions of classic taste.[114] The vexation which Poggio experienced, when he contemplated the gloomy contrast which Britain exhibited, when compared with his native land, was encreased by the receipt of letters from Italy, informing him, that whilst he was wasting his days in the unprofitable pursuit of preferment, his late associates were enjoying, with scholastic rapture, the perusal of some valuable manuscripts, which had been discovered at Lodi by Gerardo Landriani, bishop of that city. This prelate had rescued from a heap of rubbish a very ancient copy of various works of Cicero, written in a character so antique, that few were able to decypher it. The manuscript in question contained, besides Cicero’s treatise on Rhetoric, which was already in the hands of collectors of books, the following works of the same elegant writer, which had till this period escaped the researches of the learned—The three books De Oratore, entire—Brutus de claris Oratoribus—and the Orator ad Brutum. Nobody could be found at Milan who was able to read the character in which these treatises were written. But Cosmo of Cremona, a scholar of excellent accomplishments, decyphered and copied the treatise De Oratore; and the celebrated Flavio Biondo[115] undertook and soon accomplished the task of transcribing Brutus de claris Oratoribus. From these transcripts copies were speedily multiplied, and dispersed all over Italy, while Poggio was waiting with the utmost impatience, till Leonardo Aretino could convey one of these copies to the distant region in which his friend then resided.[116] At this inauspicious period, Poggio was filled with anxiety on account of the destitute condition of his mother, and also by the dissolute conduct of one of his brothers.[117] In these circumstances his uneasiness and vexation were greatly aggravated by the receipt of a letter from Niccolo Niccoli, containing grievous complaints against Leonardo Aretino, and informing him, that the bond of friendship, by which his correspondent and Leonardo had for so long a space of time been united, was for ever sundered.