An Early Humanist

SOME three hundred and seventy years ago, Sir Thomas More, then a rising barrister, not long married, and already set, by the favor of young King Harry, on the high-road to honor and to martyrdom, translated and adapted out of the Renaissance Latin in which it was first written, published, and dedicated as a New Year’s gift to his “right entirely beloved sister in Christ, Joyeuce Leigh,” the life of John Pico della Mirandola.

The quaint little black-letter quarto, long since become a prize among bookfanciers, bears at the foot of its last printed page the ever-interesting note, “ Emprynted at London in the Fletestreet at the Sygne of the Sonne, by me Wynkyn de Worde.” There is no date, but Stapleton, one of More’s early biographers, fixes the year at about 1510. He tells us that when, by the advice of his director, Dean Colet, More finally renounced the purpose, long cherished in secret, of embracing the religious life, he “determined to set before his eyes some renowned layman, to whose example he might conform his own living.” And as he reviewed in his mind “ all those, whether at home or abroad, who were at that time eminent for learning and piety,” the name of the celebrated Pico occurred to him as the most illustrious of all. Stapleton also says that the work was undertaken “ more for his own edification than for the sake of communicating it to others, although for that also; ” whence we may surmise that it was published almost as soon as completed. “ I therefore, mine heartly beloved sister.” ¹ says the translator in his dedicatory preface, “ in good luck of this new year, have sent you such a present as may bear witness to the happy continuance and gracious increase of virtue in your soul ; and whereas the gifts of other folk declare that they wisheth their friends to be worldly-fortunate, mine testifieth that I desire to have you godly-prosperous.”

The figure thus selected by the future Lord Chancellor for his reverent consideration was indeed one of the most radiant and winning conspicuously presented to the eyes of that eager generation. Pico della Mirandola, the “ phœnix of spirits,” the knight-errant of the classical revival, had been but sixteen years dead, when he was thus enshrined. He might well, could we imagine his swift career retarded and prolonged for a very few years only beyond the allotted seventy, have witnessed the triumphant death of his English biographer for the faith to which he himself clung with so impassioned a loyalty. And there is something so striking and touching in the close kinship between these two âmes d'élite and the contrast in their fates, and the old world English into which More has rendered the life of Pico has so strong an individuality, and is, for the most part, so peculiarly apt and beautiful, that we have chosen to base on extracts from his works our own reminiscences of the great Italian humanist. The purely picturesque aspect of Pico’s life was treated by Mr. Pater, not long ago, in a charming essay. More followed a biographer whose personal and party bias led him to dwell too exclusively, it may be, upon the reverse or ascetic side. In the living man, the two were fused into a singularly sweet and symmetrical whole,—a gracious type, or prophecy of a type, which passed too quickly, and for whose reappearance the world may, in some sort, be said to have waited ever since in vain.

The biography of which More’s is a considerably abridged translation was written by John Francis Pico, the nephew and namesake of its subject, who had enjoyed the confidential friendship of his young uncle, and to whom the latter made over during his life the greater part of his large possessions. The difference in the ages of the two men was small, for the elder Pico was the youngest of a large family.² He was born at Mirandola, February 24, 1463, " Pius II. being then the vicar of Christ his church, and Frederic, the third of that name, ruling the Empire.” More gives a certain ceremonious prominence to his hero’s fabulously high descent at the same time that he affects to overlook it : “ John Picus, of his father’s side, was descended of the worthy lineage of the Emperor Constantine, by a nephew of the said emperor called Picus, from whom all the ancestors of this Johan Picus undoubtedly bear that name. But we shall let his ancestors pass, to whom, though they were right excellent, he gave again as much honor as he received.” This last remark, indeed, is quoted from John Francis, who, however, puts the Emperor Constantine into a parenthesis, and gives particulars about the immediate ancestry of his kinsman which More omits. Even he, however, makes no mention of the wildest and darkest passage in the family annals, an intensely Italian episode, recalling that most heart-rending page of the Inferno which immortalizes the torment of Ogolino della Gerhardesca. Francesco Pico della Mirandola, a Ghibelline chief, was made podestá of Modena in 1310, and expelled by the Guelphs July 8, 1312. Restored by the Emperor Henry VII. and raised to royal power, he grossly abused his office, and finally sold the city for fifty thousand florins to Passerino Bonacossi, a lord of Mantua, and retired to Mirandola. Bonacossi, impatient to recover his money, surprised Mirandola in 1321, took Francesco prisoner, and murdered him and two of his sons in their dungeon. A third son, Nicolo Pico, escaped ; and when, seven years later, the Bonacossis were driven by the Gonzagas out of Mantua and Modena, this Nicolo joined the victors, but demanded and obtained, as the price of his adhesion, that Francesco Bonacossi, the son of Passerino, should be given up to him, to be starved in the prison where his own father and brothers had suffered death.

There was therefore a strain sufficiently dark and fierce in the blood of the man whose birth, to the dilated eyes of his own star-gazing generation, was ushered in by the fairest of prodigies. " For,” says More, — in this case quite literally translating the original, — " a marvellous sight was there seen before his birth. There appeared a fiery garland, standing over the chamber of his mother while she travailed, and suddenly vanished away. Which appearance was, peradventure, a token that he who should that hour, in the company of mortal men be born, in the perfection of understanding should be like the perfect figure of that round circle or garland, and that his excellent name should, round about the circle of the whole world, be magnified ; whose mind should alway, as the fire, aspire upward unto heavenly things, and whose fiery eloquence should with an ardent heat in time to come worship and praise Almighty God with all his strength. And, as the same suddenly vanished, so should this fire soon, from the eyen of mortal people, be hid.”

There follows a minute pen-portrait of Pico in his boyish prime, which fully justifies the tradition, inseparable from his name, of extraordinary personal beauty : “ He was of feature and shape seemly and beauteous ; of stature goodly and high, of flesh tender and soft, his visage lovely and fair, his color white intermingled with comely reds, his eyen gray and quick of look, his teeth white and even, his hair yellow and not too piked ” (or elaborately dressed).

His prodigious aptitude for learning appeared at a very early age. Taught by private tutors at home, in the little court of Mirandola, under the supervision of his mother, the accomplished Julia dei Boiardi, until he was fourteen years of age, he was then sent to the University of Bologna to study canon law. He was destined for the church, in the mind of his mother, who dreamed of seeing this last and brightest of her offspring who knows how eminent an ecclesiastic ? But at the end of two years — that is to say, at sixteen — “ he fell from it, yet lost not his time therein, since he compiled a breviary or summe upon all the decretals, in which, as briefly as possible, was compressed the effect of all the whole great volume. After this, as a desirous enserchour (cupidus explorator) of the secrets of nature, he left these common trodden paths, and gave himself wholly to speculation and philosophy, as well human as divine.”

It is time to pause for a moment, and consider what sort of world that was which claimed the first glad activities of this precocious mind, and under the compulsion of what manner of Zeitgeist he forsook the sober path which had been marked out for him, and gave himself to secular study. It was full sunrise, though misty as yet, in the world of modern thought; in Italy, the most dazzling moment of the Renaissance in letters, unquestionably, if not yet in art. The whole country was enjoying a peace, of halcyon brevity. Lorenzo the Magnificent, at the age of thirty-one, was the assured ruler of Florence ; a year having passed since the quelling of the Pazzi conspiracy, in which his own life had been attempted, and his brother Giuliano slain behind the high altar in the Duomo. Marsilio Ficino had just finished his translation of the works of Plato into Latin, having been trained from boyhood for this especial work in the household of the Medici. Angelo Poliziano, the first of Italian poets after Petrarch, and the first of Latin poets since the end of the classic age, had begun the translation of Homer into Latin verse; had dramatized the fable of Orpheus; had sung, in his melodious stanze, of the prowess of the fallen Giuliano and the tragic death of his lady, the beautiful Simonetta, for whom all Florence had wept aloud, when she was carried to her vernal grave, two years to a day before her murdered lover. Savonarola had taken his Dominican vows, and was preparing himself, by a life of mortification and prayer, for his coming career as a preacher in Florence. With every one of these ever memorable men the beautiful young Prince of Mirandola was destined, within a few years, to come into the most intimate personal relations : with Lorenzo and Poliziano, in light poetic rivalries, as well as in May masques and midnight dances, and all the extravagant trifling rife in Florence in the hour when the tide of her glory was just upon the turn ; with them also, but more particularly with Marsilio Ficino, in Ids graver pursuits, — in the oriental studies which the two may be said to have inaugurated, and in the preparations of the Platonic academy ; with the Prior of San Marco, as the religious counselor of his later and more austere days.

From Bologna, the young student of philosophy went first to Ferrara, — his elder brother, Galeotto, having married Bianca d’Este, sister of Ercole, the reigning Duke. There he remained for a year or more, under the tuition of the celebrated Giambattista Guarino, and thence he returned for a while to Mirandola in 1481. A letter of Pico’s, written from Mirandola in this year to Angelo Poliziano in Florence, proves that he had already made acquaintance with some members of that renowned circle of which he was presently to become the star. From Mirandola he went, with a private tutor, Manuello Adramiteno, to Pavia, to perfect himself in the Greek language; from Pavia, for a time to Padua; and his first recorded visit to Florence took place in 1483, when he had just completed his twentieth year.

He came, thus juvenile in years and fascinating in person, with the fame of a scholar and the prestige of a prince ; and his welcome in the first society of the place and time may be imagined. His earliest literary efforts were in the line of that romantic and amorous verse, both Latin and Italian, which was at that time cultivated by Lorenzo and Poliziano. In a note to the latter, written in 1484, Pico says, “I am vacillating between poetry, letters, and philosophy, and I doubt the desire to keep a foot in both stirrups will prevent my becoming either a poet, an orator, or a philosopher.” Not long after the date of this letter, Pico submitted to Poliziano five books of verses for correction. “ Be to me,” he gracefully entreated, “ judice œquo, non iniquo, — I mean severe, not indulgent.” Poliziano recommended a few alterations, —“after the example,” as he said, “ of him who found fault with the sandals of the goddess of beauty, because he could find none with herself,” and because a few verses had seemed to him “only of equestrian rank, while the rest were patrician and senatorial.” To this courtly apology, Pico replied with thanks for the corrections, and complained only that the censor had been too indulgent. “ No one,” he protested, “ could object to die by the sword of such a friend.” To the same period of his early success in the Gay Science and social popularity in Florence belong two letters of Pico’s, which acquired a certain celebrity. The one was a eulogy of the poems of Lorenzo de’ Medici, addressed to that potentate himself, and awarding him the palm over both Dante and Petrarch ! The other was to Ermolao Barbaro, a young Venetian ecclesiastic, three years older than Pico, and only less brilliant in his scholastic promise, afterward made Patriarch of Aquileia by Innocent VIII., and who died a year later than Lorenzo, a year earlier than Pico and Poliziano ; swept away, he also, before his prime, by that strange blast of mortality which devastated the first blossoming of the Italian revival ere its fruit had had time to form. The letter to Ermolao treated of the scholastic style, which Pico describes as barbarous but exact. “ The philosophers,” said he, “ have no need to adorn their writings con amore. It is enough for them to speak the truth, and to care for this only.” Ermolao notices a certain superciliousness in the tone of this dictum, but says it may well be pardoned on the score of Pico’s extreme youth, and also because of the elegance of the style in which he himself pleads for the barbarisms of other philosophers.

There are no letters of Pico’s dated from Italy between the middle of the year 1485 (his twenty-second) and the early part of I486. The interval comprises his first visit to the University of Paris, where he learned what he calls “ il linguaggio parisienne,” and where he received a new and powerful impulse to deeper philosophic, and especially Platonic, studies ; where, finally, he first conceived the audacious idea of his own grand philosophic adventure. This was nothing less than an attempt to establish the essential concord between Paganism, more particularly Platonism, and Christianity, in nine hundred theses, which, after the fashion of the day, the boyish champion proposed to set up in Rome itself ; inviting scholars from all parts of the world to come thither and dispute with him de omni re scibili, and magnificently offering to pay the expenses of such as were too poor to undertake the journey.

In pursuance of this purpose, Pico returned to Florence from Paris, in April, 1486; and then occurred an episode in his life, solitary of its kind, entirely passed over by his nephew, from motives obvious enough, and not altogether dishonorable,— an episode of which More may possibly have been entirely ignorant, but which seems to us quite essential to a perfect picture and full understanding of the man. Up to that time he had been hardly less conspicuous for the purity of his life than for the charm of his presence and the precocity of his attainments. But in May of this year, amid the preparations for his grand encounter with the wits of all the world, he fell captive to the allurements of Margarita, the wife of Giuliano Marotti de’ Medici, a distant and seemingly rather obscure relative of the great family whose home was at Arezzo. We know that this lady was beautiful, or that the young Mirandolano thought her so, and we know very little else to her advantage. She was of inferior birth, even to her husband, and a widow when mar-, ried to Giuliano; whence it would appear that, like the first love of many less famous men, she must have been older than her princely adorer.

Howbeit, having given out that he was going to Rome to set up his muchtalked-of theses, he sent forward his luggage, and started, with about twenty followers, both horse and footmen, arriving on the afternoon of the 9th of May at a small village called II Bastardo, Thence he pushed forward by night toward Arezzo, and took up his lodging outside the walls; where, at ten A. M. of the following day, he captured Margarita, on her way, with a child and a servant, to hear mass in the old cathedral outside the walls, lifted her upon his own good steed, and rode away. An alarm was instantly raised, the storm-bell rung to gather the people of Arezzo, chase given, and the fugitives presently overtaken; when, after a sharp skirmish between the two bands, the lady was recovered and carried back “ a grandissimo honore ” by her proper lord, while Pico and his chancellor were made prisoners. All the powerful friends and connections of Pico — Lorenzo in Florence, and the Estes in Ferrara—at once interceded in his behalf, and soon obtained his release ; but the adventure was a humiliating and inauspicious one, and may very well have helped to create a prejudice against him in Rome. Several letters to Lorenzo de’ Medici on the subject are preserved in the archives of Florence; one from Giuliano Marotti de’ Medici himself: He forgave his wife with great facility, albeit one of his own servants, who had been engaged in the fray, insists, in a letter to Lorenzo, that she mounted into the saddle quite of her own free will (come inamorata e ciecha di si bel corpo).

The most serious impression produced by this unfortunate and slightly absurd business seems to have been on the mind of the young knight-errant himself, whose expressions, in subsequent letters, of humble and remorseful regret, show a delicacy of conscience and a refinement of spirit sufficiently rare in the Italy of that day. There is a letter of Pico’s to Andrea Corneo, of Urbino, written in October ot the same year, in reply, seemingly, to one in which his correspondent had urged him to forsake the study of philosophy for a stirring and civic life (vitam actuosam et civilem) in the service of some greater prince. Pico repels the suggestion warmly, and professes, in his most eloquent Latin, an unwavering devotion to higher and more disinterested aims. All this part of the letter is quoted by Sir Thomas More,³ and is very fine in his translation. But he breaks off abruptly, and interpolates a “ Fare ye well” before what is, to us, the most, interesting and touching part of the original letter. Pico expresses his sense of Andrea’s generosity in being willing to excuse “ what took place near Florence,” by the example of “ kings David and Solomon, not to speak of Aristotle ” (!) ; but he says that he cannot so easily forgive himself. “ These palliations, and, as it were, screenings, thy friend embraces not, nor loves ; rather he repels, refuses, rejects them. He grieves over his sin. He defends it not.” Others may deem it an excuse to say “naught is weaker than man, naught stronger than love;” but for himself, he will only plead that it was his first fall, and that he was ignorant and rash. “ He who puts to sea for the first time may well be overcome of Neptune ; but if he twice make shipwreck upon the same rock, let none pity or stretch forth a hand to save him. But enough of this, for it is thy friend’s desire, ‘ hujusmodi facti memoriam non solum aliquo modo literis tradi sed quod sequens vita faciat obliterari penitus.’ ” Notwithstanding the forlorn play of words upon literœ, we recognize here the very accent of that true compunction which the author of the Imitation says it is better to feel than to be able to define. Even the use of the third person deepens the effect of ingenuous shame. We would far rather know that a young man so singularly tempted erred once in this way, and never again, than to believe him incapable of erring at all.

The unpracticed gallant eventually pursued his interrupted journey to Rome, and there his nine hundred Conclusiones were at last published in December of the same year, 1486. The discussions were advertised to begin after the Epiphany, permission for the same having, of course, been previously obtained of the reigning pontiff, Innocent VIII. But no discussions ever came off. A great clamor immediately arose, against both the theses and their author, a charge of heresy was preferred, and the public disputations were arrested by papal edict until this charge should have been investigated. John Francis Pico, as quoted by More, says briefly that “ it was through the envy of his malicious enemies that Pico could never bring about to have a day for his dispicions appointed,” and that there was plenty of bitter personal feeling against him among the members of the papal court there is no reason to doubt. His youth, his prestige, his pretensions, were a sufficient guarantee for that. But the theses, as we attempt to peruse them now, really constitute so amazing a mélange of mystical fancies, and crude physical speculations of pietism, Platonism, and magic, “and sundry matters sought out as well of the Latin authors as the Greek, and partly set out of the secret mysteries of the Hebrews, Chaldees, and Arabics, and many things drawn out of the old obscure philosophy of Pythagoras, Trismegistus, and others, and many things strange to all folk, except right few special excellent men,” that the word heresy could have had little meaning in those days, if they had not incurred suspicion of it.⁴

Before the commission of inquiry, Pico was permitted to appear from time to time, and defend his positions, and so the case dragged on until midsummer. That it was going against the defendant must have been evident long before its close. Pico himself clearly foresaw it, as we know from a subsequent letter of his to Lorenzo de’ Medici.⁵ But he adds firmly that he considered himself amenable for his opinions to the Holy Father alone, and free to defend and explain them until the pontiff had actually pronounced his interdict. At what time Pico’s Apologia, or defense of thirteen out of the nine hundred propositions, was actually prepared was a disputed point even in his life-time ; and it is still one of interest to determine, since it touches not only his loyalty as a Catholic, but his veracity as a gentleman. The brief of Innocent VIII., which condemned the theses in general and forbade their open discussion, while at the same time it distinctly declared their author to be free from censure, was dated August 5, 1487,⁶ but it was not issued until the 15th of the following December. The Apologia, which was dedicated to Lorenzo, was certainly not published until some days, at least, after the issue of the brief, but it was dated some months earlier than the latter, or May 31, 1487. Pico’s enemies accused him of having contumaciously prepared his apology after receiving the papal edict, had it printed with great secrecy in a cave near Naples, and disingenuously antedated it by seven months. This, in the letter to Lorenzo, already mentioned (August 27, 1489), Pico most earnestly and explicitly denies ; affirming that the interdict, so long threatened and suspended, was not issued until after he had left Rome, on his second journey to France; and that, when it overtook him on the road, upon the 6th of January, 1488, his apology had already been dispatched to Lorenzo. Pico’s word was quite enough for that independent potentate, and indeed for all who loved him; and we may add that it is, upon the whole, borne out by the character of the Apologia, which is rather a development or commentary than a defense, and which concerns itself with thirteen propositions only, and those not specially selected in the brief for censure. The tone of the dedication to Lorenzo, and of the envoi appended to the apology, is that of a man sincerely, and even distressfully, desirous of guarding against misunderstanding. He points out that many of the theses refer purely to profane matters, were advanced by him as probabilities only, and were never intended for general reading, but for private debate among the learned ; and finally he beseeches that they may be read no more, either by his friends or his enemies, in their original bald form, but only with the explanations herein offered.

But, however honestly intended in the first place, the apology had been prepared on a rumor of papal disapprobation, had been gotten before the world through a species of quibble, and its effect was to add fuel to the fire already raging at Rome against the young philosopher. Lorenzo, and the literary world of Florence both lay and clerical, received it with enthusiasm, and as early as January 19, 1488, we have the first of a long series of very spirited letters on the part of Lorenzo to Lanfredini, the Florentine ambassador at the papal court, urgently requesting, not to say demanding, a reconsideration of his favorite’s case, and his full restoration to ecclesiastical favor. But Innocent remained immovable. It was one thing, as he once remarked to Lanfredini, to oblige Lorenzo in the matter of his hoy (that is to say, by making a cardinal, at fourteen, of Giovanni de’ Medici, afterwards Leo X.), and another to yield upon a point of doctrine. Tacitly, however, he suffered Pico to return to Italy, and live there unmolested; and accordingly, in the spring of the same year, 1488, we find him back in Florence, which he never quitted again save for one short visit to Ferrara. Sometimes he was a member of Lorenzo’s household, at Careggi or in town ; sometimes he lived in his own rural villa of Querceto, the music of whose whispering oaks yet lingers in its name; oftenest of all, toward the last, in the Abbey at Fiesole, with that glorious view ever beneath his eyes, which almost pains the stranger out of colder lands when he beholds it first, so far he feels its beauty and significance to transcend his feeble appreciation.

But the glimpses of Pico’s daily life during this latter residence in Florence, which we soon begin to discern in the letters and memoirs of the time, reveal a man deeply changed from the fiery and self-confident champion of letters, who had made his splendid début there two years before. No outward charm is missing, but a something is added, of remote and unearthly radiance. Just so swiftly and completely as he embraced all other knowledge, he had learned, in that interval, the vanity of ambition and acquirements of love and fame. Despite the misconceptions under which he suffered so keenly, life still smiled for the Prince of Mirandola as it has rarely smiled for any man. But for him, at twenty-five the spell of life was broken; “and despising the blast of vainglory which he before desired, now with all his mind he began to seek the glory and profit of Christ his church, and so began to order his conscience that from thenceforth he might have been approved, though his enemy were his judge.”

It is not possible for us heartily to sympathize with the satisfaction of Pico’s austere kinsman, when he goes on to say that “ he now burned those books which, in his youth of wanton bliss, he had made in the vulgar tongue.” On the contrary, we would give more for a fragment of the love poems, so tenderly corrected by Poliziano, than for the whole of those “ noble books of commentary upon the Scriptures, which testify both his angelic wit, his ardent labor, and his profound erudition, — some of which we have, and some, as an inestimable treasure, we have lost.” All the literary work that he was yet to do lay more or less in this direction, but his zeal for study was not one jot abated. “ Great libraries, — it is marvelous with what celerity he read them o’er; ” and “ seven thousand ducats he laid out in the gathering together of volumes of all manner of literature.”

Another writer of that period, Paolo Cortese, thus describes Pico’s manner of life in Florence and Fiesole at this time : “ He studied not less than twelve hours a day, with extraordinary intensity of attention. In the morning, as he himself tells us in his letter to Battista Mantonana, he applied himself to his work on the concord between Plato and Aristotle. The afternoon he reserved to his friends and for recreation ; and therein, to soothe his soul of its cares, he touched the strings of the lyre, or married to music the verses which he had himself composed, or read the poets and orators. The evening he consecrated to meditation on the sacred pages, the which brought him great satisfaction, both of the intellect and heart. ' Philosophy,’he once said to this same friend, ‘ seeks truth ; theology finds it; religion hath it.’ ”

Combined with his ever-growing spiritual steadfastness and mental concentration, there is, however, something touching and ominous in the state of personal detachment and bodily unrest revealed by the following anecdote, as we have it embodied in More’s quaint phraseology : “ Wedding and worldly business, he fled almost alike. Notwithstanding, when he was axed once in sport whether of those two burdens seemed lighter, and which he would choose, if he should of necessity be driven to one, and at his election ; which he sticked thereat awhile, but at last he shook his head, and a little smiling, he answered that he had liever take him to marriage as the thing in which was less servitude and not so much jeopardy. Liberty above all things he loved, to which both his own natural affection and the study of philosophy inclined him, and for it he was always wandering and flitting, and would never take himself to any certain dwelling. ... Of outward observances he gave no very great force. We speak not of those observances which the church demandeth, for in those he was diligent, but we speak of those ceremonies which folk bring up — setting the very service of God aside — which is, as Christ says, to be worshipped in spirit and in truth.”

The study of the Hebrew Scriptures, in which he now so ardently engaged, was virtually a study to find Plato and Aristotle in them. His darling aim continued to be that of establishing the original divinity and oneness, at their source, of all religions, — the essential identity, in all times and places, of that “ true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” His first essay in exegesis — if his strained and visionary interpretations can he held to deserve the name — was the Heptaplo, or Seven Expositions upon the Days of Genesis, published in June, 1489, and dedicated, like the Apologia, to Lorenzo. It was a fixed and characteristic idea of Pico’s that God had never suffered the deepest mysteries of any faith to be committed to writing; that the visible text ever conveyed only the lower and more literal meaning, behind which the docile spirit may seek and find the symbolical and the celestial. The Heptaplo professed to indicate the hidden significance of the Mosaic cosmogony. It has little interest for modern readers, save as it “blazes” the solitary path followed by the author’s mind, for whom, however, it did not help to smooth matters at Rome.⁷

The treatise De Ente et Uno, published two years later, and dedicated to Poliziano, gives a stricter and more cogent development to many of the views advanced in the Heptaplo; and though embodying something like the Pythagorean idea of the divinity of number, has always been reckoned by the learned in philosophy as Pico’s most substantial work. To nearly the same period belong several meditations on the Psalms ; an elaborate commentary upon a sonnet by his friend and almoner, the poet Benivieni, translated into English, fifty years later, by the poet Thomas Stanley, under the title of A Discourse upon Platonick Love ; and the fragment of a tract against the astrologers. The latter reveals instincts in the matter of physical investigation which proved prophetically just, and it was enthusiastically commended by Savonarola, under whose rapidly ascendant spell Pico passed more completely than any other member of the inner Medicean circle. Poliziano, on the contrary, told Pico, in an impatient epigram, that he was wasting his powers upon such work, and that his “style was too good for a generation of jugglers.” Pico’s last literary work, destined also to remain unfinished, was a treatise on the harmony between Plato and Aristotle. His views on this head had already been foreshadowed in the Apologia, and Marsilio Ficino had said of him, when that work appeared, in the high-flown phraseology of their circle, that he ought, by rights, to be styled the Duke rather than the Count of Concord,⁸ since “ he had reconciled Jews and Christians, Peripatetics and Platonists, Greeks and Latins.”

It does not answer to depend entirely upon John Francis Pico and More for the events of Mirandola’s latest years, for the reason that the nephew became one of Savonarola’s most fanatical adherents, — was indeed the first and chief biographer of the Dominican ; opposed in principle, therefore, to the whole Medicean party, and unwilling to dwell upon his uncle’s close affiliation with them. But we may safely follow for a little our most sympathetic guide, while we “pass over those powers ” of his hero’s soul " which appertain to understanding and knowledge, and speak of them which belong to the achieving of noble acts. The year before his death, to the end that, all charge and business of lordship set aside, he might lead his life in rest and peace . . . all his patrimony and dominion, that is to say, the third part of the Earldom of Mirandola and of Concordia, unto John Francis his nephew he sold ; and that so good cheap that it seemed rather a gift than a sale. All that ever he received of this bargain, partly he gave out to poor folk, partly he bestowed on the buying of a little land” (the villa of Querceto) “to the finding of him and his household. And over that much silver vessel and plate, with other precious and costly household utensils, he divided among poor people. He was content with mean fare at his table, howbeit somewhat yet retaining of the old plenty in dainty viand and silver vessel. Every day, at certain hours he gave himself to prayer. To poor men alway, if any came, he plenteously gave out his money ; and not content to give them only that he had himself, he wrote to a certain Florentine, a well lettered man ” (the sacred poet Girolamo Benivieni) “ whom he singularly loved, that he should with his own money ever help poor folk, and give maidens money to their marriage, and always send him word what he had laid out, that he might pay him again.

. . . He was of cheer always merry, and of so benignant nature that he was never troubled with anger. He said once to his nephew that, whatsoever should happen, he could never, as him thought, be moved to wrath but if his chystes perished, in which his books lay that he had, with great travail and watch, compiled. But forasmuch as he considered that he labored only for the love of God and profit of his church, and that he had dedicate unto Him all his works, his studies and his doings, and sith he saw that sith God is almighty they could not miscarry but if it were either by his commandment or by his sufference, he verily trusted, sith God is all-good, that He would not suffer him to have that occasion of heaviness.

O very happy mind, which none adversity might oppress and which no prosperity might enhance ! ... In renaying the shadow of glory he labored for very glory, and was come to that prick of perfect humility that he little forced whether his works went out under his own name or not, so that they might as much profit as if they were given out under his name. . . . The little affection of an old man or an old woman to Godward he set more by than by all his own knowledge, as well of natural things as godly. And oftentimes, in communication, he would admonish his familiar friends how greatly these mortal things bow and draw to an end, how slipper and how falling it is that we live in now; how firm and how stable it shall be that we shall hereafter live in. The same thing in his book which he entitled De Ente et Uno lightsomely he treateth; where he interrupteth the course of his dispicion, and turning his words to Angelo Poliziano to whom ho dedicateth that book he writeth in this wise: ‘But now behold, my well-beloved Angel, what madness holdeth us? Love God while we be in this body. We rather may than either know Him, or by speech utter Him.’ . . . Liberality in him passed measure, for so far was he from the beginning of any diligence to earthly things, that he seemed somewhat besprent with the freckle of negligence. His friends often admonished him that he should not all utterly despise riches ; showing him that it was his dishonesty and rebuke when it was reported that his negligence and setting naught by money gave his servants occasion of deceit and robbery. Nevertheless that mind of his, which evermore only cleaved fast in contemplation, and the euchering of nature’s counsel, could never let down itself to the consideration and overseeing of these base, abject, and vile earthly trifles. His high-steward came on a time to him, and desired him to receive his account of such money as he had, in many years, received of his, and brought forth his book of reckoning. Pico answered him in this wise : ‘ My friend, I know well ye have mought oftentimes, and may yet deceive me, and ye list; wherefore the examination of these expenses shall not need. There is no more to do. If I be aught in your debt, I shall pay you by and by, and if you be in mine pay me; — either now, if ye have it, or hereafter, if ye be now not able.’ ”

The contemporary memoirs of the tragical last decade of the fifteenth century in Florence abound in references to Pico : now as active at the sessions of the nascent Platonic Academy, in the halls or open loggie of Careggi ; now as deep in theological discourse with Savonarola in the library of San Marco. The places which knew these vivid spirits are strangely unaltered in three hundred and ninety years. One has to shake himself free of their mysterious contact, rather than spur his imagination to recall them there. It was probably under Savonarola’s influence that Pico began divesting himself of his wealth in 1493. We know, from the funeral sermon preached in the Duomo by the Prior of St. Mark’s, that he had used his utmost influence to induce Pico to assume the Dominican vow ; and, very possibly, had both lived long into the dark days to come, he might have succeeded. Already, a year previously, the first lightning-stroke had fallen. Lorenzo fell gravely ill ; and — it is useless to shudder at the accounts we have of the medical practice which he underwent—for the magnificent tyrant of his fair native land, the poet, the gallant, the philosopher, the ardent friend, the most sumptuous and the most unscrupulous of citizens, the end was come at fortytwo. Poliziano was always at his bedside, the black-oak, red-canopied bed in the homely palace chamber, by which to-day the stranger may linger till he loses himself. We must make room for the poet’s own tearful account of Pico’s last appearance there, contained in a letter of Poliziano’s to Jacopo Antiquario : —

“ And when he was near to death at Careggi, looking gently at me as was his wont, he said, ' O Angelo, art thou here?’ and lifting his languid arms, he earnestly pressed both my hands. I could not restrain my sobs, which nevertheless I endeavored to conceal by turning away my face. But he, not in the least overcome, continued to clasp my hands in his. When, however, he perceived that my distress prevented me from speaking, little by little, he let me go. And I ran quickly into the neighboring cabinet and gave vent to my sorrow and weeping. Afterwards I dried my eyes and returned, and the instant be perceived me, he asked for Pico della Mirandola. I told him that Pico had remained in the city for fear of burdening him by his presence. ‘ And I,’ said Lorenzo, ' if I had not feared that the journey would incommode him, would entreat to see him and speak with him for the last time before I leave you all.’ ' Shall I then send for him ?' said I. ' Do so,’ he said, and as soon as might be, it was done. Pico came and took his place at the bedside. And I too dropped at his knees, that I might the better hear, for the last time, the now feeble voice of my master. Good God, with what courtesy, I may say caresses, Lorenzo welcomed him ! He began by asking pardon for having put him to so great trouble. He besought him to consider it as a sign of the love and friendship which he had for him. He said that he should die the more willingly for having seen once more so beloved a friend. After that he passed, as was his wont, to pleasant and familiar talk. Nay, he even jested with us, and ‘ I could wish,’ said he, ‘ that death had at least delayed until your library had been filled.’ ”

Immediately after Pico’s withdrawal Savonarola was admitted, for that terrible last interview of which such contradictory accounts have been given to the world. John Francis Pico, whose life of Savonarola was probably compiled from materials furnished him by the brethren of San Marco, is responsible for the statement, so generally received, that the prior refused absolution to Lorenzo because he would not promise to restore the liberties of Florence. Setting aside the vanity of such a demand at such a moment, and the impossibility of complying with it, the story is quite inconsistent with the narrative of Poliziano, — a devoted, though perhaps partial, eye-witness ; and we may observe, as tending to sustain the truth of the latter, that Savonarola could not have refused Lorenzo absolution, since he had already received extreme unction at other hands before even Pico arrived.

This was in July, 1492. In May, 1493, the new Pope, Alexander VI., issued a brief, relieving the Prince of Mirandola of all censure in the matter of the theses, and removing the ban from his works. In September of the same year, Pico, “ feeling that his life was accomplished,” made his will; devising all the real estate with which he had not yet parted to the Hospital of Santa Maria Novella, and the residue of his personal property to his brother Antonio. Poliziano and Savonarola both witnessed the will. One more short year, full of civic trouble and agitation as of spiritual peace, and, in the late autumn of 1494, under the dim skies and amid the dropping rose-leaves of the Florentine November, with the “ drums and tramplings ” of a French army already beginning to echo along the Val d’Arno, Pico fell ill of a mortal fever. Once again let us yield the pen to More. No words can describe the final scene so fittingly as his : —

“ After that he had received the holy body of our Saviour, when they offered unto him the crucifix, . . . that he might, ere he gave up the ghost, receive his full draught of love and compassion, and the priest demanded him whether he firmly believed the crucifix to be the image of him that was very God and very man . . . and such other things as they be wont to inquire of folk in that case, Pico answered him that he not only believed but most certainly knew it. His nephew Albert spake of release from suffering, but Pico answered that he welcomed death rather as the release from sin. He asked also all his servants’ forgiveness, — if he had ever, before that day, offended any of them. . . . He lay always with a pleasant and merry countenance, and in the very twitches and pangs of death, he spake as though he beheld the heavens open. And all that came to him and saluted him, offering their service, with very loving words he received, thanked and kissed. . . . And in this wise into the hands of our Saviour he gave up his spirit.”

It was the 17th of November, 1494. The gates of Florence had been opened to the army of Charles VIII. of France that very day. The narrow streets were full of sullen din ; the bravest hearts in the city were heaviest. But the struggle was just over in the chamber of the agonizing, when there entered two of the French king’s own physicians, sent by their master to bear letters of compliment to the sufferer, and “ do him all the good they might.”

There is a little story, well enough authenticated, which reflects, as from a score of facets, the spirit and the foibles of the time. Prophecy, as we know, was coming much into fashion, and a certain sickly Camilla Rucellai was become a noted seer. She had stated some years before that “ Pico would die in the time of the lilies,” and they taxed her with it now. “ Oh,” replied the adroit visionary, “I meant the lilies of France.”

Savonarola had also his vision, which he described somewhat minutely in the sermon already mentioned, preached in the Duomo after Pico’s death. He beheld his friend in the penal fire, but was able to assure the Florentines that his detention would be but brief, and was due entirely to his reluctance to enter the Dominican order. This may be classed with Savonarola’s other visions.

The prince was buried in the cloister of San Marco, in a white robe and scarlet cap. Long years afterward, we are told by an Italian writer on the Incorruzione Naturale dei Cadaveri, the tomb was opened by two of the brethren of St. Mark, and the remains were seen therein still fresh and undecayed. The epitaph upon the cloister wall is daily scanned by vagrants out of “ antipodal ” regions, of which the poet could have dreamed but vaguely in 1494, despite his confident prediction of a world-wide fame : —

The world of to-day “ knows the rest ” quite as well as the inquisitive fifteenth century knew it. Pico della Mirandola died at thirty-two, disappointed of his chief ambition, and leaving behind him no work commensurate with his renown for learning and ability. Of the vast and miscellaneous mass of his acquirements, the greater part was singularly useless ; nor have his speculations, whether in physics or philosophy, proved particularly fruitful as seeds of later discovery. Yet he has always been counted, and justly, among the pioneers of modern progress. His was the merit of a mind wide open to inspiration from every quarter of God’s universe, and chivalric in the disinterestedness of its devotion to truth, and he has enriched the world by the jewel of an exquisite human memory.

Harriet Waters Preston.