OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

117

Europe had emerged from the deluge of bar- chapbarism, that the seeds of science might have been LXVI *scattered by the winds, before the Italian soilwas prepared for their cultivation.

The most learned Italians of the fifteenth cen- Revival oftury have confessed and applauded the restora-, t “ a e r ®J ) g e i „tion of Greek literature, after a long oblivion of Ital y’many hundred years.’ Yet in that country, andbeyond the Alps, some names are quoted ; someprofound scholars, who in the darker ages werehonourably distinguished by their knowledgeof the Greek tongue; and national vanity hasbeen loud in the praise of such rare examples oferudition. Without scrutinizing the merit of in-dividuals, truth must observe, that their scienceis without a cause, and without an effect; thatit w r as easy for them to satisfy themselves andtheir more ignorant contemporaries; and thatthe idiom, which they had so marvellously ac-quired, was transcribed in few manuscripts, andwas not taught in any university of the West.

In a corner of Italy , it faintly existed as the po-pular, or at least as the ecclesiastical dialect/

The first impression of the Doric and Ionic co-lonies has never been completely erazed: the

9 Of those writers who professedly treat of the restoration of theGreek learning in Italy, the two principal are Hodius, Dr. HumphreyHody (de Graecii Illustribus, Linguae Graecae Literarumque humani-orum Instauratoribus, Londini, 1742, in large octavo), and Tiraboschi(Istoria della Letteratura Italiana, tom v, p.364-377, tom.vii, p. 112-143).

The Oxford professor is a laborious scholar, but the librarian of Mo-dena enjoys the superiority of a modern and national historian.

r In Calabria qua olim inagna Grsecia dicebatur, coloniis Graecii re-pleta, rcmansit quaedam lingua veteris cognitio (Hodius, p. 2). Tf itwere eradicated by the Romans, it was re\ived and perpetuated by themonks of St. Basil, who possessed seven convents at Rossauo alone(Giannone, Istoria di Napoli, tom. i, p. 520).