The first to make these charges were certainly the humanists themselves.Of all men who ever formed a class, they had the least sense of their common interests, and least respected what there was of this sense.All means were held lawful, if one of them saw a chance of supplanting another.From literary discussion they passed with astonishing suddenness to the fiercest and the most groundless vituperation.Not satisfied with refuting, they sought to annihilate an opponent.Something of this must be put to the account of their position and circumstances; we have seen how fiercely the age, whose loudest spokesmen they were, was borne to and fro by the passion for glory and the passion for satire.Their position, too, in practical life was one that they had continually to fight for.In such a temper they wrote and spoke and described one another.Pog- gio's works alone contain dirt enough to create a prejudice against the whole class--and these 'Opera Poggii' were just those most often printed, on the north as well as on the south side of the Alps.We must take care not to rejoice too soon, when we meet among these men a figure which seems immaculate; on further inquiry there is always a danger of meeting with some foul charge, which, even if it is incredible, still discolors the picture.The mass of indecent Latin poems in circulation, and such things as ribaldry on the subject of one's own family, as in Pontano's dialogue 'Antonius,' did the rest to discredit the class.The sixteenth century was not only familiar with all these ugly symptoms, but had also grown tired of the type of the humanist.These men had to pay both for the misdeeds they had done, and for the excess of honour which had hitherto fallen to their lot.Their evil fate willed it that the greatest poet of the nation, Ariosto, wrote of them in a tone of calm and sovereign contempt.
Of the reproaches which combined to excite so much hatred, many were only too well founded.Yet a clear and unmistakable tendency to strictness in matters of religion and morality was alive in many of the philologists, and it is a proof of small knowledge of the period, if the whole class is condemned.Yet many, and among them the loudest speakers, were guilty.