again upon the coming of Chrysoloras,
who is said to have lighted in Italy 'a new and perpetual flame.' Poggio
Bracciolini was one of his first pupils; and he became so distinguished
in literature that the earlier part of the fifteenth century is known as
the age of Poggio. Leonardo Aretino describes the enthusiasm with which
the Italians made acquaintance with the ancient learning. 'I gave myself
up to Chrysoloras,' he writes, 'and my passion for knowledge was so
strong that the daily tasks became the material of my nightly dreams.' He
told Cosmo de' Medici, when translating Plato's Dialogues, that they
alone seemed to be infused with real life, while all other books passed
by like fleeting and shadowy things.

We are chiefly concerned with Poggio as the discoverer of long-lost
treasures. He saved Quintilian and many other classics from complete
extinction. 'Some of them,' said his friend Barbaro, 'were already dead
to the world, and some after a long exile you have restored to their
rights as citizens.' As a famous stock of pears had been named after an
Appius or Claudius, so it was said that these new fruits of literature
ought certainly to be named after Poggio.

The sole remaining copy of an ancient work upon aqueducts was discovered
by him in the old library at Monte Cassino, which had survived the
assaults of Lombards and Saracens, but in that later age seemed likely to
perish by neglect. We have the record of an earlier visit by Boccaccio,
in which the carelessness of its guardians was revealed. The visitor, we
are told, asked very deferentially if he might see the library. 'It is
open, and you can go up,' said a monk, pointing to the ladder that led to
an open loft. The traveller describes the filthy and doorless chamber,
the grass growing on the window-sills, and the books and benches white
with dust. He took down book after book, and they all seemed to be
ancient and valuable; but from some of them whole sheets had been taken
out, and in others the margins of the vellum had been cut off. All in
tears at this miserable sight, Boccaccio went down the ladder, and asked
a monk in the cloister how those precious volumes had come to such a
pass; and the monk told him that the brothers who wanted a few pence
would take out a quire of leaves to make a little psalter for sale, and
used to cut off the margins to make 'briefs,' which they sold to the
women.

Poggio himself has described his discovery at the Abbey of S