t was impossible to ascertain, except by
indefatigable researches, the extent of what had been saved out of the
great shipwreck of antiquity. To this inquiry Petrarch devoted continual
attention. He spared no means to preserve the remains of authors, who
were perishing from neglect and time. This danger was by no means
passed in the fourteenth century. A treatise of Cicero upon Glory, which
had been in his possession, was afterwards irretrievably lost.[908] He
declares that he had seen in his youth the works of Varro; but all his
endeavours to recover these and the second Decad of Livy were fruitless.
He found, however, Quintilian, in 1350, of which there was no copy in
Italy.[909] Boccaccio, and a man of less general fame, Colluccio
Salutato, were distinguished in the same honourable task. The diligence
of these scholars was not confined to searching for manuscripts.
Transcribed by slovenly monks, or by ignorant persons who made copies
for sale, they required the continual emendation of accurate
critics.[910] Though much certainly was left for the more enlightened
sagacity of later times, we owe the first intelligible text of the Latin
classics to Petrarch, Poggio, and their contemporary labourers in this
vineyard for a hundred years before the invention of printing.

[Sidenote: Industry of the fifteenth century.]

[Sidenote: Poggio.]

What Petrarch began in the fourteenth century was carried on by a new
generation with unabating industry. The whole lives of Italian scholars
in the fifteenth century were devoted to the recovery of manuscripts and
the revival of philology. For this they sacrificed their native
language, which had made such surprising shoots in the preceding age,
and were content to trace, in humble reverence, the footsteps of
antiquity. For this too they lost the hope of permanent glory, which can
never remain with imitators, or such as trim the lamp of ancient
sepulchres. No writer perhaps of the fifteenth century, except Politian,
can aspire at present even to the second class, in a just marshalling of
literary reputation. But we owe them our respect and gratitude for their
taste and diligence. The discovery of an unknown manuscript, says
Tiraboschi, was regarded almost as the conquest of a kingdom. The
classical writers, he adds, were chiefly either found in Italy, or at
least by Italians; they were first amended and first printed in Italy,
and in Italy they were first collected in public libraries