252 EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPLATION Otf 



ever found conjoined; but the influence of the aesthetic 

 feeling thus awakened in them vanished without leaving 

 farther traces ; and the praise of having prepared in Italy 

 a permanent resting place for the exiled Grecian Muses, 

 of having laboured most powerfully for the restoration of 

 classical literature, belongs to two poets intimately linked 

 with each other in the bonds of friendship Petrarch and 

 Boccaccio. They had both received lessons from a Calabrian 

 monk named Barlaam, who had long lived in Greece enjoying 

 the favour of the Emperor Andronicus. ( 387 ) They first com- 

 menced the careful collection of Roman and Grecian manu- 

 scripts; and even an historical eye for the comparison of 

 languages had been awakened in Petrarch, ( 388 ) whose 

 philological acuteness seemed to tend towards a more 

 general contemplation of the Universe. Emanuel Chryso- 

 loras, who was sent as ambassador from Greece to Italy and 

 to England in 1391, Cardinal Bessarion of Trebizond, 

 Gemistus Pletho, and the Athenian, Demetrius Chalcoiidylas, 

 to whom is owing the first printed edition of Homer, ( 389 ) 

 were all important agents in promoting acquaintance with 

 Grecian literature. All these came from Greece before the 

 eventful taking of Constantinople on the 29th of May, 1453 

 it was only Constantino Lascans, whose ancestors had once sat 

 on the throne of the eastern empire, who came later to Italy, 

 and brought with him a precious collection of Greek manu- 

 scripts, which is now buried in the seldom-used library of the 

 Escurial. ( 39 ) The first Greek book was printed only fourteen 

 years before the discovery of America, although the art of print- 

 ing was discovered (probably simultaneously, and quite inde- 

 pendently ( 3 9i) by Guttenberg in Strasburg and Mayence, 



