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P O G 
everlafting remembrance. I do not commend him for 
entertaining fentiments hoftile to the conftitution of the 
church; but I admire his learning, his extenlive know¬ 
ledge, the fuavity of hiseloquence, and his ability in reply. 
Yet lam afraid that all thefe endowments were bellowed 
on him by nature, in order to effect his deftruftion.” He 
thus concludes: “He may have been heretical in his 
notions, and obftinate in perfevering in them ; but he cer¬ 
tainly died like a philofopher. I have rehearfed a long 
ftory, as I wilhed to employ my leifure, in relating a 
tranfafdion which furpaffes the events of ancient hi ftory : 
for neither did Mutius fuffer his hand to be burnt fo pa¬ 
tiently as Jerome endured the burning of his whole body; 
nor did Socrates drink the hemlock fo cheerfully as 
Jerome fubmitted to the fire.” 
In 1416, Poggio undertook a talk which entitles him 
to the gratitude of the friends of ancient literature. 
This was a vifit to feveral monafteries, in which he was 
informed that various manufcripts were lying concealed 
from the learned world. At that of St. Gall he found a 
complete copy of Quintilian’s works, with part of the 
Argonautics of Valerius Flaccus, and Afconius Pedianus’s 
Commentary on Cicero’s Orations. In other religious 
houfes he difcovered feveral of the great Roman orator’s 
harangues which had been conlidered as loft; and by 
himfelf and his friends be obtained copies of the works 
of Silius, Laclantius, Vegetius, Nonius, Marcellus, Arn- 
mianus Marcel lin us, Lucret i us, Coin me! la, and Tertu Ilian, 
together with parts of other authors. After the termina¬ 
tion ot the papal fchifm by the ele£dion of Martin V. Poggio 
returned to Italy; but, probably feeing no favourable 
profpefds in that country, he quitted it in 1418 for a vifit 
to England, whither he had been invited by Beaufort 
bifhop of Winchefter, afterwards cardinal. At this pe¬ 
riod, however, England was a country of barbarifm, con¬ 
taining nothing to gratify the tafte of a man of letters; 
fo that, after being prefented with the revenue of a fmall 
benefice by the bifhop as a compenfation for his trouble, 
be gladly reimbarked for Italy, and again took up his 
refidence in Rome, refuming his poll: of fecretary to the 
papa! chancery. He there applied himfelf to ftudy, and 
to the compofitioa and revifion of various works ; and 
in 1429 he made public his “ Dialogue on Avarice.” 
In this piece he feverely fatirized fome of the clerical 
order, efpecially a branch of the Francifcans termed Fra- 
tres Obfervantias. 
After the accefiion of Eugenios IV. to the papal 
throne, a conteft occurred between him and the council 
of Brazil, which terminated in the depolition of the 
pontiff, in 1433, and his flight to Florence; and Poggio, 
in attempting to follow him thither, was captured, and 
for fome time detained in confinement. However, by 
the payment of a ranfom, which his pecuniary circuin- 
ftances rendered very opprefiive, he was fet free, and 
finally accomplifhed his retreat to Florence. During his 
refidence in this city, he had an opportunity of teldify- 
ing his ardent attachment to the houfe of Medicis, by 
entering into a literary conteft, or rather a kind of lampoon 
war,with Filelto, an avowed enemy of that family, in which 
they feem to have vied with each other in inventing 
falsehoods of the mod atrocious kind, and in difgracing 
their pages by the molt malevolent and indecent calum¬ 
nies. This conteft between two of the mod learned men 
of the age was condadded in a manner, which, however 
it might have contributed to the amufement of their 
contemporaries, entails lafting difgrace on both parties, 
in the judgment of pofterity. Poggio, foon after the 
termination of this conteft, determined to fix his perma¬ 
nent refidence in the Tufcan territory, and with this 
view he purchafed a villa in the pleafant diftridt of Val- 
riarno. The Tufcan government favoured his purpofes 
of retirement, and palled a public add, which exempted 
him and his children from the payment of all public 
taxes. Poggio’s fortune was i neon fid era bl e; but he con¬ 
trived to render his humble man lion an objedt of atten- 
G I O. 
tion to the lovers of the liberal arts, by the treasures of 
his library and by a fmall colleddion of ftatues, which he 
difpofed in fuch a manner as to conlditute a principal or¬ 
nament of his garden, and the appropriate furniture of 
an apartment which he intended to dedicate to literary 
converfation. His attention feems to have been long 
engaged by the ftudy of ancient fculpture; nor was hie 
lefs afiiduous in refeuing its relics from obfeurity, than 
in fearching for the bell writers of antiquity. With this 
view he made a diligent furvey of the ruins of ancient 
Rome, and inferred in the preemium to his dialogue 
“ De Varietate Fortunes,” a catalogue of the relics of Ro¬ 
man architeddure, which has been introduced by Mr. 
Gibbon in the 71ft chapter of his Decline and Fall of the 
Roman Empire. Poggio’s refearches extended beyond 
the precindds of Rome ; and his zeal for the reftoration of 
the monuments of ancient fculpture induced him to vifit 
Crypta Ferrata, Tufculum, Ferentinum, Alba, Arpinum, 
Alatrinum, and Tiburtum; and by means of friends Ire 
diredded his refearches to Rhodes, Greece, and other 
countries. 
Another change in his condition took place in 1435, 
when he had attained his 55th year. He had hitherto 
lived in celibacy, with the (olace, at that time common 
among perfons attached to the Roman court, of keeping 
a miftrefs, who had borne him fourteen children, four of 
whom were living. Thefe he had deftined as the heirs 
of his property by a bull of legitimation ; but the attrac¬ 
tions of a beautiful girl of eighteen, induced him to dif- 
mifs them and their mother to poverty, and enter into 
the marriage-ftate with the objedd of liis new paffion. 
This union, according to his own account, proved a great 
addition to his happinefs, and fully juldified him in main¬ 
taining the affirmative on the queldion “ An feni fit uxor 
ducenda.” 
In 1440 he publiflied one of the mold finifhed of his 
works, a “Dialogue on Nobility,” in which the fuppofed 
interlocutors are Niccolo Niccoli, and Lorenzo, the bro¬ 
ther of Cofrno de’ Medici. The latter perfon, who was 
Poggio’s particular friend and patron, died foon after, 
and.was honoured by him with a funeral eulogy. New 
w’orks from time to time fell from the pen of this accora- 
plilhed fcholar ; but, though high in literary reputation, 
he had not obtained any promotion beyond the iecretary- 
ftiip which he had exercifed under feven fucceflive pontiffs. 
When, upon the death of Eugenius IV. in 1447, Tom- 
111 a fo da Sarzana fucceeded to the chair, under the name 
of Nicholas V. Poggio, relying on his paid friendship with, 
that patron of learning, addreffed a congratulatory ora¬ 
tion to him, in which he freely ftaled the condition in 
which he was left after forty years fervice in the Roman 
court. Nicholas was not inattentive to his complaints, 
and bellowed upon him prefents fo liberal, that Poggio 
confeffed he had no longer any reafon to be out of hu¬ 
mour with fortune. In this pontificate he was not afraid 
to publifh a “ Dialogue on Hypocrify,” in which he mold 
feverely lafhed the prevailing vices of the clergy. He 
alfo gratified the wilhes of the pope for the diffufion of 
found literature, by tranflating into Latin the works of 
Diodorus Siculus, and Xenophon’s Cyropsedia. 
In 1450, during a recefs from ferious bufinefs, be amu- 
fed himfelf with cOmpofing a work which is a linking 
proof of the little regard paid at that time to conliftency 
of charafter. In his 70th year, after he had fo often ap¬ 
peared as a grave philofopher and moralift, and even a 
chaftifer of indecent writings, he publifhed a “Liber 
Facetiarum,” or colleddion of jocular tales, many of them 
fuch as would have required apology in a narrator of a 
very different age and ftation. We are not told that 
this work injured him in the opinion of his great patron, 
though fome of his enemies made it a fubjefd of reproach; 
and we need not be furprifed that it became popular 
throughout Europe. 
Poggio was now, in the decline of life, to occupy a new 
and more important office than that which had employed 
all 
