Читать книгу Giordano Bruno - J. Lewis McIntyre - Страница 12

Queen Elizabeth.His account of the Queen must be taken much less seriously, although his praise of her formed one of the many counts against him in Venice. “That most singular and rare of ladies, who from this cold clime, near to the Arctic parallel, sheds a bright light upon all the terrestrial globe. Elizabeth, a Queen in title and in dignity, inferior to no King in all the world. For her judgment, counsel, and government, not easily second to any other that bears a sceptre in the earth. In her familiarity with the arts, knowledge of the sciences, understanding and practice of all languages spoken in Europe by the people or by the learned, I leave the whole world to judge what rank she should hold among princes.”[54] In a satirical passage of the Causa, where Bruno is proving that all vices, defects, crimes are masculine, all virtues, excellences, goodnesses, feminine, Elizabeth is given as a crowning example:—“than whom no man is more worthy in the whole kingdom, among the nobles no one more heroic, among the long robed no one more learned, among the councillors no one more wise.”[55] Exaggerated as the language is, it is not more so than was common with the writers who adorned Elizabeth’s Court; and it was one of his errors which Bruno could easily regret before his judges. “In my book on ‘the Cause, Principle, and One,’ I praise the Queen of England and call her ‘divine,’ not as a term of worship, but as an epithet such as the ancients used to apply to their princes, and in England where I then was, and where I composed this book, the title ‘divine’ is usually given to the Queen. I was the more inclined to call her so, that she knew me, as I went continually with the Ambassador to Court; but I know I erred in praising this lady, she being a heretic, and in calling her ‘divine.’ ” Mendoça.Through Mauvissière, Bruno made acquaintance with Bernardino di Mendoça, Spanish Ambassador to England from 1578 to 1584, a much stronger man as well as a more unscrupulous servant of his king than Mauvissière could be. Bruno says definitely that Mendoça was known by him at the English Court. So well was he known that Bruno approached the Ambassador in Paris on the delicate subject of his own relations with the Catholic Church, and was introduced by him to the Papal Nuncio. There is absolutely no reason for doubting these statements, and if true, they are quite compatible with acquaintance, if not friendship, between Bruno and Sir Philip Sidney, or the others whom he mentions. Mendoça was not, however a persona grata at Court: he was a thorough-going supporter of the Scottish Queen, and seems to have had a finger in almost every conspiracy that was planned or formed by the English Catholics. He became unbearable to Queen Elizabeth; his recall was demanded and refused; but in January of 1584 he was compelled to leave England, and a formal rupture with Spain was the consequence, which became actual war four years afterwards. Philip of Spain did not desert his champion, in whom he had the highest confidence. In October of 1584 Mendoça became Ambassador to France, and there in 1855 Bruno renewed acquaintance with him.

Sidney.Like all his contemporaries, Bruno came under the spell of Sir Philip Sidney’s charm. He had already heard in Milan and in France of that “most illustrious and excellent cavalier, one of the rarest and brightest spirits in the world.” To Sir Philip are dedicated the two chief ethical writings of Bruno, the Spaccio, and the Heroici Furori, with the expressed assurance that the author is not presenting a lyre to a deaf man, nor a mirror to a blind. “The Italian reasons with one who can understand his speech; his verses are under the censure and the protection of a poet. Philosophy displays her form unveiled to so clear an eye as yours. The way of heroism is pointed out to a heroic and generous spirit.” Sidney was one of the first to take an interest in the Italian on his arrival in England, and when the Spaccio was published, on the eve, as Bruno thought, of his departure from England towards the close of 1584,[56] Bruno could not turn his back upon Sidney’s “beautiful, fortunate, and chivalrous country, without saluting him with a mark of recognition, along with the generous and humane spirit, Sir Fulke Greville.” Greville.There was some disagreement, however, between Greville and Bruno, “the invidious Erinnys of vile, malignant, ignoble, interested persons, had spread its poison” between them, in Bruno’s emphatic words. What the ground of division was we do not know; possibly the tone in which the Cena spoke of Oxford men, and of English scholars generally, had offended Greville, and this may have called out the partial retractation in the Causa. As is well known the friendship of the two men, Sidney and Greville (with whom Edward Dyer was closely associated), was of the noblest type. Greville died in 1628 in the fulness of years and of honours, but had retained the impress of his young friendship fresh to the end.[57] It may be added that he became an intimate of Francis Bacon, who may through him have been introduced to Bruno’s works. Spenser.It must have been in some such way also that Spenser knew of Bruno, as it is probable that the Cantos on Mutability (first published posthumously in 1609, but written probably after his visit to England in 1596) were “suggested” by Bruno’s Spaccio.[58] The “new poet” certainly could not have met Bruno, for he was in Ireland continuously, as secretary, from 1580 till 1589, when he came over to publish the first three books of the Faerie Queen.

Bacon.It is possible, on the other hand, that Bruno met Bacon, who was a rising young barrister and member of Parliament when he arrived in England, and had already achieved some fame as a critic of Aristotle. The idea, however, that he knew and influenced Shakespeare, is entirely fanciful. Richard Field, a friend of Shakespeare, had come to London in 1579, and served his apprenticeship with Thomas Vautrollier;Shakespeare. and Field was Shakespeare’s first publisher, having set up for himself by 1587. It has been suggested that before this time Shakespeare worked in Vautrollier’s printing office. On the other hand, it has been universally received that Vautrollier was Bruno’s publisher in England, and Bruno usually corrected his own proofs. Hence the two may have met, Shakespeare and Bruno, in a grimy printer’s den. The idea is charming, but it has to yield before the light of fact. Shakespeare did not come to London until 1586, and there is no proof that he worked with Vautrollier. Bruno had left England by the end of 1585, and there is no proof that Vautrollier was his printer. The suggested analogies between one or two ideas in Hamlet and Bruno’s conceptions of transmigration, of the relativity of evil, and the rest, are of the shallowest.[59] Thomas Vautrollier, a French printer who came to London some years before, and set up a press in Blackfriars, was said (by Thomas Baker) to have gained an undesired notoriety as Bruno’s printer, and to have been compelled to leave England for a period, which he spent in Edinburgh, to the advantage of Scottish printing. The Triginta Sigilli and all the Italian Dialogues of Bruno were certainly published in England, although Venice or Paris was set down as their place of publication. According to Bruno, this was “that they might sell more easily, and have the greater success, for if they had been marked as printed in England, they would have sold with greater difficulty in those parts.” It is doubtful, however, whether Vautrollier was really the printer; in any case it was not on that account that he went to Edinburgh.[60]

Florio.Of the Italians in England during Elizabeth’s reign the most familiar to us is Florio, whose father had been preacher to the Protestant Italians in London. Florio had been at Oxford, from which university he dedicated his “First Fruites” to Leicester in 1578, so that he was already well known as a scholar when Bruno came to England and made his acquaintance. This may have occurred through Sidney; or vice versa, Sidney’s attention may have been called to Bruno by Florio. The latter was described by Cornwallis as one who looked “more like a good fellow than a wise man,” yet was “wise beyond his fortune or his education.” It was long after Bruno’s departure that Florio devoted himself to the charming translation of Montaigne (published in 1603), of which a copy has been found bearing Shakespeare’s name, while to Shakespeare is attributed a sonnet in praise of Florio. Curiously, we find him in his translation acknowledging assistance from one with whom Bruno also has casually connected him in the Cena, viz. Matthew Gwinne. Alexander Dicson.Of Bruno’s more intimate acquaintance in England we know little: there are two whose names occur in the dialogues, “Smith” in the Cena, and Dicson in the Causa, both sympathetic listeners and adherents of Theophilo, who is Bruno’s representative. The former it is naturally difficult to place: he may however have been the poet William Smith, a disciple of Spenser, who published a pastoral poem “Chloris, or the Complaint of the Passionate Despised Shepherd.” Of Dicson—“learned, honourable, lovable, well-born faithful friend Alexander Dicson, whom the Nolan loves as his own eyes,”[61] a little more can be told. He was the author of a De Umbra Rationis, (1583), obviously inspired by Bruno’s De Umbris Idearum, and on the same basis of Neoplatonism. The work is extremely sketchy, occasionally diffuse, and of little value even were there anything of value in the Art of Memory which it teaches. Antidicsonus.But it seems from a reply it called forth (Antidicsonus) to have had some vogue, and to have been backed by a vigorous and aggressive school in which Bruno, who is joined in condemnation with Dicson, may have had a place.[62] Watson.The poet Thomas Watson has also connected Bruno with Dicson in his Compendium Memoriæ Localis, published in 1585 or 1586. Watson also published a translation of Tasso’s Aminta, in Latin hexameters—in 1585, i.e. in the year following the appearance of Bruno’s Spaccio, with its satire on Tasso’s Age of Gold.[63] Watson had been in Paris in 1581, when he met Walsingham, and he may of course have met Bruno also: he was a scholarly poet, although his work lay more in the direction of translation and imitation of foreign writers, than in that of original verse, but during his lifetime he ranked as the equal of Spenser and Sidney. The Compendium of Local Memory is in clear, simple, classical Latin, in strong contrast with the corresponding works of Dicson and of Bruno; but the principles of the Art which it describes are those of Bruno, or Ravenna, or of some common source, more skilfully arranged and more aptly expressed.