During the interval between the triumph of Mahomet II. and the close of the fifteenth century, the scattered remnants of what could still be called Grecian genius, had gradually settled down into distant or secure retreats. A portion of the educated classes, who preferred submission at home to independence in a foreign land, remained at Constantinople, assembled round the palace of the Patriarch Scholarius, and took possession of the dwellings assigned them by the conqueror at the Phanar. Here the fragments of manuscripts which had escaped desupposed me writing a literary, rather than a general, sketch of Modern Greece. Amongst the most remarkable Romances of this period, were the anonymous History referred to by Crusius, the Loves of Rhodamna and Lybistros, a sketch of the fable of which will be found at p. 75, n. of Leake's Researches; and the adventures of Bertrand the Roman and Chrysanza, daughter to the King of Antioch, both of which have been referred to the thirteenth century. In the fifteenth translations and adoptions from the Italian, or Provençal tales became general; we have still Romaic versions of the Theseid of Boccacio, Iberius or Imperius, Floris and Blanchefleur, and Apollonius of Tyre, which were all written previous to A. D. 1500. In the sixteenth, (for I may anticipate the enumeration,) the most celebrated were a history of Belisarius, by an unknown author; one of Alexander the Great, by Demetrius Zeno of Zante, written in 1529; and the still popular, though tiresome, Adventures of Erotocritus, by Vincenzo Cornaro, a Cretan. (For an account of this curious production, the reader is again referred to Colonel Leake, p. 101, and Fauriel, Disc. Prel. p. xix.) struction, were collected into a library; schools were established for the education of youth, and the pens of the secular clergy and other satellites of the church were employed by Gennadius in exposing the impurities of Rome. The individuals devoted to classical pursuits had retired, as I have mentioned, to the cities and colleges of Italy; and poetry,* with the lighter branches of literature, withdrew almost exclusively to Candia, where they long continued to be cultivated under the protection of the Venetians. Of the literary productions of this or the two succeeding centuries, I shall not enter into a minute detail; the invention and rapid improvement of printing at this period had given unusual facilities to their multiplication, and the number of Greek works which issued from the press were quently much increased. conse But unfortunately • Previously to the fall of the city, the poetic talents of a few individuals had been devoted to the commemoration of some of the historical events of the empire, as well as to the composition of romance: thus an anonymous eye-witness has sung the Wars of the Franks in the Morea, and another the Battle of Varna in 1444, and a third, (Emmanuel Gheorghilá,) the Plague of Rhodes in 1478. + Lists of the Greek authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries will be found in Fabricius, Bibl. Græc. v. xi. and Meletius's Ecclesiastical History, v. iv. c. 25, as well as in Crusius and Ducange. the talent of the authors was far from advancing in a corresponding ratio; with the exception of theology, poetry alone (if their rude rhymes deserve the name) seemed the grand object of universal cultivation; but in this, their dialect continued barbarous and corrupt, and their ideas coarse and vulgar, and the laws of versification in their untutored hands served only to involve their phraseology in obscurity. Sentiment, which the taste of the day could not comprehend, became subservient to sound, which all could appreciate; and even the interest of their wild narrations was sacrificed to the prolix ambition of their authors.* As to works of science or instruction, of history, philosophy, or general information, the Greeks of this period have left us none. Education amongst them seems to have been at the lowest ebb. I have already referred to the melancholy statement of Kraus, relative to the almost total want of native schools; and though the attention of the French missionaries, who, in the reign of Charles IX. established The nuptials of Theseus and Emilia, printed at Venice in A. D. 1529, are spun out into no less than twelve books, and the Erotocritus of Cornaro occupies upwards of 10,000 lines in relating the adventures, wars, tournaments, and single combats of the hero. themselves in Greece, was directed to the instruction of the people, their efforts, opposed by the craft of the priesthood and the religious animosities of all classes, were never crowned with success. The country, in the mean time, was at once the object and the arena for the contentions of Venice and the Sultan; and whilst its cities were beset by the armies of the belligerents, and its fields overrun by bands of plunderers,t the mental cultivation or enlightenment of the people was naturally a matter of impossibility. It was only when the era of bloodshed had passed, and when a revolting tranquillity was procured by the final establishment of the Turks, that we begin in the eighteenth century to discover any symptoms of intellectual or political improvement. • Rabbe, p. 64. + See vol. i. p. 162, &c. CHAPTER XIV. Fate of the Fine Arts in Greece. It has sometimes been a matter of discussion, whether the influence of despotism, or that of liberty, be more conducive to the advancement of the liberal arts; but, were an instance wanting to decide in favour of the latter, none more convincing could be adduced than that of the Greeks. Throughout all those intestine wars, which, during the days of their independence, so long and so frequently distracted the attention of the Grecian states, the progress of the arts towards perfection may have been slow and occasionally suspended; but the interruption was a pause, not a retrogression, and the stream of genius flowed on afresh from each successive check, not with diminished but with renovated vigour. But when liberty began to wane, and the influence of despots commenced to spread over Greece, art from that moment |