ents, who are its
principal models. Such were John of Salisbury, the acute and learned
author of the Polycraticon, William of Malmsbury, Giraldus Cambrensis,
Roger Hoveden, in England; and in foreign countries, Otho of Frisingen,
Saxo Grammaticus, and the best perhaps of all I have named as to style,
Falcandus, the historian of Sicily. In these we meet with frequent
quotations from Livy, Cicero, Pliny, and other considerable writers of
antiquity. The poets were now admired and even imitated. All metrical
Latin before the latter part of the twelfth century, so far as I have
seen, is of little value; but at this time, and early in the succeeding
age, there appeared several versifiers who aspired to the renown of
following the steps of Virgil and Statius in epic poetry. Joseph
Iscanus, an Englishman, seems to have been the earliest of these; his
poem on the Trojan war containing an address to Henry II. He wrote
another, entitled Antiocheis, on the third crusade, most of which has
perished. The wars of Frederic Barbarossa were celebrated by Gunther in
his Ligurinus; and not long afterwards, Guillelmus Brito wrote the
Philippis, in honour of Philip Augustus, and Walter de Chatillon the
Alexandreis, taken from the popular romance of Alexander. None of these
poems, I believe, have much intrinsic merit; but their existence is a
proof of taste that could relish, though not of genius that could
emulate antiquity.[897]

[Sidenote: much more the fourteenth.]

[Sidenote: Invention of linen paper.]

[Sidenote: Libraries.]

In the thirteenth century there seems to have been some decline of
classical literature, in consequence probably of the scholastic
philosophy, which was then in its greatest vigour; at least we do not
find so many good writers as in the preceding age. But about the middle
of the fourteenth, or perhaps a little sooner, an ardent zeal for the
restoration of ancient learning began to display itself. The copying of
books, for some ages slowly and sparingly performed in monasteries, had
already become a branch of trade;[898] and their price was consequently
reduced. Tiraboschi denies that the invention of making paper from linen
rags is older than the middle of that century; and although doubts may
be justly entertained as to the accuracy of this position, yet the
confidence with which so eminent a scholar advances it is at least a
proof that paper manuscripts of an earlier date are very rare.[899]
Princes became f