Before the invention of printing, it was well-nigh
impossible to secure two copies of any work that would be exactly
alike. Now, the constant proof-reading and the fact that an entire
edition was printed from the same type were securities against the
anciently recurring faults of forgery or of error.
HUMANISM
Printing, the invention of which has just been described, was the new
vehicle of expression for the ideas of the sixteenth century. These
ideas centered in something which commonly is called "humanism." To
appreciate precisely what humanism means--to understand the dominant
intellectual interests of the educated people of the sixteenth century
--it will be necessary first to turn back some two hundred years
earlier and say a few words about the first great humanist, Francesco
Petrarca, or, as he is known to us, Petrarch.
[Sidenote: Petrarch, "the Father of Humanism"]
The name of Petrarch, who flourished in the fourteenth century (1304-
1374), has been made familiar to most of us by sentimentalists or by
literary scholars who in the one case have pitied his loves and his
passions or in the other have admired the grace and form of his Italian
sonnets.
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