Even so the whole race was losing its vigor amid studies and pleasures, and the time of its ignoble paralysis was near at hand.
But study consoled Alberti for all that he had lost; letters and philosophy led him to scorn all else. Perilous indeed is contact with the ancients! The men of the Quattrocento, like barbarians come to a marvelous city, were overwhelmed with reverence for the divine Latin works. They had no hope of reaching higher excellence; they sought a similar perfection; they could but imitate. Their greatest desire was that scholars should think their writings a recovered treasure. So when Alberti, in spare hours at Bologna, wrote a comedy, the Philodoxeos, in which he allegorized his love of learning, he himself spread the rumor that it was a new-found piece by an ancient writer of comedies named Lepidus—and had the satisfaction of deceiving his literary friends.
There no longer existed that indifference to glory which had marked the obscure artisans of the Middle Ages, the nameless builders and sculptors of the great cathedrals; nor had there yet appeared the complacent modern genius, who, sure of himself and of the novelty of his work, sends it forth under his own name. The men of the Quattrocento sought shelter under
