Finally what is shown by these records concerning the development of the council itself? Enough has been said within the limits. of this paper to show that certain current views regarding this body must be modified. So far as the records of council proceedings show, there was no considerable organic change during the reign of Richard II. Comparing the memoranda of that time with those of the earlier period there is no particular difference to be observed, beyond the growth of an institution already mature. Of new historical material the minutes of the council will probably not furnish much, for the same data may generally be found elsewhere. What is of more value than the miscellaneous subject-matter which they contain, is the clearer understanding that the original records give of the steps of council procedure. They are perhaps most serviceable in showing how the acts of the council came to find place upon the various rolls of the chancery and the exchequer. They reveal also, what is partly understood already, a power working with great persistency in legislation and administration, which it would be no exaggeration to call the mainspring of the government. They show, moreover, that the usual working council, the consilium ordinarium, as some have called it, consisted of a very small number of men. No wonder it roused the jealousy of Parliament and particularly of the House of Lords, which sought in various ways to curb its powers!

JAMES F. BALDWIN.

1 The functions of the council in judicial proceedings, about which more is generally known, I have held for the present in reserve.

THE LITERARY ACTIVITY OF THE EMPEROR

MAXIMILIAN I.

It is not so rare as one might suppose for great rulers to try their hands at literature, and Julius Caesar and Marcus Aurelius wrote books which rank them among the masters. If Maximilian I., Emperor of Germany from 1494-1517, failed to write anything comparable to the Commentaries on the Gallic War, it was not for lack of trying. During all the latter part of his life he was busied with plans for writing or collating. The list of proposed subjects finally grew to over a hundred and ranged from a treatise on cooking to a collection of prayers. But it is very doubtful whether he ever took much interest in any subject simply to produce a beautiful, an interesting or a useful book. He did not write from the love of letters.

Maximilian was firmly convinced that he could do almost everything better than anybody alive, better than all but a few of those who were dead. And a severe analysis of his books shows in them all the same leading motive-bragging. He brags of what has come to him by birth and what he has achieved; of what he owns and what he has done; of what he is and what his children will become. He brags of his great skill in cooking and of his piety; of his dancing and his generalship; of his knowledge of horses and pictures; of the marriages of his children and of the waters he preserves for fishing; of his ability to talk many languages and hunt all kinds of game; of the antiquity of his family and of his skill in blacksmithing; of his kindness to the poor and of his slaughter of enemies; of his mercy and of his executions of rebel peasants; of his ability to endure fatigue and his regularity in saying his prayers. Every book in which he took any interest is either a record of his deeds, a catalogue of his possessions or an exhortation to his descendants to base their greatness on his example. His prayer-book seems an exception. But its latest commentator believes it was designed to promote a pious enterprise of which Maximilian, as head of Christendom, was to be the glorious leader.

The works on genealogy and history are not even apparent exceptions to this inspiration of vanity. Maximilian's plan for his own tomb symbolizes his view of genealogy and history. As he saw it in his mind's eye, forty life-sized figures surrounded it.

They represented Maximilian's ancestors. A hundred small statues of saints of the house of Hapsburg kept their respectful watch over a sarcophagus adorned with twenty-four reliefs of the supreme achievements of Maximilian's life. Over it all, dominating history, genealogy, his own achievements, towered a colossal statue of Maximilian himself.

It is difficult to find a finer example of the desire for the extension of the ego, than is shown by Maximilian's work in literature and patronage of art. This egotism is not indeed too crassly expressed. Maximilian knew that it was not wise to put the trumpet of his praise too openly to his own lips. Neither is it concealed with art, as that clever man of the world, Julius Caesar, buried his commendation of his own generalship beneath an impersonal manner. At times it is naïve and childlike. At times the reader notes it indirectly, as one sees the polite struggle of a very vain man to take active interest in talking about anything except his own successes. But open or veiled, it is omnipresent as sunlight on an April day. And the man who survives the reading of all Maximilian's books in succession, receives at least one clear and distinct impression-of continuous, all-pervading vanity.

Vanity, unlike pride, is a weakness rather than a vice. It is not incompatible with amiability, and Maximilian was a most amiable man. It often accompanies capacity, and perhaps literary capacity more often than any other form of capacity; witness for instance the stolid vanity of Wordsworth, the touchy vanity of Pope. But Maximilian had no literary capacity, only a tireless energy in planning, correcting, inspiring the work of secretaries, scholars and illustrators. This judgment is, of course, a matter of taste. The reader who recalls the vague praises of Maximilian's literary ability and artistic knowledge which abound in German popular histories will question it. But if he reads Maximilian's books through, the question will be given up. Even without that severe cure, it is sufficient to notice that the praises are all vague and for his literary activity as a whole. None of the men who in modern times have made special studies of his separate works has anything to say in praise either of the form or the content of the particular object of his study.1

Nevertheless, though these books are dull in themselves, they have an overtone of interest. The writer of the only essay in English about any of them had apparently not seen the latest

1 For Teuerdank, see judgments of Haltaus, Einleitung, pp. 106, 108, 109; of Goedeke, Einleitung, xii, xxi, xxii; of Laschitzer. For Weiss Kunig see Alwin Schultz, Jahrbücher der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen, etc., Vol. VI.

AM. HIST. REV., VOL XI.-2.

edition of the books he wrote about and the conclusions of the only men who have thoroughly studied manuscripts of them, but the title of his essay is very suggestive, "Tewrdanck and Weiss Kunig and their Historical Interest."1

The literary work of Maximilian throws light upon a strange personality who played a prominent part upon the stage of history. It does not show Maximilian as the man he thought he was, but it is none the less illuminating for that.

His preparation for literary work was not a very good one. He wrote in his autobiography, of his own childhood, "Although the King was very young he grew so in good habits that he surpassed all other princes and noblemen's children so that everybody wondered at his youth, and the old White King (his father) rejoiced at it, as may well be imagined." But, unfortunately, this summary of an old man writing an account of his life for an example to his grandchildren, does not agree with the indignation he expressed in his manhood against the tutor who had allowed him to grow up in ignorance. Neither does it agree with his father's recollection of the boy's education. For when Maximilian at the age of twenty-seven was crowned King of the Romans at Frankfort, his father expressed the greatest astonishment at the fact that he could make a speech to the magnates in Latin, "For certainly," he said, "at the age of twelve years I was afraid he would turn out either mute or a fool."

When he came to the Netherlands at eighteen as husband of the Duchess, the French statesman, Commines, thought him very badly educated. He did not remain so. Maximilian had a vast fund of nervous energy always seeking outlets. He never wasted time, and even his amusements were strenuous. He laid aside campaigning or left the labors of the council-chamber only for a hard huntingtrip or a whirl of banquets, masks and balls. When he once discovered the pleasures of the mind and tastes he flung himself into them with the same restless ardor he showed on all sides of life. He surrounded himself with scholars, employed artists, and gave himself the best education he could pick up in the intervals of life by • ading, toy and conversation. This love of learning, letters like everything else in him, tributary to his domiceaseless greed for distinction. But it grew from t arose out of a sense of pleasure in the exercise of the mind; just as his lifelong passion for hunting grew out of the

I

1

1A. W. Ward, in An English Miscellany presented to Dr. Furnivall, Oxford,

habit of finding pleasure in the exercise of skill and strength in following the chamois to the cliffs or the wild boar to the swamps.

It was natural for an active-minded man who ruled many territories to gain some knowledge of a number of languages. His autobiography says that he could dictate to secretaries in several languages at the same time, and talk to the captains of his army in seven. One of his biographers says that he could speak Italian, French and Latin elegantly. We cannot test this account of his Italian, but it is to be hoped that he spoke French better than he wrote it in those letters to his daughter Margaret which have been preserved. We know this was not the case with his Latin, for a distinguished preacher of his day has left an account of a visit to Maximilian in which he says, "Latinus bonus sed scripto melius quam verbo". In that case his spoken Latin must have been very poor.

Every patron who dabbles in art, scholarship or letters becomes a shining mark for flattery. But the praise of Maecenas is not all conscious flattery. The modern critic often finds it hard to maintain a just severity toward the verses, the picture or the statue turned out in the spare hours of the talented amateur who happens to be a charming woman of high social position. The amiable manners of the man who held the highest secular title in the society of Europe of the early sixteenth century produced the same effect. A curious chance has preserved to us from Maximilian's life a classical example of this familiar hypnotic influence of social position in paralyzing critical perceptions.

Willibald Pirkheimer, a cultivated patrician of Nüremberg, served as commander of his city's contingent in the Swiss war. the year 1499 he crossed the lake of Constance with Maximilian, and years afterward described to Melancthon the voyage. Maximilian spent part of it dictating in Latin some paragraphs of his autobiography. In the evening he gave Pirkheimer the day's dictation and asked him his opinion of the "soldier's Latin ". Pirkheimer assured Melancthon that no German historian had ever written in so pure a style as these dictations, for which since the Emperor's death he had vainly searched. Recently some fragments of this autobiography have been found, and on one of the sheets the scribe has written, "King Maximilian wrote this while we were sailing to Lindau on the Lake of Constance". It is therefore the very passage on which Pirkheimer afterwards based his judgment to Melancthon that no German historian had written purer Latin. The editor of the manuscript diplomatically "leaves it to the reader to decide whether the Latinity of the Emperor, the style of his dic