shades of his grove of classic laurels. He was indifferent alike to
princely and to popular favour, passionately consecrating his efforts
to the revival and preservation of such classics as had survived the
destructive era known as the Dark Ages. Denied a name of his own,
he adopted a Latin one to his liking, thus from necessity setting a
fashion his imitators followed from affectation. When approached in
the days of his fame by the Sanseverini with proposals to recognise
him as a kinsman, he answered with a proud and laconic refusal.[5] The
Academy, formed of super-men infected with pagan ideals, contemptuous
of scholastic learning and impatient of the restraints of Christian
morality, did not long escape the suspicions of the orthodox;
suspicions only too well warranted and inevitably productive of
antagonism ending in condemnation.[6]

[Note 5: His refusal was in the following curt form: _Pomponius
Lætus cognatis et propinquis suis, salutem. Quod petitis fieri non
potest.--Valete_. Consult Tiraboschi, _Storia della Letteratura
Italiana_, vol. vii., cap. v.; Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom
in Mittelalter_; Burkhardt, _Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien_,
and Voigt in his _Wiederlebung des Klassischen Alterthums_.]

[Note 6: Sabellicus, in a letter to Antonio Morosini (_Liber
Epistolarum_, xi., p. 459) wrote thus of Pomponius Lætus: ..._fuit
ab initio contemptor religionis, sed ingravesciente ætate coepit res
ipsa, ut mibi dicitur curæ esse. In Crispo et Livio reposint quædam;
et si nemo religiosius timidiusques tractavit veterum scripta ...
Græca ... vix attingit_. While to a restricted number, humanism stood
for intellectual emancipation, to the many it meant the rejection of
the moral restraints on conduct imposed by the law of the Church,
and a revival of the vices that flourished in the decadent epochs of