Ravenna.

Bracciolini was not of a character to have revolted at the
baseness of fabrication;--an inordinate love of riches, more
devouring in his breast than his next strongest passion, love of
knowledge, was sufficient to egg him on to it. Throughout life,
his moral conduct was unfavourably influenced by the scantiness of
his means. It was to beguile the anxiety occasioned by his narrow
circumstances that he devoted himself to intense study, from
knowing that superior attainments combined with splendid talents
would secure for him great offices of trust and profit: he saw how
those who were esteemed the most learned as well as the most able
gained the best lucrative posts under the governments of the Popes
and Princes of his day: he, therefore, employed himself in the
pursuit of knowledge for the sake of attaining high rank and great
wealth; knowledge was, accordingly, only so far pursued by him as
it would be productive of money, and get him through the world in
honour and affluence. Up to the age of twenty-six he had the run
of, what was then considered,--when good manuscripts were
uncommonly costly and very scarce,--a magnificent library of 800
volumes, that belonged to his veteran friend, Coluccio Salutati,
Chancellor of the Republic of Florence; amid those stores of
knowledge he courted the Muses ardently, all the while cultivating
diligently the acquaintance of the leaders of society, uniting the
character of the scholar with that of the man of the world, and
becoming as accomplished in politeness and as profound in mastery
of the human heart as in scholarship and learning;--qualities
conspicuous in his acknowledged writings, no less than in that
extraordinary masterpiece, the Annals of Tacitus.