the Annals by instilling into his mind the peculiar principles of
morals and behaviour which find apt illustration in that work. No
one could have written that book who had not been admitted within
the veil which hides the daily transactions of the great from the
profane eyes of the vulgar; and who had not come into frequent
personal contact with courts that were corrupt, and with princes,
ministers and leading men of society who were objects of
unqualified abhorrence.

III. Young Bracciolini who as the son of a notary of Florence in
embarrassed circumstances, inherited no advantages of rank or
fortune, when he had attained, at the age of 23, a competent
knowledge of the learned languages under the instruction of
Malpaghino, Chrysolaras [Endnote 136] and a Jewish Rabbi, made his
first entry into life by receiving admission, perhaps,--it being
the common custom in the fifteenth century,--by purchase, into the
Pontifical Chancery as a writer of the Apostolic Letters. At that
early age the scene that opened itself to his eyes was calculated
to destroy all faith in the goodness of human nature. He found in
the occupant of St. Peter's Chair, in Boniface IX., a man,
ambitious, avaricious, insincere in his dealings, and guilty of
the most flagrant simony, bestowing all Church preferments upon
the best bidder, without regard to merit or learning, and making
it his study to enrich his family and relations.

Bracciolini did not come into the closest communion with the Popes
till he became their Principal Secretary, which was when he was
between forty and fifty years of age, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini,
afterwards Pius II., stating in the 54th chapter of his History of
Europe that he "dictated" (or caused to be written) "the