II. The temptation was great to palm off literary forgeries,
especially of the chief writers of antiquity, on account of the
Popes, in their efforts to revive learning, giving money rewards
and indulgences to those who should procure MS. copies of any of
the ancient Greek or Roman authors. Manuscripts turned up, as if
by magic, in every direction; from libraries of monasteries,
obscure as well as famous; from the most out-of-the-way places,--
the bottom of exhausted wells, besmeared by snails, as the History
of Velleius Paterculus; or from garrets, where they had been
contending with cobwebs and dust, as the Poems of Catullus. So
long as the work had an appearance of high antiquity, it passed
muster as an old classic; and no doubt could be entertained of its
genuineness, if, in addition to its ancient look, it was brought
in a fragmentary form. We have no history of the last six
fragmentary books of the Annals--at least, up to this time; though
I shall give it towards the end of this inquiry; but we are told
all about the discovery of the fragmentary first six books by
Meibomius, the Westphalian historian, and Professor of Poetry and
History at Helmstaedt at the close of the sixteenth century in his
Opuscula Historica Rerum Germianicarum, while telling the story of
the life of Witikind, the monk of the Abbey of Corvey; by Justus
Lipsius in note 34 to the second book of the Annals; by Brotier,
and other editors of Tacitus.

John de Medici, that magnificent Pope, had been scarcely elected
to the Pontifical chair by the title of Leo X. in the spring of
1513, when he caused it to be publicly made known that he would
increase the price of rewards given by his predecessors to persons
who procured new MS. copies of ancient Greek and Roman works. More
than a year, nearly two years elapsed; then his own "Thesaurum