Books and Schools in the Italian Renaissance.

The appearance of the second volume of Paul Grendler's uncorrected and reprinted essays in the Variorum series calls to mind Sir Ernst Gombrich's famous inversion of an old cliche: "the maxim should read only where there is a way is there also a will." With nearly five hundred volumes of the Collected Studies in print, over the past two decades Variorum has ensured that libraries and scholars who can afford the steep price can have access to the essays of major Renaissance scholars. The inarguable convenience of having the papers of our colleagues between two covers must, however, be weighed against the cost of the volumes and the apparently irresistible policy of reprinting all of a scholar's papers on a particular theme. Grendler's volume under review points up both the merits and drawbacks of this system.

As in many cases, this volume mixes studies of enduring value with more modest essays and occasional pieces. HIS most useful essays are, for me, on books rather than schools. Of enormous value is the bibliographical essay, coauthored with Marcella Grendler, on "The Erasmus Holdings of Roman and Vatican Libraries," rescued from the now-defunct Erasmus in English newsletter. Of major importance is the lengthy and learned study which examines the paradox of urban Italian merchants' love of feudal chivalric romances. This essay builds, in turn, on Grendler's path-breaking study of vernacular texts in sixteenth-century Venetian schools, first published in 1982. In fact, most of the essays on school texts and education should be read as preparatory or complementary to Grendler's major study, Schooling in Renaissance Italy, Literacy and Learning, 1300.1600 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). Inevitably there is some overlap among earlier essays, the book and later studies, especially the synthesis "Form and Function in Italian Renaissance Popular Books," published in Renaissance Quarterly in 1993.

At their best, these essays document the unfolding of Grendler's growing competence in the difficult fields of bibliography, vernacular literature, Renaissance curriculum, and teaching methods. Two papers - the address intended for high school students at the opening of an exhibition on Aldus Manutius at the John Carter Brown Library (1984) and the Literaturbericht on schooling in western Europe during the Renaissance (1990) are clearly ephemera and should probably have been omitted. The last essay on the University of Padua, 1405-1600, reflects Grendler's early effort in the history of Italian universities during the Renaissance, demonstrating his first exploration of the riches of the Paduan university archives and whetting our appetite for his newest scholarly endeavor.

BENJAMIN G. KOHL Vassar College