John Addington Symonds, The Revival of Learning:

All through the Middle Ages uneasy and imperfect memories of Greece and Rome had haunted Europe. Alexander, the great conqueror; Hector, the noble knight and lover; Helen, who set Troy town on fire; Virgil, the magician; Dame Venus lingering about the hill of Hörsel—these phantoms, whereof the positive historic truth was lost, remained to sway the soul and stimulate desire in myth and saga. Deprived of actual knowledge, imagination transformed what it remembered of the classic age into romance.

The fascination exercised by these dreams of a half-forgotten past over the mediæval fancy expressed itself in the legend of Doctor Faustus. That legend tells us what the men upon the eve of the Revival longed for, and what they dreaded, when they turned their minds towards the past. The secret of enjoyment and the source of strength possessed by the ancients, allured them; but they believed that they could only recover this lost treasure by the suicide of their soul. So great was the temptation that Faustus paid the price. After imbibing all the knowledge of his age, he sold himself to the Devil, in order that his thirst for experience might be quenched, his grasp upon the world be strengthened, and the ennui of his inactivity be soothed. His first use of this dearly-bought power was to make blind Homer sing to him. Amphion tunes his harp in concert with Mephistopheles. Alexander rises from the dead at his behest, with all his legionaries; and Helen is given to him for a bride. Faustus is therefore a parable of the impotent yearnings of the spirit in the Middle Ages—its passionate aspiration, its conscience-stricken desire, its fettered curiosity amid the cramping limits of imperfect knowledge and irrational dogmatism. That for which Faustus sold his soul, the freedom he acquired by magic, the sense of beauty he gratified through visions, the knowledge he gained by interrogation of demons, was yielded to the world without price at the time of the Renaissance.

Homer, no longer by the intervention of a fiend, but by the labour of the scholar, sang to the new age. The pomp of the empires of the old world was restored in the pages of historians. The indestructible beauty of Greek art, whereof Helen was an emblem, became, through the discovery of classic poetry and sculpture, the possession of the modern world. Mediævalism took this Helen to wife, and their offspring, the Euphorion of Goethe’s drama, is the spirit of the modern world. But how was this effected? By long and toilsome study, by the accumulation of MSS., by the acquisition of dead languages, by the solitary labour of grammarians, by the lectures of itinerant professors, by the scribe, by the printing press, by the self-devotion of magnificent Italy to erudition. In this way the Renaissance realised the dream of the Middle Ages, and the genius of the Italians wrought by solid toil what the myth-making imagination of the Germans had projected in a poem.

Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 10.105:

Not undeservedly was Cicero said by his contemporaries to be king in the courts, and he maintained that among his posterity such that ‘Cicero’ seems like a word for eloquence, and not the name of a man. Let us then look at him, and let it be placed as an example before us that one may know that they have achieved knowledge when they find much pleasure in Cicero.

There is a lot of invention in Asinius Pollio, and even so much attention to detail that some think it seems excessive; there is also enough of consideration and mind in him. He is so far from the resplendence and pleasantness of Cicero that he could seem to be from a previous generation. But Messala is resplendent and shining and in a certain way making a pretense of his nobility in speaking, though possessed of lesser powers.

If only Gaius Caesar had stayed away from the forum, there would have been no one else whose name could be set against Cicero’s. There was such great force in him, such acumen, such quickness, that he appears to have spoken with the same vigor with which he waged war. Yet he decorated all of what he wrote with a marvelous elegance of speech, of to which he was rightly devoted.

Quare non inmerito ab hominibus aetatis suae regnare in iudiciis dictus est, apud posteros vero id consecutus ut Cicero iam non hominis nomen sed eloquentiae habeatur. hunc igitur spectemus, hoc propositum nobis sit exemplum, ille se profecisse sciat cui Cicero valde placebit. Multa in Asinio Pollione inventio, summa diligentia, adeo ut quibusdam etiam nimia videatur, et consilii et animi satis: a nitore et iucunditate Ciceronis ita longe abest ut videri possit saeculo prior. At Messala nitidus et candidus et quodam modo praeferens in dicendo nobilitatem suam, viribus minor. C. vero Caesar si foro tantum vacasset, non alius ex nostris contra Ciceronem nominaretur: tanta in eo vis est, id acumen, ea concitatio, ut illum eodem animo dixisse quo bellavit appareat; exornat tamen haec omnia mira sermonis, cuius proprie studiosus fuit, elegantia.

Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy:

Yet thus much I will say of myself, and that I hope without all suspicion of pride, or self-conceit, I have lived a silent, sedentary, solitary, private life, mihi et musis in the University, as long almost as Xenocrates in Athens, ad senectam fere to learn wisdom as he did, penned up most part in my study. For I have been brought up a student in the most flourishing college of Europe, augustissimo collegio, and can brag with Jovius, almost, in ea luce domicilii Vacicani, totius orbis celeberrimi, per 37 annos multa opportunaque didici; for thirty years I have continued (having the use of as good libraries as ever he had) a scholar, and would be therefore loath, either by living as a drone, to be an unprofitable or unworthy member of so learned and noble a society, or to write that which should be any way dishonourable to such a royal and ample foundation.

Something I have done, though by my profession a divine, yet turbine raptus ingenii, as he said, out of a running wit, an unconstant, unsettled mind, I had a great desire (not able to attain to a superficial skill in any) to have some smattering in all, to be aliquis in omnibus, nullus in singulis, which Plato commends, out of him Lipsius approves and furthers, “as fit to be imprinted in all curious wits, not to be a slave of one science, or dwell altogether in one subject, as most do, but to rove abroad, centum puer artium, to have an oar in every man’s boat, to taste of every dish, and sip of every cup,” which, saith Montaigne, was well performed by Aristotle, and his learned countryman Adrian Turnebus.

This roving humour (though not with like success) I have ever had, and like a ranging spaniel, that barks at every bird he sees, leaving his game, I have followed all, saving that which I should, and may justly complain, and truly, qui ubique est, nusquam est, which Gesner did in modesty, that I have read many books, but to little purpose, for want of good method; I have confusedly tumbled over divers authors in our libraries, with small profit, for want of art, order, memory, judgment.

I never travelled but in map or card, in which mine unconfined thoughts have freely expatiated, as having ever been especially delighted with the study of Cosmography. Saturn was lord of my geniture, culminating, &c., and Mars principal significator of manners, in partile conjunction with my ascendant; both fortunate in their houses, &c. I am not poor, I am not rich; nihil est, nihil deest, I have little, I want nothing: all my treasure is in Minerva’s tower.

Pius II, Commentaries 1.8:

When Aeneas set out for Milan, he found a nobleman from the great house of the Landriani had, by the order of the duke, been called through that chapter to the directorship and been led to its possession. Aeneas compelled this man to yield to him – so much did both the prince and the curia favor him. But, having obtained the directorship, he fell to the sick bed after being taken by a great fever. The duke Filippo sent his own doctor, a learned and cheerful man named Filippo of Bologna (who later served Pope Nicholas) to him every day.

When in the course of this illness Aeneas had taken a medicine and it had no effect, the doctor prepared a second medicine to be taken the next night. At the very hour when the second medicine was to be administered, his bowels began to move and so irritated him that he had to get up ninety times. Out of his mind because of this he rushed almost to death’s door, as they say. If he had taken the second medicine, he would have been weakened and consumed, and would have finally given up the ghost. Recognizing this as a sure sign from God, although he was disturbed by the continuous burning of the fever for 75 days, he could nevertheless not be prevailed upon to listen to the quacks even when a man was brought in who was said to have recently cured two thousand men in Niccolo Piccinino’s camp. Instead, trusting to God, by whose help he had been preserved in life, he took to the road though still afflicted with fever, and, liberated from it through bouts of horse riding, he returned to Basel.

At Aeneas Mediolanum profectus nobilem quendam ex magna domo Landrianorum iussu ducis per capitulum ad eam preposituram vocatum et in possessionem adductum invenit, quem sibi mox cedere compulit: tantum Aenee et princeps et curia favit. Sed obtenta prepositura lectum egritudinis incidit ingenti febre correptus; ad quem Philippus suum medicum, doctum et laetum virum, Philippum Bononiensem – qui postea Nicolao papae servivit – singulis diebus mittebat. In hac aegritudine cum farmacum accepisset, neque id quicquam operatum esset, potionemque alteram sequenti nocte sumendam medicus preparasset, ipsa hora, qua ministrari secundum farmacum debuit, moveri venter cepit atque adeo vexavit hominem, ut nonaginta vicibus assurgere cogeretur. Ob quam rem mente alienatus ad portas – ut aiunt – mortis usque cucurrit. Quod si potionem alteram ebibisset, animam procul dubio extenuatus atque consumptus exalasset. Quod certissimum Dei beneficium intelligens, quamvis quinque et septuaginta dies continuo febris ardore quateretur, nunquam tamen adduci potuit, ut incantatoribus auscultaret, quamvis homo ad se duceretur, quem novissime in castris Nicolai Picinini duo millia virorum ex febribus liberasse dicebant. Sed Deo fidens, cuius ope servatus in vita fuerat, adhuc febricitans iter accipiens inter equitandum liberatus Basileam reversus est.

Pius II, Commentaries 1.7:

After much of the night had passed, a great uproar was made by barking dogs and honking geese. Then all the women went forth in different directions, and even the guide of the journey took flight, and everything was a full-blown uproar as if enemies were at the gates. But to Aeneas, it seemed far better counsel to wait inside the bedroom (which was a stable) and expect the outcome there, fearing that if he were to run outside uncertain of the way, he would simply be giving himself up to be despoiled by whomever he came across first. Without delay, the women came back with the interpreter and said that there was nothing wrong, that it was friends and not enemies who had arrived. Aeneas reckoned that this was the reward of his firm resolve, and when day shone again, he commited himself to the road and arrived at Newcastle, which they say was founded by Caesar. There he saw once again the figure of the world and the habitable portion of the earth, for Scotland and the part of England closest to it have nothing at all like the land where we live – it is horrid, uncultivated, and not exposed to the winter sun.