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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN
ELEC TRIC AL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Yue Gao
Zhijin Qin

Data-Driven
Wireless
Networks
A Compressive
Spectrum
Approach
123
SpringerBriefs in Electrical and Computer
Engineering

Series editors
Woon-Seng Gan, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
C.-C. Jay Kuo, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Thomas Fang Zheng, Research Institute of Information Technology, Tsinghua
University, Beijing, China
Mauro Barni, Department of Information Engineering and Mathematics, University
of Siena, Siena, Italy
SpringerBriefs present concise summaries of cutting-edge research and practical
applications across a wide spectrum of fields. Featuring compact volumes of 50
to 125 pages, the series covers a range of content from professional to academic.
Typical topics might include: timely report of state-of-the art analytical techniques,
a bridge between new research results, as published in journal articles, and a
contextual literature review, a snapshot of a hot or emerging topic, an in-depth case
study or clinical example and a presentation of core concepts that students must
understand in order to make independent contributions.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10059

Yue Gao • Zhijin Qin

Data-Driven Wireless
Networks
A Compressive Spectrum Approach

123
Yue Gao Zhijin Qin
School of Electronic Engineering School of Electronic Engineering
and Computer Science and Computer Science
Queen Mary University of London Queen Mary University of London
London, UK London, UK

ISSN 2191-8112 ISSN 2191-8120 (electronic)

SpringerBriefs in Electrical and Computer Engineering
ISBN 978-3-030-00289-3 ISBN 978-3-030-00290-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00290-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956141

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

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How can wireless data influence the
compressive spectrum sensing in windband
cognitive radio and Internet of Things
networks?
Foreword

It is my great pleasure to write a foreword to this fantastic book, Data-Driven

Wireless Networks: A Compressive Sensing Approach, authored by two of my good
friends and long-term collaborators. I first knew the real meaning of “wideband
compressive sensing” several years ago after I discussed with them on research
in cognitive radio. Later on, I read some of their papers in the related topics and
gradually realized that it is a very effective tool in signal processing and wireless
communications. I once thought that it would be great to have a comprehensive
book in the area.
This book addresses spare representation in wireless communications, with
emphasis on the most recently developed compressive sensing-enabled approaches.
It starts from a comprehensive overview of the fundamental principles. Subse-
quently, it introduces the data-driven compressive spectrum sensing in cognitive
radio networks and discusses robust and security issues. The book also contains test
results of various algorithms based on the real-world signals and data collected by
experiments carried out during the TV white space pilot trials.
I would like to emphasize that the authors are very active in the related areas
in the past several years. Their publications have been very well-cited and received
best paper awards. I believe that this book is as good as their other publications.
This book contains most of the important results in the related topics, including
their own. The book is written concisely and clearly. It is an excellent reference for
graduate students, faculty, and practice engineers in the area.

Professor and Director Geoffrey Ye Li

Information Transmission and Processing Lab
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA, USA
June 2018

vii
Preface

In this book, we will discuss the applications of spare representation in wireless

communications, with particular focus on the most recently developed compres-
sive sensing-enabled approaches. With the help of sparsity property, sub-Nyquist
sampling can be achieved in wideband cognitive radio networks by adopting com-
pressive sensing. This book starts from a comprehensive overview of CS principles.
Subsequently, we will present a complete framework for data-driven compressive
spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks, which is able to provide guarantee on
robustness, low complexity, and security. Particularly, robust compressive spectrum
sensing, low-complexity compressive spectrum sensing, and secure compressive
sensing-based malicious user detection are proposed to address the various issues
in wideband cognitive radio networks. Correspondingly, the real-world signals and
data collected by experiments carried out during TV white space pilot trial enable
data-driven compressive spectrum sensing. The collected data are used to verify our
designs and provide significant insights on the potential of applying compressive
sensing to wideband spectrum sensing. We believe this book will provide readers a
clear picture on how to exploit the compressive sensing to process wireless signals
in wideband cognitive radio networks.

London, UK Yue Gao

June 2018

ix
Acknowledgment

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my current and former PhD students,
my collaborators, and all the colleagues who contributed to the work and projects
that lead to this book. I would like to thank the UK Engineering and Physical Sci-
ences Research Council (EPSRC) for funding my research projects, e.g., the EPSRC
Fellowship project (EP/R00711X/1).
I would also like to particularly thank our editor as well as all the editorial staff
from Springer in producing this book.
Finally, I would like to thank my family, including my wife, my daughter, and
my son. I cannot make it without their great support.

xi
Contents

Part I Background
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1 Motivations and Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1.1 Data-Driven Compressive Spectrum Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.1.2 Robust Compressive Spectrum Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.1.3 Secure Compressive Spectrum Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2 Sparse Representation in Wireless Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1 Principles of Standard Compressive Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1.1 Sparse Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.1.2 Projection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.1.3 Signal Reconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2 Reweighted Compressive Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3 Distributed Compressive Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.4 Compressive Spectrum Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.4.1 Spectrum Sensing Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.4.2 Spectrum Sensing Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.4.3 Compressive Wideband Spectrum Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Part II Compressive Spectrum Sensing Algorithms

3 Data-Driven Compressive Spectrum Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.1.1 Related Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.1.2 Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.2 Data-Driven Compressive Spectrum Sensing Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.2.1 Iteratively Reweighted Least Square-Based
Compressive Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

xiii
xiv Contents

3.2.2
Non-iteratively Reweighted Least Square-Based
Compressive Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.2.3 Proposed Wilkinson’s Method-Based DTT Location
Probability Calculation Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.3 Numerical Analyses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.3.1 Numerical Analyses on Simulated Signals and Data . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.3.2 Numerical Analyses on Real-World Signals and Data . . . . . . . . . 38
3.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4 Robust Compressive Spectrum Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.1.1 Related Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.1.2 Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4.2 Robust Compressive Spectrum Sensing at Single User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.2.1 System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.2.2 Computational Complexity and Spectrum Usage Analyses . . . 47
4.3 Numerical Analyses for Single User Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.3.1 Analyses on Simulated Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.3.2 Analyses on Real-World Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.4 Matrix Completion-Based Robust Spectrum Sensing at
Cooperative Multiple Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.4.1 System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.4.2 Denoised Cooperative Spectrum Sensing Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.4.3 Computational Complexity and Performance Analyses . . . . . . . 58
4.5 Numerical Analyses for Cooperative Multiple Users Case . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.5.1 Analyses on Simulated Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.5.2 Analyses on Real-World Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5 Secure Compressive Spectrum Sensing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
5.1.1 Related Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
5.1.2 Motivations and Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.2 System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.2.1 Networks Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.2.2 Signal Processing Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.3 Malicious User Detection Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.3.1 Proposed Malicious User Detection Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.3.2 Rank Order Estimation Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.3.3 Malicious User Number Estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
5.3.4 Analyses on Minimal Number of Active Secondary Users . . . . 79
5.4 Numerical Analyses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
5.4.1 Numerical Results Using Simulated Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.4.2 Numerical Results Using Real-World Signals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Contents xv

5.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Part III Conclusions

6 Conclusions and Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.1 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.2 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Acronyms and Nomenclature

ADC Analog-to-digital conversion

AOP Adaptive outlier pursuit
AWGN Additive white Gaussian noise
CR Cognitive radio
CRN Cognitive radio network
CS Compressive sensing/compressed sensing
CSS Cooperative spectrum sensing
DNRLS Data-assisted non-iteratively reweighted least squares
DSA Dynamic spectrum access
DSO Digital switch-over
DTT Digital terrestrial television
DVB-T Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial
FC Fusion center
FCC Federal Communications Commission
FFT Fast Fourier transform
IDFT Inverse digital Fourier transform
i.i.d. Independent and identically distributed
IRLS Iteratively reweighted least squares
MC Matrix completion
NGR National grid reference
NOMA Non-orthogonal multiple access
Ofcom Office of Communications
OFDM Orthogonal frequency division multiplexed
OMP Orthogonal matching pursuit
PMSE Programme making and special events
PU Primary user
QMUL Queen Mary University of London
RF Radio frequency
RIP Restricted isometry property
ROC Receiver operating characteristics
RTRMC Riemannian Trust-Region for MC

xvii
xviii Acronyms and Nomenclature

SNR Signal-to-noise ratio

SU Secondary user
TVWS TV white space
UHF Ultra-high frequency
WSD White space device
d Decision on spectrum occupancy
F −1 Inverse discrete Fourier transform
h (t) Channel coefficients in time domain
hf Channel coefficients in frequency domain
Hf Channel coefficients in frequency domain in matrix format
I Number of channels among the spectrum of interest
Imax Maximal iteration number
IN N × N identity matrix
J Number of SUs sensing the same channel at different locations
K Number of occupied channels, or sparsity level, or rank order of a matrix
Kmax Statistical upper bound of the rank order K
K̂ Estimated sparsity level K
L Number of channels in a channel group
Lc Number of corrupted channels
L̂c Estimated number of corrupted channels
M Low-rank matrix
M̂ Recovered low-rank matrix
N Number of samples at Nyquist rates
p Norm
pij Uncorrupted power value of the ith channel sensed by the j th SU
p̃ij Corrupted power value of the ith channel sensed by the j th SU
p̂ij Recovered power value of the ith channel sensed by the j th SU
P Number of compressed measurements
Pas Average received power of the wanted DTT signal
Pd Probability of detection
P̄d Target probability of detection
Pf Probability of false alarm
P̄f Target probability of false alarm
PI B Maximum allowable EIRP
PΩ Complete matrix constructed at the FC
r (t) Received signal in time domain
rf Received signal in frequency domain
Rf Received signal in frequency domain in matrix format
s (t) Transmitted signal in time domain
sf Transmitted signal in frequency domain
ŝf Recovered signal
Sf Transmitted signal in frequency domain in matrix format
Ŝf Recovered signal in matrix format
w (t) Additive white Gaussian noise in time domain
wf AWGN in frequency domain
Acronyms and Nomenclature xix

Wf AWGN in frequency domain in matrix format

W Weights matrix for IRLS
W̃ Newly constructed weights matrix for DNRLS
x Compressed measurements
X Compressed measurements in matrix format
γ Compression ratio
κ Malicious user ratio
λ Threshold for energy detection
Λ Binary matrix denoting the uncorrupted channels
Ω Index set of the complete matrix
Φ Measurement matrix
Ψ Sparsifying matrix
ε Error tolerance
 Part I
Background
Chapter 1
Introduction

Radio frequency (RF) spectrum is a valuable but tightly regulated resource due
to its unique and important role in wireless communications. The demand for
RF spectrum is increasing due to a rapidly expanding market of multimedia
wireless services, while the usable spectrum is becoming scarce due to current
rigid spectrum allocation policies. Specifically, according to reports from the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Office of Communications
(Ofcom), localized temporal and geographic spectrum utilization is extremely low
in reality (Kolodzy and Avoidance 2002; Ofc a). Cognitive radio (CR) has become
a promising solution to solve the spectrum scarcity problem, by allowing secondary
users (SUs) to opportunistically access a licensed band when the primary user
(PU) is absent (Mitola and Maguire 1999). Additionally, it is demonstrated that TV
spectrum, which is used to be allocated to analog TV signals, has been cleaned and
opened to access due to the digital switch-over (DSO) around the world (Kolodzy
and Avoidance 2002; Ofc a). These underutilized TV spectra are named as TV white
space (TVWS). Lately, FCC issued a report and order for permitting the cognitive
usage of TVWS spectrum (fcc). Most recently, Ofcom has enabled license exempt
use of TVWS to harness the benefits of such an innovative wireless technology (Ofc
b), which motivates the further research on the cognitive access to TVWS spectrum.
In order to avoid any harmful interference to the PUs in TVWS, SUs in CR
networks (CRNs) should be aware of the spectrum occupancy over TV band.
Spectrum sensing is the first and one of the most challenging tasks in CR, which is
performed to detect the spectrum holes over TV spectrum. As the radio environment
changes over time and space, an efficient spectrum sensing technique should be
capable of tracking these fast changes (Akyildiz et al. 2006). A good approach for
detecting the primary transmitters is to adopt the traditional narrowband sensing
algorithms, which include energy detection, matched-filtering, and cyclostationary
feature detection. Here, the term “narrowband” implies that the frequency range is
sufficiently narrow, such that the channel frequency response can be considered as

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 3

Y. Gao, Z. Qin, Data-Driven Wireless Networks, SpringerBriefs in Electrical
and Computer Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00290-9_1
4 1 Introduction

flat. In another word, the bandwidth of interest is less than the coherence bandwidth
of the channel (Sun et al. 2013).
While the present spectrum sensing algorithms have focused on exploiting
spectral opportunities over narrow frequency range, CRNs will eventually be
required to exploit spectral opportunities over wide frequency range from hundreds
of megahertz (MHz) to several gigahertz (GHz), in order to improve spectrum
efficiency and achieve higher opportunistic throughput. In wideband spectrum
sensing, as driven by the Nyquist sampling theory, a simple approach is to acquire
the wideband signal directly by a high-speed analog-to-digital converter (ADC).
So far, wideband spectrum sensing has been investigated in Tian and Giannakis
(2007), Farhang-Boroujeny (2008), Quan et al. (2009), Sun et al. (2010) with the
implementation of a high-speed ADC. However, the high-speed ADC is particularly
challenging or even unaffordable for energy-constrained devices, such as smart
phones or even battery-free devices in a wireless power transfer model (Qin et al.
2017). Subsequently, Landau (1967) demonstrated that sampling rate should be
no less than the measure of occupied part of the spectrum, with the purpose of
guaranteeing the stable reconstruction of multiband signals. However, the energy
consumption is still unaffordable for energy-constrained SUs in CRNs. Therefore,
revolutionary wideband spectrum sensing techniques become more than desired to
release the burden on high-speed ADCs.
Recent developments on compressive sensing (CS) theory inspire sub-Nyquist
sampling, by utilizing the sparse nature of signals (Candes 2006). Driven by the
inborn nature of the signal sparsity in wireless communications, e.g., the sparse
utilization of spectrum, CS theory is capable of enabling sub-Nyquist sampling
possible for wideband spectrum sensing. More particularly, CS theory has been
firstly applied to wideband spectrum sensing by Tian and Giannakis (2007), where
fewer compressed measurements are required on the basis of Nyquist sampling
theory. Subsequently, the application of CS theory on wideband spectrum sensing
in CRNs has attracted much attention.

1.1 Motivations and Contributions

Along with the developments on CS theory, this book spans the sub-Nyquist-
based wideband spectrum sensing with particular emphasis on CS technique.
These proposed algorithms are capable of improving the robustness and security
of CRNs, with low computational complexity at energy-constrained SUs. The
specific motivations and contributions of this book research are summarized in the
following.
1.1 Motivations and Contributions 5

1.1.1 Data-Driven Compressive Spectrum Sensing

Besides the robustness to channel noise, adaptive compressive spectrum sensing

with low complexity has attracted much attention (Zhang et al. 2018). Theoretically,
the required number of measurements will proportionally change when the sparsity
level of wideband signal varies. However, in practice, the sparsity level of wideband
signal is uncertainty, because of either the dynamic activities of PUs or the
time-varying fading channels between PUs and SUs. Consequently, most of sub-
Nyquist wideband sensing systems should pessimistically choose the number of
measurements to ensure exact recovery, leading to more energy consumption at SUs.
Moreover, the computational complexity of signal recovery may be unaffordable
for the energy-constrained SUs as it is dependent on the number of collected
compressed measurements. Therefore, a low-complexity compressive spectrum
sensing algorithm is needed, which should be adaptive to the dynamic spectrum
occupancy.
Inspired by the geolocation database for TVWS, which is another approach to
make SUs aware of spectrum occupancy, a hybrid framework combining compres-
sive spectrum sensing and geolocation database is proposed to achieve adaptive CS
with low complexity (Qin et al. 2015, 2016a; Gao et al. 2016). More specifically,
a geolocation database algorithm is proposed to be implemented at SUs locally
to provide prior information on the spectrum occupancy. As a result, SUs collect
samples at the minimum rate without loss of any information. Additionally, with
the availability of prior information, a data-assisted non-iteratively reweighted least
squares (DNRLS)-based compressive spectrum sensing algorithm is proposed to
reduce the computational complexity of signal recovery. In order to further improve
accuracy and efficiency of the geolocation database algorithm implemented at SUs,
an efficient approach for calculating the maximum allowable equivalent isotropic
radiated power (EIRP) is proposed. Furthermore, the proposed hybrid framework
and algorithms are tested on the real-world signal and data over TVWS after being
approved by the simulated data.

1.1.2 Robust Compressive Spectrum Sensing

With the use of CS at SUs, each SU would only collect compressed samples at
sub-Nyquist sampling rate. Subsequently, signal recovery would be performed at
SUs or a fusion center (FC), where the data from the spatially located SUs are
fused. It is noticed that the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the CS measurements
would be decreased by 3 dB for every octave increasing in the subsampling factor
for acquisition of a noisy signal with fixed sparsity level (Treichler et al. 2009). This
makes the exact signal recovery more difficult for compressive spectrum sensing
under heavy channel noise. Therefore, a robust spectrum sensing algorithm based
on CS with low computational complexity is needed.
6 1 Introduction

As motivated by this, two robust compressive spectrum sensing algorithms are

designed for the single SU case and the case with multiple SUs, respectively (Qin
et al. 2014, 2016b). The proposed algorithms contain two phases. In the case
with single SU, where signal recovery is to be performed at the SU locally, a
new wideband channel division scheme is proposed to reduce the computational
complexity of signal recovery in the first phase. In the second phase, a denoising
algorithm is performed to improve detection performance by enabling the com-
pressive spectrum sensing algorithm being more robust to channel noise. For the
case with multiple cooperative SUs, where spatial diversity among participating
SUs is utilized to improve the sensing performance (Ghasemi and Sousa 2005;
Akyildiz et al. 2011), the sparse property of spectral signals can be transformed into
a low-rank property (Wang et al. 2012). In the first phase, the proposed wideband
channel division scheme is invoked to reduce the costs of signal acquisition at SUs.
Subsequently, only the compressed measurements are sent to the FC, which reduces
the amount of transmission overhead in CRNs. Matrix completion (MC), as a further
development of CS, is invoked at the FC to recover the unsensed channels from the
sensed channels. In the second phase, detection performance is further improved
by the proposed denoising algorithm. To this end, the proposed robust compressive
spectrum sensing algorithm is tested on the real-world signals over TVWS after
being validated by the simulated TV signals.

1.1.3 Secure Compressive Spectrum Sensing

Along with improving the robustness, adaption, and reducing the complexity
of compressive spectrum sensing algorithm, another challenge for CRNs comes
from the malicious users, which will send out dishonest data to degrade system
performance. In current CSS networks, all cooperative SUs are assumed to be honest
and genuine. However, the existence of malicious users would severely degrade the
performance of cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) networks. Moreover, malicious
users can degrade the detection performance heavily in sub-Nyquist-based CSS
networks. If part of the compressed measurements are corrupted by malicious users,
signal recovery would be unstable at the FC.
In order to guarantee the security of CSS networks, a malicious user detection
framework is proposed by invoking the low-rank MC technique (Zhang et al. 2014;
Qin et al. 2018). More specifically, with the purpose of improving the detection
accuracy and reducing the costs of data acquisitions at SUs, the data corrupted by
malicious users are removed during the MC process at the FC. Additionally, in
order to avoid requiring any prior information of the CSS networks, a rank order
estimation algorithm and a malicious user number estimation strategy are proposed.
The proposed framework is tested on the real-world signals over TVWS after being
validated by the simulated TV signals. Numerical results show that the proposed
malicious user detection framework achieves higher detection accuracy with lower
costs of data acquisition at SUs or less number of active SUs.
References 7

References

Akyildiz, I. F., Lee, W.-Y., Vuran, M. C., & Mohanty, S. (2006). Next generation/dynamic spectrum
access/cognitive radio wireless networks: A survey. Computer Network, 50, 2127–2159.
Akyildiz, I. F., Lo, B. F., & Balakrishnan, R. (2011). Cooperative spectrum sensing in cognitive
radio networks: A survey. Physical Communication, 4, 40–62.
Candes, E. (2006). Compressive sampling. In Proceedings of the International Congress of
Mathematicians, Madrid, Spain (vol. 3, pp. 1433–1452)
Farhang-Boroujeny, B. (2008). Filter bank spectrum sensing for cognitive radios. IEEE Transac-
tions on Signal Processing, 56, 1801–1811.
Federal Communications Commission (FCC). (2008). Second report and order and memorandum
opinion and order in matter of unlicensed operation in the TV broadcast bands, additional
spectrum for unlicensed devices below 900 MHz and in the 3 GHz band, Document 08-260.
Gao, Y., Qin, Z., Feng, Z., Zhang, Q., Holland, O., & Dohler, M. (2016). Scalable and reliable
IoT enabled by dynamic spectrum management for M2M in LTE-A. IEEE Internet of Things
Journal, 3, 1135–1145.
Ghasemi, A., & Sousa, E. (2005). Collaborative spectrum sensing for opportunistic access in fading
environments. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Dynamic Spectrum
Access Networks (DYSPAN), Baltimore, MD (pp. 131–136)
Kolodzy, P., & Avoidance, I. (2002). Spectrum policy task force. Federal Communications
Commission, Washington, DC, Rep. ET Docket.
Landau, H. (1967). Necessary density conditions for sampling and interpolation of certain entire
functions. Acta Mathematica, 117, 37–52.
Mitola, J., & Maguire, G. Q. (1999). Cognitive radio: Making software radios more personal. IEEE
Personal Communications, 6, 13–18.
Qin, Z., Gao, Y., & Parini, C. G. (2016a). Data-assisted low complexity compressive spectrum
sensing on real-time signals under sub-Nyquist rate. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communi-
cations, 15, 1174–1185.
Qin, Z., Gao, Y., Plumbley, M., & Parini, C. (2014). Efficient compressive spectrum sensing
algorithm for M2M devices. In IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing
(GlobalSIP), Atlanta, GA (pp. 1170–1174).
Qin, Z., Gao, Y., & Plumbley, M. D. (2018). Malicious user detection based on low-rank matrix
completion in wideband spectrum sensing. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 66, 5–17.
Qin, Z., Gao, Y., Plumbley, M. D., & Parini, C. G. (2016b). Wideband spectrum sensing on real-
time signals at sub-Nyquist sampling rates in single and cooperative multiple nodes. IEEE
Transactions on Signal Processing, 64, 3106–3117.
Qin, Z., Liu, Y., Gao, Y., Elkashlan, M., & Nallanathan, A. (2017). Wireless powered cognitive
radio networks with compressive sensing and matrix completion. IEEE Transactions on
Communications, 65, 1464–1476.
Qin, Z., Wei, L., Gao, Y., & Parini, C. (2015). Compressive spectrum sensing augmented by geo-
location database. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Smart Spectrum at IEEE
Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), New Orleans, LA (pp. 170–
175).
Quan, Z., Cui, S., Sayed, A. H., & Poor, H. V. (2009). Optimal multiband joint detection for
spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 57,
1128–1140.
Sun, H., Laurenson, D. I., & Wang, C. X. (2010). Computationally tractable model of energy
detection performance over slow fading channels. IEEE Communications Letters, 14, 924–926.
Sun, H., Nallanathan, A., Wang, C.-X., & Chen, Y. (2013). Wideband spectrum sensing for
cognitive radio networks: A survey. IEEE Wireless Communications, 20, 74–81.
Tian, Z., & Giannakis, G. (2007). Compressed sensing for wideband cognitive radios. In IEEE
International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Honolulu, HI (ICASSP)
(pp. 1357–1360).
8 1 Introduction

Treichler, J., Davenport, M., & Baraniuk, R. (2009). Application of compressive sensing to the
design of wideband signal acquisition receivers. In US/Australia Joint Work. Defense Apps of
Signal Processing (DASP) (vol. 5).
UK Office of Communications (Ofcom). (2009). Statement on cognitive access to interleaved
spectrum.
UK Office of Communications (Ofcom). (2015). Decision to make the wireless telegraphy (White
Space Devices).
Wang, Y., Tian, Z., & Feng, C. (2012). Collecting detection diversity and complexity gains in
cooperative spectrum sensing. IEEE Wireless Communications, 11, 2876–2883.
Zhang, X., Ma, Y., Gao, Y., & Zhang, W. (2018). Autonomous compressive sensing augmented
spectrum sensing. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 67, 6970–6980.
Zhang, X., Qin, Z., & Gao, Y. (2014). Dynamic adjustment of sparsity upper bound in wideband
compressive spectrum sensing. In Proceedings of the IEEE Global Conference on Signal and
Information Processing (GlobalSIP), Atlanta, GA (pp. 1214–1218).
Chapter 2
Sparse Representation in Wireless
Networks

Sparse representation of signals has received extensive attention due to its capacity
for efficient signal modeling and related applications. The problem solved by the
sparse representation is to search for the most compact representation of a signal
in terms of a linear combination of the atoms in an overcomplete dictionary. In
the literature, three aspects of research on the sparse representation have been
focused:
1. Pursuit methods for solving the optimization problem, such as matching pursuit
and basis pursuit;
2. Design of the dictionary, such as the K-SVD method;
3. Applications of the sparse representation, such as wideband spectrum sensing,
channel estimation of massive MIMO, and data collection in WSNs.
General sparse representation methods, such as principal component analysis
(PCA) and independent component analysis (ICA), aim to obtain a representation
that enables sufficient reconstruction. It has been demonstrated that PCA and ICA
are able to deal with signal corruption, such as noise, missing data, and outliers. For
sparse signals without measurement noise, CS can recover the sparse signals exactly
with random measurements. Furthermore, the random measurements significantly
outperform measurements based on PCA and ICA for the sparse signals without
corruption (Chang et al. 2009b; Wright et al. 2010; Chang et al. 2009a).

2.1 Principles of Standard Compressive Sensing

The principles of standard CS, such as to be performed at a single node, can be

summarized in the following three parts (Candes 2006).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 9

Y. Gao, Z. Qin, Data-Driven Wireless Networks, SpringerBriefs in Electrical
and Computer Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00290-9_2
10 2 Sparse Representation in Wireless Networks

2.1.1 Sparse Representation

Generally speaking, sparse signals contain much less information than their ambient
dimension suggests. Sparsity of a signal is defined as the number of non-zero
elements in the signal under a certain domain. Let f be an N -dimensional signal
of interest, which is sparse over the orthonormal transformation basis matrix Ψ ∈
RN ×N , and s be the sparse representation of f over the basis Ψ . Then f can be given
by

f = Ψ s. (2.1)

Apparently, f can be the time or space domain representation of a signal, and s is the
equivalent representation of f in the Ψ domain. For example, if Ψ is the inverse
Fourier transform (FT) matrix, then s can be regarded as the frequency domain
representation of the time domain signal, f. Signal f is said to be K-sparse in the Ψ
domain if there are only K (K  N ) out of the N coefficients in s that are non-zero.
If a signal is able to be sparsely represented in a certain domain, the CS technique
can be invoked to take only a few linear and non-adaptive measurements.

2.1.2 Projection

When the original signal f arrives at the receiver, it is processed by the measurement
matrix Φ ∈ RP ×N with P < N, to get the compressed version of the signal, that is,

x = Φf = ΦΨ s=Θs, (2.2)

where Θ = ΦΨ is a P × N matrix, called the sensing matrix. As Φ is independent

of signal f, the projection process is non-adaptive.
Figure 2.1 illustrates how the different sensing matrices Θ influence the projec-
tion of a signal from high dimension
 to its space, i.e., mapping s ∈ R3 to x ∈ R2 .
As shown in Fig. 2.1, s = s s 0 is a three-dimensional signal. When s is mapped
 
1 −1 0
into a two-dimensional space by taking Θ1 = as the sensing matrix,
0 0 1
the original signal s cannot be recorded based on the projection under Θ1 . This is
because that the plane spanned by the two row vectors of Θ1 is orthogonal to signal s
as shown in Fig. 2.1a. Therefore, Θ1 corresponds to the worst projection.  As shown

100
in Fig. 2.1b, we can also observe that the projection by taking Θ2 = is
001
not a good one. It is noted that the plane spanned by the two row vectors of Θ2 can
only contain part of information of the sparse signal s, and the sparse component in
the direction of s2 is missed when the signal s is projected into the two-dimensional
2.1 Principles of Standard Compressive Sensing 11

(a) (b) (c)

s2 s2 s2

è è
æs ç æs ç
æs
è
ç
S = çs S = çç s
ç ç
ç ç ç
ç ç S =çs ç
ç0 æ ç0 æ
ç0
è è è
æ

s1 s1 s1

s3 s3 s3
è è è
æ1 −1 0 ÷ æ1 0 0 ÷ æ1 1 0 ÷
Θ1 = ÷ æ Θ 2 =÷ æ Θ3 = ÷ æ
è0 0 1 è0 0 1 è0 0 1

Fig. 2.1 Projection of a sparse signal with one non-zero component with different sensing
matrices Qin et al. (2018). (a) Worst projection. (b) Bad projection. (c) Good projection

 
110
space. When the sensing matrix is set to Θ3 = , as shown in Fig. 2.1c, the
001
signal s can be fully recorded as it falls into the plane spanned by the two row vectors
of Θ3 . Therefore, Θ3 results in a good projection and s can be exactly recovered by
its projection x in the two-dimensional space. Then it is natural to ask what type of
projection is good enough to guarantee the exact signal recovery?
The key of CS theory is to find out a stable basis Ψ or measurement matrix Φ to
achieve exact recovery of the signal with length N from P measurements. It seems
an undetermined problem as P < N. However, it has been proved in Candes et al.
(2006) that exact recovery can be guaranteed under the following conditions:
• Restricted isometry property (RIP): Measurement matrix Φ has the RIP of order
K if

Φf22
1 − δK ≤ ≤ 1 + δK (2.3)
f22

holds for all K-sparse signal f, where δK is the restricted isometry constant of a
matrix Φ.
• Incoherence property: Incoherence property requires that the rows of measure-
ment matrix Φ cannot sparsely represent the columns of the sparsifying matrix
Ψ and vice versa. More specifically, a good measurement will pick up a little bit
information of each component in s based on the condition that Φ is incoherent
with Ψ . As a result, the extracted information can be maximized by using the
minimal number of measurements.
It has been pointed out that verifying both the RIP condition and incoherence
property is computationally complicated but they could be achieved with a high
12 2 Sparse Representation in Wireless Networks

probability simply by selecting Φ as a random matrix. The common random

matrices include Gaussian matrix, Bernoulli matrix, or almost all others matrices
with independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) entries. Besides, with the
properties of the matrix with i.i.d. entries Φ, the matrix Θ = ΦΨ is also random
i.i.d., regardless of the choice of Ψ . Therefore, the random matrices are universal
as they are random enough to be incoherent with any fixed basis. It has been
demonstrated that random measurements can universally capture the information
relevant for many compressive signal processing applications without any prior
knowledge of either the signal class and its sparse domain or the ultimate signal
processing task.
Moreover, for Gaussian matrices the number of measurements required to
guarantee the exact signal recovery is almost minimal. However, random matrices
inherently have two major drawbacks in practical applications: huge memory
buffering for storage of matrix elements, and high computational complexity due
to their completely unstructured nature (Candes and Romberg 2007). Compared to
the standard CS that limits its scope to standard discrete-to-discrete measurement
architectures using random measurement matrices and signal models based on
standard sparsity, more structured sensing architectures, named structured CS,
have been proposed to implement CS on feasible acquisition hardware. So far,
many efforts have been put on the design of structured CS matrices, i.e., random
demodulator (Tropp et al. 2010), to make CS implementable with expense of
performance degradation. Particularly, the main principle of random demodulator
is to multiply the input signal with a high-rate pseudonoise sequence, which
spreads the signal across the entire spectrum. Then a low-pass anti-aliasing filter
is applied and the signal is captured by sampling it at a relatively low rate. With
the additional digital processing to reduce the burden on the analog hardware,
random demodulator bypasses the need for a high-rate analog-to-digital converter
(ADC) (Tropp et al. 2010). A comparison of Gaussian sampling matrix and random
demodulator is provided in Fig. 2.2 in terms of detection probability with different
compression ratios P /N. From the figure, the Gaussian sampling matrix performs
better than the random demodulator.

2.1.3 Signal Reconstruction

After the compressed measurements are collected, the original signal should be
reconstructed. Since most of the basis coefficients in s are negligible, the original
signal can be reconstructed by finding out the minimal set of coefficients that
matches the set of compressed measurements x, that is, by solving

ŝ = arg min sp subject to Θs = x, (2.4)

s
2.2 Reweighted Compressive Sensing 13

0.8

0.6
Pd

0.4

0.2
Random demodulator
Gaussian distributed matrix
0
10-2 10-1 100
P/N

Fig. 2.2 Detection probability versus compression ratio with different measurement matrices. In
this case, the signal is one-sparse

where ·p is the p -norm and p = 0 corresponds to counting the number of non-
zero elements in s. However, the reconstruction problem in (2.4) is both numerically
unstable and NP-hard (Candes 2006) when 0 -norm is used.
So far, there are mainly two types of relaxations to problem (2.4) to find a
sparse solution. The first type is convex relaxation, where 1 -norm is used to
substitute 0 -norm in (2.4). Then (2.4) can be solved by standard convex solvers,
e.g., cvx. It has been proved that 1 norm results √
in the same solution as 0 norm
when RIP is satisfied with the constant δ2k < 2 − 1 (Cands 2008). Another
type of solution is to use a greedy algorithm, such as OMP (Tropp and Gilbert
2007), to find a local optimum in each iteration. In comparison with the convex
relaxation, the greedy algorithm usually requires lower computational complexity
and time cost, which makes it more practical for wireless communication systems.
Furthermore, the recent result has shown that the recovery accuracy achieved by
some greedy algorithms is comparable to the convex relaxation but requiring much
lower computational cost (Choi et al. 2017).

2.2 Reweighted Compressive Sensing

As aforementioned, 1 -norm is a good approximation for the NP-hard 0 -norm

problem when RIP holds. However, the large coefficients are penalized more
heavily than the small ones in 1 -norm minimization, which leads to performance
degradation on signal recovery. To balance the penalty on the large and the
small coefficients, reweighted CS is introduced by providing different penalties on
those large and small coefficients. A reweighted 1 -norm minimization framework
14 2 Sparse Representation in Wireless Networks

(Candes 2006) has been developed to enhance the signal recovery performance with
fewer compressed measurements by solving

ŝ = arg min Ws1 subject to Θs = x, (2.5)

s

where W is a diagonal matrix with w1 , . . . , wn on the diagonal and zeros elsewhere.

Moreover, p -norm, e.g., 0 < p < 1, is utilized to lower the computational
complexity of signal recovery process caused by the 1 -norm optimization problem.
Iterative reweighted least square (IRLS)-based CS approach has been proposed
in Rao and Kreutz-Delgado (1999) to solve (2.4) in a non-convex approach as


N
ŝ = arg min wi si subject to Θs = x, (2.6)
s
i=1

 
 (l−1) p−2 (l−1)
where wi = si  is computed based on the result of the last iteration, si .
It is worth noting that (2.4) becomes non-convex when p < 1. The existing
algorithms cannot guarantee to reach a global optimum and may only produce local
minima. However, it has been proved (Chartrand 2007; Chartrand and Staneva 2008)
that under some circumstances the reconstruction in (2.4) will reach a unique and
global minimizer (Chartrand and Yin 2008), which is exactly ŝ = s. Therefore, we
can still exactly recover the signal in practice.

2.3 Distributed Compressive Sensing

The distributed compressive sensing (DCS) (Baron et al. 2009) is an extension

of the standard one by considering networks with M nodes. At the m-th node,
measurement xm can be given by

xm = Θm sm , ∀m ∈ M , (2.7)

where M is the set of nodes in the network. As stated in (2.2), Θm is the sensing
matrix deployed at the m-th node, and sm is a sparse signal of interest. DCS becomes
a standard CS when M = 1.
In the applications of standard CS, the signal received at the same node has its
sparsity property due to its intra-correlation. While for the networks with multiple
nodes, signals received at different nodes exhibit strong inter-correlation. The intra-
correlation and inter-correlation of signals from the multiple nodes lead to a joint
sparsity property. The joint sparsity level is usually smaller than the aggregate
over the individual signal’s sparsity level. As a result, the number of compressed
measurements required for exact recovery in DCS can be reduced significantly
compared to the case performing standard CS at each single node independently.
2.4 Compressive Spectrum Sensing 15

In DCS, there are two closely related concepts: distributed networks and
distributed CS solvers. The distributed networks refer to networks that different
nodes perform data acquisition in a distributed way and the standard CS can
be applied at each node individually to perform signal recovery. While for DCS
solver as proposed in Baron et al. (2009), the data acquisition process requires no
collaboration among sensors and the signal recovery process is performed at several
computational nodes, which can be distributed in a network or locally placed within
a multiple core processor. Generally, it is of interest to minimize both computation
cost and communication overhead in DCS. The most popular application scenario of
DCS is that all signals share the common sparse support but with different non-zero
coefficients.

2.4 Compressive Spectrum Sensing

The last decade has witnessed the rapid explosion of wireless devices all over the
world, which gives rise to the increasing demand for wireless spectral resource.
As reported by FCC and Ofcom (Kolodzy and Avoidance 2002; Ofc a), there are
significant temporal and spatial variations in the allocated spectrum. Given this
fact, CR has been proposed as an intelligent system to detect spectrum holes for
unlicensed usage (Mitola and Maguire 1999). More specifically, the basic idea of CR
is to match the requirements of higher layer applications or users with the available
resources. The available resources include available power, spectrum, and other
resources that can be utilized by unlicensed SUs. CR is a radio that is capable of
sensing the available resources and learning from the user behaviors and its previous
decisions and mistakes, in order to provide a better response to the new resource
request from SUs. So far, CR has been widely investigated.

2.4.1 Spectrum Sensing Methods

In CR, spectrum sensing is one of the most challenging tasks, which allows SUs to
have the knowledge of spectrum occupancy. Once a spectrum hole is detected, SUs
can make use of it for data transmission. Spectrum sensing requires high accuracy
and low complexity for DSA (Nekovee 2008). There is an extensive research work
on spectrum sensing techniques being carried out. Many theoretical models for
spectrum sensing techniques have been proposed, such as matched filter detection,
cyclostationary feature detection, and energy detection. The matched filter detection
is an optimal detection method that requires the prior information of PUs (Bhargavi
and Murthy 2010). However, it requires SUs to have a dedicated sensing receiver
for each type of PU signals. Cyclostationary feature detection can distinguish the
PUs and noise by utilizing the periodicity in the received primary signal. However,
it requires high computational complexity and prior information of the primary
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 As early as the reign of Edward III. (1327-1377), there is record of
a number of stationarii as carrying on business in Oxford. In an
Oxford manuscript dating from this reign, there is an inscription of a
certain Mr. William Reed, of Merton College, who tells us that he
purchased this book from a stationarius.[410]
In London, there is record of an active trade in manuscripts being
in existence as early as the middle of the fourteenth century. The
trade in writing materials, such as parchment, paper, and ink,
appears not to have been organised as in Paris, but to have been
carried on in large part by the grocers and mercers. In the
housekeeping accounts of King John of France, covering the period
of his imprisonment in England, in the years 1359 and 1360, occur
entries such as the following:
“To Peter, a grocer of Lincoln, for four quaires of paper,
two shillings and four pence.”
“To John Huistasse, grocer, for a main of paper and a
skin of parchment, 10 pence.”
“To Bartholomew Mine, grocer, for three quaires of
paper, 27 pennies.”[411]
The manuscript-trade in London concentrated itself in Paternoster
Row, the street which became afterwards the centre of the trade in
printed books.
The earliest English manuscript-dealer whose name is on record is
Richard Lynn, who, in the year 1358, was stationarius in Oxford.[412]
The name of John Browne occurs in several Oxford manuscripts on
about the date of 1400. Nicholas de Frisia, an Oxford librarius of
about 1425, was originally an undergraduate. He did energetic work
as a book scribe and, later, appears to have carried on an important
business in manuscripts. His inscription is found first on a manuscript
entitled Petri Thomæ Quæstiones, etc., which manuscript has been
preserved in the library of Merton.
There is record, as early as 1359, of a manuscript-dealer in the
town of Lincoln who called himself Johannes Librarius, and who
sold, in 1360, several books to the French King John. It is a little
difficult to understand how in a quiet country town like Lincoln with
no university connections, there should have been enough business
in the fourteenth century to support a librarius.
The earliest name on record in London is that of Thomas Vycey,
who was a stationarius in 1433. A few years later we find on a
parchment manuscript containing the wise sayings of a certain
Lombardus, the inscription of Thomas Masoun, “librarius of gilde
hall.”
Between the years 1461 and 1475, a certain Piers Bauduyn,
dealer in manuscripts, and also a bookbinder, purchased a number
of books for Edward IV. In the household accounts of Edward
appears the following entry: “Paid to Piers Bauduyn, bookseller, for
binding, gilding and dressing a copy of Titus Livius, 20 shillings; for
binding, gilding and dressing a copy of the Holy Trinity, 16 shillings;
for binding, gilding and dressing a work entitled ‘The Bible’ 16
shillings.”
William Praat, who was a mercer of London, between the years
1470 and 1480 busied himself also with the trade in manuscripts,
and purchased, for William Caxton, various manuscripts from France
and from Belgium.
Kirchhoff finds record of manuscript-dealers in Spain as early as
the first decade of the fifteenth century. He prints the name, however,
of but one, a certain Antonius Raymundi, a librarius of Barcelona,
whose inscription, dated 1413, appears in a manuscript of
Cassiodorus.
 PART II.
THE EARLIER PRINTED BOOKS.
 PART II.
THE EARLIER PRINTED BOOKS.
 CHAPTER I.
THE RENAISSANCE AS THE FORERUNNER OF THE
PRINTING-PRESS.

T HE fragments of classic literature which had survived the

destruction of the Western Empire, had, as we have seen, owed
their preservation chiefly to the Benedictine monasteries. Upon the
monasteries also rested, for some centuries after the overthrow of
the Gothic Kingdom of Italy, the chief responsibility for maintaining
such slender thread of continuity of intellectual activity, and of
interest in literature as remained. By the beginning of the twelfth
century, this responsibility was shared with, if not entirely transferred
to, the older of the great universities of Europe, such as Bologna and
Paris, which from that time took upon themselves, as has been
indicated, the task of directing and of furthering, in connection with
their educational work, the increasing literary activities of the
scholarly world.
With the increase throughout Europe of schools and universities,
there had come a corresponding development in literary interests
and in literary productiveness or reproductiveness. The universities
became publishing centres, and through the multiplication and
exchange of manuscripts, the scholars of Europe began to come into
closer relations with each other, and to constitute a kind of
international scholarly community. The development of such world-
wide relations between scholars was, of course, very much furthered
by the fact that Latin was universally accepted as the language not
only of scholarship but practically of all literature.
In Italy, by the beginning of the fourteenth century, intellectual
interests and literary activities had expanded beyond the scholastic
circles of the universities, and were beginning to influence larger
divisions of society. The year 1300 witnessed the production in
Florence of the Divine Comedy of Dante, and marked an epoch in
the history of Italy and in the literature of the world. During the two
centuries which followed, Florence remained the centre of a keener,
richer, and more varied intellectual life than was known in any other
city in Europe.
With the great intellectual movement known as the Renaissance, I
am concerned, for the purposes of this study, only to indicate the
influence it exerted in preparing Italy and Europe for the utilisation of
the printing-press. The work of the Renaissance included, partly as a
cause, and partly as an effect, the rediscovery for the Europe of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries of the literature of classic Greece,
as well as the reinterpretation of the literature of classic Rome.
The influence of the literary awakening and of the newly
discovered masterpieces would of necessity have been restricted to
a comparatively limited scholarly circle, if it had not been for the
invention of Gutenberg and for the scholarly enterprise and devotion
of such followers of Gutenberg as Aldus, Estienne, and Froben. It is,
of course, equally true that if the intellectual world had not been
quickened and inspired by the teachers of the Renaissance, the
presses of Aldus would have worked to little purpose, and their
productions would have found few buyers. Aldus may, in fact, himself
be considered as one of the most characteristic and valuable of the
products of the movement.
The Renaissance has been described by various historians, and
analysed by many commentators. The work which has, however,
been accepted as the most comprehensive account of the
movement and the best critical analysis of its nature and influence,
and which presents also a vivid and artistic series of pictures of Italy
and the Italians during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries, is Symonds’ Renaissance in Italy. These volumes are so
thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the period, and the author’s
characterisations are so full and so sympathetic, that it is difficult not
to think of Symonds as having been himself a Florentine, rather than
a native of the “barbarian realm of Britain.”
I take the liberty of quoting the description given by Symonds of
the peculiar conditions under which Italy of the fifteenth century, in
abandoning the hope of securing a place among the nations of the
world, absorbed itself in philosophic, literary, and artistic ideals.
Freshly imbued with Greek thought and Greek inspiration, Italy took
upon itself the rôle played centuries earlier by classic Greece, and,
without political power or national influence, it assumed the
leadership of the intellect and of the imagination of Europe.
“In proportion as Italy lost year by year the hope of becoming a
united nation, in proportion as the military instincts died in her, and
the political instincts were extinguished by despotism, in precisely
the same ratio did she evermore acquire a deeper sense of her
intellectual vocation. What was world-embracing in the spirit of the
mediæval Church passed by transmutation into the humanism of the
fifteenth century. As though aware of the hopelessness of being
Italians in the same sense as the natives of Spain were Spaniards,
or the natives of France were Frenchmen, the giants of the
Renaissance did their utmost to efface their nationality, in order that
they might the more effectually restore the cosmopolitan ideal of the
human family. To this end both artists and scholars, the depositories
of the real Italian greatness at this epoch, laboured; the artists by
creating an ideal of beauty with a message and a meaning for all
Europe; the scholars by recovering for Europe the burghership of
Greek and Roman civilisation. In spite of the invasions and
convulsions that ruined Italy between the years 1494 and 1527, the
painters and the humanists proceeded with their task as though the
fate of Italy concerned them not, as though the destinies of the
modern world depended on their activity. After Venice had been
desolated by the armies of the League of Cambray, Aldus Manutius
presented the peace-gift of Plato to the foes of his adopted city, and
when the Lutherans broke into Parmegiano’s workshop at Rome,
even they were awed by the tranquil majesty of the Virgin on his
easel. Stories like these remind us that Renaissance Italy met her
doom of servitude and degradation in the spirit of ancient Hellas,
repeating as they do the tales told of Archimedes in his study, and of
Paulus Emilius face to face with the Zeus of Phidias.[413]...
It is impossible to exaggerate the benefit conferred upon Europe
by the Italians at this epoch. The culture of the classics had to be
reappropriated before the movement of the modern mind could
begin, before the nations could start upon a new career of progress;
the chasm between the old and the new world had to be bridged
over. This task of reappropriation the Italians undertook alone, and
achieved at the sacrifice of their literary independence and their
political freedom. The history of the Renaissance literature in Italy is
the history of self-development into the channels of scholarship and
antiquarian research. The language created by Dante as a thing of
power, polished by Petrarch as a thing of beauty, trained by
Boccaccio as the instrument of melodious prose, was abandoned
even by the Tuscans in the fifteenth century for revived Latin and
newly discovered Greek. Patient acquisition took the place of proud
inventiveness; laborious imitation of classical authors suppressed
originality of style. The force of mind which in the fourteenth century
had produced a Divine Comedy and a Decameron, in the fifteenth
century was expended upon the interpretation of codices, the
settlement of texts, the translation of Greek books into Latin, the
study of antiquities, the composition of commentaries,
encyclopædias, dictionaries, ephemerides. While we regret this
change from creative to acquisitive literature, we must bear in mind
that these scholars, who ought to have been poets, accomplished
nothing less than the civilisation, or, to use their own phrase, the
humanisation, of the modern world. At the critical moment when the
Eastern Empire was being shattered by the Turks, and when the
other European nations were as yet unfit for culture, Italy saved the
Arts and Sciences of Greece and Rome, and interpreted the spirit of
the classics. Devoting herself to what appears the slavish work of
compilation and collection, she transmitted an inestimable treasure
to the human race; and though for a time the beautiful Italian tongue
was superseded by a jargon of dead languages, yet the literature of
the Renaissance yielded in the end the poetry of Ariosto, the political
philosophy of Machiavelli, the histories of Guicciardini and Varchi.
Meanwhile the whole of Europe had received the staple of its
intellectual education.”[414]
Symonds finds in the age of the Renaissance, or in what he calls
the Humanistic movement, four principal periods: first, the age of
inspiration and discovery, which is initiated by Petrarch; second, the
period of arrangement and translation. During this period, the first
great libraries came into existence, the study of Greek began in the
principal universities, and the courts of Cosimo de’ Medici in
Florence, Alfonso in Naples, and Nicholas in Rome, became centres
of literary activity; third, the age of academies. This period
succeeded the introduction of printing into Italy. Scholars and men of
letters are now crystallising or organising themselves into cliques or
schools, under the influence of which a more critical and exact
standard of scholarship is arrived at, while there is a marked
development in literary form and taste. Of the academies which
came into existence, the most important were the Platonic in
Florence, that of Pontanus in Naples, that of Pomponius Lætus in
Rome, and that of Aldus Manutius in Venice. This period covered, it
is to be noted, the introduction of printing into Italy (1464) and its
rapid development. In the fourth period it may be said that
scholasticism to some extent took the place of scholarship. It was
the age of the purists, of whom Bembo was both the type and the
dictator. There is a tendency to replace learning with an exaggerated
attention to æsthetics and style. It was about the Court of Leo X.
(1513-1522) that these æsthetic literati were chiefly gathered.
“Erudition, properly so-called,” says Symonds, “was now upon the
point of being transplanted beyond the Alps.”
The names of the scholars and writers who, following Dante, gave
fame to Florence and to Italy, are part of the history of the world’s
literature. It is necessary to refer here only to those whose influence
was most important in widening the range of scholarly interests and
in preparing Italy and Europe for the diffusion of literature, a
preparation which, while emphasising the requirement for some
means of multiplying books cheaply, secured for the printing-press,
as soon as its work began, an assured and sufficient support. The
fact that a period of exceptional intellectual activity and literary
productiveness immediately preceded the invention, or at least the
introduction of printing, must have had an enormous influence in
furthering the speedy development and diffusion of the new art. The
press of Aldus Manutius seems, as before said, like a natural and
necessary outgrowth of the Renaissance.
 The typical feature of the revival of learning in Italy was, of course,
the rediscovery of the literature of Greece. In the poetic simile of
Symonds, “Florence borrowed her light from Athens, as the moon
shines with rays reflected from the sun. The revival was the silver
age of that old golden age of Greece.”[415] The comparison of
Florence with Athens has repeatedly been made. The golden ages
of the two cities were separated by nearly two thousand years; but
history and human nature repeat themselves, and historians have
found in the Tuscan capital of the fifteenth century a population
which, with its keen intellectual nature, subtle and delicate wit, and
restless political spirit, recalls closely the Athens of Pericles. The
leadership which belonged to Italy in literature, art, scholarship, and
philosophy, was, within Italy, conceded to Florence.
The first name in the list of Florentine scholars whose influence
was important in this revival is that of Petrarch. He never himself
mastered the Greek language, but he arrived at a realisation of the
importance of Greek thought for the world, and he preached to
others the value of the studies which were beyond his own grasp. It
was at Petrarch’s instance that Boccaccio undertook the translation
into Latin of the Iliad. Among Latin authors, Petrarch’s devotion was
given particularly to Cicero and Virgil. The fact that during the first
century of printing more editions of Cicero were produced than of
any other classic author must have been largely due to the emphasis
given by the followers of Petrarch to the beauty of Cicero’s latinity
and the permanent value of his writings.
Petrarch was a devoted collector of manuscripts, and spared
neither labour nor expense to secure for his library codices of texts
recommended as authoritative. Notwithstanding his lack of
knowledge of Greek, he purchased for his collection all the Greek
manuscripts which came within his reach and within his means.
Fortunately for these expensive literary tastes, he appears to have
possessed what we should call a satisfactory independence. Some
of his manuscripts went to Boccaccio, while the rest were, at his
death, given to the city of Florence and found place later in the
Medicean Library.
 Petrarch laid great stress on the importance, for the higher
education of the people, of efficient public libraries, and his influence
with wealthy nobles served largely to increase the resources of
several of the existing libraries. In his scholarly appreciation of the
value of such collections, he was helping to educate the community
to support the booksellers, while in the collecting of manuscripts he
was unwittingly doing valuable service for the coming printer. He
died in 1374, ninety years before the first printing-press began its
work in Italy. A century later his beautiful script served as a model for
the italic or cursive type which was first made by Aldus.
Symonds thinks it very doubtful whether the Italians would have
undertaken the labour of recovering the Greek classics if no Petrarch
had preached the attractiveness of liberal studies, and if no school of
disciples had been formed by him in Florence. Of these disciples, by
far the most distinguished was Boccaccio. His actual work in
furthering the study of Greek was more important than that of the
friend to whom (although there was a difference of but nine years in
their ages) he gave the title of “master.” Boccaccio, taking up the
study of Greek (at Petrarch’s instance) in middle life, secured a
sufficient mastery of the language to be able to render into Latin the
Iliad and the Odyssey. This work, completed in 1362, was the first
translation of Homer for modern readers. He had for his instructor
and assistant an Italian named Leontius Pilatus, who had sojourned
some years at Byzantium, but whose knowledge of classic Greek
was said to have been very limited. Boccaccio secured for Pilatus an
appointment as Greek professor in the University of Florence, the
first professorship of Greek instituted in Europe.
The work by which Boccaccio is best known, the Decameron or
the Ten Nights’ Entertainment, was published in 1353, a few years
before the completion by Chaucer of the Canterbury Tales. It is
described as one of the purest specimens of Italian prose and as an
inexhaustible repository of wit, beauty, and eloquence; and
notwithstanding the fact that the stories are representative of the low
standard of moral tone which characterised Italian society of the
fourteenth century, the book is one which the world will not willingly
let die. It is probably to-day in more continued demand than any
book of its century, with the possible exception of the Divine
Comedy. The earliest printed edition was that of Valdarfer, issued in
Florence in 1471. This was three years before the beginning of
Caxton’s work as a printer in Bruges. The Decameron has since
been published in innumerable editions and in every language of
Europe.
A far larger contribution to Hellenic studies was given some years
later by Manuel Chrysoloras, a Greek scholar of Byzantium, who,
after visiting Italy as an ambassador from the Court of the Emperor
Palæologus, was, in 1396, induced to accept the Chair of Greek in
the University of Florence. “This engagement,” says Symonds,
“secured the future of Greek erudition in Europe.” Symonds
continues: “The scholars who assembled in the lecture-rooms of
Chrysoloras felt that the Greek texts, whereof he alone supplied the
key, contained those elements of spiritual freedom and intellectual
culture without which the civilisation of the modern world would be
impossible. Nor were they mistaken in what was then a guess rather
than a certainty. The study of Greek implied the birth of criticism,
comparison, research. Systems based on ignorance and superstition
were destined to give way before it. The study of Greek opened
philosophical horizons far beyond the dream world of the churchmen
and monks; it stimulated the germs of science, suggested new
astronomical hypotheses, and indirectly led to the discovery of
America. The study of Greek resuscitated a sense of the beautiful in
art and literature. It subjected the creeds of Christianity, the language
of the Gospels, the doctrines of St. Paul, to analysis, and
commenced a new era of Biblical inquiry. If it be true, as a writer no
less sober in his philosophy than eloquent in his language has lately
asserted, that except the blind forces of nature, nothing moves in this
world which is not Greek in its origin, we are justified in regarding the
point of contact between the Greek teacher Chrysoloras and his
Florentine pupils as one of the most momentous crises in the history
of civilisation. Indirectly the Italian intellect had hitherto felt Hellenic
influence through Latin literature. It was now about to receive that
influence immediately from actual study of the masterpieces of the
Attic writers. The world was no longer to be kept in ignorance of
those ‘eternal consolations’ of the human race. No longer could the
scribe omit Greek quotations from his Latin text with the dogged
snarl of obtuse self-satisfaction, Græca sunt, ergo non legenda. The
motto had rather to be changed into a cry of warning for
ecclesiastical authority upon the verge of dissolution, Græca sunt,
ergo periculosa; since the reawakening faith in human reason, the
reawakening belief in the dignity of man, the desire for beauty, the
liberty, audacity, and passion of the Renaissance, received from
Greek studies their strongest and most vital impulse.”
Symonds might have added that the literary revival, which was so
largely due to these Greek studies, made possible, a century later,
the utilisation of the printing-press, the invention of which would
otherwise have fallen upon comparatively barren ground; while the
printing-press alone made possible the diffusion of the new
knowledge, outside of the small circles of aristocratic scholars, to
whole communities of impecunious students.
Florence had, as we have seen, done more than any other city of
Italy, more than any city of Europe, to prepare Italy and Europe for
the appreciation and utilisation of the art of printing, but the direct
part taken by Florence in the earlier printing undertakings was,
curiously enough, much less important than that of Venice, Rome, or
Milan. By the year 1500, that is, thirty-six years after the beginning of
printing in Italy, there had been printed in Florence 300 works, in
Bologna 298, in Milan 629, in Rome 925, and in Venice 2835.
The list of the scholars and men of letters who, during the century
following the work of Petrarch and Boccaccio, associated
themselves with the brilliant society of Florence, and retained for the
city its distinctive pre-eminence in the intellectual life of Europe, is a
long one, and includes such names as those of Tommaso da
Sarzana, Palla degli Strozzi, Giovanni da Ravenna, Niccolo de’
Niccoli, Filelfo, Marsuppini, Rossi, Bruni, Guicciardini, Poggio,
Galileo, Cellini, Plethon, and Machiavelli. It was to Strozzi that was
due the beginning of Greek teaching in Florence under Manuel
Chrysoloras, while he also devoted large sums of money to the
purchase in Greece and in Constantinople of valuable manuscripts.
He kept in his house skilled copyists, and was employing these in
the work of preparing transcripts for a great public library, when,
unfortunately for Florence, he incurred the enmity of Cosimo de’
Medici, who procured his banishment. Strozzi went to Padua, where
he continued his Greek studies.
Cosimo, having vanquished his rival in politics, himself continued
the work of collecting manuscripts and of furthering the instruction
given by the Greek scholars. The chief service rendered by Cosimo
to learning and literature was in the organisation of great public
libraries. During his exile (1433-1434), he built in Venice the Library
of S. Giorgio Maggiore, and after his return to Florence, he
completed the hall for the Library of S. Marco. He also formed
several large collections of manuscripts. To the Library of S. Marco
and to the Medicean Library were bequeathed later by Niccolo de’
Niccoli 800 manuscripts, valued at 600 gold florins. Cosimo also
provided a valuable collection of manuscripts for the convent of
Fiesole. The oldest portion of the present Laurentian Library is
composed of the collections from these two convents, together with
a portion of the manuscripts preserved from the Medicean Library.
In 1438, Cosimo instituted the famous Platonic Academy of
Florence, the special purpose of which was the interpretation of
Greek philosophy. The gathering in Florence, in 1438, of the Greeks
who came to the great Council, had a large influence in stimulating
the interest of Florentines in Greek culture. Symonds (possibly
somewhat biassed in favour of his beloved Florentines of the
Renaissance) contends that the Byzantine ecclesiastics who came
to the Council, and the long series of Greek travellers or refugees
who found their way from Constantinople to Italy during the years
that followed, included comparatively few real scholars whose
classical learning could be trusted. These men supplied, says
Symonds, “the beggarly elements of grammar, caligraphy, and
bibliographical knowledge,” but it was Ficino and Aldus, Strozzi and
Cosimo de’ Medici who opened the literature of Athens to the
comprehension of the modern world.
The elevation to the papacy, in 1447, of Tommaso Parentucelli,
who took the name of Nicholas V., had the effect of carrying to Rome
some of the Florentine interest in literature and learning. Tommaso,
who was a native of Pisa, had won repute in Bologna for his wide
and thorough scholarship. He became, later, a protégé of Cosimo de’
Medici, who employed him as a librarian of the Marcian Library. To
Nicholas V. was due the foundation of the Vatican Library, for which
he secured a collection of some five thousand works. Symonds says
that during his pontificate, “Rome became a vast workshop of
erudition, a factory of translations from Greek and Latin.” The
compensation paid to these translators from the funds provided by
the Pope, was in many cases very liberal. In fact, as compared with
the returns secured at this period for original work, the rewards paid
to these translators of the Vatican seem decidedly disproportionate,
especially when we remember that a large portion of their work was
of poor quality, deficient both in exact scholarship and in literary
form. To Lorenzo Valla was paid for his translation of Thucydides,
500 scudi, to Guarino for a version of Strabo, 1500 scudi, to Perotti
for Polybius, 500 ducats. Manetti had a pension of 600 scudi a
month to enable him to pursue his sacred studies. Poggio’s version
of the Cyropædia of Xenophon and Filelfo’s rendering of the poems
of Homer, were, from a literary point of view, more important
productions. Some of the work in his series of translations was
confided by the Pope to the resident Greek scholars. Trapezuntios
undertook the Metaphysics of Aristotle and the Republic of Plato,
and Tifernas the Ethics of Aristotle. Translations were also prepared
of Theophrastus and of Ptolemy.
In addition to these paid translators, the Pope attracted to his
Court from all parts of Italy, and particularly from his old home,
Florence, a number of scholars, of whom Poggio Bracciolini (or
Fiorentino) and Cardinal Bessarion were the most important.
Bessarion took an active part in encouraging Greek scholars to
make their homes and to do their work in Italy. The great
development of literary productiveness and literary interests in Rome
during the pontificate of Nicholas, is one of the noteworthy examples
of large results accruing to literature and to literary workers through
intelligently administered patronage. It seems safe to say that before
the introduction of printing, it was only through the liberality of
patrons that any satisfactory compensation could be secured for
literary productions.
 During the reign of Alfonso of Aragon, who in 1435 added Sicily to
his dominions, and under the direct incentive of the royal patronage,
a good deal of literary activity was developed in Naples. Alfonso was
described by Vespasiano as being, next to Nicholas V., the most
munificent patron of learning in Italy, and he attracted to his Court
scholars like Manetti, Beccadelli, Valla, and others. The King paid to
Bartolommeo Fazio a stipend of 500 ducats a year while he was
engaged in writing his Chronicles, and when the work was
completed, he added a further payment of 1500 florins. In 1459, the
year of his death, Alfonso distributed 20,000 ducats among the men
of letters gathered in Naples. It is certain that in no other city of
Europe during that year were the earnings or rewards of literature so
great. It does not appear, however, that this lavish expenditure had
the effect of securing the production by Neapolitans of any works of
continued importance, or even of bringing into existence in the city
any lasting literary interests. The temperament of the people and the
general environment were doubtless unfavourable as compared with
the influences affecting Florence or Rome. It is probable also that the
selection of the recipients of the royal bounty was made without any
trustworthy principle and very much at haphazard.
A production of Beccadelli’s, perhaps the most brilliant of Alfonso’s
literary protégés, is to be noted as having been proscribed by the
Pope, being one of the earliest Italian publications to be so
distinguished. Eugenius IV. forbade, under penalty of
excommunication, the reading of Beccadelli’s Hermaphroditus, which
was declared to be contra bonos mores. The book was denounced
from many pulpits, and copies were burned, together with portraits of
the poet, on the public squares of Bologna, Milan, and Ferrara.[416]
This opposition of the Church was the more noteworthy, as the book
contained nothing heretical or subversive of ecclesiastical authority,
but was simply ribald and obscene.
Lorenzo Valla, another of the writers who received special favours
and emoluments at the hands of Alfonso, likewise came under the
ecclesiastical ban. But his writings contained more serious offences
than obscenity or ribaldry. He boldly questioned the authenticity of
Constantine’s Donation (a document which was later shown to be a
forgery), and of other documents and literature held by the Church to
be sacred, and the accuracy of his scholarship and the brilliancy of
his polemical style, gave weight and force to his attacks.
Denunciations came upon Valla’s head from many pulpits, and the
matter was taken up by the Inquisition. But Alfonso told the monks
that they must leave his secretary alone, and the proceedings were
abandoned.
When Nicholas V. came to the papacy, undeterred by the charge
of heresies, he appointed Valla to the post of Apostolic writer, and
gave him very liberal emoluments for work on the series of Greek
translations before referred to. Valla never retracted any of his
utterances against the Church, but he appears, after accepting the
Pope’s appointment, to have turned his polemical ardour in other
directions. He engaged in some bitter controversies with Poggio,
Fazio, and other contemporaries, controversies which seem to have
aroused and excited the literary circles of the time, but which turned
upon matters of no lasting importance. It is a cause of surprise to
later literary historians that men like Valla, possessed of real learning
and of unquestioned literary skill, should have been willing to devote
their time and their capacity to the futilities which formed the pretexts
for the greater part of the personal controversies of the time.
Professor Adams says of Valla: “He had all the pride and insolence
and hardly disguised pagan feeling and morals of the typical
humanist; but in spirit and methods of work he was a genuine
scholar, and his editions lie at the foundation of all later editorial work
in the case of more than one classic author, and of the critical study
of the New Testament as well.”[417]
During the two centuries preceding the invention of printing, it was
the case that more books (in the form of manuscripts) were available
for the use of students and readers in Italy than in any other country,
but even in Italy manuscripts were scarce and costly. Even the
collections in the so-called “libraries” of the cathedrals and colleges
were very meagre. These manuscripts were nearly entirely the
production of the cloisters, and as parchment continued to be very
dear, many of the works sent out by the monks were in the form of
palimpsests, that is, were transcribed upon scrolls which contained
earlier writing. The fact that the original writing was in many cases
but imperfectly erased, has caused to be preserved fragments of a
number of classics which might otherwise have disappeared entirely.
The service rendered by the monks in this way may be considered
as at least a partial offset to the injury done by them to the cause of
literature in the destruction of so many ancient writings. This matter
has been referred to more fully in the chapter on Monasteries and
Manuscripts.
One of the Italian scholars of the fifteenth century who interested
himself particularly in the collection of manuscripts of the classics
was Poggio Bracciolini. In 1414, while he was, in his official capacity
as Apostolic Secretary, in attendance at the Council of Constance,
he ransacked the libraries of St. Gall and of other monasteries of
Switzerland and Suabia, and secured a complete Quintilian, copies
of Lucretius, Frontinus, Probus, Vitruvius, nine of Cicero’s Orations,
and manuscripts of a number of other valuable texts. Many of the
libraries had been sadly neglected, and the greater part of the
manuscripts were in dirty and tattered condition, but literature owes
much to the monks through whom these literary treasures had been
kept in existence at all.
Poggio is to be noted as a free-thinker who managed to keep in
good relations with the Church. So long as free-thinkers confined
their audacity to such matters as form the topic of Poggio’s Facetiæ,
Beccadelli’s Hermaphroditus, or La Casa’s Capitolo del Forno, the
Roman Curia looked on and smiled approvingly. The most obscene
books to be found in any literature escaped the Papal censure, and a
man like Aretino, notorious for his ribaldry, could aspire with fair
prospects of success to the scarlet of a Cardinal.[418]
While there could be no popular distribution, in the modern sense
of the term, for necessarily costly books in manuscript, in a
community of which only a small proportion had any knowledge of
reading and writing, it is evident from the chronicles of the time that
there was an active and prompt exchange of literary novelties
between the court circles and the literary groups of the different
cities, and also between the Faculties of the universities. A
controversy between two scholars or men of letters (and there were,
as said, many such controversies, some of them exceedingly bitter)
appears to have excited a larger measure of interest and attention in
cultivated circles throughout the country than could probably be
secured to-day for any purely literary or scholastic issues. There
must, therefore, have been in existence and in circulation a very
considerable mass of literature in manuscript form, and we know
from various sources that Florence particularly was the centre of an
important trade in manuscripts. I have not thus far, however, been
able to find any instances of the writers of this period receiving any
compensation from the publishers, booksellers, or copyists, or any
share in such profits as might be derived from the sale of the
manuscript copies of their writings. It seems probable that the
authors gave to the copyists the privilege (which it was in any case
really impracticable to withhold) of manifolding and distributing such
copies of the books as might be called for by the general public,
while the cost of the complimentary copies (often a considerable
number) given to the large circle of friends, seems as a rule to have
been borne by the author.
As the author had to take his compensation in the shape of fame
(except in the cases of receipts from patrons), the wider the
circulation secured for copies of his productions (provided only they
were not plagiarised), the larger his fund of—satisfaction. For
substantial compensation he could look only to the patron.
Fortunately for the impecunious writers of the day, it became
fashionable for not a few of the princes and nobles of Italy to play the
rôle of Mæcenas, and by many of these the support and
encouragement given to literature was magnificent, if not always
judicious.
During the reigns of the last Visconti and of the first Sforza, or from
about 1440 to 1474, literature became fashionable at the Court of
Milan. Filippo Maria Visconti is described as a superstitious and
repulsive tyrant, and he could hardly by his own personality have
attracted to Lombardy men of intellectual tastes. Visconti appears,
however, to have considered that his Court would be incomplete
without scholars, and to have been willing to pay liberally for their
attendance. Piero Candido Decembrio was one of the most
industrious of the writers who were supported by Visconti. According
to his epitaph, he was responsible for no less than 127 books.
Symonds speaks of his memoir of Visconti as a vivid and vigorous
study of a tyrant. Gasparino da Barzizza was the Court letter-writer
and rhetorician, and, as the official orator, filled an important place in
what was considered the intellectual life of the city.
By far the most noteworthy, however, of the scholars who were
attracted to Milan by the Ducal bounty was Francesco Filelfo. He
could hardly be said to belong to Lombardy, as he was born in
Ancona and educated at Padua, and had passed a number of years
in Venice, Constantinople, Florence, Siena, and Bologna. The
longest sojourn of his life, however, was made in Milan, where he
arrived in 1440, and where he enjoyed for some years liberal
emoluments from the Court.
Filelfo was evidently a man with great powers of acquisition and
with exceptional versatility. He brought back with him from
Constantinople (where he had remained for some years) a Greek
bride from a noble family, an extensive collection of Greek
manuscripts, and a working knowledge of the Greek language; and
at a time when Greek ideas and Greek literature were attracting the
enthusiastic attention not merely of the scholars but of the courtiers
and men of fashion, these possessions of Filelfo were exceptionally
serviceable, and enabled him to push his fortunes effectively. He
seems to have possessed a self-confidence at least equal to his
learning. He speaks of himself as having surpassed Virgil because
he was an orator, and Cicero because he was a poet. Symonds
says, however, that, notwithstanding his arrogance, he is entitled to
the rank of the most universal scholar of his age, and his self-
assertion doubtless aided not a little in securing prompt recognition
for his learning. Venice paid him, in 1427, a stipend of 500 sequins
for a series of lectures on Eloquence. A year later he accepted the
post of lecturer in Bologna on Moral Philosophy and Eloquence, with
a stipend of 450 sequins. Shortly afterwards, flattering offers tempted
him to Florence, where he lectured on the Greek and Latin classics
and on Dante, with a stipend first of 250 sequins, and later of 450