James Montgomery

“ Nature presents her most enchanting aspect; and the voice of human genius breathing from the silent tomb, speaks of the influence of the imagination of man, and of the power which he possesses to communicate his ideas in all their warmth and beauty to his fellow creatures. Such is the tomb of Virgil now—such was it five hundred years ago, when Boccaccio's heart glowed with new-born enthusiasm as he gazed upon it. ”

“ Paris presented a yet more painful spectacle; grass grew in the deserted streets; the sounds of gaiety and the silence of learning were exchanged for the tumult of soldiery and the fabrication of arms. Petrarch was well received, especially by the dauphin, Charles, who cultivated letters and loved literary men. Here, as in every other court he visited, the poet was solicited to remain; but he found the barbarism of Paris little congenial to his habits, and he hastened back to Italy. ”

“ I cannot express with what affection such a one would be received in those provinces which have suffered from the inundation of foreign troops; with what thirst of vengeance, what resolute fidelity; with what piety, and what grateful tears he would be followed. What gates would be shut against him? what people would refuse to render him obedience? what Italian would hesitate to submit to his rule? Every one abhors the authority of the barbarians. ”

“ My health is so good and robust that I scarcely feel the advance of years. My feelings are as warm as in my youth, but I control their vivacity, so that my repose is seldom disturbed by them. One thing only is the source of disquietude: I am esteemed more than I deserve, so that a vast concourse of people come to see me. Not only am I honoured and loved by the prince of this city and his court, but the whole population pays me respect: yet, living in a distant quarter of the city, the visits I receive are infrequent, and I am often left in solitude. ”

“ Dante's last and most magnanimous patron was Guido Novello da Polenta, lord of Ravenna, who was himself a poet, and a munificent benefactor of men of letters. This nobleman was the father of Francesca di Rimini, whose fatal love has given her a place on the most splendid page of the "Divina Commedia;" no other episode being told with equal beauty and pathos: yet so brief and simple is the narrative, that, even if the circumstances were as unexceptionably pure as they are insidiously delicate, translation ought hardly to be attempted; for the labour would be fruitless. ”

“ Poor Angelica feels not less for Rinaldo; but, arriving at Ardennes, she is delivered from her misery, by drinking of the fountain, that turns all her love to hate; while Rinaldo, also arriving, drinks of the love-in-spiring waters, and with great joy seeing the lady, wonders at his past dislike, and congratulates himself now on her passion. He addresses her with tenderness; but is repulsed with scorn, while her champion Orlando is at hand to defend her. ”

“ The perpetual infringement which results from a secret intrigue degrades in their own eyes those who practise the falsehood. In the details which Boccaccio has given of his passion, we perceive the violation of the most beautiful of social ties; while deceit is substituted for sincerity, and mystery for frankness. The lover perceived a perpetual lie on the lips of her he loved; and, had his attachment been of an ennobling nature, he would rather have given up its gratification, than have sought it in the humiliation and error of its object. ”

“ Angelica wakes; she rises, wanders from her place of rest, and comes to the spot where Rinaldo is reposing. Her love-blinded eyes behold him, and, transported by sudden and subduing passion, she watches his waking with fondness. He opens his eyes, and holds in abhorrence the beauty who is gazing upon him, and flies from her in disdain. Argalia meanwhile arrives in the wood, pursued by Ferrau; he has lost his enchanted lance; the enemies meet, and continue the combat. ”

“ The ease with which the Italian language lends itself to rhythm and to rhyme, enabled Boccaccio to dress his thoughts in the guise of poetry; but he was, essentially, not a poet. It were too long to enter here into the distinction between the power of the imagination which creates fable and character, and even produces ideal imagery, and the peculiar attributes of poetry, which consists in a greater force and concentration of language, and an ear for the framing poetic numbers. ”

“ It did not, therefore, agree with his policy to give Ariosto a cardinal's hat, because, being a subject of Alfonso's, the poet would not only do no wrong to the duke; but, on the contrary, honoured as he was by his sovereign, he would employ all his influence to thwart the injurious designs of the pontiff against the latter. What marvel, then, that Leo, like mighty men in every age, should prefer his own ambition to the great friendship and esteem in which he held Ariosto; since ambition, when united with personal interest, swallows up all other passions! ”

“ Dante did more than either his predecessors or contemporaries had done to improve, ennoble, and refine his native idiom; indeed he was wont to speak indignantly of those who would degrade it below the Provençal, the fashionable vehicle of verse in that age of transition, when the young languages of modern Europe, begotten between the stern tongues of the north and the classic ones of the south, were growing up together, on both sides of the Alps and the Pyrenees, like children in rivalry of each other, as the nations that spoke them respectively, so often intermingled in war or in peace. ”

“ Orlando sees all die around him, and his soul is pierced with grief; yet not till he feels himself dying will he sound the mighty horn which is to give Charlemagne notice of his peril. The emperor hears the faint echo borne on the winds three distinct times, and he and all around him feel certain that treason is at work and Orlando in danger. They turn pale with terror, and hasten to the sad spot, where they find the noble warrior dead. Rinaldo is near him. Rinaldo, at the moment that the slaughter of Roncesvalles was preparing, was far away in Asia. ”

“ Dante's poetry (extravagant and imaginative as he often may be) is thoroughly intellectual; there is no enthusiasm of feeling, but there is much of philosophical and theological subtlety, and of course much absurdity in some of his reveries; yet his passion is always pure and unaffected, his descriptions are daylight realities, and his heroes men of flesh and blood. Probably no other work of human genius so far exceeds in its development the expectation of prejudiced or unprepared readers, as the "Divina Commedia;" or performs, in fact, so much more than it seems to promise. ”

“ Men like to be benefited even more than they dislike being injured; and love is a more universal passion than terror. He continues, "Still a prince, while he seeks to be feared, must avoid being hated—for fear is very distinct from hatred. And he ought always to avoid seizing on the goods of his subjects. He may, as far as is justified by the cause given, proceed against the life of an individual; but let him not touch the possessions. For men more easily forget the death of a father than the loss of patrimony." ”

“ There is scarcely an image, a monster, or an incident in all their raving chronicles—wild as the dreams of lunatics, or beautiful as those of infants are supposed to be—which cannot be traced to Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, or Statius; so narrow is the range of human invention; and so inextricably connected with what we have heard, and read, and seen, are all the imaginations or the thoughts of the heart of the most original genius. ”

“ Ariosto has this advantage over Cervantes,—that whatever is great, glorious, or admirable in romance, he can seriously set forth in all the pomp and eloquence of verse of the highest species; while whatever is mean, farcical, or monstrous, he can exhibit in strains of facetiousness, at once as grave and as poignant as those in which the celebrated assault on the windmills, the rout of the sheep, or the gross sensuality of Sancho Panza, are given, without descending into caricature ”

“ The citizens were full of energy and fire; volatile and rash, sometimes they acted a cowardly, sometimes a magnanimous part. They were restless and versatile—but ambitious, and full of that quick intuitive genius which, even now, in their fallen state, belongs to them. They were at enmity with the Visconti, who incited against them the hostility of the great company, a band of mercenary troops, the off-pourings of the invasion of France by the English, which had entered Italy, and sold their services to different standards, or made war on their own account for booty only. ”

“ In those days, when books were rare, reading was a luxury reserved for a few, and it was chiefly by oral communication that a poet's contemporaries became acquainted with his productions; and there was a class of men, not poets themselves, who chiefly subsisted by repeating the productions of others:—"men," writes Petrarch, "of no genius, but endowed with memory and industry. Unable to compose themselves, they recite the verses of others at the tables of the great, and receive gifts in return. They are chiefly solicitous to please their audience by novelty. ”

“ All his wonders and prodigies are made so easy and probable, that to the most fastidious reader, who does not resolutely resist the spell of the poet, and deprive himself of the pleasure of being beguiled by it, they appear as they would do if they were actual events, from the daylight effect of his truth-telling style; for whenever his delight in the extravagant carries him beyond the legitimately marvellous, he disarms resentment, and prevents the laugh against himself by a quiet pleasantry,—becoming himself the Cervantes of his own Quixotes. ”

“ No rival composition of the same or any other class of heroic verse has yet proved equally attractive to Italian readers in every rank of life; though, in the "Gerusalemme Liberata" of Tasso, consummate skill and genius of the highest order have constructed an epic according to the strictest rules of art, to conciliate the learned, and at the same time embellished it with all the graces of romance, to charm the multitude, who love to be pleased, because they cannot help it, and care not by what means, so that these be but "rich and strange." ”

“ There are some elegiac stanzas preserved of his, which prove that he suffered at one time the struggles and errors of passion, and was subdued by it to other thoughts than those which his reason approved. How different is this poem to those addressed to Lucretia Donati. There is no Platonic refinement, no subtlety, no conceit, no imitation of Petrarch; its diction is clear and sweet; truth and strength of feeling animate each expression; it bears the stamp of heartfelt sincerity, and is adorned by all the delicacy which real passion inspires. ”

“ To the imaginative, fanciful imagery and thoughts, whose expression seems steeped in the hues of dawn, are natural and unforced: when the mind of such is calm, their conceptions resemble those of other men; but when excited by passion, when love, or patriotism, or the influence of nature, kindles the soul, it becomes natural, nay, imperative to them to embody their thoughts, and to give "a local habitation and a name" to the emotions that possess them. ”

“ When I leave the wood I go to a fountain, where I watch my bird nets with a book in hand; either Dante or Petrarch, or one of the minor Latin poets—Tibullus, Ovid, or one similar. I read the accounts of their loves; I think of my own, and for a while enjoy these thoughts. Then I go to the inn on the road side; I talk with the passers by; ask the news of their villages; I hear many things, and remark on the various tastes and fancies of men. Meanwhile the hour of dinner arrives, and I dine with my family on such food as my poor house and slight patrimony afford. ”

“ A dark rock rises immediately before; it is shut in, secluded and tranquil: but at the distance of only a few yards, a short ascent leads to the top of the hill, where the whole of the hay of Naples opens itself to the eye. The exceeding beauty of this scene fills every gazer with delight; the wide-spread sea is adorned by various islands, and by picturesque promontories, which shut in secluded bays; the earth is varied by hills, dells, and lakes, by towering heights and woody ravines; the sky, serenely though darkly blue, imparts matchless hues to the elements beneath. ”