Richard Garnett

“ Hence Shelley in another place calls Milton "the third among the sons of light." Both these great men, in truth, versed in all the learning of their ages, and entertaining a conviction of the indefeasible truth of what they believed themselves to know which no successor will be able to share, applied themselves to embody these beliefs in works of genius. Even as great empires have vanished from the earth, and left nothing but the works of art which were not the greatness itself but merely its testimonies and symbols, so here the opinions have gone while the works remain. ”

“ On the contrary, the century from the death of Boccaccio to the appearance of Lorenzo de' Medici as a poet is the most barren in Italian literary history. It produces no vernacular writer of genius, and but few of eminent talent. It is indeed no reproach to it to have brought forth no second Dante, or to have failed, like all other ages, to reproduce the inimitable perfection of Petrarch. ”

“ Not much need be said of Petrarch's character, whether as poet, scholar, or man. As a poet he deserves to be numbered among the few who have attained absolute perfection within a certain sphere; to whom within these limits nothing can be added, though much may be taken away. The subtraction of the trivial or fantastic from Petrarch's verse leaves, nevertheless, a mass of love-poetry transcending in amount no less than in loveliness all poetry of the same class from the pen of any other man. ”

“ Apart from the merits of his writings, Boccaccio might rest a claim to no ordinary renown as the creator of classic Italian prose; and even if he had found this instrument ready to his hand, his work with it might alone have assured him immortality. Perhaps he has a still higher title to fame in his quality as a great originator, achieving, indeed, no consummate work except the Decameron, but reconnoitring the unknown world through which the human spirit travels, and opening out new paths on every side as he steers "bound upon beating wing to golden bough." ”

“ It was a cruel injury to Italy that her greatest modern genius should have done so little for her regeneration, and that his writings, instead of inspiring a healthy public spirit, should rather tend to foster the selfish indifference and the despair of good which continue to be her principal bane. In two points of view, nevertheless, Leopardi rendered his country essential service. His sufferings, and the moral infirmities which they entailed, enabled him to represent in his own person, as no soundly-constituted man could have done, the unhappy Italy of his day. ”

“ More extraordinary works than the Vita Nuova have been composed at even an earlier age, but there is perhaps no other book in the world in which a young man appears as asserting by his first attempt so unchallenged a superiority over predecessors and contemporaries, with whom he has nevertheless much in common. The evolution of Italian poetry has up to this point proceeded gradually and systematically; all of a sudden it makes a bound, and seems as it were to have sprung across a chasm. The prose is of more equable desert than the interspersed poetry, some of which is inferior ”

“ Another defect lay less in the nature of things than in the spirit of the age, the occasional anticipation of the false taste of the seventeenth century. Italy was weary of the elegant exteriors and empty interiors of the compositions of Bembo and Molza. A Wordsworth, arising to proclaim a return to nature, might have endowed her with a new age of great literature, but the circumstances of the time absolutely forbade any such apparition, and the craving for vitality and vigour had to be appeased by a show of intellectual dexterity and mere exaggeration. ”

“ If there was any country in Europe where literature might be expected to be unequivocally on the side of Liberty, it was Italy; for Italy alone had to reckon with foreign as well as domestic oppressors. In fact, the general tendency of Italian literature during the period under review is more uniformly liberal than that of any other; but at the same time its expression is more restrained than that of any other, for the conclusive reason that an Italian writer could only obtain liberty of speech at the price of exile. ”

“ If tragedy and comedy can be said to have taken root at all, the latter degenerated, while the former put forth only Sparse and occasional flowers. Alfieri's best plays continue stock-pieces to this extent, that they are revived as offering the most suitable opportunities for the display of the brilliant histrionic genius which from time to time irradiates the Italian stage. A succession of gifted men—Monti, Foscolo, Manzoni, Pellico, Niccolini, Cossa—have continued the tradition, and on the whole the state of tragedy seems much the same in Italy as in England. ”

“ It should be the task of the cultivators of every literature to ascertain what course this literature has instinctively shaped for itself; what are the dominant ideas which have determined the course of its development. In Italy, from the first lyrists down to Carducci, from the first prose writers down to D'Annunzio, the guiding principle would seem to have been the love of perfect form and artistic finish, liable, like all other meritorious tendencies, to abuse, when its too exclusive pursuit has cramped originality; to aberration, when writers, remembering the end, have mistaken the means ”

“ There is no story, no moral, no character, no inner unity, nothing but forty-five thousand lines of word-painting, rich and brilliant indeed, but commonplace in so far as the poet sees nothing invisible to ordinary eyes, and evinces no originality in his manner of regarding man and nature.
Such merely verbal beauty must inevitably satiate, and Marini has experienced more neglect, and even contempt, than many men of far inferior faculty. In his own day he carried all before him, and was even more admired in France than in Italy. ”

“ It will be evident from the above brief sketch of the Italian novel that in the sixteenth century the art of novel-writing was nearly identical with the art of narrative. This was fully possessed by most writers of fiction; but characterisation, ingenuity of construction and development of plot, underplot, episode, artful suspension of interest, above all the application of the novelist's art to weighty purposes, were all in the most rudimentary condition. Compared with the modern novel, the ancient story is as a simple air upon a flute to the complicated harmony of an organ. ”

“ It is the great distinction of Metastasio to have been at the same time a consummate playwright and a true lyrical poet. Other great playwrights have been great poets in blank verse; but, at any rate for the first half of his life, Metastasio's bosom was as affluent a storehouse of melody as Rückert's; to sing was for him as easy as to speak. He was constrained to submit himself to the laws of the opera, inexorable because founded upon the reason of things. As an opera can be nothing without a cantatrice, it follows that it must turn chiefly upon the passion of love ”

“ They seem to regard literature and belles lettres as convertible terms, and take no notice of the wider and more important domains of history, biography, philosophy, moral and economic science, which may be and often have been in the most flourishing condition while belles lettres languish. It is, indeed, much to be wished that more of the literary talent of Italy were directed to solid and permanent work, and less to fiction, which must be ephemeral in proportion to the very fidelity with which it fulfils its ordinary task of depicting the manners of the day. ”

“ Monti, the first great Italian writer whose career was powerfully affected by it, was neither a revolutionist nor an anti-revolutionist, but a straw in a whirlpool. When, however, the idea of Italian unity—Napoleon's legacy to his true native country—had had time to develop itself, and it had become manifest that the only path to it lay through a cordial adoption of revolutionary principles, the Revolution acquired more practical significance for Italy than for any other country in Europe. ”

“ Yet the fate of so morbidly sensitive a spirit could hardly have been materially different; it is only wonderful that he should have regained so much of his intellect and died master of himself. Courtly society and religious excitement between them admirably trained his magnificent genius to write the Jerusalem Delivered, in its relation to general culture the epic of the Roman Catholic revival, but, from the large-hearted humanity of the author, happily much more.
The circumstances of Tasso's youth were such as to intensify the innate melancholy of his disposition. ”

“ The spirit is that of Pope's satires, but Parini, composing in blank verse, has been led into a style more nearly resembling that of Young, although he has little of the sententious abruptness of the Night Thoughts or of their fatiguing glitter: the four poems are perfect wholes, gliding from theme to theme by the most ingenious and delicate transitions, and replete with charming episodes; the diction is exquisite, and the blank verse the best that Italy had then seen. The work is invaluable as a picture of manners, and a masterpiece of delicate polished satire ”

“ No book, it is probable, gives a better idea of the general atmosphere of the Italy of the sixteenth century; assuredly no other delineation is nearly so vivid. With truly Pepysian unconsciousness the writer depicts in himself the man of turbulent and impracticable character moving among princes and nobles, outraging their forbearance by every action of his life, and revenging himself for their exhausted patience by malicious truth or reckless calumny. ”

“ Nor could Petrarch himself be fully aware how impossible it was to write like a Roman poet in the new dawn of reviving classical studies. It took two centuries of culture to produce a Vida and a Sannazaro, and if their names are undying, the same can hardly be said of their Latin works. But there was a deeper reason. Petrarch attempted epic composition without epic inspiration. His genius was entirely lyric, and his poetry has little value except where it palpitates with lyrical feeling. When he writes on the misfortunes of his country, he is a poet even when writing in Latin ”

“ It is not, strictly speaking, so much a history of literature as a history of learning. The fortunes of schools and universities, the rise and decay of particular branches of study, are narrated very fully, while there is little literary criticism, and the lives of great men are recounted with astonishing brevity, except when some personal or intellectual circumstance regarding them has become the theme of erudite controversy, when the incident overshadows the life. ”

“ Of the wild, untutored graces of the woods and fields they have absolutely nothing; their sphere is the court, save for the feeling which Chiabrera, as becomes a Ligurian, occasionally manifests for the sea; and the ideas are seldom absolutely novel, though they often seem so. But there is true elevation of thought and majesty of diction: a lyrical afflatus seems to descend upon the poet and whirl him on, sped, in the absence of a really inspiring subject, by his own excitement, as a courser is urged along by the thunder of his own hoofs. ”

“ If immortality is deservedly awarded to a single masterpiece like the Burial of Sir John Moore or the Pervigilium Veneris, it should not be difficult to estimate his claims whose similar masterpieces are counted by scores. Perhaps the greatest of his beauties is the complete naturalness of his ceaseless succession of thoughts transcendently exquisite. If Petrarch has not the thrilling note or transparent spirituality of Dante, his perfect form represents a higher stage of artistic development—too high, indeed, to be maintained by his successors. ”

“ On the other hand, the devotion of the Italian writers to elegance and symmetry of composition has rendered their literature a model for cultured writers in all languages, has deeply influenced contemporary literatures in their rudimentary stages, and has preserved many a writer from oblivion whose original power was not conspicuous, whose themes have long since become antiquated, but who still challenges the attention of posterity by charm of style. ”

“ It is needless to relate the oft-told story of Galileo, which indeed rather regards the history of science than that of literature. We are only concerned with him as a typical figure, the most eminent victim of the spirit of persecution which deprived Italy of her supremacy among intellectual nations, and which, even before Galileo had excited its hatred, had claimed another victim, less illustrious, but not less interesting. ”

“ Goldoni wants the French writer's overpowering vis comica, and is happier in "catching the manners living as they rise" than in laying bare the depths of the heart. Wit, gaiety, elegance, simplicity, truth to nature, skill in dramatic construction, render him nevertheless a most delightful writer, and his fame is the more assured from his position as his country's sole eminent representative in the region of polite comedy.
The eighteenth century had thus endowed Italy with dramatic poets of European reputation, worthy to be inscribed on the same roll as Racine and Molière. ”

“ The weakness and disunion of the oppressed, no less than the brutality of the oppressor, are depicted with the most refined sarcasm. Nothing can be more humorous, for example, than the crab's exposition to the mouse of the principle of the balance of power; and through all the fancy and drollery pierce the grief and rage of a patriotic Italian. There are also fine flashes of true poetry, especially near the end, when the adventurous mouse visits the underworld of his species; and Ariosto is parodied as well as Dante. The satire, nevertheless, transcends the appreciation of ordinary readers ”

“ Nothing can more forcibly proclaim the superiority of Dante's mind than the uniqueness of his first production, unless it be the fact that, high as is its place in literature, its chief interest for us is its concern with the man. It is simply the record of his attachment to a young lady whom he calls Beatrice, and whom Boccaccio enables us to identify with one whom we know from other sources to have actually existed, Beatrice de' Portinari. ”

“ Nothing in literary history is more surprising than the gap between Gil Vicente and his contemporaries, whether classical or romantic. Had he been born an Italian instead of a Portuguese, the history of the Italian stage might possibly have been different. It nevertheless remains to be explained why no such person arose among so gifted a people, and why throughout their entire history, with one or two marked exceptions in particular departments, Italians have never had a drama that they could justly call their own. ”

“ Individual genius, however, is no less effective than of old upon those constitutionally in sympathy with it, and no gifted writer can introduce a new style without enlisting disciples and provoking antagonists. Such a genius and such a style appertain to Giosuè Carducci (born 1836) , the one contemporary poet of Italy who, if we except Gabriele d'Annunzio, "in shape and gesture proudly eminent," stands forth like a tower from the rest, and who has made an abiding reputation as the introducer of the new elements needed to replace the expiring impulse of the romantic school. ”

“ While Leopardi, although at heart a patriot, was virtually proclaiming patriotism a phantom, a poet of a very different cast was assailing abuses and preparing a better day by dint of humorous indignation and sturdy hopefulness. The Italy of the time stands between Leopardi and Giuseppe Giusti (1809–50) like Garrick between tragedy and comedy. Giusti's gifts were less sublime than Leopardi's, but not less original. What Leopardi was to the Italian language in its most classical form, Giusti was to the peculiar niceties of the most idiomatic Tuscan. ”

“ But neither the innate love of letters nor the awakened faculty of poetry would have exalted Petrarch to the literary supremacy he attained if he had not lived at the very juncture when literature, hitherto cultivated in some of its branches for mere utility, in others as an ornament of courtly life, was beginning to revive as a profession. Dante, a statesman, a philosopher, a prophet, was not in a true sense a man of letters, and neither his ideals nor his contemporary influence extended beyond the limits of Italy. ”

“ With all its defects, the poetry of the Cinque Cento will survive as a proof that rules of art exist and may be ascertained, and cannot be safely departed from; no less than as an example of the embellishment which even ordinary thoughts may receive from nobility of diction and breadth of style; and as an instance of the great part which a literature not too original or too racy of the native soil may play in moulding and enriching the literatures of neighbouring and less advanced nations. ”

“ Ariosto does not, like Tasso, convey the impression of a man above his time, and only depressed to its level by unpropitious circumstances. He is the child of his age, at the summit of its average elevation, but not transcending this. Yet it would have been well for Italy if her princes and statesmen had generally acted upon those ideas of honour and loyalty which they found and doubtless admired in their favourite poet. ”

“ In truth, the displacement of the Goths, making room for the Pope, the Lombard and the Byzantine Exarch, was no deliverance for Italy, but her great misfortune. A poet, however, is not obliged like a historian to distinguish nicely between Theodoric and Alaric; and Trissino, with all his pedantry, might have ranked as a bard if he could have felt as a patriot; if he could have depicted the Italy of the Goths as the prototype of the Italy of his own age, rent amid French and Spaniards and Germans. ”

“ Compared to the Faerie Queene his poem is as his own clear-chiming octave to the sonorous magnificence of the Spenserian stanza. In general, his tone is much more easy and familiar than Spenser's; when he chooses, however, his sentiment is more elevated and his pathos more moving. Poetry has few passages at once so nobly heroic and so exquisitely touching as the combat between Orlando and Agricane, epitomised by Leigh Hunt in his Stories from the Italian Poets. ”

“ With marvellous versatility he essayed history, politics, moral and speculative philosophy, biography, philology, criticism and poetry, distinguishing himself in all without producing great or enduring work in any. His greatest distinction, perhaps, was attained as an Italian grammarian and lexicographer; but as a critic he wielded great authority, and powerfully contributed to the development of literature. He was essentially the man of his own times, and seemed to resume their various aspects in himself, a sound Catholic and an ardent liberal; a classicist and a romanticist ”