Indeed, even a foreigner can hardly open a page of Petrarch, without being struck with the precocity of a language, which, like the vegetation of an arctic summer, seems to have ripened into full maturity at once. There is nothing analogous to this in any other tongue with which we are acquainted, unless it be the Greek, which in the poems of Homer appears to have attained its last perfection; a circumstance which has led Cicero to remark in his Brutus, that there must doubtless have existed poets antecedent to Homer, since invention and perfection can hardly go together.' The mass of Petrarch's Italian poetry, is, as is well known, of an amorous complexion. He was naturally of a melancholy temperament, and his unfortunate passion became with him the animating principle of being. His compositions in the Latin, as well as those in the vulgar tongue, his voluminous correspondence, his private memoranda or confessions, which from their nature seem never to have been destined for the public eye, all exhibit this passion in one shape or another. Yet there have been those who have affected to doubt even the existence of such a personage as Laura. His Sonnets and Canzoni, chronologically arranged, exhibit pretty fairly the progress of his life and love, and as such, have been judiciously used by the Abbé de Sade. The most trivial event seems to have stirred the poetic feeling within him. We find no less than four sonnets indited to his mistress's gloves, and three to her eyes; which last, styled par excellence, the Three Sisters,' are in the greatest repute with his countrymen; a judgment on which most English critics would be at issue with them. Notwithstanding the vicious affectation of style, and the mysticism which occasionally obscure these and other pieces of Petrarch, his general tone exhibits a moral dignity unknown to the sordid appetites of the ancients; and an earnestness of passion rarely reflected from the cold glitter of the Provençal. But it is in the verses, written after the death of his mistress, that he confesses the inspiration of Christianity, in the deep moral coloring which he has given to his descriptions of nature, and in those visions of immortal happiness which he contrasts with the sad realities of the present life. He dwells rather on the melancholy pleasures of retrospection, than those of hope; unlike most of the poets of Italy, whose warm sunny skies seem to have scattered the gloom, which hangs over the poetry of the North. In this, and some other peculiarities, Dante and Petrarch appear to have borne greater resemblance to the English, than to their own nation. Petrarch's career, however brilliant, may serve rather as a warning than as a model. The querulous tone of some of his later writings, the shade of real sorrow, which seems to come across even his brightest moments, show the utter inefficacy of genius and of worldly glory to procure to their possessor a substantial happiness. It is melancholy to witness the aberrations of mind, into which so fine a genius was led by unfortunate passion. The apparition of Laura haunted him by night as well as by day, in society and in solitude. He sought to divert his mind by travelling, by political or literary occupation, by reason and religion, but in vain. His letters and private confessions, show, no less than his poetry, how incessantly his imagination was tortured by doubts, hopes, fears, melancholy presages, regrets, and despair. She triumphed over the decay of her personal charms, and even over the grave, for it was a being of the mind he worshipped. There is something affecting in seeing such a mind as Petrarch's feeding on this unrequited passion, and more than twenty years after his mistress's death, and when on the verge of the grave himself, depicting her in all the bright coloring of youthful fancy, and following her in anticipation to that Heaven where he hopes soon to be united to her. Petrarch's example, even in his own day, was widely infectious. He sarcastically complains of the quantities of verses sent to him for correction, from the farthest north, from Germany and the British Isles, then the Ultima Thule of civilization. The pedants of the succeeding age, it is true, wasted their efforts in hopeless experiments upon the ancient languages, whose chilling influence seems to have entirely closed the hand of the native minstrel; and it was not until the time of Lorenzo de' Medici, whose correct taste led him to prefer the flexible movements of a living tongue, that the sweet tones of the Italian lyre were again awakened. The excitement, however, soon became general, affecting all ranks, from the purpled prelate down to the most vulgar artisan; and a collection of the Beauties, (as we should call them,) of this latter description of gentry, has been gathered into a respectable volume, which Baretti assures us, with a good-natured criticism, may be compared with the verses of Petrarch. In all these the burden of the song is love. Those who did not feel, could at least affect the tender passion. Lorenzo de' Medici pitched upon a mistress as deliberately as Don Quixote did on his Dulcinea; and Tasso sighed away his soul, to a nymph so shadowy as sorely to have puzzled his commentators, till the time of Serassi. It would be unavailing to attempt to characterize those who have followed in the footsteps of the Laureate, or we might dwell on the romantic sweetness of Lorenzo de' Medici, the purity of Vittoria Colonna, the elaborate polish of Bembo, the vivacity of Marini, and the eloquence, the platonic reveries and rich coloring of Tasso, whose beauties, and whose defects, so nearly resemble those of his great original in this department. But we have no leisure to go minutely into the shades of difference between the imitators of Petrarch. One may regret, that amidst their clouds of amorous incense, he can so rarely discern the religious or patriotic enthusiasm, which animates the similar compositions of the Spanish poets, and which forms the noblest basis of lyrical poetry at all times. The wrongs of Italy, the common battle-field of the banditti of Europe for nearly a century, and at the very time when her poetic vein flowed most freely, might well have roused the indignation of her children. The comparatively few specimens on this theme from Petrarch to Filicaja are justly regarded as the happiest efforts of the Italian lyre. The seventeenth century, so unfortunate for the national literature in all other respects, was marked by a bolder deviation from the eternal track of the Petrarchists; a reform indeed, which may be traced back to Casa. Among these innovators, Chiabrera, whom Tiraboschi styles both Anacreon and Pindar, but who may be content with the former of these appellations, and Filicaja, who has found in the Christian faith sources of a sublimity that Pindar could never reach, are the most conspicuous. Their salutary example has not been lost on the modern Italian writers. Some of the ancients have made a distinct division of lyrical poetry, under the title of melicus.* If, as it would seem, they mean something of a more calm and uniform tenor, than the impetuous dithyrambic flow; something in which symmetry of form, and melody of versification are chiefly considered; in * Ausonius, Edyl. IV. 54.-Cicero, De Opt. Gen. Oratorum, I. which, in fine, the effeminate beauties of sentiment are preferred to the more hardy conceptions of fancy, the term may be significant of the great mass of Italian lyrics. But we fear that we have insisted too far on their defects. Our criticism has been formed rather on the average, than on the highest specimens of the art. In this way the very luxuriance of the soil is a disadvantage to it. The sins of exuberance, however, are much more corrigible than those of sterility, which fall upon this department of poetry, in almost every other nation. We must remember, too, that no people has exhibited the passion of love under such a variety of beautiful aspects, and that, after all, although the amount be comparatively small, no other modern nation can probably produce so many examples of the very highest lyrical inspiration. But it is time that we should turn to the Romantic Epics, the most important and perhaps the most prolific branch of the ornamental literature of the Italians.* They have been distributed into a great variety of classes by their own critics. We shall confine our remarks to some of their most eminent models, without regard to their classification. Those who expect to find in these poems the same temper which animates the old English tales of chivalry, will be disappointed. A much more correct notion of their manner may be formed from Mr. Ellis's Bernesque (if we may be allowed a significant term) recapitulations of these latter. In short, they are the marvels of an heroic age, told with the fine incredulous air of a polite one. It is this contrast of the dignity of the matter with the familiarity of the manner of narration, that has occasioned among their countrymen so many silly disputes respecting the serious or satirical intentions of Pulci, Ariosto, Berni, and the rest. The Italians, although they have brought tales of chivalry to higher perfection, than any other people in the world, are of all others, in their character, the most anti-chivalrous. Their early republican institutions, which brought all classes nearly to the same level, were obviously unfavorable to the spirit of chivalry. Commerce became the road to preferment. Wealth was their *In this division of our subject, we have exhibited much the same views as those contained in an article published in the forty-fifth number, of this journal, to which we refer those of our readers who are desirous of seeing the narrative poetry of Italy treated in extenso. pedigree, and their patent of nobility. The magnificent Medici were bankers and merchants; and the ancient aristocracy of Venice employed their capital in traffic, until an advanced period of the republic. Courage, so essential in the character of a knight, was of little account in the busy communities of Italy. Like Carthage of old, they trusted their defence to mercenaries, first foreign, and afterwards native, but who in every instance fought for hire, not honor, selling themselves, and often their employers, to the highest bidder; and who, cased in impenetrable mail, fought with so little personal hazard, that Machiavelli has related more than one infamous encounter, in which the only lives lost were from suffocation under their ponderous panoplies. So low had the military reputation of the Italians declined, that in the war of the Neapolitan succession in 1502, it was thought necessary for thirteen of their body to vindicate the national character from the imputation of cowardice, by solemn defiance and battle against an equal number of French knights, in presence of the hostile armies. Hence other arts came to be studied than that of war,-the arts of diplomacy and intrigue. Hence statesmen were formed, but not soldiers. The campaign was fought in the cabinet, instead of the field. Every spring of cunning and corruption was essayed, and an insidious policy came into vogue, in which, as the philosopher, who has digested its principles into a system, informs us, the failure, not the atrocity of a deed, was considered disgraceful."* The law of honor became different with the Italians, from what it was with other nations. spiracy was preferred to open defiance, and assassination was a legitimate method of revenge. The State of Venice condescended to employ a secret agent against the life of Francis Sforza; and the noblest escutcheons in Italy, those of Este and the Medici, were stained with the crimes of fratricide and incest. Con In this general moral turpitude, the literature of Italy was rapidly advancing to its highest perfection. There was scarcely a petty State, which, in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, had not made brilliant advances in elegant prose, poetry, or the arts of design. Intellectual culture was widely diffused, and men of the highest rank devoted * Machiavelli, Istor. Fior. L. VI. |