No More Learning

In
every line of the Philip and the Saul, the greatest poems, I think, of
the eighteenth century, we may trace the influence of that mighty
genius which has immortalised the ill-starred love of Francesca, and
the paternal agonies of Ugolino. Alfieri bequeathed the sovereignty of
Italian literature to the author of the Aristodemus--a man of genius
scarcely inferior to his own, and a still more devoted disciple of the
great Florentine. It must be acknowledged that this eminent writer has
sometimes pushed too far his idolatry of Dante. To borrow a sprightly
illustration from Sir John Denham, he has not only imitated his garb,
but borrowed his clothes. He often quotes his phrases; and he has,
not very judiciously as it appears to me, imitated his versification.
Nevertheless, he has displayed many of the higher excellencies of his
master; and his works may justly inspire us with a hope that the Italian
language will long flourish under a new literary dynasty, or rather
under the legitimate line, which has at length been restored to a throne
long occupied by specious usurpers.

The man to whom the literature of his country owes its origin and
its revival was born in times singularly adapted to call forth his
extraordinary powers. Religious zeal, chivalrous love and honour,
democratic liberty, are the three most powerful principles that have
ever influenced the character of large masses of men. Each of them
singly has often excited the greatest enthusiasm, and produced the
most important changes. In the time of Dante all the three, often in
amalgamation, generally in conflict, agitated the public mind. The
preceding generation had witnessed the wrongs and the revenge of the
brave, the accomplished, the unfortunate Emperor Frederic the Second,--a
poet in an age of schoolmen,--a philosopher in an age of monks,--a
statesman in an age of crusaders. During the whole life of the poet,
Italy was experiencing the consequences of the memorable struggle which
he had maintained against the Church. The finest works of imagination
have always been produced in times of political convulsion, as the
richest vineyards and the sweetest flowers always grow on the soil which
has been fertilised by the fiery deluge of a volcano. To look no
further than the literary history of our own country, can we doubt
that Shakspeare was in a great measure produced by the Reformation,
and Wordsworth by the French Revolution? Poets often avoid political
transactions; they often affect to despise them. But, whether they
perceive it or not, they must be influenced by them. As long as their
minds have any point of contact with those of their fellow-men, the
electric impulse, at whatever distance it may originate, will be
circuitously communicated to them.

This will be the case even in large societies, where the division of
labour enables many speculative men to observe the face of nature, or
to analyse their own minds, at a distance from the seat of political
transactions. In the little republic of which Dante was a member the
state of things was very different. These small communities are most
unmercifully abused by most of our modern professors of the science
of government. In such states, they tell us, factions are always
most violent: where both parties are cooped up within a narrow space,
political difference necessarily produces personal malignity. Every man
must be a soldier; every moment may produce a war. No citizen can lie
down secure that he shall not be roused by the alarum-bell, to repel
or avenge an injury. In such petty quarrels Greece squandered the blood
which might have purchased for her the permanent empire of the world,
and Italy wasted the energy and the abilities which would have enabled
her to defend her independence against the Pontiffs and the Caesars.

All this is true: yet there is still a compensation. Mankind has not
derived so much benefit from the empire of Rome as from the city of
Athens, nor from the kingdom of France as from the city of Florence.
The violence of party feeling may be an evil; but it calls forth that
activity of mind which in some states of society it is desirable to
produce at any expense. Universal soldiership may be an evil; but where
every man is a soldier there will be no standing army. And is it no evil
that one man in every fifty should be bred to the trade of slaughter;
should live only by destroying and by exposing himself to be destroyed;
should fight without enthusiasm and conquer without glory; be sent to a
hospital when wounded, and rot on a dunghill when old? Such, over more
than two-thirds of Europe, is the fate of soldiers. It was something
that the citizen of Milan or Florence fought, not merely in the vague
and rhetorical sense in which the words are often used, but in sober
truth, for his parents, his children, his lands, his house, his altars.
It was something that he marched forth to battle beneath the Carroccio,
which had been the object of his childish veneration: that his aged
father looked down from the battlements on his exploits; that his
friends and his rivals were the witnesses of his glory. If he fell, he
was consigned to no venal or heedless guardians. The same day saw him
conveyed within the walls which he had defended. His wounds were dressed
by his mother; his confession was whispered to the friendly priest
who had heard and absolved the follies of his youth; his last sigh was
breathed upon the lips of the lady of his love. Surely there is no sword
like that which is beaten out of a ploughshare. Surely this state of
things was not unmixedly bad; its evils were alleviated by enthusiasm
and by tenderness; and it will at least be acknowledged that it was well
fitted to nurse poetical genius in an imaginative and observant mind.

Nor did the religious spirit of the age tend less to this result than
its political circumstances. Fanaticism is an evil, but it is not the
greatest of evils. It is good that a people should be roused by any
means from a state of utter torpor;--that their minds should be diverted
from objects merely sensual, to meditations, however erroneous, on the
mysteries of the moral and intellectual world; and from interests which
are immediately selfish to those which relate to the past, the future,
and the remote. These effects have sometimes been produced by the worst
superstitions that ever existed; but the Catholic religion, even in
the time of its utmost extravagance and atrocity, never wholly lost the
spirit of the Great Teacher, whose precepts form the noblest code, as
His conduct furnished the purest example, of moral excellence. It is of
all religions the most poetical. The ancient superstitions furnished
the fancy with beautiful images, but took no hold on the heart. The
doctrines of the Reformed Churches have most powerfully influenced
the feelings and the conduct of men, but have not presented them with
visions of sensible beauty and grandeur. The Roman Catholic Church has
united to the awful doctrines of the one that Mr Coleridge calls the
"fair humanities" of the other. It has enriched sculpture and painting
with the loveliest and most majestic forms. To the Phidian Jupiter it
can oppose the Moses of Michael Angelo; and to the voluptuous beauty
of the Queen of Cyprus, the serene and pensive loveliness of the Virgin
Mother. The legends of its martyrs and its saints may vie in ingenuity
and interest with the mythological fables of Greece; its ceremonies and
processions were the delight of the vulgar; the huge fabric of secular
power with which it was connected attracted the admiration of the
statesman. At the same time, it never lost sight of the most solemn
and tremendous doctrines of Christianity,--the incarnate God,--the
judgment,--the retribution,--the eternity of happiness or torment. Thus,
while, like the ancient religions, it received incalculable support from
policy and ceremony, it never wholly became, like those religions, a
merely political and ceremonial institution.

The beginning of the thirteenth century was, as Machiavelli has
remarked, the era of a great revival of this extraordinary system. The
policy of Innocent,--the growth of the Inquisition and the mendicant
orders,--the wars against the Albigenses, the Pagans of the East, and
the unfortunate princes of the house of Swabia, agitated Italy during
the two following generations. In this point Dante was completely
under the influence of his age. He was a man of a turbid and melancholy
spirit. In early youth he had entertained a strong and unfortunate
passion, which, long after the death of her whom he loved, continued to
haunt him. Dissipation, ambition, misfortunes had not effaced it. He was
not only a sincere, but a passionate, believer. The crimes and abuses
of the Church of Rome were indeed loathsome to him; but to all its
doctrines and all its rites he adhered with enthusiastic fondness and
veneration; and, at length, driven from his native country, reduced to
a situation the most painful to a man of his disposition, condemned to
learn by experience that no food is so bitter as the bread of dependence

("Tu proverai si come sa di sale
Lo pane altrui, e come e duro calle
Lo scendere e'l sa'ir per l'altrui scale. "
Paradiso, canto xvii. ),

and no ascent so painful as the staircase of a patron,--his wounded
spirit took refuge in visionary devotion. Beatrice, the unforgotten
object of his early tenderness, was invested by his imagination with
glorious and mysterious attributes; she was enthroned among the highest
of the celestial hierarchy: Almighty Wisdom had assigned to her the care
of the sinful and unhappy wanderer who had loved her with such a perfect
love. ("L'amico mio, e non della ventura. " Inferno, canto ii. ) By a
confusion, like that which often takes place in dreams, he has sometimes
lost sight of her human nature, and even of her personal existence, and
seems to consider her as one of the attributes of the Deity.

But those religious hopes which had released the mind of the sublime
enthusiast from the terrors of death had not rendered his speculations
on human life more cheerful. This is an inconsistency which may often be
observed in men of a similar temperament. He hoped for happiness beyond
the grave: but he felt none on earth. It is from this cause, more than
from any other, that his description of Heaven is so far inferior to the
Hell or the Purgatory. With the passions and miseries of the suffering
spirits he feels a strong sympathy. But among the beatified he appears
as one who has nothing in common with them,--as one who is incapable of
comprehending, not only the degree, but the nature of their enjoyment.
We think that we see him standing amidst those smiling and radiant
spirits with that scowl of unutterable misery on his brow, and that curl
of bitter disdain on his lips, which all his portraits have preserved,
and which might furnish Chantrey with hints for the head of his
projected Satan.

There is no poet whose intellectual and moral character are so closely
connected. The great source, as it appears to me, of the power of the
Divine Comedy is the strong belief with which the story seems to be
told. In this respect, the only books which approach to its excellence
are Gulliver's Travels and Robinson Crusoe. The solemnity of his
asseverations, the consistency and minuteness of his details, the
earnestness with which he labours to make the reader understand the
exact shape and size of everything that he describes, give an air of
reality to his wildest fictions. I should only weaken this statement
by quoting instances of a feeling which pervades the whole work, and to
which it owes much of its fascination. This is the real justification
of the many passages in his poem which bad critics have condemned as
grotesque. I am concerned to see that Mr Cary, to whom Dante owes more
than ever poet owed to translator, has sanctioned an accusation utterly
unworthy of his abilities. "His solicitude," says that gentleman, "to
define all his images in such a manner as to bring them within the
circle of our vision, and to subject them to the power of the pencil,
renders him little better than grotesque, where Milton has since taught
us to expect sublimity. " It is true that Dante has never shrunk from
embodying his conceptions in determinate words, that he has even given
measures and numbers, where Milton would have left his images to float
undefined in a gorgeous haze of language. Both were right. Milton
did not profess to have been in heaven or hell. He might therefore
reasonably confine himself to magnificent generalities. Far different
was the office of the lonely traveller, who had wandered through the
nations of the dead. Had he described the abode of the rejected spirits
in language resembling the splendid lines of the English Poet,--had he
told us of--

"An universe of death, which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good,
Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds
Perverse all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, unutterable, and worse
Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived,
Gorgons, and hydras, and chimaeras dire"--

this would doubtless have been noble writing. But where would have been
that strong impression of reality, which, in accordance with his plan,
it should have been his great object to produce? It was absolutely
necessary for him to delineate accurately "all monstrous, all prodigious
things,"--to utter what might to others appear "unutterable,"--to relate
with the air of truth what fables had never feigned,--to embody what
fear had never conceived. And I will frankly confess that the vague
sublimity of Milton affects me less than these reviled details of Dante.
We read Milton; and we know that we are reading a great poet. When
we read Dante, the poet vanishes. We are listening to the man who has
returned from "the valley of the dolorous abyss;" ("Lavalle d'abisso
doloroso. "--Inferno, cantoiv. )--we seem to see the dilated eye of
horror, to hear the shuddering accents with which he tells his fearful
tale. Considered in this light, the narratives are exactly what they
should be,--definite in themselves, but suggesting to the mind ideas
of awful and indefinite wonder. They are made up of the images of the
earth:--they are told in the language of the earth. --Yet the whole
effect is, beyond expression, wild and unearthly. The fact is, that
supernatural beings, as long as they are considered merely with
reference to their own nature, excite our feelings very feebly. It is
when the great gulf which separates them from us is passed, when we
suspect some strange and undefinable relation between the laws of the
visible and the invisible world, that they rouse, perhaps, the strongest
emotions of which our nature is capable. How many children, and how many
men, are afraid of ghosts, who are not afraid of God! And this, because,
though they entertain a much stronger conviction of the existence of a
Deity than of the reality of apparitions, they have no apprehension that
he will manifest himself to them in any sensible manner. While this
is the case, to describe superhuman beings in the language, and
to attribute to them the actions, of humanity may be grotesque,
unphilosophical, inconsistent; but it will be the only mode of working
upon the feelings of men, and, therefore, the only mode suited for
poetry. Shakspeare understood this well, as he understood everything
that belonged to his art. Who does not sympathise with the rapture of
Ariel, flying after sunset on the wings of the bat, or sucking in the
cups of flowers with the bee? Who does not shudder at the caldron of
Macbeth? Where is the philosopher who is not moved when he thinks of
the strange connection between the infernal spirits and "the sow's
blood that hath eaten her nine farrow? " But this difficult task of
representing supernatural beings to our minds, in a manner which shall
be neither unintelligible to our intellects nor wholly inconsistent with
our ideas of their nature, has never been so well performed as by
Dante. I will refer to three instances, which are, perhaps, the most
striking:--the description of the transformations of the serpents and
the robbers, in the twenty-fifth canto of the Inferno,--the passage
concerning Nimrod, in the thirty-first canto of the same part,--and the
magnificent procession in the twenty-ninth canto of the Purgatorio.

The metaphors and comparisons of Dante harmonise admirably with that
air of strong reality of which I have spoken. They have a very peculiar
character. He is perhaps the only poet whose writings would become much
less intelligible if all illustrations of this sort were expunged. His
similes are frequently rather those of a traveller than of a poet. He
employs them not to display his ingenuity by fanciful analogies,--not
to delight the reader by affording him a distant and passing glimpse of
beautiful images remote from the path in which he is proceeding, but to
give an exact idea of the objects which he is describing, by comparing
them with others generally known. The boiling pitch in Malebolge was
like that in the Venetian arsenal:--the mound on which he travelled
along the banks of Phlegethon was like that between Ghent and Bruges,
but not so large:--the cavities where the Simoniacal prelates are
confined resemble the Fonts in the Church of John at Florence.
Every reader of Dante will recall many other illustrations of this
description, which add to the appearance of sincerity and earnestness
from which the narrative derives so much of its interest.

Many of his comparisons, again, are intended to give an exact idea of
his feelings under particular circumstances. The delicate shades of
grief, of fear, of anger, are rarely discriminated with sufficient
accuracy in the language of the most refined nations. A rude dialect
never abounds in nice distinctions of this kind. Dante therefore employs
the most accurate and infinitely the most poetical mode of marking
the precise state of his mind. Every person who has experienced the
bewildering effect of sudden bad tidings,--the stupefaction,--the vague
doubt of the truth of our own perceptions which they produce,--will
understand the following simile:--"I was as he is who dreameth his own
harm,--who, dreaming, wishes that it may be all a dream, so that he
desires that which is as though it were not. " This is only one out of a
hundred equally striking and expressive similitudes. The comparisons of
Homer and Milton are magnificent digressions. It scarcely injures their
effect to detach them from the work. Those of Dante are very different.
They derive their beauty from the context, and reflect beauty upon it.
His embroidery cannot be taken out without spoiling the whole web. I
cannot dismiss this part of the subject without advising every person
who can muster sufficient Italian to read the simile of the sheep, in
the third canto of the Purgatorio. I think it the most perfect passage
of the kind in the world, the most imaginative, the most picturesque,
and the most sweetly expressed.

No person can have attended to the Divine Comedy without observing how
little impression the forms of the external world appear to have made on
the mind of Dante. His temper and his situation had led him to fix his
observation almost exclusively on human nature. The exquisite opening of
the eighth* canto of the Purgatorio affords a strong instance of this.
(I cannot help observing that Gray's imitation of that noble line

"Che paia 'lgiorna pianger che si muore,"--

is one of the most striking instances of injudicious plagiarism with
which I am acquainted. Dante did not put this strong personification at
the beginning of his description. The imagination of the reader is so
well prepared for it by the previous lines, that it appears perfectly
natural and pathetic. Placed as Gray has placed it, neither preceded
nor followed by anything that harmonises with it, it becomes a frigid
conceit. Woe to the unskilful rider who ventures on the horses of
Achilles! )

He leaves to others the earth, the ocean, and the sky. His business is
with man. To other writers, evening may be the season of dews and stars
and radiant clouds. To Dante it is the hour of fond recollection and
passionate devotion,--the hour which melts the heart of the mariner and
kindles the love of the pilgrim,--the hour when the toll of the bell
seems to mourn for another day which is gone and will return no more.

The feeling of the present age has taken a direction diametrically
opposite. The magnificence of the physical world, and its influence
upon the human mind, have been the favourite themes of our most eminent
poets. The herd of bluestocking ladies and sonneteering gentlemen seem
to consider a strong sensibility to the "splendour of the grass, the
glory of the flower," as an ingredient absolutely indispensable in the
formation of a poetical mind. They treat with contempt all writers who
are unfortunately

nec ponere lucum
Artifices, nec rus saturum laudare.

The orthodox poetical creed is more Catholic. The noblest earthly object
of the contemplation of man is man himself. The universe, and all its
fair and glorious forms, are indeed included in the wide empire of the
imagination; but she has placed her home and her sanctuary amidst the
inexhaustible varieties and the impenetrable mysteries of the mind.

In tutte parti impera, e quivi regge;
Quivi e la sua cittade, e l'alto seggio.
(Inferno, canto i. )

Othello is perhaps the greatest work in the world. From what does it
derive its power? From the clouds? From the ocean? From the mountains?
Or from love strong as death, and jealousy cruel as the grave? What is
it that we go forth to see in Hamlet? Is it a reed shaken with the wind?
A small celandine? A bed of daffodils? Or is it to contemplate a mighty
and wayward mind laid bare before us to the inmost recesses? It may
perhaps be doubted whether the lakes and the hills are better fitted for
the education of a poet than the dusky streets of a huge capital. Indeed
who is not tired to death with pure description of scenery? Is it not
the fact, that external objects never strongly excite our feelings but
when they are contemplated in reference to man, as illustrating his
destiny, or as influencing his character? The most beautiful object in
the world, it will be allowed, is a beautiful woman. But who that can
analyse his feelings is not sensible that she owes her fascination
less to grace of outline and delicacy of colour, than to a thousand
associations which, often unperceived by ourselves, connect those
qualities with the source of our existence, with the nourishment of our
infancy, with the passions of our youth, with the hopes of our age--with
elegance, with vivacity, with tenderness, with the strongest of natural
instincts, with the dearest of social ties?

To those who think thus, the insensibility of the Florentine poet to
the beauties of nature will not appear an unpardonable deficiency. On
mankind no writer, with the exception of Shakspeare, has looked with
a more penetrating eye. I have said that his poetical character had
derived a tinge from his peculiar temper. It is on the sterner and
darker passions that he delights to dwell. All love excepting the
half-mystic passion which he still felt for his buried Beatrice, had
palled on the fierce and restless exile. The sad story of Rimini is
almost a single exception. I know not whether it has been remarked,
that, in one point, misanthropy seems to have affected his mind, as
it did that of Swift. Nauseous and revolting images seem to have had a
fascination for his mind; and he repeatedly places before his readers,
with all the energy of his incomparable style, the most loathsome
objects of the sewer and the dissecting-room.

There is another peculiarity in the poem of Dante, which, I think,
deserves notice. Ancient mythology has hardly ever been successfully
interwoven with modern poetry. One class of writers have introduced the
fabulous deities merely as allegorical representatives of love, wine,
or wisdom. This necessarily renders their works tame and cold. We may
sometimes admire their ingenuity; but with what interest can we read
of beings of whose personal existence the writer does not suffer us
to entertain, for a moment, even a conventional belief? Even Spenser's
allegory is scarcely tolerable, till we contrive to forget that Una
signifies innocence, and consider her merely as an oppressed lady under
the protection of a generous knight.

Those writers who have, more judiciously, attempted to preserve the
personality of the classical divinities have failed from a different
cause. They have been imitators, and imitators at a disadvantage.
Euripides and Catullus believed in Bacchus and Cybele as little as we
do. But they lived among men who did. Their imaginations, if not their
opinions, took the colour of the age. Hence the glorious inspiration of
the Bacchae and the Atys. Our minds are formed by circumstances: and I
do not believe that it would be in the power of the greatest modern poet
to lash himself up to a degree of enthusiasm adequate to the production
of such works.

Dante, alone among the poets of later times, has been, in this respect,
neither an allegorist nor an imitator; and, consequently, he alone has
introduced the ancient fictions with effect. His Minos, his Charon,
his Pluto, are absolutely terrific. Nothing can be more beautiful or
original than the use which he has made of the River of Lethe. He has
never assigned to his mythological characters any functions inconsistent
with the creed of the Catholic Church. He has related nothing concerning
them which a good Christian of that age might not believe possible. On
this account there is nothing in these passages that appears puerile or
pedantic. On the contrary, this singular use of classical names suggests
to the mind a vague and awful idea of some mysterious revelation,
anterior to all recorded history, of which the dispersed fragments might
have been retained amidst the impostures and superstitions of later
religions. Indeed the mythology of the Divine Comedy is of the elder and
more colossal mould. It breathes the spirit of Homer and Aeschylus, not
of Ovid and Claudian.

This is the more extraordinary, since Dante seems to have been utterly
ignorant of the Greek language; and his favourite Latin models could
only have served to mislead him. Indeed, it is impossible not to remark
his admiration of writers far inferior to himself; and, in particular,
his idolatry of Virgil, who, elegant and splendid as he is, has no
pretensions to the depth and originality of mind which characterise his
Tuscan worshipper, In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal
rule that good poets are bad critics. Their minds are under the tyranny
of ten thousand associations imperceptible to others. The worst writer
may easily happen to touch a spring which is connected in their minds
with a long succession of beautiful images. They are like the gigantic
slaves of Aladdin, gifted with matchless power, but bound by spells
so mighty that when a child whom they could have crushed touched a
talisman, of whose secret he was ignorant, they immediately became his
vassals. It has more than once happened to me to see minds, graceful
and majestic as the Titania of Shakspeare, bewitched by the charms of an
ass's head, bestowing on it the fondest caresses, and crowning it
with the sweetest flowers.
I need only mention the poems attributed to
Ossian. They are utterly worthless, except as an edifying instance of
the success of a story without evidence, and of a book without merit.
They are a chaos of words which present no image, of images which have
no archetype:--they are without form and void; and darkness is upon the
face of them. Yet how many men of genius have panegyrised and imitated
them!

The style of Dante is, if not his highest, perhaps his most peculiar
excellence. I know nothing with which it can be compared. The noblest
models of Greek composition must yield to it. His words are the fewest
and the best which it is possible to use. The first expression in which
he clothes his thoughts is always so energetic and comprehensive that
amplification would only injure the effect. There is probably no writer
in any language who has presented so many strong pictures to the mind.
Yet there is probably no writer equally concise. This perfection of
style is the principal merit of the Paradiso, which, as I have already
remarked, is by no means equal in other respects to the two preceding
parts of the poem. The force and felicity of the diction, however,
irresistibly attract the reader through the theological lectures and the
sketches of ecclesiastical biography, with which this division of the
work too much abounds. It may seem almost absurd to quote particular
specimens of an excellence which is diffused over all his hundred
cantos. I will, however, instance the third canto of the Inferno, and
the sixth of the Purgatorio, as passages incomparable in their kind. The
merit of the latter is, perhaps, rather oratorical than poetical; nor
can I recollect anything in the great Athenian speeches which equals it
in force of invective and bitterness of sarcasm. I have heard the most
eloquent statesman of the age remark that, next to Demosthenes, Dante
is the writer who ought to be most attentively studied by every man who
desires to attain oratorical eminence.

But it is time to close this feeble and rambling critique. I cannot
refrain, however, from saying a few words upon the translations of the
Divine Comedy. Boyd's is as tedious and languid as the original is rapid
and forcible. The strange measure which he has chosen, and, for aught I
know, invented, is most unfit for such a work. Translations ought never
to be written in a verse which requires much command of rhyme. The
stanza becomes a bed of Procrustes; and the thoughts of the unfortunate
author are alternately racked and curtailed to fit their new receptacle.
The abrupt and yet consecutive style of Dante suffers more than that
of any other poet by a version diffuse in style, and divided into
paragraphs, for they deserve no other name, of equal length.

Nothing can be said in favour of Hayley's attempt, but that it is better
than Boyd's. His mind was a tolerable specimen of filigree work,--rather
elegant, and very feeble. All that can be said for his best works is
that they are neat. All that can be said against his worst is that they
are stupid. He might have translated Metastasio tolerably. But he was
utterly unable to do justice to the

"rime e aspre e chiocce,
"Come si converrebbe al tristo buco. "
(Inferno, canto xxxii. )

I turn with pleasure from these wretched performances to Mr Cary's
translation. It is a work which well deserves a separate discussion, and
on which, if this article were not already too long, I could dwell
with great pleasure. At present I will only say that there is no other
version in the world, as far as I know, so faithful, yet that there is
no other version which so fully proves that the translator is himself a
man of poetical genius. Those who are ignorant of the Italian language
should read it to become acquainted with the Divine Comedy. Those
who are most intimate with Italian literature should read it for its
original merits: and I believe that they will find it difficult to
determine whether the author deserves most praise for his intimacy with
the language of Dante, or for his extraordinary mastery over his own.

*****


CRITICISMS ON THE PRINCIPAL ITALIAN WRITERS.




No. II. PETRARCH. (April 1824. )

Et vos, o lauri, carpam, et te, proxima myrte,
Sic positae quoniam suaves miscetis odores. Virgil.

It would not be easy to name a writer whose celebrity, when both its
extent and its duration are taken into the account, can be considered as
equal to that of Petrarch. Four centuries and a half have elapsed since
his death. Yet still the inhabitants of every nation throughout the
western world are as familiar with his character and his adventures as
with the most illustrious names, and the most recent anecdotes, of their
own literary history. This is indeed a rare distinction. His detractors
must acknowledge that it could not have been acquired by a poet
destitute of merit. His admirers will scarcely maintain that the
unassisted merit of Petrarch could have raised him to that eminence
which has not yet been attained by Shakspeare, Milton, or Dante,--that
eminence, of which perhaps no modern writer, excepting himself and
Cervantes, has long retained possession,--an European reputation.

It is not difficult to discover some of the causes to which this great
man has owed a celebrity, which I cannot but think disproportioned to
his real claims on the admiration of mankind. In the first place, he
is an egotist. Egotism in conversation is universally abhorred. Lovers,
and, I believe, lovers alone, pardon it in each other. No services,
no talents, no powers of pleasing, render it endurable. Gratitude,
admiration, interest, fear, scarcely prevent those who are condemned to
listen to it from indicating their disgust and fatigue. The childless
uncle, the powerful patron can scarcely extort this compliance. We leave
the inside of the mail in a storm, and mount the box, rather than
hear the history of our companion. The chaplain bites his lips in the
presence of the archbishop. The midshipman yawns at the table of
the First Lord. Yet, from whatever cause, this practice, the pest of
conversation, gives to writing a zest which nothing else can impart.
Rousseau made the boldest experiment of this kind; and it fully
succeeded. In our own time Lord Byron, by a series of attempts of the
same nature, made himself the object of general interest and admiration.
Wordsworth wrote with egotism more intense, but less obvious; and he has
been rewarded with a sect of worshippers, comparatively small in number,
but far more enthusiastic in their devotion. It is needless to multiply
instances. Even now all the walks of literature are infested with
mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting
all the distortions of their intellects, and stripping the covering from
all the putrid sores of their feelings. Nor are there wanting many who
push their imitation of the beggars whom they resemble a step further,
and who find it easier to extort a pittance from the spectator, by
simulating deformity and debility from which they are exempt, than by
such honest labour as their health and strength enable them to perform.
In the meantime the credulous public pities and pampers a nuisance which
requires only the treadmill and the whip. This art, often successful
when employed by dunces, gives irresistible fascination to works which
possess intrinsic merit. We are always desirous to know something of
the character and situation of those whose writings we have perused
with pleasure. The passages in which Milton has alluded to his own
circumstances are perhaps read more frequently, and with more interest,
than any other lines in his poems. It is amusing to observe with what
labour critics have attempted to glean from the poems of Homer, some
hints as to his situation and feelings. According to one hypothesis,
he intended to describe himself under the name of Demodocus. Others
maintain that he was the identical Phemius whose life Ulysses spared.
This propensity of the human mind explains, I think, in a great degree,
the extensive popularity of a poet whose works are little else than the
expression of his personal feelings.

In the second place, Petrarch was not only an egotist, but an amatory
egotist. The hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, which he described,
were derived from the passion which of all passions exerts the widest
influence, and which of all passions borrows most from the imagination.
He had also another immense advantage. He was the first eminent amatory
poet who appeared after the great convulsion which had changed, not only
the political, but the moral, state of the world. The Greeks, who, in
their public institutions and their literary tastes, were diametrically
opposed to the oriental nations, bore a considerable resemblance to
those nations in their domestic habits. Like them, they despised the
intellects and immured the persons of their women; and it was among the
least of the frightful evils to which this pernicious system gave
birth, that all the accomplishments of mind, and all the fascinations of
manner, which, in a highly cultivated age, will generally be necessary
to attach men to their female associates, were monopolised by the
Phrynes and the Lamais. The indispensable ingredients of honourable and
chivalrous love were nowhere to be found united. The matrons and their
daughters confined in the harem,--insipid, uneducated, ignorant of all
but the mechanical arts, scarcely seen till they were married,--could
rarely excite interest; afterwards their brilliant rivals, half Graces,
half Harpies, elegant and informed, but fickle and rapacious, could
never inspire respect.

The state of society in Rome was, in this point, far happier; and
the Latin literature partook of the superiority. The Roman poets have
decidedly surpassed those of Greece in the delineation of the passion of
love. There is no subject which they have treated with so much success.
Ovid, Catullus, Tibullus, Horace, and Propertius, in spite of all their
faults, must be allowed to rank high in this department of the art. To
these I would add my favourite Plautus; who, though he took his plots
from Greece, found, I suspect, the originals of his enchanting female
characters at Rome.

Still many evils remained: and, in the decline of the great empire, all
that was pernicious in its domestic institutions appeared more strongly.
Under the influence of governments at once dependent and tyrannical,
which purchased, by cringing to their enemies, the power of trampling on
their subjects, the Romans sunk into the lowest state of effeminacy
and debasement. Falsehood, cowardice, sloth, conscious and unrepining
degradation, formed the national character. Such a character is totally
incompatible with the stronger passions. Love, in particular, which, in
the modern sense of the word, implies protection and devotion on the one
side, confidence on the other, respect and fidelity on both, could not
exist among the sluggish and heartless slaves who cringed around the
thrones of Honorius and Augustulus. At this period the great renovation
commenced. The warriors of the north, destitute as they were of
knowledge and humanity, brought with them, from their forests and
marshes, those qualities without which humanity is a weakness and
knowledge a curse,--energy--independence--the dread of shame--the
contempt of danger. It would be most interesting to examine the manner
in which the admixture of the savage conquerors and the effeminate
slaves, after many generations of darkness and agitation, produced the
modern European character;--to trace back, from the first conflict to
the final amalgamation, the operation of that mysterious alchemy which,
from hostile and worthless elements, has extracted the pure gold of
human nature--to analyse the mass, and to determine the proportion in
which the ingredients are mingled. But I will confine myself to the
subject to which I have more particularly referred. The nature of the
passion of love had undergone a complete change. It still retained,
indeed, the fanciful and voluptuous character which it had possessed
among the southern nations of antiquity. But it was tinged with the
superstitious veneration with which the northern warriors had been
accustomed to regard women. Devotion and war had imparted to it their
most solemn and animating feelings. It was sanctified by the blessings
of the Church, and decorated with the wreaths of the tournament. Venus,
as in the ancient fable, was again rising above the dark and tempestuous
waves which had so long covered her beauty. But she rose not now, as of
old, in exposed and luxurious loveliness. She still wore the cestus of
her ancient witchcraft; but the diadem of Juno was on her brow, and
the aegis of Pallas in her hand. Love might, in fact, be called a new
passion; and it is not astonishing that the first poet of eminence
who wholly devoted his genius to this theme should have excited an
extraordinary sensation. He may be compared to an adventurer who
accidentally lands in a rich and unknown island; and who, though he may
only set up an ill-shaped cross upon the shore, acquires possession of
its treasures, and gives it his name. The claim of Petrarch was indeed
somewhat like that of Amerigo Vespucci to the continent which should
have derived its appellation from Columbus. The Provencal poets were
unquestionably the masters of the Florentine. But they wrote in an age
which could not appreciate their merits; and their imitator lived at the
very period when composition in the vernacular language began to attract
general attention. Petrarch was in literature what a Valentine is
in love. The public preferred him, not because his merits were of a
transcendent order, but because he was the first person whom they saw
after they awoke from their long sleep.

Nor did Petrarch gain less by comparison with his immediate successors
than with those who had preceded him. Till more than a century after his
death Italy produced no poet who could be compared to him. This decay of
genius is doubtless to be ascribed, in a great measure, to the influence
which his own works had exercised upon the literature of his country.
Yet it has conduced much to his fame. Nothing is more favourable to
the reputation of a writer than to be succeeded by a race inferior
to himself; and it is an advantage, from obvious causes, much more
frequently enjoyed by those who corrupt the national taste than by those
who improve it.

Another cause has co-operated with those which I have mentioned to
spread the renown of Petrarch. I mean the interest which is inspired by
the events of his life--an interest which must have been strongly felt
by his contemporaries, since, after an interval of five hundred years,
no critic can be wholly exempt from its influence. Among the great men
to whom we owe the resuscitation of science he deserves the foremost
place; and his enthusiastic attachment to this great cause constitutes
his most just and splendid title to the gratitude of posterity. He was
the votary of literature. He loved it with a perfect love. He worshipped
it with an almost fanatical devotion. He was the missionary, who
proclaimed its discoveries to distant countries--the pilgrim, who
travelled far and wide to collect its reliques--the hermit, who retired
to seclusion to meditate on its beauties--the champion, who fought its
battles--the conqueror, who, in more than a metaphorical sense, led
barbarism and ignorance in triumph, and received in the Capitol the
laurel which his magnificent victory had earned.

Nothing can be conceived more noble or affecting than that ceremony. The
superb palaces and porticoes, by which had rolled the ivory chariots
of Marius and Caesar, had long mouldered into dust. The laurelled
fasces--the golden eagles--the shouting legions--the captives and the
pictured cities--were indeed wanting to his victorious procession. The
sceptre had passed away from Rome. But she still retained the mightier
influence of an intellectual empire, and was now to confer the prouder
reward of an intellectual triumph. To the man who had extended the
dominion of her ancient language--who had erected the trophies
of philosophy and imagination in the haunts of ignorance and
ferocity--whose captives were the hearts of admiring nations enchained
by the influence of his song--whose spoils were the treasures of ancient
genius rescued from obscurity and decay--the Eternal City offered the
just and glorious tribute of her gratitude. Amidst the ruined monuments
of ancient and the infant erections of modern art, he who had restored
the broken link between the two ages of human civilisation was crowned
with the wreath which he had deserved from the moderns who owed to him
their refinement--from the ancients who owed to him their fame. Never
was a coronation so august witnessed by Westminster or by Rheims.

When we turn from this glorious spectacle to the private chamber of the
poet,--when we contemplate the struggle of passion and virtue,--the
eye dimmed, the cheek furrowed, by the tears of sinful and hopeless
desire,--when we reflect on the whole history of his attachment, from
the gay fantasy of his youth to the lingering despair of his age, pity
and affection mingle with our admiration. Even after death had placed
the last seal on his misery, we see him devoting to the cause of the
human mind all the strength and energy which love and sorrow had spared.
He lived the apostle of literature;--he fell its martyr:--he was found
dead with his head reclined on a book.

Those who have studied the life and writings of Petrarch with attention,
will perhaps be inclined to make some deductions from this panegyric.
It cannot be denied that his merits were disfigured by a most unpleasant
affectation. His zeal for literature communicated a tinge of pedantry
to all his feelings and opinions. His love was the love of a
sonnetteer:--his patriotism was the patriotism of an antiquarian. The
interest with which we contemplate the works, and study the history, of
those who, in former ages, have occupied our country, arises from
the associations which connect them with the community in which are
comprised all the objects of our affection and our hope. In the mind
of Petrarch these feelings were reversed. He loved Italy, because it
abounded with the monuments of the ancient masters of the world. His
native city--the fair and glorious Florence--the modern Athens, then in
all the bloom and strength of its youth, could not obtain, from the most
distinguished of its citizens, any portion of that passionate homage
which he paid to the decrepitude of Rome. These and many other
blemishes, though they must in candour be acknowledged, can but in a
very slight degree diminish the glory of his career. For my own part, I
look upon it with so much fondness and pleasure that I feel reluctant
to turn from it to the consideration of his works, which I by no means
contemplate with equal admiration.

Nevertheless, I think highly of the poetical powers of Petrarch. He did
not possess, indeed, the art of strongly presenting sensible objects to
the imagination;--and this is the more remarkable, because the talent of
which I speak is that which peculiarly distinguishes the Italian poets.
In the Divine Comedy it is displayed in its highest perfection. It
characterises almost every celebrated poem in the language. Perhaps this
is to be attributed to the circumstance, that painting and sculpture
had attained a high degree of excellence in Italy before poetry had been
extensively cultivated. Men were debarred from books, but accustomed
from childhood to contemplate the admirable works of art, which, even in
the thirteenth century, Italy began to produce. Hence their imaginations
received so strong a bias that, even in their writings, a taste for
graphic delineation is discernible. The progress of things in England
has been in all respects different. The consequence is, that English
historical pictures are poems on canvas; while Italian poems are
pictures painted to the mind by means of words. Of this national
characteristic the writings of Petrarch are almost totally destitute.
His sonnets indeed, from their subject and nature, and his Latin Poems,
from the restraints which always shackle one who writes in a dead
language, cannot fairly be received in evidence. But his Triumphs
absolutely required the exercise of this talent, and exhibit no
indications of it.

Genius, however, he certainly possessed, and genius of a high order. His
ardent, tender, and magnificent turn of thought, his brilliant fancy,
his command of expression, at once forcible and elegant, must be
acknowledged. Nature meant him for the prince of lyric writers. But by
one fatal present she deprived her other gifts of half their value. He
would have been a much greater poet had he been a less clever man. His
ingenuity was the bane of his mind. He abandoned the noble and natural
style, in which he might have excelled, for the conceits which he
produced with a facility at once admirable and disgusting. His muse,
like the Roman lady in Livy, was tempted by gaudy ornaments to betray
the fastnesses of her strength, and, like her, was crushed beneath the
glittering bribes which had seduced her.

The paucity of his thoughts is very remarkable. It is impossible to look
without amazement on a mind so fertile in combinations, yet so barren
of images. His amatory poetry is wholly made up of a very few topics,
disposed in so many orders, and exhibited in so many lights, that it
reminds us of those arithmetical problems about permutations, which so
much astonish the unlearned. The French cook, who boasted that he could
make fifteen different dishes out of a nettle-top, was not a greater
master of his art. The mind of Petrarch was a kaleidoscope. At every
turn it presents us with new forms, always fantastic, occasionally
beautiful; and we can scarcely believe that all these varieties have
been produced by the same worthless fragments of glass. The sameness of
his images is, indeed, in some degree, to be attributed to the sameness
of his subject. It would be unreasonable to expect perpetual variety
from so many hundred compositions, all of the same length, all in
the same measure, and all addressed to the same insipid and heartless
coquette. I cannot but suspect also that the perverted taste, which is
the blemish of his amatory verses, was to be attributed to the influence
of Laura, who, probably, like most critics of her sex, preferred a gaudy
to a majestic style. Be this as it may, he no sooner changes his subject
than he changes his manner. When he speaks of the wrongs and degradation
of Italy, devastated by foreign invaders, and but feebly defended by
her pusillanimous children, the effeminate lisp of the sonnetteer
is exchanged for a cry, wild, and solemn, and piercing as that which
proclaimed "Sleep no more" to the bloody house of Cawdor. "Italy seems
not to feel her sufferings," exclaims her impassioned poet; "decrepit,
sluggish, and languid, will she sleep forever? Will there be none to
awake her? Oh that I had my hands twisted in her hair! "

("Che suoi guai non par che senta;
Vecchia, oziosa, e lenta.
Dormira sempre, e non fia chi la svegli?
Le man l' avess' io avvolte entro e capegli. "
Canzone xi. )

Nor is it with less energy that he denounces against the Mahometan
Babylon the vengeance of Europe and of Christ. His magnificent
enumeration of the ancient exploits of the Greeks must always excite
admiration, and cannot be perused without the deepest interest, at a
time when the wise and good, bitterly disappointed in so many other
countries, are looking with breathless anxiety towards the natal land of
liberty,--the field of Marathon,--and the deadly pass where the Lion of
Lacedaemon turned to bay.

("Maratona, e le mortali strette
Che difese il LEON con poca gente. "
Canzone v. )

His poems on religious subjects also deserve the highest commendation.
At the head of these must be placed the Ode to the Virgin. It is,
perhaps, the finest hymn in the world. His devout veneration receives an
exquisitely poetical character from the delicate perception of the sex
and the loveliness of his idol, which we may easily trace throughout the
whole composition.

I could dwell with pleasure on these and similar parts of the writings
of Petrarch; but I must return to his amatory poetry: to that he
entrusted his fame; and to that he has principally owed it.

The prevailing defect of his best compositions on this subject is
the universal brilliancy with which they are lighted up. The natural
language of the passions is, indeed, often figurative and fantastic; and
with none is this more the case than with that of love. Still there is
a limit. The feelings should, indeed, have their ornamental garb; but,
like an elegant woman, they should be neither muffled nor exposed. The
drapery should be so arranged, as at once to answer the purposes
of modest concealment and judicious display. The decorations should
sometimes be employed to hide a defect, and sometimes to heighten a
beauty; but never to conceal, much less to distort, the charms to which
they are subsidiary. The love of Petrarch, on the contrary, arrays
itself like a foppish savage, whose nose is bored with a golden ring,
whose skin is painted with grotesque forms and dazzling colours, and
whose ears are drawn down his shoulders by the weight of jewels. It is
a rule, without any exception, in all kinds of composition, that the
principal idea, the predominant feeling, should never be confounded with
the accompanying decorations. It should generally be distinguished from
them by greater simplicity of expression; as we recognise Napoleon in
the pictures of his battles, amidst a crowd of embroidered coats and
plumes, by his grey cloak and his hat without a feather. In the verses
of Petrarch it is generally impossible to say what thought is meant
to be prominent.