Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/529

LITERATURE.] ITALY 507 advance, but one which carried vith it the seeds of many dangers. The conception of morality became gradually weaker. The " fay ce que vouldras " of Rabelais became the first principle of life. Religious feeling was blunted, was weakened, was changed, became pagan again. Finally the Italian of the Renaissance, in his qualities and his passions, became the most remarkable representative of the heights and depths, of the virtues and faults, of humanity. Corruption was associated with all that is most ideal in life ; a profound scepticism took hold of people s minds ; indif ference to good and evil reached its highest point. rary Besidss this, a great literary danger was hanging over ?ers Italy. Humanism threatened to submerge its youthful ,atin- na tional literature. There were authors who laboriously tried to give Italian Latin forms, to do again, after Dante s time, what Guittoned Arezzo had so unhappily done in the 13th century. Provincial dialects tried to reassert them selves in literature. The great authors of the 14th century, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, were by mnny people forgotten or despised. ience It was Florence that saved literature by reconciling, l- the classical models to modern feeling, Florence that e> succeeded in assimilating classical forms to the "vulgar" art. Still gathering vigour and elegance from classicism, still drawing from the ancient fountains all that they could supply of good and useful, it was able to preserve its real life, to keep its national traditions, and to guide literature along the way that had been opened to it by the writers of the preceding century. At Florence the most celebrated humanists wrote also in the vulgar tongue, and commented on Dante and Petrarch, and defended them from their enemies. Leon Battista Alberti, the learned Greek and Latin scholar, wrote in the vernacular, and Yespasia io da Bisticci, whilst he was constantly absorbed in Greek and Latin manuscripts, wrote the Vite di Uomini Illustri, valuable for their historical contents, and rivalling the best works of the 14th century in their candour and simplicity. Andrea da Barberino wrote the beautiful prose of the Reali di Francia, giving a colouring of "romanita" to the chivalrous romances. Belcari and Benivieni carry us back to the mystic idealism of earlier times, azo But it is in Lorenzo de Medici that the influence of edici. Florence on the Renaissance is particularly seen. In forming an opinion of him miny people are led away by political preconceptions. Even as a statesman, Lorenzo Ins a conspicuous place in the history of his time, and in our day it will not be deemed reasonable to expect that in the age of lordships and principalities he alone should stand out from his time, and not feel the influence of the general condition of Italy. With this, however, we have nothing to do. We have to consider Lorenzo de Medici as a man of letters ; and as such he is one about whom tradition and reality best agree. His mind was formed by the ancients : he attended the class of the Greek Argyropulos, sat at Platonic banquets, took pains to collect codices, sculptures, vases, pictures, gems, and drawings to ornament the gardens of San Marco and to form the library afterwards called by his name. In the saloons of his Florentine palace, in his villas at Careggi, Fiesole, and Ambra, stood the wonderful chests painted by Dello with stories from Ovid, the Hercules of Pollajuolo, the Pallas of Botticelli, the works of Filippino and Verrocchio. Lorenzo de Medici lived entirely in the classical world ; and yet if we read his poems we only see the man of his time, the admirer of Dante and of the old Tuscan poets, who takes inspiration from the popular muse, and who succeeds in giving to his poetry the colours of the most pronounced realism, as well as of the loftiest idealism, who passes from the Platonic sonnet to the impassioned triplets of the Amori di Venere, from the grandiosity of the Salve to Nencia and to Beoiri, from the Canto Carnascialesco to the Lauda. The feeling of nature is strong in him, at one time sweet and melancholy, at another vigorous and deep, as if an echo of the feelings, the sorrows, the ambitions of that deeply agitated life. He liked to look into his own heart ^with a severe eye, but he was also able to pour himself out with tumultuous fulness. He described with the art of a sculptor; he satirized, laughed, prayed, sighed, always elegant, always a Florentine, but a Florentine who read Anacreon, Ovid, and Tibullus, who wished to enjoy life, but also to taste of the refinements of art. Next to Lorenzo comes Poliziano, who also united, and Poliziauo. with greater art, the ancient and the modern, the popular and the classical style. In his Rispdti and in his Ballate the freshness of imagery and the plasticity of form are inimitable. He, a great Greek scholar, wrote Italian verses with dazzling colours ; the purest elegance of the Greek sources pervaded his art in all its varieties, in the Orfeo as well as the Stanze per la Giostra. As a consequence of the intellectual movement towards The aca- the Renaissance, there arose in Italy in the 15th demies, century three academies, those of Florence, of Naples, and of Rome. The Florentine academy was founded by Cosmo I. de Medici. Having heard the praises of Platonic philosophy sung by Gemistus Pletho, who in 1439 was at the council of Florence, he took such a liking for those opinions that he soon made a plan for a literary con gress which was especially to discuss them. Marsilius Ficinus has described the occupations and the entertain ments of these academicians. Here, he said, the young men learnt, by w r ay of pastime, precepts of conduct and the practice of eloquence ; here grown-up men studied the government of the republic and the family ; here the aged consoled themselves with the belief in a future world. The academy was divided into three classes : that of patron?, who were members of the Medici family : that of hearers, among whom sat the most famous men of that age, such as Pico della Mirandola, Angelo Poliziano, Leon Battista Alberti ; that of disciples, who w 7 ere youths anxious to distinguish themselves in philosophical pursuits. It is known that the Platonic academy endeavoured to promote, with regard to art, a second and a more exalted revival of antiquity. The Roman academy w r as founded by Giulio Pomponio Leto, with the object of promoting the discovery and the investigation of ancient monuments and books. It was a sort of religion of classicism, mixed with learning and philosophy, Platina, the celebrated author of the lives of the first hundred popes, belonged to it. At Naples, the academy know 7 n as the Pontaniana was instituted. The founder of it was Antonio Beccadelli, surnamed II Panormita, and after his death the head was II Pontano, who gave his name to it, and whose mind animated it. Romantic poems were the product of the moral scepticism Romantic and the artistic taste of the 15th century. Italy never had poetry. any true epic poetry in its period of literary birth. Still less could it have any in the Renaissance. It had, how ever, many poems called Cantdri, because they contained stories that were sung to the people ; and besides there were romantic poems, such as tho Buovo d Anfona, the.- Regina Ancroja, and others. But the first to introduce elegance and a new 7 life into this style was Luigi Pulci, who grew up in the house of the Medici, and who wrote the Morgante Maggiore at the request of Lucrezia Tornabuoni, mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. The material of the Morgante is almost completely taken from an obscure chivalrous poem of the 15th century recently discovered by Professor Pio Rajna. On this foundation Pulci erected a structure of his own, often turning the subject into ridicule, burlesquing the characters, introducing many digressions, now capricious, now scientific, now theo logical. Pulci s merit consists in having been the first to