Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/536

514 ITALY [LITERATURE. feeling, and the mastery of versification shows wonderful art. Perhaps it is to this mastery more than to anything else that the admiration the Sepolcri excites is due. There are most obscure p issages in it, as to the meaning of which it would seem as if even the author himself had not formed a clear idea. He left incomplete three hymns to the Graces, in which he sang of beauty as the source of courtesy, of all high qualities, and of happiness. Here again what most excites our admiration is the harmonious and easy versifica tion, Among his prose works a high place belongs to his translation of the Sentimental Journey of Sterne, a writer by whom one can easily understand how Foscolo should have been deeply affected. He went as an exile to England, and died there. He wrote for English readers some Essays on Petrarch and on the texts of the Decamerone and of Dante, which are remarkable for the time at which they were written, and which may be said to have initiated a new kind of literary criticism in Italy. Foscolo is still greatly admired, and not without reason. His writings stimulate the love of fatherland, and the men that made the revolu tion of 1848 were largely brought up on them. Still, his fame both as a man and as an artist is now on the decline. Monti. If in Foscolo patriotism and classicism were united, and formed almost one passion, so much cannot be said of Yincenzo Monti, in whom the artist was absolutely pre dominant. Yet we must be careful : .Monti was a patriot too, but in his own way. He had no one deep feeling that ruled him, or rather the mobility of his feelings is his char acteristic ; but each of these was a new form of patriot ism, that took the place of an old one. He saw danger to his country in the French Revolution, and wrote the Pdlegrino Apostolic.o, the Bassvilliana, and the Fer unlade; Napoleon s victories caused him to write the Prometeo and the Musagonia ; in his Fanatismo and his Superstizione he attacked the papacy ; afterwards he sang the praises of tho Austrians. Thus every great event made him change his mind, with a readiness which might seem incredible, but is yet most easily explained. Monti was above everything an artist ; art was his real, his only passion ; everything else in him was liable to change, that alone was persistent. Fancy was his tyrant, and under its rule he had no time to reason and to see the miserable aspect of his political tergiversation. It was an overbearing deity that moved him, and at its dictation he wrote. Pius VI., Napoleon, Francis II., were to him but passing shadows, to which he hardly gives the attention of an hour; that which endures, which is eternal to him, is art alone. It were unjust to accuse Monti of baseness. If we say that nature in giving him one only faculty had made the poet rich and the man poor, we shall speak the truth. But the poet was indeed rich. Knowing little Greek, he succeeded in making a translation of the Iliad which is remarkable for its Homeric feeling, and in his Bassvilliana he is on a level with Dante. In fine, in him classical poetry seemed to revive in all its florid grandeur. Niccoliui. Monti was born in 1754, Foscolo in 1778; four years later still was born another poet of the same school, Giambattista Niccolini. In literature he was "a classicist ; in politics he was a Ghibelline, a rare exception in Guelph Florence, his birthplace. In translating or, if the expres sion is preferred, imitating ^Eschylus, as well as in writing the Discorsi sulla Tragedia Greca, and on the Sublime e Michelangelo, Niccolini displayed his passionate devotion to ancient literature. In his tragedies he set himself free from the excessive rigidity of Alfieri, and partly approached the English and German tragic authors. He nearly always chose political subjects, striving to keep alive in his com patriots the love of liberty. Such are Nalucco, Antonio Foscarini, Giovanni da Procida, Lodovico il Moro, &c, He assailed papal Koine in Arnaldo da Brescia, a long tragic piece, not suited for acting, and epic rather than dramatic. Niccolini s tragedies show a rich lyric vein rather than dramatic genius. At any rate he has the merit of having vindicated liberal ideas, and of having opened a new path to Italian tragedy. The literary period we are dealing with had three writers Y. who are examples of the direction taken by historical study. ": It seems strange that, after the learned school begun by Muratori, there should have been a backward movement here, but it is clear that this retrogression was dua to the influence of classicism and patriotism, which, if they revived poetry, could not but spoil history. Carlo Botla, born its 1766, was a spectator of French spoliation in Italy and of the overbearing rule of Napoleon. Hence, excited by indignation, he wrote a History of Italy from 1789 to 1814 ; and later on he continued Guicciardini s History up to 1789. Ho wrote after the mariner of the Latin authors, trying to imitate Livy, putting together long and sonorous periods in a style that aimed at being like Boccaccio s, caring little about that which constitutes the critical material of history, only intent on declaiming his academic prose for his country s benefit. Botta wanted to be classical in a style that could no longer be so, and hence he failed completely to attain his literary goal. His fame is only that of a man of a noble and patriotic heart. Not so bad as the two histories of Italy is that of the Gnerra dell Indipendenza Americana. Close to Botta comes Pietro Colletta, a Neapolitan born nine years after him. He also in his Storia del Reame di Napoli dal 1734 al 1825 had the idea of defending the independence and liberty of Italy in a style borrowed from Tacitus ; and he succeeded rather better than Botta. He has a rapid, brief, nervous style, which makes his book attractive reading. But it is said that Pietro Giordani and Gino Capponi corrected it for him. Lazzaro Papi of Lucca, author of the Gommentari della Eivoluzione Francese dal 1789 al 1814, was not altogether unlike Botta and Colletta. He also was an historian in the classical style, and treats his subject with patriotic feeling ; but as an artist he perhaps excels the other two. At first sight it seems unnatural that, whilst the most 1 burning political passions were raging, and whilst the most l brilliant men of genius in the new classical and patriotic school were at the height of their influence, a question should have arisen about " purism " of language. Yet the phenomenon can be easily accounted for. Purism is another form of classicism and patriotism. In the second half of the 18th century the Italian language was specially full of French expressions. There was great indifference about fitness, still more about elegance of style. Prose then was to be restored for the sake of national dignity, and it was believed that this could not be done except by going back to the writers of the 14th century, to the "aurei trecentisti," as they were called, or else to the classics of Italian literature. One of the promoters of the new school was Antonio Cesari of Verona, who republished ancient authors, and brought out a new edition, with additions, of the Voccibolario della Crusca. He wrote a dissertation Sopra lo slato presents della Lingua Italiana, and endeavoured to establish the supremacy of Tuscan and of the three great writers Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio. And in accordance with that principle he wrote several books, taking pains to copy the " trecentisti " as closely as possible. But patriotism in Italy has always had something munici pal in it ; so to this Tuscan supremacy, proclaimed and upheld by Cesari, there was opposed a Lombard school, which would know nothing of Tuscan, and with Dante s De Vulyari Eloquio returned to the idea of the "lingua illustre." This was an old question, largely and bitterly argued in the Cinquecento (16th century) by Varchi,