64 NOTES AND QUERIES. 1 12 s.ix. JULY 23,1921.
and swerd-berer (the officials who bear the sword and mace before the Lord Mayor in civic processions) other of thame xld.; and the sex ofecers, ichon of thame xxd." Neither did Sir John in his will forget the needy nor neglect to forward works of public utility, for he willed that his executors should "gif to pure folkes of my viij day xlvjs. viijd." whilst he bequeathed a sum of five shillings "to the skowryng of ye dike at Sanct Anne chapell (on Foss Bridge) so yt ony other will make ye brigges." He appointed as his executors "Mr. Barra [the above-mentioned Prebendary of Osbaldwick], my wiff, and Annes my doghter," and devised that the first of these should "have for his costes and expenses for his commyng, my gret brase pott wt the feet." He died on "Sunnday in the morning," Nov. 12, 1508, and on the following day he "was nobly entered at the parish church of St. Michael called the Belframe, with the sword and mase borne by esquyers afore the body and corse and sex aldermen berying the sayd corse to the sayd church" [Skaife MS. in York Public Library]. Finally a window was erected to his memory in the south transept of the Minster, since removed to make room for the figure of Solomon by Peckitt, in which the late Lord Mayor was depicted in his robes of office and kneeling at a desk. On a scroll beneath was inscribed:—"Orate pro anima Johannis Pety Glasarii et Majoris (civitatis) Ebor qui obiit 12 Nov. 1508 [Drake Eboracum]." His will [Reg. Test. D. & C. Ebor. ii. 54 b., printed in Test. Ebor., Surtees Soc., vol. iv., p. 333] was proved on Dec. 13, 1508. John A. Knowles.
DANTESCAN CRITICISM IN THE SETTECENTO: ANTONIO CONTI.
The history of Dantescan criticism in Italy still remains to be written, and with the possible exception of the chapter in the ' Poesia di Dante ' of Croce ' Intorno alia I storia della critica dantesca ' and isolated works like that of Zacchetti, ' La fama di Dante in Italia nel Secolo XVIII.,' where no effort is made to enter more deeply into the genuine critical penetration, it is im- possible to quote even partial critical evaluations. The following essay is in- tended to fill up some of the lacunae left by Zacchetti and develop still further the suggestions made by Croce in the chapter already mentioned, and by G. Brognoligo in his valuable * Opera letteraria di Antonio Conti' (Ateneo Veneto, 1893-4). Dantescan criticism in the early Settecento, if we
- consider only the narrow limits within
which criticism was confined and the almost aggressively ethical tone which
- pervaded every theoretical production,
' actually reached some basic unity of | appreciation. Purification of literature from ! the licence of the seventeenth century ! could only be achieved, according to the critics, through a rigid literary morality, i and, while the national ideal should be ! ennobled by a true criticism of the great i Italian poets, that ideal must conform to | the ethical standard. But there are ink-
- lings of a more intuitive, more aesthetic
criticism of Dante ; in the Vichian con- ception of Dante we can see perhaps the most notable production of that time in aesthetic criticism, while through Gravina, Becelli and Antonio Conti the deeper aesthetic penetration gleams through the traditional appreciation. But even with this deeper insight, even with the theory of Vico that the genius of Dante lay in the genius of poetry itself and that the emer- gence of Italy from a long period of poli- tical and emotional unrest into a calmer world of thought and expression found a voice in the Dantescan poetry and became fused in his soul to the very stuff of poetry, the beauty and power of the ' Divina Corn- media,' in, the living conception of the eighteenth century, are not explained, are not brought into the living reality de- manded of the critical interpretation. This insufficiency characterizes the criti- cism of Dante expressed by Antonio Conti in several passages of the ' Prose e Poesi ' (Venezia, 1756, vol. ii.) and especially in the
- Discorso sopra la Italiana Poesia,' but a new
element comes into Dantescan criticism, the comparison of the * Divina Commedia ' with the ' Paradise Lost ' of Milton. Conti thus shows the beginning of that school of criticism which, taking its inspiration from English writers and especially Addison, Gray, Swift, Pope, and, latterly, Shake- speare, Ossian, Young, led ultimately to Italian Romantic criticism. In the * Dis- corso sopra la Italiana Poesia' this com- parison inspires undoubtedly the first effort to attain a real historical perspective not only in the appreciation of Dante but in the conception of Italian poetry. Dante, appreciating the strength and beauty of a still crude language, set out, not to perfect the romance or love-poem, not to flatter the
