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TI1UBOSCHI, GIROLAMO. 



TIRABOSCHI, GIROLAMO. 



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his attempts to proceed be was met by a party of Europeans from 

 witbinside the gate, by whom he was attacked. Owing to two wounds 

 which he received iu his breast he fell from bis horse ; his attendants 

 placed him upon a palankeen in one of the recesses of the gateway, 

 and entreated him to make himself known to the English. This lie 

 disdainfully refused to do. A short time afterwards some European 

 soldiers entered the gateway, and one of them attempting to take off 

 the sultan's sword-belt, the wouuded prince, who still held his sword, 

 made a thrust at him and wounded him in the knee; upon which the 

 soldier levelled his musket aud shot him through the head. On the 

 afternoon of the 5th of May he was buried in the mausoleum of Hyder 

 Aly. Four companies of European troops escorted the funeral pro- 

 cession, which was strikingly solemn. 



When Tippoo met his death he was iu his fiftieth year. Although 

 after his misfortunes in 179:4 he oppressed the people more than they 

 had ever been in the time of his father, he was nevertheless popular ; 

 and t e Mysoreans considered him as a martyr to the faith, and as a 

 prince who fell gloriously in the cause of his religion. He used to 

 pass a great portion of his day in reading, and his library, consisting 

 of about 12,000 volumes, was well selected. About one-half of this 

 collection is preserved at the Kast India House, London ; the other 

 half was left at Fort William for the use of the college. The museum 

 and library of the East India House contain many articles both of 

 value and curiosity which once belonged to Tippoo Saib. 



(' Memoirs of Tippoo Sultan,' in Stewart's Descriptive Catalogue of the 

 Oriental Library of the late Tippoo Sultan of Mysore, Cambridge, 1809.) 

 TI11A.BOSCHI, GIRO'LAMO, was born at Bergamo in 1731. He 

 studied in the college of' Mouza, and afterwards entered the order of 

 the Jesuits. About 1766 he was made professor of rhetoric in the 

 University of Milan, where he wrote his first work, the history of a 

 monastic order long siuce suppressed, under peculiar circumstances : 

 * Vetera Humiliatorum Monumenta,' Milan 1766. In 1770 he was 

 appointed by the Duke of Modena librarian of his rich library, in the 

 place of Father Granelli, deceased. He now applied himself to the 

 undertaking of his great work, ' Storia della Letteratura Italiana,' 

 published at Modena 1772-1783, which he completed in eleven years. 

 The subject was 'vast and intricate ; the only author who had yet 

 attempted to writs a general history of Italian literature, Gimma of 

 Naples, had only sketched a rough and very defective outline of it in 

 his 'Storia dell' Italia Letterata.' There were however local histories 

 and biographies concerning particular towns and districts, and the rest 

 of the materials had to be sought among the archives and libraries of 

 Italy. Tiraboschi undertook to write the history of the literature of 

 ancient and modern Italy in the most extended sense of the word, 

 including most of, if not all, the individuals deserving of mention in 

 every department of learning, who have flourished in Italy, from the 

 oldest times on record, beginning from the Etruscans and the Greek 

 colonies of Magna Graecia and Sicily, and then proceeding with the 

 history of Roman literature through its rise, progress, and decay, 

 down to the invasion of the northern tribes, with which the second 

 volume concludes. The author distributes the great divisions of learning 

 in separate chapters ; poetry, grammar, oratory, history, philosophy, 

 medicine, jurisprudence, and the arts; he gives an account of the 

 principal libraries, aud of the great patrons of learning, and although 

 he does not profess to write biography, properly speaking, yet he gives 

 biographical notices of the more illustrious writers and of their pro- 

 ductions. The third volume comprises the literary history of Italy 

 during the dark ages, as they are commonly called, from the 5th to the 

 12th century. The author makes his way through the scanty and 

 obscure records of those times, and brings to light much curious 

 information concerning the intellectual state of Italy under the Goths, 

 the Longobards, and the Franks. The ecclesiastical writers come in 

 for a gr-at share of this part of the work. The fourth volume includes 

 the period from 1183 to the year 1300. The rev.ival of studies, the 

 formation of the Italian language, the foundation of universities, 

 notices of the civilians and canonists who flourished in that age, an 

 account of the Italian troubadours, of the earliest Italian poets, and 

 of the Italian Latinists, and a view of the splendid architectural 

 works of Arnolfo di Lapo, of Niccol6 and Giovanni of Pisa, and other 

 artists, impart a cheering aspect to this period. The fifth volume 

 embraces the 14th century, the age of Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio. 

 The author is particularly diffuse in speaking of Petrarca. The 

 sixth volume concerns the 15th century, au age of classical studies, 

 the age of Cosmo and Lorenzo de' Medici, of Poggio, Filelfo, Niccoli, 

 Palla Strozzi, Coluccio, Salutati, Paolo Manetti, Cardinal Bessarion, 

 and other collectors of manuscripts, founders of libraries, and encou- 

 ragers of learning, and the age also of distinguished jurists and eccle- 

 siastical writers. This volume is very large, and is divided into three 

 parts, whilst the preceding volumes are divided each into two parts, 

 each part being subdivided into books and chapters. We cannot help 

 thinking that this mode of division is too formal and cumbersome, 

 and that it might have been simplified and made clearer. 



The seventh volume of Tiraboschi's history treats of the 16th 

 century, the age of Leo X., the Augustan age, as it is sometime., called, 

 of Italian literature. This volume, which is still more bulky than 

 the one preceding, ia divided into four parts. After giving a sketch of 

 the gi neral condition of Italy during that period, of the encourage- 

 ment to learning afforded by the various princes, of the universities, 



academies, libraries, and museums, the author treats first of the 

 theological polemics which arose with the Reformation, then of the 

 philosophical and mathematical studies, of natural history and medi- 

 cine, of civil and ecclesiastical jurisprudence, of historical writing, and 

 of the Italian Hellenists and Orientalists. He passes next in review 

 the Italian poets, among whom Ariosto and Tasso hold a conspicuous 

 place, and afterwards the Latin poets, the grammarians, rhetoricians, 

 and pulpit orators, and lastly the artists, among whom Michel Angelo, 

 Raffaelle, Tiziano, and Correggio stand prominent. It is impossible to 

 peruse this long list of illustrious names without being struck with the 

 seemingly inexhaustible fertility of the Italian mind in almost every 

 branch of knowledge. 



The eighth volume embraces the 17th century, which in Italy is 

 scornfully styled the age of the " seicentiati,' or the age of bad taste, a 

 reproach however which applies mainly to the poets, and not even to 

 the whole of them. The department of history is filled with good 

 names, as well as that of the mathematical sciences, in which Galileo 

 holds the first rank. With the 17th century Tiraboschi concludes his 

 work. Various reasons prevented his entering the field of contem- 

 porary history. This however has been done of late years by Lombardi, 

 in his continuation of Tiraboschi's work: 'Storia della Letteratura 

 Italiana nel Secolo xviii.' 



Tiraboschi's work was highly esteemed, and went through numerous 

 editions in various parts of Italy. The author himself superintended 

 the second edition of 'Modena,' 1787-94, in which he made corrections 

 and additions, chiefly in the shape of notes to the text. Antonio 

 Laudi made an abridgment of the work in French, which was pub- 

 lished at Paris, and at Bern, in 1784 ; and J. Retzer made a similar 

 abridgment of it iu the German language. When the work of Tira- 

 boschi appeared, no other country in Europe had a general history of 

 its own literature. The learned Benedictines of St. Maur had begun a 

 work of this kind concerning the literature of France, which however 

 they left imp-rfect. The work of Tiraboschi does not give all the 

 information that one might wish, but contains probably as much 

 information as could be collected and compressed together by auy one 

 man upon the subject. It has been said to be deficient in criticism, and in 

 the analysis of conspicuous works, of which he has not given extracts ; 

 but this, as he says in his preface, did not form part of his plan, which 

 was already extensive enough, or the work would have had no end. 

 His accuracy and conscientiousness are undisputed. The tone of his 

 remarks, especially on religious matters, is perhaps as temperate as 

 could be expected from a man of his profession, times, and country, 

 who was a sincere believer in the tenets of his church, though not a 

 bigot. For a proof of this we might refer the reader to Tiraboschi's 

 letter to Father Mamachi, a Dominican, who edited at Rome an 

 edition of Tiraboschi's great work with corrections and notes to those 

 passages which were not consonant with his own high notions of Papal 

 prerogative and Roman supremacy, both spiritual and temporal. Tira- 

 boschi's letter was published at Modena in 1785, and was afterwards 

 inserted at the end of the last volume of the second Modeua edition of 

 the ' History of Italian Literature.' A tone of refined cutting irony, 

 half veiled, under a most courteous style of language, pervades the 

 whole of the letter. The French writer Ginguene" has followed closely 

 Tiraboschi's footsteps in his ' Histoire Litteraire d'ltalie,' which how- 

 ever contains only the modern part, or the history of the literature of 

 the Italian language. [GINGUENE.] 



The Duke of Modena, Ercole III. of Este, in consideration of Tira- 

 boschi's useful labours, made him a knight, and appointed him member 

 of his council in 1780. By the suppression of the order of Jesuits, 

 Tiraboschi had become a secular priest. In 1781 he began to publish 

 another work of bibliography and biography : ' Biblioteca Modenese, o 

 Notizia della Vita e delle Opere degli Scrittori natii degli Stati del 

 Serenissimo Duca di Modena,' 6 vols. 4to, Modena, 1781-86; to which 

 he afterwards added a seventh volume, containing notices of the artists 

 who were born in the dominions of the house of Este. Having thus 

 illustrated the literary history of Modena, and of the other territories 

 of the house of Este, he afterwards wrote the political history of the 

 same country, in his ' Memorie Storiche Modeuesi, col codice diplo- 

 matico, illustrate con note,' 3 vols. 4to, Modena, 1793. He also 

 published the history of the ancient monastery and abbey of Nonau- 

 tola in the duchy of Modena, founded about the middle of the 8th 

 century by Auselmus, Duke of Friuli, and afterwards greatly enriched 

 by Charlemagne and other princes, and which became a powerful com- 

 munity during the Middle Ages ; ' Storia dell' augusta Badia di S. 

 Silvestro di Nonantola, aggiuntovi il codice diplomatico della rnede- 

 sima, illustrate con note,' 2 vols. folio, Modena, 1784. The other 

 works of Tiraboschi are : 1, ' Vita del Conte D. Fulvio Testi.' Testi 

 was a lyric poet of the 17th century, and enjoyed for a time a high 

 office at the court of Modena, but ended his days in prison for state 

 reasons ; 2, ' Lettere intorno ai viaggi del Sigr. Bruce,' inserted in the 

 'Notizie Letterarie' of Cesena, 1792; 3, 'Memoria delle cognizioni 

 che si avevano delle sorgeiiti del Nilo prima del Viaggio del Sigr. 

 Jacopo Bruce,' inserted in the 1st vol. of the ' Memorie dell' Acca- 

 demia dello Scienze di Mantova ; ' 4, Two memoirs on Galileo, his 

 discoveries, and his condemnation by the Inquisition, inserted in the 

 last vol. of the second Modena edition of the ' History of Italian 

 Literature ; ' 5, ' Notizie della Confraternity di S Pietro Martire ; ' 

 6, ' Vita di Sant" Olimpia, Vedova e Diaconessa della Chiesa di Costan- 



