LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



1*1 



his reach, he constructed an epic which 

 places his name beside that of him whom he 

 humbly called his master, Virgil. Taking the 

 religious faith of his time as the material, he 

 conducts the reader through the sad and ter- 

 rible circles of Hell, the twilight region of 

 Purgatory, and the fair mount of Paradise, 

 showing him all forms of torture and punish- 

 ment for the vile, all varieties of supreme hap- 

 piness for the pure and good. The poem takes 

 a fierce and gloomy character from the wrongs 

 and persecutions which the poet endured in his 

 life. Dante died in 1321, at which time Pe- 

 trarch, who was born in 1304, had commenced 

 those studies which led to the restoration of 

 classic literature to Italy. As an enthusiastic 

 admirer of antiquity he imparted to his con- 

 temporaries that passion for the study of the 

 Greek and Roman authors which preserved 

 many of their masterpieces at a moment when 

 *hey were about to be lost to the world. His 

 songs and sonnets, most of which were in- 

 spired by his unfortunate love for Laura "de 

 Sade, gave him a worthy place after Dante in 

 Italian literature. He died in 1374. Con- 

 temporary with Petrarch was the great master 

 of Italian prose, Boccaccio, who was born in 

 1313. He early devoted his life to literature, 

 and in 1341 assisted at the celebrated examina- 

 tion of Petrarch, previous to his coronation in 

 the capitol. His principal work is the De- 

 cameron, a collection of one hundred tales, 

 which, notwithstanding the impurities with 

 which they are disfigured, are models of nar- 

 ration and exhibit the most varied powers of 

 imagination and invention. Boccaccio is con- 

 sidered as the inventor of romances of love 

 a branch of literature which was wholly un- 

 known to antiquity. 



For a century following the death of Boc- 

 caccio, the literature of Italy shows no great 

 name, though several scholars distinguished 

 themselves by their attainments and the aid 

 \vhich they rendered to the cause of classic 

 literature. The most noted of these were John 

 of Ravenna ; Leonardo Aretino, who wrote a 

 history of Florence in Latin ; Poggio Brac- 

 ciolini, a most voluminous writer, who enjoyed 

 the patronage of Cosmo de'Medici, at Florence ; 

 Francesco Fileflo and Lorenzo Valla, both 

 Vnen of great erudition, whose labors con- 

 tributed to bring on a new era of Italian litera- 

 ture. Lorenzo de'Medici, called the Magnifi- 

 cent, towards the close of the fifteenth cen- 

 tury, gave the first impulse to the cultivation 

 of the Italian tongue, which had been lost 

 sight of in the rage for imitating Latin poets. 

 Besides being the author of many elegant 

 songs and sonnets, his court was the home of 

 all the authors of that period. Among these 



were Politiano, who wrote Orfeo, a fable 

 formed on the myth of Orpheus, which was 

 performed at the court of Mantua, in 1483 ; 

 Luigi Pulci, the author of Jlforgante Maggiore, 

 andBoiardo, author of the Orlando Innamorato. 

 Both the last named poerns are chivalrous 

 romances, written in the ottava rima, and full 

 of a quaint humor which before that time had 

 only appeared in the prose of Boccaccio. But 

 the master of the gay and sparkling poetic 

 narrative was Ariosto, who was born in 1474, 

 and first appeared as an author about the year 

 1500. Five years later he commenced his 

 Orlando Furioso, which was not completed till 

 1516. This is a romantic poem in forty-six 

 cantos, celebrating the adventures of Roland, 

 the nephew of Charlemagne. It is one of the 

 classics of Italy, and has been translated into 

 all modern languages. After the death of 

 Ariosto in 1533, no literary work of any prom- 

 inence appeared until Torquato Tasso pub- 

 lished his Jerusalem Delivered in 1581. Ala- 

 manni, Trissino and Bernardo Tasso flourished 

 in the interval and produced labored poems, 

 which are no longer read. The subject of 

 Tasso 's poem is the rescue of the Holy Sepul- 

 cher from the Moslems, by the Crusaders under 

 Godfrey of Bouillon. The wrongs and per- 

 secutions heaped upon Tasso clouded his mind 

 and shortened his days ; he died in Rome in 

 1595, on the day before that appointed for his 

 coronation. Three other Italian authors of 

 the sixteenth century are worthy of mention : 

 Cardinal Bembo, the most finished scholar of 

 his day, and author of a history of Venice ; 

 Nicolo Machiavelli, whose name has become 

 synonymous with all that is sinister and un- 

 scrupulous in politics, from his treatise en- 

 titled The Prince, for which, after his death, 

 an anathema was pronounced against him ; 

 ! and Pietro Aretino, one of the most infamous 

 and dissolute men of his time. Machiavelli 

 wrote an admirable History of Florence, which 

 is still a standard work. 



In the haif-century following the death of 

 Tasso, there are but two poets who have at- 

 tained any renown : Guarini, the author of 

 Pastor Fido, and Tassoni, who wrote the 

 Stcchia Rapita (Rape of the Bucket). Filicaja, 

 whose impassioned lyrics are still the revolu- 

 tionary inspiration of Italy, belongs to the 

 latter part of the seventeenth century ; he died 

 in 1707. After another long interval arose 

 Frugoni, a lyric poet of some celebrity, who 

 died in 1768, and Metastasio, the author of 

 plays, operas, and ballets innumerable. He is 

 remarkable for his wonderful command of the 

 language, and the free and spirited movement 

 of his dialogue. He died in Vienna in the 

 year 1782. During this same period, Italian 



