1 



TvISE AND PROGRESS 



separate nations, which wo must now hasten to 

 resume, will show that this assertion is in strict 

 accordance with truth. It will show that, how- 

 ever the tide of genius might ebb or flow in par- 

 ticular countries, it never failed at once over the 

 whole surface of Europe. 



The long series of calamities under which 

 ITALY groaned, from the irruption of the French 

 in 1494 ; the defeats, the pillage, the misery of 

 every kind, that she endured ; could not divert 

 her from the arts and sciences, from the inter- 

 pretation of the ancient classics, and the exten- 

 sion of her own literature. It is true that her 

 governors and statesmen soon ceased to exercise 

 a munificent and steady patronage of intellectual 

 merit. Leo the tenth * sat only eight years on 

 the papal throne ; and few after him were the 

 pontiffs or princes, at Rome or Naples, Florence 

 or Milan, Mantua or Ferrara, who loved learning 

 and talent for their own sake, or found room for 

 real generosity amid the cruelty, voluptuousness, 

 and fraud, which filled their souls. Yet in spite 

 of violence and wretchedness on all sides ; of 

 contempt, persecution, and caprice in high 

 places ; that mental activity which had been so 

 wonderfully roused, held on its way rejoicing, 

 and gained for the sixteenth century the glorious 

 appellation of the good age of Italian letters. 

 The French, Spanish, and German invaders, 

 who gambled with the political fortunes of Italy 

 as their stakes, were constrained to acknowledge 

 her literary ascendancy. When the main body 

 of Greek and Latin authors had been fairly pub- 

 lished and devoutly studied, the Italians began 

 again to exult in the beauties of their own tongue, 

 and endeavoured to learn from those models 

 which it, in common with the classical languages, 

 could already supply, a consummate elegance 

 of thought and style. These endeavours were 

 not always happily directed. The multitude of 

 academies or associations, which sprang up, 

 with a variety of silly names and ceremonies, 

 in the large towns, were productive of little 

 but harm. It was no easy thing, no task 

 for pedantic brotherhoods and dilettanti meet- 

 ings, to effect a union between the spirit of the 

 antique and the spirit of the romantic literature : 

 the one simple, severe, and aiming to impress 

 the mind by the entire symmetry of its creations ; 

 the other, like its materials, rich, fantastic, vari- 

 ous, and aiming to rouse our sensibilities by the 

 perfection of details. Every scheme for reduc- 

 ing romantic subjects to the antique mould was 

 sure to end in disappointment : the difficult pro- 

 blem was how to preserve for them their proper 



scope and figure ; yet crown and circle them with 

 rays of ancient grandeur and beauty. 



That problem was first solved by AmosTO.f 

 In his hands the chivalrous epos of Pulci and 

 Boiardo acquired unlocked for graces. The 

 youthful extravagance of his prolific fancy was 

 so far chastened by a classical taste, that while it 

 wantons in eccentricity, it avoids the monstrous : 

 and, without any semblance of the Homeric plan, 

 a goodly portion of Homer's vein, especially of 

 that which is apparent in the Odyssey, may be 

 detected in the mingled sprightliness, tenderness, 

 and fervour of the Orlando Furioso. There is 

 not, however, the good faith of the thoroughly 

 national and seemingly simple-hearted Greek. 

 That could hardly be expected. A sincere be- 

 lief in the marvellous, and anything like a basis 

 in actual life for the ideal world of knight- 

 errantry, were so long past, that there was 

 something ludicrous in romantic actions and 

 adventures, which must have instantly struck the 

 eye of genius, and might justify a tone of irony 

 in its mode of treating them. Yet with all his 

 irrepressible feeling of the comic side of what he 

 painted, there was too much of the true gentle- 

 man in Ariosto's inmost soul to let him be a 

 stranger to high passions : hence that love of 

 fealty and courage which stores his pages with 

 at least one authentic and applicable lesson for 

 mankind, as long as such qualities shall be held 

 worthy of esteem. As to the heroes of his poem, 

 Ariosto was content to take names and attributes 

 from the Orlando Inamorato of count Boiardo ; 

 and, after his example, he went to Ttirpin's 

 chronicle and the French trouveres for the scene, 

 the age, and the prime materials of his plot. 

 The fecundity of his own invention is evinced 

 more by an accumulation of subordinate incidents, 

 imagined and worked up with the most brilliant 

 effect, than by any dramatic turn for diversifying 

 character ; and, though a French critic $ may be 

 right in tracing through this labyrinth one purpose 

 and one regular action, the majority of readers 

 will still delight to think that the very disorder 

 of the poem has a peculiar charm. Such is the 

 grace of Ariosto's negligence : such the bright- 

 ness of those pictures that he makes flit in 

 endless, frolicsome succession before our eyes : 

 such the incomparable felicity of his versification 

 and his diction ! Happy for us that he rejected 

 Bembo's pedantic advice to write in Latin ! 

 Happy for us, too, that he was one " foredoom 'd 

 a father's soul to cross " by declining the profits 

 of the legal profession ! And yet, so completely 

 does Ariosto wind into our affections, that, for 



A. D. 15131521. 



t A. D. 14741533. 



J M. Gingueue. 



