RISE AND PROGRESS 



over the more animated scenes of Guarini's * 

 Pastor Fido : and, as defects are easily copied, 

 the affectation which taints these otherwise ex- 

 quisite productions, became not the exception 

 but the rule with a crowd of bucolic dramatists, 

 male and female, who were roused to activity by 

 their success ; and whose writings, at the termi- 

 nation of the good age, already announced the 

 fall of Italian poetry in that which ensued. To 

 aid in precipitating that fall the services of the 

 sonneteers were not wanting. To little purpose 

 did the fiery Chiabrera,t in the most original of 

 his numerous effusions, restore the lineaments of 

 the classic ode, and clothe them sometimes with 

 Anacreontic vivacity, sometimes with the serious 

 energies of Pindar. This was but a transient 

 gleam, mocking the intellectual ruins of the 

 seventeenth century. For, coeval with Chia- 

 brera was MARINO,:): the arch corrupter of Italian 

 taste. What need is there to enumerate and 

 analyse his many kinds of composition ? In all, 

 made wanton by the very talents he undoubtedly 

 possessed, and stung by a lust of novelty, that 

 has frequently proved mischievous to literature he 

 strove to outshine his mighty predecessors by 

 substituting bombast for dignity, effeminacy for 

 tenderness, the play of Avords for genuine fancy. 

 To the disgrace of Italy, nay of Europe, Marino 

 had everywhere his imitators, and some who, like 

 himself, were for a season so famous, that in 

 more than one country it required a vigorous 

 exertion of recovered mental power to trample 

 their reputation in the dust. In Italy they were 

 adored and copied through the entire era of 

 the proverbially degenerate seicentisti. Only 

 towards the termination of that era are some 

 sparks of true feeling, of patriotic senti- 

 ment, again perceptible in the verses of the 

 Florentine Filicaia. Yet, amid the general 

 degradation of the seventeenth century, it would 

 be unfair not to distinguish the burlesque epic of 

 Tassoni ;|| a good specimen of that national 

 species of satire, which Berni ^| had made classi- 

 cal about a hundred years before him. 



Whether it were because most of the prose- 

 writers, being also poets, wavered between two 

 manners ; or because a painful imitation of the 

 ancients, in many instances, hampered them ; or 

 because there were in the example of Boccacio, 

 the great father of Italian prose, certain provo- 

 catives to a faulty exuberance of style, which the 

 opposite example of Macchiavelli could not cor- 

 rect ; there is no doubt that, with these illustrious 

 exceptions, the authors of this class in Italy fall 



A. D. 15371612. t A. D. 15521637. 1 A. D. 15691625. 

 { A. D. 16421707. II A. D. 15C5 1635. f A. D. 1431) 1S36. 



short of her highest poets. After the days of 

 Boccacio and Sacchetti, history became the field 

 of their triumphs. But he who indisputably ex- 

 celled the rest in historical composition, did not 

 confine himself to that province. The too famous 

 Prince of MACCHIAVELLI,* and his Reflections on 

 the First Decade of Livy, are as well known 

 as his Florentine Annals ; and, in the estimation 

 of some, the Reflections far surpass his other 

 works. We leave the political system of this 

 extraordinary individual to the loud reprobation 

 and the ingenious apologies which it has alter- 

 nately provoked ; admitting, however, all the 

 weight of the general sentiment that has identified 

 his name with principles of guile and cruelty. 

 No one will disparage his penetrating sagacity, 

 his profound knowledge of antiquity ; nor regret 

 anything in his clear and nervous style, except 

 too great a monotony in the structure of his 

 periods. GUICCIARDINI f has more variety and 

 harmony in this respect: yet he does not ap- 

 proach Macchiavelli in force and depth of 

 thought, or true manliness of expression. The 

 History of the Council of Trent, written with 

 much bold simplicity by Sarpi,$ and that of the 

 French civil wars by the acute and entertaining 

 DAVILA, illustrate Italian prose at an epoch 

 fatal to poetry : but, on the other hand, the 

 ambitious parade of Bentivoglio || makes it 

 manifest that no kind of composition was wholly 

 exempt from the besetting sins of the seventeenth 

 century. 



From the literature of Italy to that of SPAIN is 

 an easy transition. The progress of letters in the 

 Spanish peninsula was materially influenced by 

 Italian precedents at the most brilliant point of 

 the period which we are now considering. Not 

 but that the original genius of the Spaniards, and 

 their proud consciousness of national greatness, 

 had much to do with the maintenance and im- 

 provement of their literature, in the face of the 

 Inquisition itself. Released by the conquest of 

 Granada TJ from the presence of internal foes, 

 prosperous at home and powerful abroad, Spain 

 naturally rose to high mental dignity ; and with 

 all that she gathered from foreign contributions, 

 her writers kept much of their native vein, more 

 free than before of Orientalism, but still breathing 

 of their own romantic clime. A close connec- 

 tion, however, for more than one hundred years, 

 with Italy, familiarised the Spanish mind with 

 the eminent authors of that country, and with the 



* A. D. 14691527. t A. D. 14821540. 



J A. D. 15521623. A. D. 15761631. 



H A. D. 1640. Author of a history of the wars in the Nether 

 lands. T A. D. 1492. i 



