THE NINETEENTH CENTURY--MIDDLE PERIOD
Literature, as a rule, must ever be on the side of liberty, for one
conclusive reason among others--that liberty is the life of literature.
Hence every man of letters is instinctively a partisan of freedom; and
even should his political or religious opinions drive him to support
a tyranny by which these are protected, or should he be willing to
acquiesce in a despotism which maintains peace and encourages art, he
must yet disapprove of restraint upon his own productiveness, and this
inevitable concession implies all the rest. Poetry--and the remark may
in its measure be extended to every department of intellectual labour
implying creation or even construction--has been well said to represent
the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest minds, a virtue
and felicity to be understood as referring solely to the intellectual
sphere. That is, there is no activity so pleasurable as production, or,
by consequence, anything so intolerable as restraint.
The history of European literature for the half-century following the
fall of Napoleon is, therefore, in the main, that of a force enlisted
to contend with the Governments and the various sinister interests
which strove to ignore the Revolution and restore the state of
affairs which had existed in the eighteenth century. Many illustrious
authors, no doubt, especially in England, more or less favoured this
tendency, but their literary practice was commonly inconsistent with
their political principles. Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey,
Chateaubriand, might be reactionary as politicians, but in the literary
sphere they were innovators and iconoclasts. The study of their
writings could not but engender a habit of mind entirely inconsistent
with the deference to authority required for the perpetuation of the
ancient régime in State and Church. No man, for example, more sincerely
deplored the tendencies of his times than Niebuhr, but he should have
thought of them before he meddled with the history of Rome. By proving
its legendary character, he had done more to unsettle allegiance to
tradition than could have been accomplished by the wit and malice of a
hundred Heines. We are thus justified in regarding the literature of
the nineteenth century as in the main a great liberating force, and in
the long-run favourable to sound conservatism also, since it aimed at
procuring that liberty for the human spirit without which renovation
was as impossible as demolition.
If there was any country in Europe where literature might be expected
to be unequivocally on the side of Liberty, it was Italy; for Italy
alone had to reckon with foreign as well as domestic oppressors. In
fact, the general tendency of Italian literature during the period
under review is more uniformly liberal than that of any other; but
at the same time its expression is more restrained than that of any
other, for the conclusive reason that an Italian writer could only
obtain liberty of speech at the price of exile. Love of country is,
nevertheless, the dominant thought, which colours it throughout as the
soil colours the flower. The men of greatest genius and most prominent
association with the national movement have been treated of in previous
chapters, but the host of distinguished if less illustrious authors who
must be briefly reviewed in this, was not less animated with patriotic
feeling, and this pervading spirit imparts to the Italian literature of
the period unity and dignity, and entitles it to a higher place in the
general history of literature than could have been procured for it by
the mere ability of its representatives.
One apparent exception to this generally liberal and patriotic tendency
is not really an exception. The New Catholic reaction which was a
necessary consequence of the Revolution, whatever it may have been
among the priesthood and the less cultivated classes, was neither
illiberal nor unpatriotic among men of letters. Many of the most
eminent of these were fervent Catholics, and as such felt themselves in
a strait between the claims of religion and of country. As the head of
the Church, the Pope was entitled to the profoundest veneration, but
as temporal prince, he was as much supported by Austrian bayonets as
any of the rest. Could he be promoted from this undignified position to
that of spiritual King of Italy by the union of all Italian states into
a confederacy under his auspices? This project, if Utopian, was yet
natural, generous, and in no respect inconsistent with true patriotic
feeling. It broke down from the demonstration furnished by the course
of events of the incompatibility of Italian confederacy with Italian
unity, but, by the exertions of its opponents, no less than those of
its supporters, it left deep traces upon literature.
This idea was the especial property of Vincenzo Gioberti, already
mentioned among the men to whom Italian regeneration owes most.
Its very fallacy was a powerful aid to the popular cause, for it
conciliated many who would have shrunk from openly assailing the
Pope’s secular authority, while at the same time it was not so
obviously unsound as to be incapable of being maintained in good
faith until refuted by the course of events. Although, nevertheless,
Gioberti’s essay on Italy’s spiritual and intellectual primacy is
the most important of his works, it almost disappears in the mass of
the remainder, treating for the most part of religion, or of moral
or speculative philosophy. Among them was a violent attack on the
writings of the most eminent Italian philosopher of the age, ANTONIO
ROSMINI-SERBATI (1797-1855), who in turn accused Gioberti of pantheism.
The great purpose of Rosmini’s philosophy may be defined to be the
perfecting of St. Thomas Aquinas’s system by expelling the element
it had derived from Aristotle, which in Rosmini’s view led direct to
pantheism and materialism. He laboured hard at this object all his
life, but died before his work was done. It says much for his genius
that one so encumbered with childish ultramontane notions should have
won the acknowledged rank he holds among the first philosophical
thinkers. He is equally well known as the founder of a religious Order,
the constant antagonist of the Jesuits, and the author of the _Five
Wounds of the Church_, an appeal for reform whose honest frankness was
used by his enemies to deprive him of the cardinal’s hat that had been
promised him. His Order still flourishes, his system is still potent,
and his memory, honoured everywhere, is almost adored in his native
place, Roveredo in the Italian Tyrol.
Another philosopher influential on Italian thought was GIOVANNI
DOMENICO ROMAGNOSI (1761-1835), whose importance chiefly consists in
his application of philosophy to legal and political science, and his
clear prevision of the coming deliverance of Italy.
No Italian of his age, perhaps, was more thoroughly admirable in every
respect than TERENZIO MAMIANI (1799-1885), an approved patriot, a
wise statesman, a sound and sober thinker in religion and philosophy,
an elegant poet, and a man excellent in every relation of life. With
more angularity of character, he would, perhaps, have possessed
more creative force, and impressed himself more powerfully on the
imagination. The dignified eloquence of his meditative poetry, usually
in blank verse, and of his discourses, political or academical, is
often very impressive, but the form seems more remarkable than the
substance. Like most of the best Italians of his day, he spent his
youth in exile, his prime in office, and his old age in study and
composition. A good selection from his voluminous writings has been
published with a memoir by Giovanni Mestica, the editor of Petrarch.
A connecting link between the thinkers and the historians is formed
by GIUSEPPE FERRARI (1812-1872). A disciple of Romagnosi, he imported
abstract ideas into his survey of the revolutions of Italy since the
downfall of the Roman Empire--a very readable if not always a very
convincing book. Ferrari was also a distinguished publicist, and an
indefatigable pamphleteer in the cause of his country.
History has been extensively cultivated in Italy during the nineteenth
century; and although many histories were but popular compendiums, or
magnified party pamphlets, or mere _mémoires pour servir_, others have
gained for the writers honourable rank among first-class historians.
The most extensive in scale and imposing in subject are histories by
CARLO BOTTA (1766-1837) of the American War of Independence and of
Italy from 1789 to 1814. The former is the best history of the subject
out of the United States; the latter, though taxed with partiality,
is a great and invaluable work. His continuation of Guicciardini
is of less account. Botta’s style is severe and dignified; too
archaic in diction, and occasionally deficient in flexibility, but
he always writes with the consciousness of his mission which becomes
the historian. He was a determined enemy of the romantic school. A
Piedmontese by birth, he had been concerned in the disturbances of
the early revolutionary period, and had made several campaigns in the
capacity of an army surgeon. Become temporarily a Frenchman by the
annexation of Piedmont to France, he had held office under Napoleon,
whom he displeased by his frankness. After Napoleon’s fall he lived
chiefly in France. Though always a patriot as regarded the independence
of Italy, the melancholy deceptions of revolutionary times led him at
last to deem his countrymen only fit for an enlightened despotism.
A stancher liberal was PIETRO COLLETTA (1770-1831) and an even more
eminent historian. A Neapolitan officer of engineers, he served under
Murat, but was, nevertheless, maintained in his rank by the restored
Bourbons. He was Minister of War under the Constitutional Government of
1820, and after its overthrow was for some time imprisoned at Brunn in
Austria, where his health suffered greatly. Upon his release he settled
at Florence, and devoted himself to writing the history of Naples from
the accession of the Bourbon dynasty in 1734 up to 1825. He was wholly
inexperienced as an author, but succeeded in imparting classic form to
his work by dint of infinite labour and careful imitation of Tacitus,
for which the imperious brevity natural to him, intensified by the
habits of military life, admirably qualified him. His work is one of
the most marrowy and sinewy of histories, and is especially valuable
where he speaks as an eye-witness. It deals fully with financial and
economical as well as political and military affairs.
Another excellent historian has been almost lost to Italy by the
circumstances attending the publication of his book. GIOVANNI BATTISTA
TESTA, an exile in England, published in 1853 his history of the
Lombard League, at Doncaster, a place better affected to the horse
of Neptune than to the olive of Pallas, and, thus producing _invita
Minerva_, has been almost ignored. In fact, he is an admirable
historian, lucid and delightful in his narrative, and his style is
so fashioned upon the purest models, that he might seem to have come
straight out of the sixteenth century. This might be reprehended as
affectation, but the objection, if in any respect well founded, has
no application to the excellent English version (1877), a book which
cannot be too strongly recommended to historians desirous of acquiring
the pregnant brevity so essential in this age of multiplication of
books to all who would catch and retain the ear of posterity.
The friend and biographer of Manzoni, and imitator of his style in a
successful novel, _Margherita Pusterla_, CESARE CANTÙ was a long-lived
and industrious, and consequently a voluminous author. His position
is well marked as almost the only considerable writer of his time who
favoured political and ecclesiastical reaction, and the resulting
unpopularity has led him to be unjustly depreciated as a man of
letters; he is always interesting, always individual, and his principal
works, the _History of Italy from 1750 to 1850_ and his _History of
Italian Heretics_, though disfigured by party spirit, are important
books. The latter is still the standard authority on the subject,
though it will hardly be allowed to continue so.
An unique position among Italian historians is occupied by MICHELE
AMARI (1805-89), the Orientalist and national historian of Sicily.
Detesting the Neapolitan oppression of his native island, he look up
the investigation of the Sicilian Vespers, and depicted this great
event as not the consequence of a conspiracy subtly organised by
John of Procida, but as a spontaneous uprising against intolerable
oppression. The allusion did not escape the Neapolitan Government,
and Amari found it expedient to withdraw to Paris, where he studied
Arabic as a preparation for his yet more important _History of Sicily
under Moslem Dominion_, published between 1854 and 1872. In the
interim he had taken part in the Sicilian insurrection, and after the
final expulsion of the Bourbons, was successively Minister of Public
Instruction and professor of Arabic at Florence, continuing to write
and edit books on his favourite subjects. No historian has a higher
reputation for erudition and sagacity.
GIUSEPPE MICALI (1780-1844) devoted himself to a subject even more
difficult than Amari’s, and one incapable of an authoritative solution
of its numberless problems. His _Storia degli Antichi Popoli Italiani_
is nevertheless a highly important work, which exploded much error, if
it did not establish much truth.
A Neapolitan, CARLO TROYA (1784-1858) was to have written the History
of Italy in the Middle Ages from 476 to 1321, which by his method
of working might have required forty volumes, but he only arrived
at Charlemagne and only filled sixteen. The book is, as Settembrini
remarks, a thesaurus rather than a history, but cannot be opened
without encountering valuable information and judicious criticism.
Troya loved the Middle Age without idolising it; his liberal opinions,
much against his will, made the indefatigable bookworm a Minister under
one of the ephemeral Neapolitan constitutions, and there was sense as
well as wit in the reply of the restored Ferdinand when advised to
arrest him: “No! leave him in the Middle Ages!”
Three distinguished statesmen of the nineteenth century, Cesare Balbo,
Gino Capponi, and Luigi Carlo Farini, respectively wrote histories of
much worth; Balbo an abridged history of Italy, and Capponi one of the
Florentine republic, while Farini chronicled the transactions of the
States of the Church from 1814 to 1850. Farini’s is the most important
and authoritative of these works, as he has made the field entirely
his own. Balbo and Capponi, however, patricians and men of wealth, did
even more for historical studies by their encouragement and pecuniary
assistance than by their own writings. The great Ministers, Cavour,
Ricasoli, and Minghetti claim a place in literary history as orators
and pamphleteers.
For some reason difficult to understand, biography has not of late
flourished in Italy. No country is so much overrun with little
ephemeral memoirs of little ephemeral people, and there are many
extremely valuable studies of particular episodes in the lives of
celebrated men, of scientific rather than literary merit. The very
important works of Villari, Pasolini, and Solerti belong to a later
period than that now under review, which possesses only two biographies
of decided literary pretensions, both autobiographic.
So important was the public career of MASSIMO D’AZEGLIO (1798-1866),
a fervent patriot, but also a prudent statesman, for nobility of
character second to no contemporary, that his memoirs might have
been expected to have been very serious. On the contrary, they are
eminently lively and gay, in part, perhaps, from their terminating at
the beginning of 1846, before the author’s heaviest cares had come
upon him. GIUSEPPE MONTANELLI (1813-62), one of the triumvirs in the
inauspicious Tuscan revolution of 1849, though equally honest, was
entirely deficient in the ballast that steadied D’Azeglio. But his
very levity and inconstancy lend vivacity to his memoirs of the Tuscan
affairs of his time, and the paradoxes of his character, faithfully
depicted by himself, make a striking and memorable portrait. His style
is unequal, but excellent when at its best.
NICCOLÓ TOMMASEO, a Dalmatian (1802-74) forms a connecting link
between history and _belles-lettres_. With marvellous versatility he
essayed history, politics, moral and speculative philosophy, biography,
philology, criticism and poetry, distinguishing himself in all without
producing great or enduring work in any. His greatest distinction,
perhaps, was attained as an Italian grammarian and lexicographer; but
as a critic he wielded great authority, and powerfully contributed
to the development of literature. He was essentially the man of his
own times, and seemed to resume their various aspects in himself, a
sound Catholic and an ardent liberal; a classicist and a romanticist;
a conservative and an innovator; impetuous yet moderate in his aims;
frequently inconsistent with himself, yet ever controlled by an austere
sense of duty; a fine and even brilliant writer, who yet could achieve
no durable work. His account of his exile at Corfu, nevertheless,
deserves to live for its style, although the theme is insufficient.
Tommaseo was a man of marked character, disinterested, independent and
impracticable; rejecting the public honours which he had well earned
by his share in the defence of Venice, he spent his later years at
Florence, where, although totally blind, he worked indomitably to
the last. He should be endeared to England as the author of the fine
inscription placed upon the house of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The history of Italian poetry during the post-Napoleonic era,
after deducting the great names of Leopardi and Giusti, is in the
main the history of the romantic school. It has been remarked that
this school is not congenial to the Italian genius, and that its
temporary prevalence could only occur through the decay of the
classical tradition and the inevitable reaction from the excesses
of the Revolution. It was further prejudiced in Italian eyes by the
ecclesiastical colouring which it could not help assuming. Most of
the literary youth of Italy, though they might not be bad Catholics,
were still better patriots, and although their compositions might be
influenced by Scott and Goethe, were utterly averse to the mediæval
development which the romantic idea was receiving in France and
Germany. This was particularly the case with the first poet of eminence
who imbibed romantic feeling from Manzoni and broke entirely with the
already attenuated classicism of Monti and Foscolo. GIOVANNI BERCHET
(1783-1851), although of French descent, was a devoted Italian patriot,
whose first works of importance were published in London, where he had
been obliged to seek refuge. He began by denouncing the conduct of
the English Government towards the people of Parga, and followed this
up by a succession of stirring ballads, mostly of patriotic tendency,
and a longer poem, _Fantasie_, a vision of the past glories of the
Lombard League. In style these poems resemble the romantic poetry of
Germany and England, without a vestige of classical influence, but
also with no trace of the worship of the past, except as an example to
the present, or anything of the mystic spirit of genuine romanticism.
Well timed as they were, their effect was extraordinary; but whether
antique or contemporary in subject, they were essentially poems of the
day, and such poetry cannot continue to be read unless it attains the
level of Manzoni’s ode on the death of Napoleon and Tennyson’s on the
death of Wellington. This Berchet knew. “My aim was not,” he said on
one occasion, “to write a fine poem, but to perform a fine action.”
His style is consequently defective; his poetry was not written to
be criticised, but to inspire and inflame, and fully answered its
purpose. “He has found,” says Settembrini, “all the maledictions that
can possibly be hurled against the foreigner.” Upon Charles Albert’s
conversion to the national cause, Berchet returned to Italy, and died a
member of the Sardinian Parliament, universally honoured and beloved,
nor will his countrymen forget him.
“Accursed,” adds Settembrini, “be the Italian who forgets GABRIELE
ROSSETTI.” Rossetti (1785-1854) assuredly will not be forgotten by
England, for which he has done what no other inhabitant of these isles
ever did in begetting two great poets. His claims to the gratitude of
his countrymen are of quite another sort, resting chiefly upon the
spirit and fluency of his political poems, which helped to keep the
flame of patriotism alive at home, while the exiled author was teaching
Italian at King’s College. His life is well known as an appendage
to the biography of his more celebrated son. It is one of the most
interesting speculations imaginable what kind of poetry Dante Gabriel
Rossetti would have written if he had been born and brought up in
Italy; certain it is that no prefigurement of his singular alliance
of purity and transparency of feeling with intricacy of thought
and opulence of illustration, or of his objectivity and marvellous
pictorial gift, is to be found in his father’s simple, natural, rather
overfluent verse. The elder Rossetti may, nevertheless, be ranked among
the poets of the romantic school; and a similar place belongs to the
amiable Luigi Carrer (1801-53) on account of his ballads, the most
successful of his works. Francesco dall’ Ongaro, a good lyric poet in
other departments, applied the popular _stornello_ to the purposes of
patriotic poetry with eminent success.
Two poets of more importance enjoyed for a time great renown,
but their reputation, without becoming extinct, has considerably
declined. GIOVANNI PRATI (1815-54), a native of the Italian Tyrol,
gained great reputation in 1841 by a narrative poem in blank verse,
_Edmenegarda_, founded upon a tragic event in the family of the great
Venetian patriot Daniele Manin. It is a poor apology for adultery, but
in sentimentality, though not in morality, belongs to the school of
Lamartine, whose _Jocelyn_ was then at the meridian of its celebrity.
In consequence, notwithstanding much real poetical merit, it bears
that fatal impress of the boudoir which disfigures so much of the best
pictorial as well as poetical work of the time. Its success encouraged
Prati to produce several volumes of lyrics, spirited, melodious, but
too fluent. His facility, like Monti’s, approached the faculty of
improvisation, but Monti’s tawny torrent has shrunk in Prati into a
silver rill, equally swift but by no means equally majestic. He is
nevertheless a poet, and in a particular manner the poet of the brief
interval of hope and joy which accompanied the uprising of 1848. The
national feeling of the time remains embodied in these verses, the most
permanently valuable of his writings; for the more imaginative and
ambitious productions of his later years, such as _Satana e le Grazie_
or _Armando_, though interesting, belong to the fundamentally unsound
_genre_ of adaptation from _Faust_.
Another poet once in the enjoyment of a popularity which he has failed
to retain is ALEARDO ALEARDI (1812-78). He has too much elegance and
feeling to be forgotten, but wants force; his general attitude seems
not inaccurately indicated in his own description of his heroine
Arnalda da Roca as she appeared in the act of blowing up a shipload of
Turks:
“Placidamente _fulminò la palla_.”
The expression is rarely at the height of the sentiment to be
expressed. If this can be overlooked, the reader who does not wish his
emotions to run away with him may find much to admire in the languid
grace of the poems, generally descriptive, didactic or idyllic, which
form the most important part of Aleardi’s work. It is rather a reproach
than an honour to his patriotic lyrics that their strong point should
be not eloquence but description, which is always excellent.
The reputation of the good priest and good patriot, GIACOMO ZANELLA
(1820-89), has, on the contrary, gone on increasing, and with justice,
for his verse is usually at the level of his thought, and his thought,
if more frequently graceful than striking, sometimes attains a
commanding elevation, as in his odes to Dante and on the opening of
the Suez Canal. His _Psyche_ and _Egoism and Charity_ are clearly and
exquisitely cut as Greek gems. Zanella’s speciality, however, is his
effort to ally science with poetry, and though he cannot always prevail
upon them to shake hands, one of his lyrics of this character, _The
Vigil_, a meditation upon Evolution from a theologian’s point of view,
is perhaps his masterpiece. Another very striking poem is the colloquy
between Milton and Galileo, in which Galileo’s dread of the sceptical
tendency of the science to which he has imparted such an impulse is
represented as determining Milton “to justify the ways of God to man.”
Zanella, a native of the Vicenzan district, was a gentle, tender,
melancholy man, not unlike Cowper, and his reason, under the stress of
domestic affliction, at one time seemed in danger of suffering the same
eclipse. Recovering, he forsook the career of college professor for a
cottage near Vicenza, where:
_Dopo sparsi al vento
Tanti sogni superbi e tanto foco
Di poesia dagl’ anni inerti spento,
Voluntario romito in questo loco,
Tra pochi arbori e fior vivo contento._
This retirement, nevertheless, produced some of Zanella’s most
delicate poetry, comprised in his dainty little volume _Astichello ed
altre Poesie_, not yet included in his works. One of the most beautiful
of his poems, _The Redbreast_ (_Il Pettirostro_), marvellously
resembles the idylls of Coleridge, with whose works Zanella betrays his
acquaintance. Charming, also, are the sonnets celebrating the various
aspects of the local river, the little Astichello, such as this upon
the sympathy between man and Nature in time of drought, a “pathetic
fallacy,” perhaps, but none the worse for that:--
_Shrunk to a thread, the dwindling waters stray
Where Astichello 'neath the poplar flows
With languid tide that scarce avails to sway
The moss that nigh the midmost channel grows._
_Sirius the while, ablaze with fiery ray,
Above the unsheltered meadow throbs and glows;
And all the blithe fecundity of May
One withering waste of dismal yellow shows._
_The peasant groans despair, and shakes his head;
The friendly stream, munificent no more,
Barred from the brink it lately overran,
Like rustic met with rustic to deplore
The common ill, wails feebly from its bed,
Mingling its music with the plaint of man._
Zanella might have applied to himself the proud humility of Musset,
_Mon verre n’est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon verre_. His modest
strain was independent of traditional or contemporary influence.
The other poets of the time are more historically significant as
representing the decadence of the romantic school. A new development
was urgently required to make good its exhausted vitality. The problem
was solved much in the same way as that of the renovation of the
operatic stage, left void by the once brilliant but now moribund school
of Rossini, save that in that instance the evening star of the old
dispensation was also the morning star of the new. No such Janus-Verdi
arose upon poetry, but the man for the occasion was found in the
principal figure of our next chapter, Giosuè Carducci.
The drama of the period has only one eminent representative, PIETRO
COSSA (1830-80), and his works, strictly speaking, fall somewhat
later. Cossa, though fine both in versification and rhetoric, is
essentially more of a playwright than of a poet, but half redeems his
deficiencies by a quality not too common on the tragic stage of our
day, masculine strength. Almost every scene is powerful, the action
rarely halts or lingers, there is never any room for doubt as to the
author’s intention, and the language is energetic without bombast.
Cossa’s shortcomings are mainly in the higher region of art. He has
little creative power, and although he is occasionally felicitous in
the invention of a minor character, he rarely ventures to travel beyond
the record in the delineation of the historical personages who form the
most important portion of his dramatic flock. There is no penetration,
no subtlety, nothing to manifest endowment with any insight beyond
the ordinary. As conventional representations, however, Cossa’s
characters are brilliant, and he may even be accused of excess in the
accumulation of historical traits, as though he could not bear to part
with an anecdote. _Nero_, _Messalina_, _Cola di Rienzo_, _The Borgias_,
_Cleopatra_, _Julian the Apostate_ are among the most remarkable of his
numerous historical tragedies; if not great plays or dramatic poems,
they are, at all events, very splendid historical masquerades. There
is more originality in his one comedy, _Plautus and his Age_, a lively
picture of Roman society in Plautus’s time.
The period immediately preceding the establishment of Italian unity
brought forth many novels, mostly of the Manzonian school. The most
important of these have been already mentioned. FRANCESCO DOMENICO
GUERAZZI (1804-73), of infelicitous memory as a politician, had
sufficient force as an historical novelist to deviate from the
Manzonian model, and to obtain for a while an European reputation with
his _Battle of Benevento_, _Siege of Florence_, and _Pasquale Paoli_.
He was a man of powerful but unregulated character, and the inequality
extends to his writings; his diction is extolled, his style condemned.
Italian fiction had a serious loss in Ippolito Nievo, drowned on his
return from Garibaldi’s expedition to Sicily. “Perhaps,” says Vernon
Lee, “no better picture could be given of Italy in the last years of
the eighteenth century than that contained in Nievo’s _Confessioni di
un Ottuagenario_.”
The literary period which we have been traversing in the last two
chapters may be approximately described as that extending from the
fall of Napoleon the First (1814) to the intervention of Napoleon the
Third in Italian politics (1859). It saw the later works of Monti
and Foscolo, all the chief productions of Manzoni, and everything
of Leopardi’s. Apart from these, it produced no great genius, but a
number of highly distinguished writers who did honour to their own
literature without producing any marked effect upon the literatures of
foreign nations. The main reason of this circumscription of Italian
influence was the legitimate preoccupation of Italy with her own
affairs. The main aspiration of every Italian breast was the expulsion
of the foreigner and the constitution of the national unity, whether
as monarchy, federation, or republic. This common thought gave a
noble unity to the authorship of the period, but could not materially
affect contemporary literatures, although Mazzini’s English writings,
Mr. Gladstone’s Neapolitan pamphlets, Sydney Dobell’s _Roman_, Mrs.
Browning’s _Casa Guidi Windows_ and _Poems before Congress_, and divers
poems of Robert Browning, and Algernon Swinburne, and Dante Rossetti,
show that England was not uninfluenced by it. In the next generation,
Italian letters, though, except for the poets Carducci and D’Annunzio,
rather retrograding than advancing in merit, became more influential by
becoming more cosmopolitan.