of the silly, simpering compliments repeated at introductions, let me
assure you that you are the only man in Florence with whom I would
willingly exchange a salutation.
_Salomon._ I must think myself highly flattered, Signor Conte, having
always heard that you are not only the greatest democrat, but also the
greatest aristocrat, in Europe.
_Alfieri._ These two things, however opposite, which your smile would
indicate, are not so irreconcilable as you imagine. Let us first
understand the words, and then talk about them. The democrat is he who
wishes the people to have a due share in the government, and this
share if you please shall be the principal one. The aristocrat of our
days is contented with no actual share in it; but if a man of family
is conscious of his dignity, and resentful that another has invaded
it, he may be, and is universally, called an aristocrat. The principal
difference is, that one carries outward what the other carries inward.
I am thought an aristocrat by the Florentines for conversing with few
people, and for changing my shirt and shaving my beard on other days
than festivals; which the most aristocratical of them never do,
considering it, no doubt, as an excess. I am, however, from my soul a
republican, if prudence and modesty will authorize any man to call
himself so; and this, I trust, I have demonstrated in the most
valuable of my works, the _Treatise on Tyranny_ and the _Dialogue_
with my friends at Siena. The aristocratical part of me, if part of me
it must be called, hangs loose and keeps off insects. I see no
aristocracy in the children of sharpers from behind the counter, nor,
placing the matter in the most favourable point of view, in the
descendants of free citizens who accepted from any vile
enslaver--French, Spanish, German, or priest, or monk (represented
with a piece of buffoonery, like a beehive on his head and a picklock
key at his girdle)--the titles of counts and marquises. In Piedmont
the matter is different: we must either have been the rabble or the
lords; we were military, and we retain over the populace the same rank
and spirit as our ancestors held over the soldiery.
_Salomon._ Signor Conte, I have heard of levellers, but I have never
seen one: all are disposed to level down, but nobody to level up. As
for nobility, there is none in Europe beside the Venetian. Nobility
must be self-constituted and independent: the free alone are noble;
slavery, like death, levels all. The English come nearest to the
Venetian: they are independent, but want the main characteristic, the
_self-constituted_. You have been in England, Signor Conte, and can
judge of them better than I can.
* * * * *
_Alfieri._ It is among those who stand between the peerage and the
people that there exists a greater mass of virtue and of wisdom than
in the rest of Europe. Much of their dignified simplicity may be
attributed to the plainness of their religion, and, what will always
be imitated, to the decorous life of their king: for whatever may be
the defects of either, if we compare them with others round us, they
are excellent.
_Salomon._ A young religion jumps upon the shoulders of an older one,
and soon becomes like her, by mockery of her tricks, her cant, and her
decrepitude. Meanwhile the old one shakes with indignation, and swears
there is neither relationship nor likeness. Was there ever a religion
in the world that was not the true religion, or was there ever a king
that was not the best of kings?
_Alfieri._ In the latter case we must have arrived nigh perfection;
since it is evident from the authority of the gravest men--theologians,
presidents, judges, corporations, universities, senates--that every
prince is better than his father, 'of blessed memory, now with God'. If
they continue to rise thus transcendently, earth in a little time will
be incapable of holding them, and higher heavens must be raised upon
the highest heavens for their reception. The lumber of our Italian
courts, the most crazy part of which is that which rests upon a red
cushion in a gilt chair, with stars and sheep and crosses dangling from
it, must be approached as Artaxerxes and Domitian. These automatons, we
are told nevertheless, are very condescending. Poor fools who tell us
it! ignorant that where on one side is condescension, on the other side
must be baseness. The rascals have ruined my physiognomy. I wear an
habitual sneer upon my face, God confound them for it! even when I
whisper a word of love in the prone ear of my donna.
_Salomon._ This temper or constitution of mind I am afraid may do
injury to your works.
_Alfieri._ Surely not to all: my satire at least must be the better
for it.
_Salomon._ I think differently. No satire can be excellent where
displeasure is expressed with acrimony and vehemence. When satire
ceases to smile, it should be momentarily, and for the purpose of
inculcating a moral. Juvenal is hardly more a satirist than Lucan: he
is indeed a vigorous and bold declaimer, but he stamps too often, and
splashes up too much filth. We Italians have no delicacy in wit: we
have indeed no conception of it; we fancy we must be weak if we are
not offensive. The scream of Pulcinello is imitated more easily than
the masterly strokes of Plautus, or the sly insinuations of Catullus
and of Flaccus.
_Alfieri._ We are the least witty of men because we are the most
trifling.
_Salomon._ You would persuade me then that to be witty one must be
grave: this is surely a contradiction.
_Alfieri._ I would persuade you only that banter, pun, and quibble are
the properties of light men and shallow capacities; that genuine
humour and true wit require a sound and capacious mind, which is
always a grave one. Contemptuousness is not incompatible with them:
worthless is that man who feels no contempt for the worthless, and
weak who treats their emptiness as a thing of weight. At first it may
seem a paradox, but it is perfectly true, that the gravest nations
have been the wittiest; and in those nations some of the gravest men.
In England, Swift and Addison; in Spain, Cervantes. Rabelais and La
Fontaine are recorded by their countrymen to have been _rêveurs_. Few
men have been graver than Pascal; few have been wittier.
* * * * *
That Shakespeare was gay and pleasurable in conversation I can easily
admit; for there never was a mind at once so plastic and so pliant:
but without much gravity, could there have been that potency and
comprehensiveness of thought, that depth of feeling, that creation of
imperishable ideas, that sojourn in the souls of other men? He was
amused in his workshop: such was society. But when he left it, he
meditated intensely upon those limbs and muscles on which he was about
to bestow new action, grace, and majesty; and so great an intensity of
meditation must have strongly impressed his whole character.
* * * * *
_Salomon._ Certainly no race of men upon earth ever was so unwarlike,
so indifferent to national dignity and to personal honour, as the
Florentines are now: yet in former days a certain pride, arising from
a resemblance in their government to that of Athens, excited a
vivifying desire of approximation where no danger or loss accompanied
it; and Genius was no less confident of his security than of his
power. Look from the window. That cottage on the declivity was
Dante's: that square and large mansion, with a circular garden before
it elevated artificially, was the first scene of Boccaccio's
_Decameron_. A boy might stand at an equal distance between them, and
break the windows of each with his sling. What idle fabricators of
crazy systems will tell me that climate is the creator of genius? The
climate of Austria is more regular and more temperate than ours, which
I am inclined to believe is the most variable in the whole universe,
subject, as you have perceived, to heavy fogs for two months in
winter, and to a stifling heat, concentrated within the hills, for
five more. Yet a single man of genius hath never appeared in the whole
extent of Austria, an extent of several thousand times greater than
our city; and this very street has given birth to fifty.
_Alfieri._ Since the destruction of the republic, Florence has
produced only one great man, Galileo, and abandoned him to every
indignity that fanaticism and despotism could invent. Extraordinary
men, like the stones that are formed in the higher regions of the air,
fall upon the earth only to be broken and cast into the furnace. The
precursor of Newton lived in the deserts of the moral world, drank
water, and ate locusts and wild honey. It was fortunate that his head
also was not lopped off: had a singer asked it, instead of a dancer,
it would have been.
_Salomon._ In fact it was; for the fruits of it were shaken down and
thrown away: he was forbidden to publish the most important of his
discoveries, and the better part of his manuscripts was burned after
his death.
_Alfieri._ Yes, Signor Salomon, those things may rather be called our
heads than this knob above the shoulder, of which (as matters stand)
we are rather the porters than the proprietors, and which is really
the joint concern of barber and dentist.
_Salomon._ Our thoughts, if they may not rest at home, may wander
freely. Delighting in the remoter glories of my native city, I forget
at times its humiliation and ignominy. A town so little that the voice
of a cabbage-girl in the midst of it may be heard at the extremities,
reared within three centuries a greater number of citizens illustrious
for their genius than all the remainder of the Continent (excepting
her sister Athens) in six thousand years. My ignorance of the Greek
forbids me to compare our Dante with Homer. The propriety and force of
language and the harmony of verse in the glorious Grecian are quite
lost to me. Dante had not only to compose a poem, but in great part a
language. Fantastical as the plan of his poem is, and, I will add,
uninteresting and uninviting; unimportant, mean, contemptible, as are
nine-tenths of his characters and his details, and wearisome as is the
scheme of his versification--there are more thoughts highly poetical,
there is more reflection, and the nobler properties of mind and
intellect are brought into more intense action, not only than in the
whole course of French poetry, but also in the whole of continental;
nor do I think (I must here also speak with hesitation) that any one
drama of Shakespeare contains so many. Smile as you will, Signor
Conte, what must I think of a city where Michel Angelo, Frate
Bartolomeo, Ghiberti (who formed them), Guicciardini, and Machiavelli
were secondary men? And certainly such were they, if we compare them
with Galileo and Boccaccio and Dante.
_Alfieri._ I smiled from pure delight, which I rarely do; for I take
an interest deep and vital in such men, and in those who appreciate
them rightly and praise them unreservedly. These are my
fellow-citizens: I acknowledge no other; we are of the same tribe, of
the same household; I bow to them as being older than myself, and I
love them as being better.
_Salomon._ Let us hope that our Italy is not yet effete. Filangieri
died but lately: what think you of him?
_Alfieri._ If it were possible that I could ever see his statue in a
square at Constantinople, though I should be scourged for an idolater,
I would kiss the pedestal. As this, however, is less likely than that
I should suffer for writing satirically, and as criticism is less
likely to mislead me than speculation, I will revert to our former
subject.
Indignation and contempt may be expressed in other poems than such as
are usually called satires. Filicaia, in his celebrated address to
Italy, steers a middle course.
* * * * *
A perfect piece of criticism must exhibit _where_ a work is good or
bad; _why_ it is good or bad; in what degree it is good or bad; must
also demonstrate in what manner, and to what extent, the same ideas or
reflections have come to others, and, if they be clothed in poetry,
why by an apparently slight variation, what in one author is
mediocrity, in another is excellence. I have never seen a critic of
Florence, or Pisa, or Milan, or Bologna, who did not commend and
admire the sonnet of Cassiani on the rape of Proserpine, without a
suspicion of its manifold and grave defects.
* * * * *
Does not this describe the devils of our carnival, rather than the
majestic brother of Jupiter, at whose side upon asphodel and amaranth
the sweet Persephone sits pensively contented, in that deep motionless
quiet which mortals pity and which the gods enjoy; rather than him
who, under the umbrage of Elysium, gazes at once upon all the beauties
that on earth were separated--Helena and Eriphyle, Polyxena and
Hermione, Deidamia and Deianira, Leda and Omphale, Atalanta and
Cydippe, Laodamia, with her arm round the neck of a fond youth whom
she still seems afraid of losing, and, apart, the daughters of Niobe
clinging to their parent?
_Salomon._ These images are better than satires; but continue, in
preference to other thoughts or pursuits, the noble career you have
entered. Be contented, Signor Conte, with the glory of our first great
dramatist, and neglect altogether any inferior one. Why vex and
torment yourself about the French? They buzz and are troublesome while
they are swarming; but the master will soon hive them. Is the whole
nation worth the worst of your tragedies? All the present race of
them, all the creatures in the world which excite your indignation,
will lie in the grave, while young and old are clapping their hands or
beating their bosoms at your _Bruto Primo_. Consider also that kings
and emperors should in your estimation be but as grasshoppers and
beetles: let them consume a few blades of your clover without
molesting them, without bringing them to crawl on you and claw you.
The difference between them and men of genius is almost as great as
between men of genius and those higher intelligences who act in
immediate subordination to the Almighty. Yes, I assert it, without
flattery and without fear, the angels are not higher above mortals
than you are above the proudest that trample on them.
_Alfieri._ I believe, sir, you were the first in commending my
tragedies.
_Salomon._ He who first praises a good book becomingly is next in
merit to the author.
_Alfieri._ As a writer and as a man I know my station: if I found in
the world five equal to myself, I would walk out of it, not to be
jostled.
I must now, Signor Salomon, take my leave of you; for his Eminence my
coachman and their Excellencies my horses are waiting.
ROUSSEAU AND MALESHERBES
_Rousseau._ I am ashamed, sir, of my countrymen: let my humiliation
expiate their offence. I wish it had not been a minister of the Gospel
who received you with such inhospitality.
_Malesherbes._ Nothing can be more ardent and more cordial than the
expressions with which you greet me, M. Rousseau, on my return from
your lakes and mountains.
_Rousseau._ If the pastor took you for a courtier, I reverence him for
his contemptuousness.
_Malesherbes._ Why so? Indeed you are in the wrong, my friend. No
person has a right to treat another with contemptuousness unless he
knows him to deserve it. When a courtier enters the house of a pastor
in preference to the next, the pastor should partake in the sentiment
that induced him, or at least not to be offended to be preferred. A
courtier is such at court: in the house of a clergyman he is not a
courtier, but a guest. If to be a courtier is offensive, remember that
we punish offences where they are committed, where they can be
examined, where pleadings can be heard for and against the accused,
and where nothing is admitted extraneous from the indictment,
excepting what may be adduced in his behalf by witnesses to the
general tenor of his character.
_Rousseau._ Is it really true that the man told you to mount the
hayloft if you wished a night's lodging?
_Malesherbes._ He did: a certain proof that he no more took me to be a
courtier than I took him to be. I accepted his offer, and never slept
so soundly. Moderate fatigue, the Alpine air, the blaze of a good fire
(for I was admitted to it some moments), and a profusion of
odoriferous hay, below which a cow was sleeping, subdued my senses,
and protracted my slumbers beyond the usual hour.
_Rousseau._ You have no right, sir, to be the patron and remunerator
of inhospitality. Three or four such men as you would corrupt all
Switzerland, and prepare it for the fangs of France and Austria.
Kings, like hyenas, will always fall upon dead carcasses, although
their bellies are full, and although they are conscious that in the
end they will tear one another to pieces over them. Why should you
prepare their prey? Were your fire and effulgence given you for this?
Why, in short, did you thank this churl? Why did you recommend him to
his superiors for preferment on the next vacancy?
_Malesherbes._ I must adopt your opinion of his behaviour in order to
answer you satisfactorily. You suppose him inhospitable: what milder
or more effectual mode of reproving him, than to make every dish at
his table admonish him? If he did evil, have I no authority before me
which commands me to render him good for it? Believe me, M. Rousseau,
the execution of this command is always accompanied by the heart's
applause, and opportunities of obedience are more frequent here than
anywhere. Would not you exchange resentment for the contrary feeling,
even if religion or duty said nothing about the matter? I am afraid
the most philosophical of us are sometimes a little perverse, and will
not be so happy as they might be, because the path is pointed out to
them, and because he who points it out is wise and powerful. Obstinacy
and jealousy, the worst parts of childhood and of manhood, have range
enough for their ill humours without the heavens.
_Rousseau._ Sir, I perceive you are among my enemies. I did not think
it; for, whatever may be my faults, I am totally free from suspicion.
_Malesherbes._ And do not think it now, I entreat you, my good friend.
_Rousseau._ Courts and society have corrupted the best heart in
France, and have perverted the best intellect.
_Malesherbes._ They have done much evil then.
_Rousseau._ Answer me, and your own conscience: how could you choose
to live among the perfidies of Paris and Versailles?
_Malesherbes._ Lawyers, and advocates in particular, must live there;
philosophers need not. If every honest man thought it requisite to
leave those cities, would the inhabitants be the better?
_Rousseau._ You have entered into intimacies with the members of
various administrations, opposite in plans and sentiments, but alike
hostile to you, and all of whom, if they could have kept your talents
down, would have done it. Finding the thing impossible, they ceased to
persecute, and would gladly tempt you under the semblance of
friendship and esteem to supplicate for some office, that they might
indicate to the world your unworthiness by refusing you: a proof, as
you know, quite sufficient and self-evident.
_Malesherbes._ They will never tempt me to supplicate for anything but
justice, and that in behalf of others. I know nothing of parties. If I
am acquainted with two persons of opposite sides in politics, I
consider them as you consider a watchmaker and a cabinet-maker: one
desires to rise by one way, the other by another. Administrations and
systems of government would be quite indifferent to those very
functionaries and their opponents, who appear the most zealous
partisans, if their fortunes and consequence were not affixed to them.
Several of these men seem consistent, and indeed are; the reason is,
versatility would loosen and detach from them the public esteem and
confidence----
_Rousseau._ By which their girandoles are lighted, their dinners
served, their lackeys liveried, and their opera-girls vie in
benefit-nights. There is no State in Europe where the least wise have
not governed the most wise. We find the light and foolish keeping up
with the machinery of government easily and leisurely, just as we see
butterflies keep up with carriages at full speed. This is owing in
both cases to their levity and their position: the stronger and the
more active are left behind. I am resolved to prove that
farmers-general are the main causes of the defects in our music.
_Malesherbes._ Prove it, or anything else, provided that the
discussion does not irritate and torment you.
_Rousseau._ Truth is the object of philosophy.
_Malesherbes._ Not of philosophers: the display of ingenuity, for the
most part, is and always has been it. I must here offer you an opinion
of my own, which, if you think well of me, you will pardon, though you
should disbelieve its solidity. My opinion then is, that truth is not
reasonably the main and ultimate object of philosophy; but that
philosophy should seek truth merely as the means of acquiring and of
propagating happiness. Truths are simple; wisdom, which is formed by
their apposition and application, is concrete: out of this, in its
vast varieties, open to our wants and wishes, comes happiness. But the
knowledge of all the truths ever yet discovered does not lead
immediately to it, nor indeed will ever reach it, unless you make the
more important of them bear upon your heart and intellect, and form,
as it were, the blood that moves and nurtures them.
_Rousseau._ I never until now entertained a doubt that truth is the
ultimate aim and object of philosophy: no writer has denied it, I
think.
_Malesherbes._ Designedly none may: but when it is agreed that
happiness is the chief good, it must also be agreed that the chief
wisdom will pursue it; and I have already said, what your own
experience cannot but have pointed out to you, that no truth, or
series of truths, hypothetically, can communicate or attain it. Come,
M. Rousseau, tell me candidly, do you derive no pleasure from a sense
of superiority in genius and independence?
_Rousseau._ The highest, sir, from a consciousness of independence.
_Malesherbes._ _Ingenuous_ is the epithet we affix to modesty, but
modesty often makes men act otherwise than ingenuously: you, for
example, now. You are angry at the servility of people, and disgusted
at their obtuseness and indifference, on matters of most import to
their welfare. If they were equal to you, this anger would cease; but
the fire would break out somewhere else, on ground which appears at
present sound and level. Voltaire, for instance, is less eloquent than
you: but Voltaire is wittier than any man living. This quality----
_Rousseau._ Is the quality of a buffoon and a courtier. But the
buffoon should have most of it, to support his higher dignity.
_Malesherbes._ Voltaire's is Attic.
_Rousseau_. If malignity is Attic. Petulance is not wit, although a
few grains of wit may be found in petulance: quartz is not gold,
although a few grains of gold may be found in quartz. Voltaire is a
monkey in mischief, and a spaniel in obsequiousness. He declaims
against the cruel and tyrannical; and he kisses the hands of
adulteresses who murder their husbands, and of robbers who decimate
their gang.
_Malesherbes._ I will not discuss with you the character of the man,
and only that part of the author's on which I spoke. There may be
malignity in wit, there cannot be violence. You may irritate and
disquiet with it; but it must be by means of a flower or a feather.
Wit and humour stand on one side, irony and sarcasm on the other.
_Rousseau._ They are in near neighbourhood.
_Malesherbes._ So are the Elysian fields and Tartarus.
_Rousseau._ Pray, go on: teach me to stand quiet in my stall, while my
masters and managers pass by.
_Malesherbes._ Well then--Pascal argues as closely and methodically;
Bossuet is as scientific in the structure of his sentences;
Demosthenes, many think, has equal fire, vigour, dexterity: equal
selection of topics and equal temperance in treating them,
immeasurably as he falls short of you in appeals to the sensibility,
and in everything which by way of excellence we usually call genius.
_Rousseau._ Sir, I see no resemblance between a pleader at the bar, or
a haranguer of the populace, and me.