The political purpose of literature in Italy had become conscious long
before Guerrazzi's time; but it was the motive of poetry long before
it became conscious. When Alfieri, for example, began to write, in the
last quarter of the eighteenth century, there was no reason to suppose
that the future of Italy was ever to differ very much from its past.
Italian civilization had long worn a fixed character, and Italian
literature had reflected its traits; it was soft, unambitious,
elegant, and trivial. At that time Piedmont had a king whom she loved,
but not that free constitution which she has since shared with
the whole peninsula. Lombardy had lapsed from Spanish to Austrian
despotism; the Republic of Venice still retained a feeble hold upon
her wide territories of the main-land, and had little trouble in
drugging any intellectual aspiration among her subjects with the
sensual pleasures of her capital. Tuscany was quiet under the
Lorrainese dukes who had succeeded the Medici; the little states of
Modena and Parma enjoyed each its little court and its little Bourbon
prince, apparently without a dream of liberty; the Holy Father ruled
over Bologna, Ferrara, Ancona, and all the great cities and towns of
the Romagna; and Naples was equally divided between the Bourbons and
the bandits. There seemed no reason, for anything that priests or
princes of that day could foresee, why this state of things should not
continue indefinitely; and it would be a long story to say just why it
did not continue. What every one knows is that the French revolution
took place, that armies of French democrats overran all these languid
lordships and drowsy despotisms, and awakened their subjects, more or
less willingly or unwillingly, to a sense of the rights of man, as
Frenchmen understood them, and to the approach of the nineteenth
century. The whole of Italy fell, directly or indirectly, under French
sway; the Piedmontese and Neapolitan kings were driven away, as were
the smaller princes of the other states; the Republic of Venice ceased
to be, and the Pope became very much less a prince, if not more a
priest, than he had been for a great many ages. In due time French
democracy passed into French imperialism, and then French imperialism
passed altogether away; and so after 1815 came the Holy Alliance with
its consecrated contrivances for fettering mankind. Lombardy, with
all Venetia, was given to Austria; the dukes of Parma, of Modena, and
Tuscany were brought back and propped up on their thrones again. The
Bourbons returned to Naples, and the Pope's temporal glory and power
were restored to him. This condition of affairs endured, with more
or less disturbance from the plots of the Carbonari and many other
ineffectual aspirants and conspirators, until 1848, when, as we know,
the Austrians were driven out, as well as the Pope and the various
princes small and great, except the King of Sardinia, who not only
gave a constitution to his people, but singularly kept the oath
he swore to support it. The Pope and the other princes, even the
Austrians, had given constitutions and sworn oaths, but their memories
were bad, and their repute for veracity was so poor that they were not
believed or trusted. The Italians had then the idea of freedom and
independence, but not of unity, and their enemies easily broke, one
at a time, the power of states which, even if bound together, could
hardly have resisted their attack. In a little while the Austrians
were once more in Milan and Venice, the dukes and grand-dukes in their
different places, the Pope in Rome, the Bourbons in Naples, and all
was as if nothing had been, or worse than nothing, except in Sardinia,
where the constitution was still maintained, and the foundations of
the present kingdom of Italy were laid. Carlo Alberto had abdicated on
that battle-field where an Austrian victory over the Sardinians sealed
the fate of the Italian states allied with him, and his son, Victor
Emmanuel, succeeded him. As to what took place ten years later, when
the Austrians were finally expelled from Lombardy, and the transitory
sovereigns of the duchies and of Naples flitted for good, and the
Pope's dominion was reduced to the meager size it kept till 1871, and
the Italian states were united under one constitutional king--I need
not speak.
In this way the governments of Italy had been four times wholly
changed, and each of these changes was attended by the most marked
variations in the intellectual life of the people; yet its general
tendency always continued the same.