In such a world Arcadia nourished; into such a world that illustrious
shepherd, Carlo Innocenze Frugoni, was born. He was the younger son of
a noble family of Genoa, and in youth was sent into a cloister as a
genteel means of existence rather than from regard to his own wishes
or fitness. He was, in fact, of a very gay and mundane temper, and
escaped from his monastery as soon as ever he could, and spent his
long life thereafter at the comfortable court of Parma, where he sang
with great constancy the fortunes of varying dynasties and celebrated
in his verse all the polite events of society. Of course, even a life
so pleasant as this had its little pains and mortifications; and it is
history that when, in 1731, the last duke of the Farnese family died,
leaving a widow, “Frugoni predicted and maintained in twenty-five
sonnets that she would yet give an heir to the duke; but in spite
of the twenty-five sonnets the affair turned out otherwise, and the
extinction of the house of Farnese was written.”
Frugoni, however, was taken into favor by the Spanish Bourbon who
succeeded, and after he had got himself unfrocked with infinite
difficulty (and only upon the intercession of divers princes and
prelates), he was as happy as any man of real talent could be who
devoted his gifts to the merest intellectual trifling. Not long before
his death he was addressed by one that wished to write his life.
He made answer that he had been a versifier and nothing more,
epigrammatically recounted the chief facts of his career, and ended by
saying, “of what I have written it is not worth while to speak”; and
posterity has upon the whole agreed with him, though, of course, no
edition of the Italian classics would be perfect without him. We know
this from the classics of our own tongue, which abound in marvels of
insipidity and emptiness.
But all this does not make him less interesting as a figure in that
amusing literarified society; and we may be glad to see him in Parma
with Signor Torelli's eyes, as he “issues smug, ornate, with his
well-fitting, polished shoe, his handsome leg in its neat stocking,
his whole immaculate person, and his demure visage, and, gently
sauntering from Casa Caprara, takes his way toward Casa Landi.”
I do not know Casa Landi; I have never seen it; and yet I think I can
tell you of it: a gloomy-fronted pile of Romanesque architecture, the
lower story remarkable for its weather-stained, vermiculated stone,
and the ornamental iron gratings at the windows. The _porte-cochère_
stands wide open and shows the leaf and blossom of a lovely garden
inside, with a tinkling fountain in the midst. The marble nymphs and
naiads inhabiting the shrubbery and the water are already somewhat
time-worn, and have here and there a touch of envious mildew; but as
yet their noses are unbroken, and they have all the legs and arms
that the sculptor designed them with; and the fountain, which after
disasters must choke, plays prettily enough over their nude
loveliness; for it is now the first half of the eighteenth century,
and Casa Landi is the uninvaded sanctuary of Illustrissimi and
Illustrissime. The resplendent porter who admits our melodious Abbate
Carlo, and the gay lackey who runs before his smiling face to open
the door of the _sala_ where the company is assembled, may have had
nothing to speak of for breakfast, but they are full of zeal for the
grandeur they serve, and would not know what the rights of man were if
you told them. They, too, have their idleness and their intrigues and
their life of pleasure; but, poor souls! they fade pitiably in the
magnificence of that noble assembly in the sala. What coats of silk
and waistcoats of satin, what trig rapiers and flowing wigs and laces
and ruffles; and, ah me! what hoops and brocades, what paint and
patches! Behind the chair of every lady stands her cavaliere servente,
or bows before her with a cup of chocolate, or, sweet abasement!
stoops to adjust the foot-stool better to her satin shoe. There is a
buzz of satirical expectation, no doubt, till the abbate arrives,
“and then, after the first compliments and obeisances,” says Signor
Torelli, “he throws his hat upon the great arm-chair, recounts
the chronicle of the gay world,” and prepares for the special
entertainment of the occasion.
“'What is there new on Parnassus?' he is probably asked.
“'Nothing', he replies, 'save the bleating of a lambkin lost upon the
lonely heights of the sacred hill.'
“'I'll wager,' cries one of the ladies, 'that the shepherd who has
lost this lambkin is our Abbate Carlo!'
“'And what can escape the penetrating eye of Aglauro Cidonia?' retorts
Frugoni, softly, with a modest air.
“'Let us hear its bleating!' cries the lady of the house.
“'Let us hear it!' echo her husband and her cavaliere servente.
“'Let us hear it!' cry one, two, three, a half-dozen, visitors.
“Frugoni reads his new production; ten exclamations receive the first
strophe; the second awakens twenty _evvivas_; and when the reading
is ended the noise of the plaudits is so great that they cannot be
counted. His new production has cost Frugoni half an hour's work; it
is possibly the answer to some Mecaenas who has invited him to his
country-seat, or the funeral eulogy of some well-known cat. Is fame
bought at so cheap a rate? He is a fool who would buy it dearer;
and with this reasoning, which certainly is not without foundation,
Frugoni remained Frugoni when he might have been something very much
better.... If a bird sang, or a cat sneezed, or a dinner was given, or
the talk turned upon anything no matter how remote from poetry, it
was still for Frugoni an invitation to some impromptu effusion. If he
pricked his finger in mending a pen, he called from on high the god of
Lemnos and all the ironworkers of Olympus, not excepting Mars, whom it
was not reasonable to disturb for so little, and launched innumerable
reproaches at them, since without their invention of arms a penknife
would never have been made. If the heavens cleared up after a long
rain, all the signs of the zodiac were laid under contribution and
charged to give an account of their performance. If somebody died, he
instantly poured forth rivers of tears in company with the nymphs of
Eridanus and the Heliades; he upraided Phaethon, Themis, the Shades of
Erebus, and the Parcae.... The Amaryllises, the Dryads, the Fauns, the
woolly lambs, the shepherds, the groves, the demigods, the Castalian
Virgins, the loose-haired nymphs, the leafy boughs, the goat-footed
gods, the Graces, the pastoral pipes, and all the other sylvan rubbish
were the prime materials of every poetic composition.”