Giuseppe Arnaud says that in his sacred poetry Manzoni gave the
Catholic dogmas the most moral explanation, in the most attractive
poetical language; and he suggests that Manzoni had a patriotic
purpose in them, or at least a sympathy with the effort of the
Romantic writers to give priests and princes assurance that patriotism
was religious, and thus win them to favor the Italian cause. It must
be confessed that such a temporal design as this would fatally affect
the devotional quality of the hymns, even if the poet's consciousness
did not; but I am not able to see any evidence of such sympathy in
the poems themselves. I detect there a perfectly sincere religious
feeling, and nothing of devotional rapture. The poet had, no doubt, a
satisfaction in bringing out the beauty and sublimity of his faith;
and, as a literary artist, he had a right to be proud of his work, for
its spirit is one of which the tuneful piety of Italy had long been
void. In truth, since David, king of Israel, left making psalms,
religious songs have been poorer than any other sort of songs; and
it is high praise of Manzoni's “Inni Sacri” to say that they are in
irreproachable taste, and unite in unaffected poetic appreciation
of the grandeur of Christianity as much reason as may coexist with
obedience.
The poetry of Manzoni is so small in quantity, that we must refer
chiefly to excellence of quality the influence and the fame it has won
him, though I do not deny that his success may have been partly owing
at first to the errors of the school which preceded him. It could
be easily shown, from literary history, that every great poet has
appeared at a moment fortunate for his renown, just as we might prove,
from natural science, that it is felicitous for the sun to get up
about day-break. Manzoni's art was very great, and he never gave
his thought defective expression, while the expression was always
secondary to the thought. For the self-respect, then, of an honest
man, which would not permit him to poetize insincerity and shape
the void, and for the great purpose he always cherished of making
literature an agent of civilization and Christianity, the Italians
are right to honor Manzoni. Arnaud thinks that the school he founded
lingered too long on the educative and religious ground he chose; and
Marc Monnier declares Manzoni to be the poet of resignation, thus
distinguishing him from the poets of revolution. The former critic is
the nearer right of the two, though neither is quite just, as it seems
to me; for I do not understand how any one can read the romance and
the dramas of Manzoni without finding him full of sympathy for all
Italy has suffered, and a patriot very far from resigned; and I think
political conditions--or the Austrians in Milan, to put it more
concretely--scarcely left to the choice of the Lombard school that
attitude of aggression which others assumed under a weaker, if not a
milder, despotism at Florence. The utmost allowed the Milanese poets
was the expression of a retrospective patriotism, which celebrated
the glories of Italy's past, which deplored her errors, and which
denounced her crimes, and thus contributed to keep the sense of
nationality alive. Under such governments as endured in Piedmont until
1848, in Lombardy until 1859, in Venetia until 1866, literature must
remain educative, or must cease to be. In the works, therefore, of
Manzoni and of nearly all his immediate followers, there is nothing
directly revolutionary except in Giovanni Berchet. The line between
them and the directly revolutionary poets is by no means to be traced
with exactness, however, in their literature, and in their lives they
were all alike patriotic.
Manzoni lived to see all his hopes fulfilled, and died two years after
the fall of the temporal power, in 1873. “Toward mid-day,” says a
Milanese journal at the time of his death, “he turned suddenly to
the household friends about him, and said: 'This man is
failing--sinking--call my confessor!'
“The confessor came, and he communed with him half an hour, speaking,
as usual, from a mind calm and clear. After the confessor left the
room, Manzoni called his friends and said to them: 'When I am dead,
do what I did every day: pray for Italy--pray for the king and his
family--so good to me!' His country was the last thought of this great
man dying as in his whole long life it had been his most vivid and
constant affection.”