WRITERS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
In striking contrast to the Fourteenth Century, the Fifteenth is
conspicuous for a great dearth of eminent authors. The same may be
noticed in the literary development of England. After the brilliant
apparition of Chaucer, more than a hundred years elapsed before an
eminent writer arose. This may be partly accounted for by the Civil
Wars which devastated the island and brought misery and anarchy in
their train. Widely different was the plight of Italy. There were wars
and disturbances, it is true, but the wealth of the country became more
enormous than ever, and great princes extended munificent patronage to
science and learning. But all intellectual energies were directed, not
to the cultivation of the Italian language, but to the study of the
writers of antiquity. Greek and Latin were alone held in estimation,
the vulgar tongue was contemptuously neglected.
The only eminent prose writer was FEO BELCARI, a Florentine
magistrate, who wrote the Lives of the Blessed Giovanni Colombini and
other Friars, and who reproduced the beauty and elegance of the best
authors of the Fourteenth Century. He died at an advanced age in 1484.
LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI was a universal genius. He distinguished himself
as painter, sculptor and architect, but his Italian writings would
hardly be of sufficient importance to mention, had not the dearth of
names in this barren century made historians of literature thankful for
any means of filling up the blank.
LEONARDO DA VINCI wrote a _Treatise on Painting,_ and he impressed upon
all artists the necessity of being original, and of not copying their
predecessors. It would have been well if the writers of the age had
laid this injunction to heart as well as the painters, for as years
advanced, the servile imitation of conventional forms became more and
more the bane of Italian literature.
PULCI is celebrated for his mock-heroic poem, the _Morgante Maggiore._
The giant Morgante is the hero, but we also make the acquaintance of
Orlando, Rinaldo, Charlemagne, and many other characters that appear in
the more famous poems of Bojardo and Ariosto. It was unfortunate for
Pulci that he had such great successors. He had abundance of wit and
originality, but he had neither the poetical imagination of Bojardo
nor the magic style of Ariosto, so that it is no cause for astonishment
that he fell into neglect.
MATTEO BOJARDO, Count of Scandiano, was born in 1430 and died in 1494.
He was favoured by nature and fortune; a soldier and a statesman, he
had every opportunity of enriching his mind with varied experiences,
nor can we say that those opportunities were neglected. His _Orlando
Innamorato,_ which he did not live to finish, long as it is, displays
great wealth of imagination and considerable creative power; but
unfortunately, his style is heavy and rough, and was completely
eclipsed by the extraordinary merits of Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso,_
which professes to be only a continuation of the earlier poem. Fifty
years later, Berni entirely re-wrote Bojardo's work and certainly
succeeded in giving it greater elegance, but he did not make it more
interesting to modern readers. In truth, the knights of the epic cycle
beginning with the _Morgante Maggiore_ and ending in the Eighteenth
Century with the _Ricciardetto,_ appear terribly uninteresting in the
present day, and it requires the picturesque and melodious style of a
really great poet like Ariosto to entice the reader through the account
of their numerous adventures.
The celebrated scholar, ANGELO POLIZIANO, shows a poetical mind in his
poems, and his _Orfeo_ may claim the credit of being the first dramatic
work of any literary value in the Italian language. It has many lyric
beauties and the choruses are spirited.[1]
His poem in Ottava Rima on a tournament given by Giniano de Medici,
was interrupted by the tragic death of his patron in the conspiracy
organised by the Pazzi family, nor was the loss of the remainder of the
poem the least deplorable consequence of that great crime. Politian
died in the prime of life in 1494. It is reasonable to suppose that if
his years had been prolonged, he might have enriched the literature of
his country with works of even greater beauty.
A poet of true tenderness and fire, but more remarkable for the
extraordinary perfection of his Latin poems than for any other
productions of his muse, was JACOPO SANNAZZARO, a Neapolitan. He
survived until the year 1530, but his Italian poems are the productions
of his youth. His _Arcadia,_ a pastoral romance in prose with poems
interspersed, acquired a great celebrity and undoubtedly served as
model to Sir Philip Sydney's work of the same name. It is tender and
graceful, but the extreme unreality of the Nymphs and Shepherds makes
it rather cloying to a modern taste. His Italian poems have not nearly
so much melody and fire as those he wrote in Latin, which are, indeed,
so perfect that they cannot be distinguished, as far as rhythm is
concerned, from those of Virgil himself.
These names practically exhaust the band of Italian writers of the
Fifteenth Century, truly a meagre list, and in striking contrast to the
countless painters who were an ornament to their country during the
same period.
[Footnote 1: The Chorus from the _Orfeo_--
"Noi seguiamo, Bacco, te;
Bacco, Bacco, evoè, evoè!"
is quoted by George Eliot in _Romola._]