CHAPTER XI.

FALL OF THE HUMANISTS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

After a brilliant succession of poet-scholars had, since the beginning

of the fourteenth century, filled Italy and the world with the worship

of antiquity, had determined the forms of education and culture, had

often taken the lead in political affairs and had, to no small extent,

reproduced ancient literature--at length in the sixteenth century,

before their doctrines and scholarship had lost hold of the public mind,

the whole class fell into deep and general disgrace. Though they still

served as models to the poets, historians, and orators, personally no

one would consent to be reckoned of their number. To the two chief

accusations against them--that of malicious self-conceit, and that of

abominable profligacy--a third charge of irreligion was now loudly added

by the rising powers of the Counter-reformation.

Why, it may be asked, were not these reproaches, whether true or false,

heard sooner? As a matter of fact, they were heard at a very early

period, but the effect they produced was insignificant, for the plain

reason that men were far too dependent on the scholars for their

knowledge of antiquity--that the scholars were personally the possessors

and diffusers of ancient culture. But the spread of printed editions of

the classics,[634] and of large and well-arranged hand-books and

dictionaries, went far to free the people from the necessity of personal

intercourse with the humanists, and, as soon as they could be but partly

dispensed with, the change in popular feeling became manifest. It was a

change under which the good and bad suffered indiscriminately.

The first to make these charges were certainly the humanists

themselves. Of all men who ever formed a class, they had the least sense

of their common interests, and least respected what there was of this

sense. All means were held lawful, if one of them saw a chance of

supplanting another. From literary discussion they passed with

astonishing suddenness to the fiercest and the most groundless

vituperation. Not satisfied with refuting, they sought to annihilate an

opponent. Something of this must be put to the account of their position

and circumstances; we have seen how fiercely the age, whose loudest

spokesmen they were, was borne to and fro by the passion for glory and

the passion for satire. Their position, too, in practical life was one

that they had continually to fight for. In such a temper they wrote and

spoke and described one another. Poggio’s works alone contain dirt

enough to create a prejudice against the whole class--and these ‘Opera

Poggii’ were just those most often printed, on the north, as well as on

the south, side of the Alps. We must take care not to rejoice too soon,

when we meet among these men a figure which seems immaculate; on further

inquiry there is always a danger of meeting with some foul charge,

which, even when it is incredible, still discolours the picture. The

mass of indecent Latin poems in circulation, and such things as the

ribaldry on the subject of his own family, in Pontano’s dialogue,

‘Antonius,’ did the rest to discredit the class. The sixteenth century

was not only familiar with all these ugly symptoms, but had also grown

tired of the type of the humanist. These men had to pay both for the

misdeeds they had done, and for the excess of honour which had hitherto

fallen to their lot. Their evil fate willed it that the greatest poet of

the nation wrote of them in a tone of calm and sovereign contempt.[635]

Of the reproaches which combined to excite so much hatred, many were

only too well founded. Yet a clear and unmistakable tendency to

strictness in matters of religion and morality was alive in many of the

philologists, and it is a proof of small knowledge of the period, if the

whole class is condemned. Yet many, and among them the loudest speakers,

were guilty.

Three facts explain, and perhaps diminish their guilt: the overflowing

excess of favour and fortune, when the luck was on their side: the

uncertainty of the future, in which luxury or misery depended on the

caprice of a patron or the malice of an enemy; and finally, the

misleading influence of antiquity. This undermined their morality,

without giving them its own instead; and in religious matters, since

they could never think of accepting the positive belief in the old gods,

it affected them only on the negative and sceptical side. Just because

they conceived of antiquity dogmatically--that is, took it as the model

for all thought and action--its influence was here pernicious. But that

an age existed, which idolised the ancient world and its products with

an exclusive devotion, was not the fault of individuals. It was the work

of a historical providence, and all the culture of the ages which have

followed, and of the ages to come, rests upon the fact that it was so,

and that all the ends of life but this one were then deliberately put

aside.

The career of the humanists was, as a rule, of such a kind that only the

strongest characters could pass through it unscathed. The first danger

came, in some cases, from the parents, who sought to turn a precocious

child into a miracle of learning,[636] with an eye to his future

position in that class which then was supreme. Youthful prodigies,

however, seldom rise above a certain level; or, if they do, are forced

to achieve their further progress and development at the cost of the

bitterest trials. For an ambitious youth, the fame and the brilliant

position of the humanists were a perilous temptation; it seemed to him

that he too ‘through inborn pride could no longer regard the low and

common things of life.’ He was thus led to plunge into a life of

excitement and vicissitude, in which exhausting studies, tutorships,

secretaryships, professorships, offices in princely households, mortal

enmities and perils, luxury and beggary, boundless admiration and

boundless contempt, followed confusedly one upon the other, and in which

the most solid worth and learning were often pushed aside by superficial

impudence. But the worst of all was, that the position of the humanist

was almost incompatible with a fixed home, since it either made frequent

changes of dwelling necessary for a livelihood, or so affected the mind

of the individual that he could never be happy for long in one place. He

grew tired of the people, and had no peace among the enmities which he

excited, while the people themselves in their turn demanded something

new (p. 211). Much as this life reminds us of the Greek sophists of the

Empire, as described to us by Philostratus, yet the position of the

sophists was more favourable. They often had money, or could more easily

do without it than the humanists, and as professional teachers of

rhetoric, rather than men of learning, their life was freer and simpler.

But the scholar of the Renaissance was forced to combine great learning

with the power of resisting the influence of ever-changing pursuits and

situations. Add to this the deadening effect of licentious excess,

and--since do what he might, the worst was believed of him--a total

indifference to the moral laws recognised by others. Such men can hardly

be conceived to exist without an inordinate pride. They needed it, if

only to keep their heads above water, and were confirmed in it by the

admiration which alternated with hatred in the treatment they received

from the world. They are the most striking examples and victims of an

unbridled subjectivity.

The attacks and the satirical pictures began, as we have said, at an

early period. For all strongly marked individuality, for every kind of

distinction, a corrective was at hand in the national taste for

ridicule. And in this case the men themselves offered abundant and

terrible materials which satire had but to make use of. In the fifteenth

century, Battista Mantovano, in discoursing of the seven monsters,[637]

includes the humanists, with many others, under the head ‘Superbia.’ He

describes how, fancying themselves children of Apollo, they walk along

with affected solemnity and with sullen, malicious looks, now gazing at

their own shadow, now brooding over the popular praise they hunted

after, like cranes in search of food. But in the sixteenth century the

indictment was presented in full. Besides Ariosto, their own historian

Gyraldus[638] gives evidence of this, whose treatise, written under Leo

X., was probably revised about the year 1540. Warning examples from

ancient and modern times of the moral disorder and the wretched

existence of the scholars meet us in astonishing abundance, and along

with these accusations of the most serious nature are brought formally

against them. Among these are anger, vanity, obstinacy, self-adoration,

a dissolute private life, immorality of all descriptions, heresy,

atheism; further, the habit of speaking without conviction, a sinister

influence on government, pedantry of speech, thanklessness towards

teachers, and abject flattery of the great, who first give the scholar a

taste of their favours and then leave him to starve. The description is

closed by a reference to the golden age, when no such thing as science

existed on the earth. Of these charges, that of heresy soon became the

most dangerous, and Gyraldus himself, when he afterwards republished a

perfectly harmless youthful work,[639] was compelled to take refuge

beneath the mantle of Duke Hercules II. of Ferrara,[640] since men now

had the upper hand who held that people had better spend their time on

Christian themes than on mythological researches. He justifies himself

on the ground that the latter, on the contrary, were at such a time

almost the only harmless branches of study, as they deal with subjects

of a perfectly neutral character.

But if it is the duty of the historian to seek for evidence in which

moral judgment is tempered by human sympathy, he will find no authority

comparable in value to the work so often quoted of Pierio

Valeriano,[641] ‘On the Infelicity of the Scholar.’ It was written

under the gloomy impressions left by the sack of Rome, which seems to

the writer, not only the direct cause of untold misery to the men of

learning, but, as it were, the fulfilment of an evil destiny which had

long pursued them. Pierio is here led by a simple and, on the whole,

just feeling. He does not introduce a special power, which plagued the

men of genius on account of their genius, but he states facts, in which

an unlucky chance often wears the aspect of fatality. Not wishing to

write a tragedy or to refer events to the conflict of higher powers, he

is content to lay before us the scenes of every-day life. We are

introduced to men, who in times of trouble lose, first their incomes,

and then their places; to others, who in trying to get two appointments,

miss both; to unsociable misers, who carry about their money sewn into

their clothes, and die mad when they are robbed of it; to others, who

accept well-paid offices, and then sicken with a melancholy, longing for

their lost freedom. We read how some died young of a plague or fever,

and how the writings which had cost them so much toil were burnt with

their bed and clothes; how others lived in terror of the murderous

threats of their colleagues; how one was slain by a covetous servant,

and another caught by highwaymen on a journey, and left to pine in a

dungeon, because unable to pay his ransom. Many died of unspoken grief

for the insults they received and the prizes of which they were

defrauded. We are told of the death of a Venetian, because his son, a

youthful prodigy, was dead; and the mother and brothers followed, as if

the lost child drew them all after him. Many, especially Florentines,

ended their lives by suicide;[642] others through the secret justice of

a tyrant. Who, after all, is happy?--and by what means? By blunting all

feeling for such misery? One of the speakers in the dialogue in which

Pierio clothed his argument, can give an answer to these questions--the

illustrious Gasparo Contarini, at the mention of whose name we turn with

the expectation to hear at least something of the truest and deepest

which was then thought on such matters. As a type of the happy scholar,

he mentions Fra Urbano Valeriano of Belluno,[643] who was for years

teacher of Greek at Venice, who visited Greece and the East, and towards

the close of his life travelled, now through this country, now through

that, without ever mounting a horse; who never had a penny of his own,

rejected all honours and distinctions, and after a gay old age, died in

his eighty-fourth year, without, if we except a fall from a ladder,

having ever known an hour of sickness. And what was the difference

between such a man and the humanists? The latter had more free will,

more subjectivity, than they could turn to purposes of happiness. The

mendicant friar, who had lived from his boyhood in the monastery, and

never eaten or slept except by rule, ceased to feel the compulsion under

which he lived. Through the power of this habit he led, amid all outward

hardships, a life of inward peace, by which he impressed his hearers far

more than by his teaching. Looking at him, they could believe that it

depends on ourselves whether we bear up against misfortune or surrender

to it. ‘Amid want and toil he was happy, because he willed to be so,

because he had contracted no evil habits, was not capricious,

inconstant, immoderate; but was always contented with little or

nothing.’ If we heard Contarini himself, religious motives would no

doubt play a part in the argument--but the practical philosopher in

sandals speaks plainly enough. An allied character, but placed in other

circumstances, is that of Fabio Calvi of Ravenna, the commentator of

Hippocrates.[644] He lived to a great age in Rome, eating only pulse

‘like the Pythagoreans,’ and dwelt in a hovel little better than the tub

of Diogenes. Of the pension, which Pope Leo gave him, he spent enough to

keep body and soul together, and gave the rest away. He was not a

healthy man, like Fra Urbano, nor is it likely that, like him, he died

with a smile on his lips. At the age of ninety, in the sack of Rome, he

was dragged away by the Spaniards, who hoped for a ransom, and died of

hunger in a hospital. But his name has passed into the kingdom of the

immortals, for Raphael loved the old man like a father, and honoured him

as a teacher, and came to him for advice in all things. Perhaps they

discoursed chiefly of the projected restoration of ancient Rome (p.

184), perhaps of still higher matters. Who can tell what a share Fabio

may have had in the conception of the School of Athens, and in other

great works of the master?

We would gladly close this part of our essay with the picture of some

pleasing and winning character. Pomponius Laetus, of whom we shall

briefly speak, is known to us principally through the letter of his

pupil Sabellicus,[645] in which an antique colouring is purposely given

to his character. Yet many of its features are clearly recognisable. He

was (p. 251) a bastard of the House of the Neapolitan Sanseverini,

princes of Salerno, whom he nevertheless refused to recognise, writing,

in reply to an invitation to live with them, the famous letter:

‘Pomponius Laetus cognatis et propinquis suis, salutem. Quod petitis

fieri non potest. Valete.’ An insignificant little figure, with small,

quick eyes, and quaint dress, he lived during the last decades of the

fifteenth century, as professor in the University of Rome, either in his

cottage in a garden on the Esquiline hill, or in his vineyard on the

Quirinal. In the one he bred his ducks and fowls; the other he

cultivated according to the strictest precepts of Cato, Varro, and

Columella. He spent his holidays in fishing or bird-catching in the

Campagna, or in feasting by some shady spring or on the banks of the

Tiber. Wealth and luxury he despised. Free himself from envy and

uncharitable speech, he would not suffer them in others. It was only

against the hierarchy that he gave his tongue free play, and passed,

till his latter years, for a scorner of religion altogether. He was

involved in the persecution of the humanists begun by Pope Paul II., and

surrendered to this pontiff by the Venetians; but no means could be

found to wring unworthy confessions from him. He was afterwards

befriended and supported by popes and prelates, and when his house was

plundered in the disturbances under Sixtus IV., more was collected for

him than he had lost. No teacher was more conscientious. Before daybreak

he was to be seen descending the Esquiline with his lantern, and on

reaching his lecture-room found it always filled to overflowing with

pupils who had come at midnight to secure a place. A stutter compelled

him to speak with care, but his delivery was even and effective. His few

works give evidence of careful writing. No scholar treated the text of

ancient authors more soberly and accurately. The remains of antiquity

which surrounded him in Rome touched him so deeply, that he would stand

before them as if entranced, or would suddenly burst into tears at the

sight of them. As he was ready to lay aside his own studies in order to

help others, he was much loved and had many friends; and at his death,

even Alexander VI. sent his courtiers to follow the corpse, which was

carried by the most distinguished of his pupils. The funeral service in

the Araceli was attended by forty bishops and by all the foreign

ambassadors.

It was Laetus who introduced and conducted the representations of

ancient, chiefly Plautine, plays in Rome (p. 255). Every year, he

celebrated the anniversary of the foundation of the city by a festival,

at which his friends and pupils recited speeches and poems. Such

meetings were the origin of what acquired, and long retained, the name

of the Roman Academy. It was simply a free union of individuals, and was

connected with no fixed institution. Besides the occasions mentioned, it

met[646] at the invitation of a patron, or to celebrate the memory of a

deceased member, as of Platina. At such times, a prelate belonging to

the academy would first say mass; Pomponio would then ascend the pulpit

and deliver a speech; some one else would then follow him and recite an

elegy. The customary banquet, with declamations and recitations,

concluded the festival, whether joyous or serious, and the academicians,

notably Platina himself, early acquired the reputation of epicures.[647]

At other times, the guests performed farces in the old Atellan style. As

a free association of very varied elements, the academy lasted in its

original form down to the sack of Rome, and included among its guests

Angelus Coloccius, Joh. Corycius (p. 269) and others. Its precise value

as an element in the intellectual life of the people is as hard to

estimate as that of any other social union of the same kind; yet a man

like Sadoleto[648] reckoned it among the most precious memories of his

youth. A large number of other academies appeared and passed away in

many Italian cities, according to the number and significance of the

humanists living in them, and to the patronage bestowed by the great and

wealthy. Of these we may mention the Academy of Naples, of which

Jovianus Pontanus was the centre, and which sent out a colony to

Lecce,[649] and that of Pordenone, which formed the court of the

Condottiere Alviano. The circle of Ludovico Moro, and its peculiar

importance for that prince, has been already spoken of (p. 42).

About the middle of the sixteenth century, these associations seem to

have undergone a complete change. The humanists, driven in other spheres

from their commanding position, and viewed askance by the men of the

Counter-reformation, lost the control of the academies: and here, as

elsewhere, Latin poetry was replaced by Italian. Before long every town

of the least importance had its academy, with some strange, fantastic

name,[650] and its own endowment and subscriptions. Besides the

recitation of verses, the new institutions inherited from their

predecessors the regular banquets and the representation of plays,

sometimes acted by the members themselves, sometimes under their

direction by young amateurs, and sometimes by paid players. The fate of

the Italian stage, and afterwards of the opera, was long in the hands of

these associations.

_PART IV._

THE DISCOVERY OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN.

CHAPTER I.

JOURNEYS OF THE ITALIANS.

Freed from the countless bonds which elsewhere in Europe checked

progress, having reached a high degree of individual development and

been schooled by the teachings of antiquity, the Italian mind now turned

to the discovery of the outward universe, and to the representation of

it in speech and in form.

On the journeys of the Italians to distant parts of the world, we can

here make but a few general observations. The crusades had opened

unknown distances to the European mind, and awakened in all the passion

for travel and adventure. It may be hard to indicate precisely the point

where this passion allied itself with, or became the servant of, the

thirst for knowledge; but it was in Italy that this was first and most

completely the case. Even in the crusades the interest of the Italians

was wider than that of other nations, since they already were a naval

power and had commercial relations with the East. From time immemorial

the Mediterranean sea had given to the nations that dwelt on its shores

mental impulses different from those which governed the peoples of the

North; and never, from the very structure of their character, could the

Italians be adventurers in the sense which the word bore among the

Teutons. After they were once at home in all the eastern harbours of the

Mediterranean, it was natural that the most enterprising among them

should be led to join that vast international movement of the

Mohammedans which there found its outlet. A new half of the world lay,

as it were, freshly discovered before them. Or, like Polo of Venice,

they were caught in the current of the Mongolian peoples, and carried on

to the steps of the throne of the Great Khan. At an early period, we

find Italians sharing in the discoveries made in the Atlantic ocean; it

was the Genoese who, in the 13th century, found the Canary

Islands.[651] In the same year, 1291, when Ptolemais, the last remnant

of the Christian East, was lost, it was again the Genoese who made the

first known attempt to find a sea-passage to the East Indies.[652]

Columbus himself is but the greatest of a long list of Italians who, in

the service of the western nations, sailed into distant seas. The true

discoverer, however, is not the man who first chances to stumble upon

anything, but the man who finds what he has sought. Such a one alone

stands in a link with the thoughts and interests of his predecessors,

and this relationship will also determine the account he gives of his

search. For which reason the Italians, although their claim to be the

first comers on this or that shore may be disputed, will yet retain

their title to be pre-eminently the nation of discoverers for the whole

latter part of the Middle Ages. The fuller proof of this assertion

belongs to the special history of discoveries.[653] Yet ever and again

we turn with admiration to the august figure of the great Genoese, by

whom a new continent beyond the ocean was demanded, sought and found;

and who was the first to be able to say: ‘il mondo è poco’--the world is

not so large as men have thought. At the time when Spain gave Alexander

VI. to the Italians, Italy gave Columbus to the Spaniards. Only a few

weeks before the death of that pope (July 7th, 1503), Columbus wrote

from Jamaica his noble letter to the thankless Catholic kings, which the

ages to come can never read without profound emotion. In a codicil to

his will, dated Valladolid, May 4th, 1506, he bequeathed to ‘his beloved

home, the Republic of Genoa, the prayer-book which Pope Alexander had

given him, and which in prison, in conflict, and in every kind of

adversity had been to him the greatest of comforts.’ It seems as if

these words cast upon the abhorred name of Borgia one last gleam of

grace and mercy.

The development of geographical and the allied sciences among the

Italians must, like the history of their voyages, be touched upon but

very briefly. A superficial comparison of their achievements with those

of other nations shows an early and striking superiority on their part.

Where, in the middle of the fifteenth century, could be found, anywhere

but in Italy, such an union of geographical, statistical, and historical

knowledge as was found in Æneas Sylvius? Not only in his great

geographical work, but in his letters and commentaries, he describes

with equal mastery landscapes, cities, manners, industries and products,

political conditions and constitutions, wherever he can use his own

observation or the evidence of eye-witnesses. What he takes from books

is naturally of less moment. Even the short sketch[654] of that valley

in the Tyrolese Alps, where Frederick III. had given him a benefice, and

still more his description of Scotland, leaves untouched none of the

relations of human life, and displays a power and method of unbiassed

observation and comparison impossible in any but a countryman of

Columbus, trained in the school of the ancients. Thousands saw and, in

part, knew what he did, but they felt no impulse to draw a picture of

it, and were unconscious that the world desired such pictures.

In geography[655] as in other matters, it is vain to attempt to

distinguish how much is to be attributed to the study of the ancients,

and how much to the special genius of the Italians. They saw and treated

the things of this world from an objective point of view, even before

they were familiar with ancient literature, partly because they were

themselves a half-ancient people, and partly because their political

circumstances predisposed them to it; but they would not so rapidly have

attained to such perfection had not the old geographers showed them the

way. The influence of the existing Italian geographies on the spirit and

tendencies of the travellers and discoverers was also inestimable. Even

the simple ‘dilettante’ of a science--if in the present case we should

assign to Æneas Sylvius so low a rank--can diffuse just that sort of

general interest in the subject which prepares for new pioneers the

indispensable groundwork of a favourable predisposition in the public

mind. True discoverers in any science know well what they owe to such

mediation.

CHAPTER II.

NATURAL SCIENCE IN ITALY.

For the position of the Italians in the sphere of the natural sciences,

we must refer the reader to the special treatises on the subject, of

which the only one with which we are familiar is the superficial and

depreciatory work of Libri.[656] The dispute as to the priority of

particular discoveries concerns us all the less, since we hold that, at

any time, and among any civilised people, a man may appear who, starting

with very scanty preparation, is driven by an irresistible impulse into

the path of scientific investigation, and through his native gifts

achieves the most astonishing success. Such men were Gerbert of Rheims

and Roger Bacon. That they were masters of the whole knowledge of the

age in their several departments, was a natural consequence of the

spirit in which they worked. When once the veil of illusion was torn

asunder, when once the dread of nature and the slavery to books and

tradition were overcome, countless problems lay before them for

solution. It is another matter when a whole people takes a natural

delight in the study and investigation of nature, at a time when other

nations are indifferent, that is to say, when the discoverer is not

threatened or wholly ignored, but can count on the friendly support

of congenial spirits. That this was the case in Italy, is

unquestionable.[657] The Italian students of nature trace with pride in

the ‘Divine Comedy’ the hints and proofs of Dante’s scientific interest

in nature.[658] On his claim to priority in this or that discovery or

reference, we must leave the men of science to decide; but every layman

must be struck by the wealth of his observations on the external world,

shown merely in his pictures and comparisons. He, more than any other

modern poet, takes them from reality, whether in nature or human life,

and uses them, never as mere ornament, but in order to give the reader

the fullest and most adequate sense of his meaning. It is in astronomy

that he appears chiefly as a scientific specialist, though it must not

be forgotten that many astronomical allusions in his great poem, which

now appear to us learned, must then have been intelligible to the

general reader. Dante, learning apart, appeals to a popular knowledge of

the heavens, which the Italians of his day, from the mere fact that they

were a nautical people, had in common with the ancients. This knowledge

of the rising and setting of the constellations has been rendered

superfluous to the modern world by calendars and clocks, and with it has

gone whatever interest in astronomy the people may once have had.

Nowadays, with our schools and hand-books, every child knows--what Dante

did not know--that the earth moves round the sun; but the interest once

taken in the subject itself has given place, except in the case of

astronomical specialists, to the most absolute indifference.

The pseudo-science, which also dealt with the stars, proves nothing

against the inductive spirit of the Italians of that day. That spirit

was but crossed, and at times overcome, by the passionate desire to

penetrate the future. We shall recur to the subject of astrology when we

come to speak of the moral and religious character of the people.

The Church treated this and other pseudo-sciences nearly always with

toleration; and showed itself actually hostile even to genuine science

only when a charge of heresy or necromancy was also in question--which

certainly was often the case. A point which it would be interesting to

decide is this: whether, and in what cases, the Dominican (and also the

Franciscan) Inquisitors in Italy, were conscious of the falsehood of the

charges, and yet condemned the accused, either to oblige some enemy of

the prisoner or from hatred to natural science, and particularly to

experiments. The latter doubtless occurred, but it is not easy to prove

the fact. What helped to cause such persecutions in the North, namely,

the opposition made to the innovators by the upholders of the received

official, scholastic system of nature, was of little or no weight in

Italy. Pietro of Albano, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, is

well known to have fallen a victim to the envy of another physician, who

accused him before the Inquisition of heresy and magic;[659] and

something of the same kind may have happened in the case of his Paduan

contemporary, Giovannino Sanguinnacci, who was known as an innovator in

medical practice. He escaped, however, with banishment. Nor must it be

forgotten that the inquisitorial power of the Dominicans was exercised

less uniformly in Italy than in the North. Tyrants and free cities in

the fourteenth century treated the clergy at times with such sovereign

contempt, that very different matters from natural science went

unpunished.[660] But when, with the fifteenth century, antiquity became

the leading power in Italy, the breach it made in the old system was

turned to account by every branch of secular science. Humanism,

nevertheless, attracted to itself the best strength of the nation, and

thereby, no doubt, did injury to the inductive investigation of

nature.[661] Here and there the Inquisition suddenly started into life,

and punished or burned physicians as blasphemers or magicians. In such

cases it is hard to discover what was the true motive underlying the

condemnation. And after all, Italy, at the close of the fifteenth

century, with Paolo Toscanelli, Luca Paccioli and Lionardo da Vinci,

held incomparably the highest place among European nations in

mathematics and the natural sciences, and the learned men of every

country, even Regiomontanus and Copernicus, confessed themselves its

pupils.[662]

A significant proof of the wide-spread interest in natural history is

found in the zeal which showed itself at an early period for the

collection and comparative study of plants and animals. Italy claims to

be the first creator of botanical gardens, though possibly they may have

served a chiefly practical end, and the claim to priority may be itself

disputed.[663] It is of far greater importance that princes and wealthy

men in laying out their pleasure-gardens, instinctively made a point of

collecting the greatest possible number of different plants in all their

species and varieties. Thus in the fifteenth century the noble grounds

of the Medicean Villa Careggi appear from the descriptions we have of

them to have been almost a botanical garden,[664] with countless

specimens of different trees and shrubs. Of the same kind was a villa of

the Cardinal Triulzio, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the

Roman Campagna towards Tivoli,[665] with hedges made up of various

species of roses, with trees of every description--the fruit-trees

especially showing an astonishing variety--with twenty different sorts

of vines and a large kitchen-garden. This is evidently something very

different from the score or two of familiar medicinal plants, which were

to be found in the garden of any castle or monastery in Western Europe.

Along with a careful cultivation of fruit for the purposes of the table,

we find an interest in the plant for its own sake, on account of the

pleasure it gives to the eye. We learn from the history of art at how

late a period this passion for botanical collections was laid aside, and

gave place to what was considered the picturesque style of

landscape-gardening.

The collections, too, of foreign animals not only gratified curiosity,

but served also the higher purposes of observation. The facility of

transport from the southern and eastern harbours of the Mediterranean

and the mildness of the Italian climate, made it practicable to buy the

largest animals of the south, or to accept them as presents from the

Sultans.[666] The cities and princes were especially anxious to keep

live lions, even when the lion was not, as in Florence, the emblem of

the state.[667] The lions’ den was generally in or near the government

palace, as in Perugia and Florence; in Rome, it lay on the slope of the

Capitol. The beasts sometimes served as executioners of political

judgments,[668] and no doubt, apart from this, they kept alive a certain

terror in the popular mind. Their condition was also held to be ominous

of good or evil. Their fertility, especially, was considered a sign of

public prosperity, and no less a man than Giovanni Villani thought it

worth recording that he was present at the delivery of a lioness.[669]

The cubs were often given to allied states and princes, or to

Condottieri, as a reward of valour.[670] In addition to the lions, the

Florentines began very early to keep leopards, for which a special

keeper was appointed.[671] Borso[672] of Ferrara used to set his lions

to fight with bulls, bears, and wild boars.

By the end of the fifteenth century, however, true menageries

(serragli), now reckoned part of the suitable appointments of a court,

were kept by many of the princes. ‘It belongs to the position of the

great,’ says Matarazzo,[673] ‘to keep horses, dogs, mules, falcons, and

other birds, court-jesters, singers, and foreign animals.’ The menagerie

at Naples, in the time of Ferrante and others, contained a giraffe and a

zebra, presented, it seems, by the ruler of Bagdad.[674] Filippo Maria

Visconti possessed not only horses which cost him each 500 or 1,000

pieces of gold, and valuable English dogs, but a number of leopards

brought from all parts of the East; the expense of his hunting-birds

which were collected from the countries of Northern Europe, amounted to

3,000 pieces of gold a month.[675] ‘The Cremonese say that the Emperor

Frederick II. brought an elephant into their city, sent him from India

by Prester John,’ we read in Brunetto Latini; Petrarch records the dying

out of the elephants in Italy.[676] King Emanuel the Great of Portugal

knew well what he was about when he presented Leo X. with an elephant

and a rhinoceros.[677] It was under such circumstances that the

foundations of a scientific zoology and botany were laid.

A practical fruit of these zoological studies was the establishment of

studs, of which the Mantuan, under Francesco Gonzaga, was esteemed the

first in Europe.[678] All interest in, and knowledge of the different

breeds of horses is as old, no doubt, as riding itself, and the

crossing of the European with the Asiatic must have been common from the

time of the crusades. In Italy, a special inducement to perfect the

breed was offered by the prizes at the horse-races held in every

considerable town in the peninsula. In the Mantuan stables were found

the infallible winners in these contests, as well as the best military

chargers, and the horses best suited by their stately appearance for

presents to great people. Gonzaga kept stallions and mares from Spain,

Ireland, Africa, Thrace, and Cilicia, and for the sake of the last he

cultivated the friendship of the Sultan. All possible experiments were

here tried, in order to produce the most perfect animals.

Even human menageries were not wanting. The famous Cardinal Ippolito

Medici,[679] bastard of Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, kept at his strange

court a troop of barbarians who talked no less than twenty different

languages, and who were all of them perfect specimens of their races.

Among them were incomparable _voltigeurs_ of the best blood of the North

African Moors, Tartar bowmen, Negro wrestlers, Indian divers, and Turks,

who generally accompanied the Cardinal on his hunting expeditions. When

he was overtaken by an early death (1535), this motley band carried the

corpse on their shoulders from Itri to Rome, and mingled with the

general mourning for the open-handed Cardinal their medley of tongues

and violent gesticulations.[680]

These scattered notices of the relations of the Italians to natural

science, and their interest in the wealth and variety of the products of

nature, are only fragments of a great subject. No one is more conscious

than the author of the defects in his knowledge on this point. Of the

multitude of special works in which the subject is adequately treated,

even the names are but imperfectly known to him.

CHAPTER III.

THE DISCOVERY OF NATURAL BEAUTY.

But, outside the sphere of scientific investigation, there is another

way to draw near to nature. The Italians are the first among modern

peoples by whom the outward world was seen and felt as something

beautiful.[681]

The power to do so is always the result of a long and complicated

development, and its origin is not easily detected, since a dim feeling

of this kind may exist long before it shows itself in poetry and

painting, and thereby becomes conscious of itself. Among the ancients,

for example, art and poetry had gone through the whole circle of human

interests, before they turned to the representation of nature, and even

then the latter filled always a limited and subordinate place. And yet,

from the time of Homer downwards, the powerful impression made by nature

upon man is shown by countless verses and chance expressions. The

Germanic races, which founded their states on the ruins of the Roman

Empire, were thoroughly and specially fitted to understand the spirit of

natural scenery; and though Christianity compelled them for a while to

see in the springs and mountains, in the lakes and woods, which they had

till then revered, the working of evil demons, yet this transitional

conception was soon outgrown. By the year 1200, at the height of the

Middle Ages, a genuine, hearty enjoyment of the external world was again

in existence, and found lively expression in the minstrelsy of different

nations,[682] which gives evidence of the sympathy felt with all the

simple phenomena of nature--spring with its flowers, the green fields

and the woods. But these pictures are all foreground without

perspective. Even the crusaders, who travelled so far and saw so much,

are not recognisable as such in these poems. The epic poetry, which

describes armour and costumes so fully, does not attempt more than a

sketch of outward nature; and even the great Wolfram von Eschenbach

scarcely anywhere gives us an adequate picture of the scene on which his

heroes move. From these poems it would never be guessed that their noble

authors in all countries inhabited or visited lofty castles, commanding

distant prospects. Even in the Latin poems of the wandering clerks (p.

174), we find no traces of a distant view--of landscape properly so

called--but what lies near is sometimes described with a glow and

splendour which none of the knightly minstrels can surpass. What picture

of the Grove of Love can equal that of the Italian poet--for such we

take him to be--of the twelfth century?

‘Immortalis fieret

Ibi manens homo;

Arbor ibi quaelibet

Suo gaudet pomo;

Viae myrrha, cinnamo

Fragrant, et amomo--

Conjectari poterat

Dominus ex domo,’[683] etc.

To the Italian mind, at all events, nature had by this time lost its

taint of sin, and had shaken off all trace of demoniacal powers. Saint

Francis of Assisi, in his Hymn to the Sun, frankly praises the Lord for

creating the heavenly bodies and the four elements.

But the unmistakable proofs of a deepening effect of nature on the human

spirit begin with Dante. Not only does he awaken in us by a few vigorous

lines the sense of the morning airs and the trembling light on the

distant ocean, or of the grandeur of the storm-beaten forest, but he

makes the ascent of lofty peaks, with the only possible object of

enjoying the view[684]--the first man, perhaps, since the days of

antiquity who did so. In Boccaccio we can do little more than infer how

country scenery affected him;[685] yet his pastoral romances show his

imagination to have been filled with it. But the significance of nature

for a receptive spirit is fully and clearly displayed by Petrarch--one

of the first truly modern men. That clear soul--who first collected from

the literature of all countries evidence of the origin and progress of

the sense of natural beauty, and himself, in his ‘Ansichten der Natur,’

achieved the noblest masterpiece of description--Alexander von Humboldt,

has not done full justice to Petrarch; and, following in the steps of

the great reaper, we may still hope to glean a few ears of interest and

value.

Petrarch was not only a distinguished geographer--the first map of Italy

is said to have been drawn by his direction[686]--and not only a

reproducer of the sayings of the ancients,[687] but felt himself the

influence of natural beauty. The enjoyment of nature is, for him, the

favourite accompaniment of intellectual pursuits; it was to combine the

two that he lived in learned retirement at Vaucluse and elsewhere, that

he from time to time fled from the world and from his age.[688] We

should do him wrong by inferring from his weak and undeveloped power of

describing natural scenery that he did not feel it deeply. His picture,

for instance, of the lovely Gulf of Spezzia and Porto Venere, which he

inserts at the end of the sixth book of the ‘Africa,’ for the reason

that none of the ancients or moderns had sung of it,[689] is no more

than a simple enumeration, but the descriptions in letters to his

friends of Rome, Naples, and other Italian cities in which he willingly

lingered, are picturesque and worthy of the subject. Petrarch is also

conscious of the beauty of rock scenery, and is perfectly able to

distinguish the picturesqueness from the utility of nature.[690] During

his stay among the woods of Reggio, the sudden sight of an impressive

landscape so affected him that he resumed a poem which he had long laid

aside.[691] But the deepest impression of all was made upon him by the

ascent of Mont Ventoux, near Avignon.[692] An indefinable longing for a

distant panorama grew stronger and stronger in him, till at length the

accidental sight of a passage in Livy, where King Philip, the enemy of

Rome, ascends the Hæmus, decided him. He thought that what was not

blamed in a grey-headed monarch, might be well _excused_ in a young man

of private station. The ascent of a mountain for its own sake was

unheard of, and there could be no thought of the companionship of

friends or acquaintances. Petrarch took with him only his younger

brother and two country people from the last place where he halted. At

the foot of the mountain an old herdsman besought him to turn back,

saying that he himself had attempted to climb it fifty years before, and

had brought home nothing but repentance, broken bones, and torn clothes,

and that neither before nor after had anyone ventured to do the same.

Nevertheless, they struggled forward and upward, till the clouds lay

beneath their feet, and at last they reached the top. A description of

the view from the summit would be looked for in vain, not because the

poet was insensible to it, but, on the contrary, because the impression

was too over-whelming. His whole past life, with all its follies, rose

before his mind; he remembered that ten years ago that day he had

quitted Bologna a young man, and turned a longing gaze towards his

native country; he opened a book which then was his constant companion,

the ‘Confessions of St. Augustine,’ and his eye fell on the passage in

the tenth chapter, ‘and men go forth, and admire lofty mountains and

broad seas, and roaring torrents, and the ocean, and the course of the

stars, and forget their own selves while doing so.’ His brother, to whom

he read these words, could not understand why he closed the book and

said no more.

Some decades later, about 1360, Fazio degli Uberti describes in his

rhyming geography[693] (p. 178), the wide panorama from the mountains of

Auvergne, with the interest, it is true, of the geographer and

antiquarian only, but still showing clearly that he himself had seen it.

He must, however, have ascended far higher peaks, since he is familiar

with facts which only occur at a height of 10,000 feet or more above the

sea--mountain-sickness and its accompaniments--of which his imaginary

comrade Solinus tries to cure him with a sponge dipped in an essence.

The ascents of Parnassus and Olympus,[694] of which he speaks, are

perhaps only fictions.

In the fifteenth century, the great masters of the Flemish school,

Hubert and Johann van Eyck, suddenly lifted the veil from nature. Their

landscapes are not merely the fruit of an endeavour to reflect the real

world in art, but have, even if expressed conventionally, a certain

poetical meaning--in short, a soul. Their influence on the whole art of

the West is undeniable, and extended to the landscape-painting of the

Italians, but without preventing the characteristic interest of the

Italian eye for nature from finding its own expression.

On this point, as in the scientific description of nature, Æneas Sylvius

is again one of the most weighty voices of his time. Even if we grant

the justice of all that has been said against his character, we must

nevertheless admit that in few other men was the picture of the age and

its culture so fully reflected, and that few came nearer to the normal

type of the men of the early Renaissance. It may be added

parenthetically, that even in respect to his moral character he will not

be fairly judged, if we listen solely to the complaints of the German

Church, which his fickleness helped to baulk of the Council it so

ardently desired.[695]

He here claims our attention as the first who not only enjoyed the

magnificence of the Italian landscape, but described it with enthusiasm

down to its minutest details. The ecclesiastical State and the south of

Tuscany--his native home--he knew thoroughly, and after he became pope

he spent his leisure during the favourable season chiefly in excursions

to the country. Then at last the gouty man was rich enough to have

himself carried in a litter through the mountains and valleys; and when

we compare his enjoyments with those of the popes who succeeded him,

Pius, whose chief delight was in nature, antiquity, and simple, but

noble, architecture, appears almost a saint. In the elegant and flowing

Latin of his ‘Commentaries’ he freely tells us of his happiness.[696]

His eye seems as keen and practised as that of any modern observer. He

enjoys with rapture the panoramic splendour of the view from the summit

of the Alban Hills--from the Monte Cavo--whence he could see the shores

of St. Peter from Terracina and the promontory of Circe as far as Monte

Argentaro, and the wide expanse of country round about, with the ruined

cities of the past, and with the mountain-chains of central Italy

beyond; and then his eye would turn to the green woods in the hollows

beneath and the mountain-lakes among them. He feels the beauty of the

position of Todi, crowning the vineyards and olive-clad slopes, looking

down upon distant woods and upon the valley of the Tiber, where towns

and castles rise above the winding river. The lovely hills about Siena,

with villas and monasteries on every height, are his own home, and his

descriptions of them are touched with a peculiar feeling. Single

picturesque glimpses charm him too, like the little promontory of Capo

di Monte that stretches out into the Lake of Bolsena. ‘Rocky steps,’ we

read, ‘shaded by vines, descend to the water’s edge, where the evergreen

oaks stand between the cliffs, alive with the song of thrushes.’ On the

path round the Lake of Nemi, beneath the chestnuts and fruit-trees, he

feels that here, if anywhere, a poet’s soul must awake--here in the

hiding-place of Diana! He often held consistories or received

ambassadors under huge old chestnut-trees, or beneath the olives on the

green sward by some gurgling spring. A view like that of a narrowing

gorge, with a bridge arched boldly over it, awakens at once his artistic

sense. Even the smallest details give him delight through something

beautiful, or perfect, or characteristic in them--the blue fields of

waving flax, the yellow gorse which covers the hills, even tangled

thickets, or single trees, or springs, which seem to him like wonders of

nature.

The height of his enthusiasm for natural beauty was reached during his

stay on Monte Amiata, in the summer of 1462, when plague and heat made

the lowlands uninhabitable. Half-way up the mountain, in the old Lombard

monastery of San Salvatore, he and his court took up their quarters.

There, between the chestnuts which clothe the steep declivity, the eye

may wander over all southern Tuscany, with the towers of Siena in the

distance. The ascent of the highest peak he left to his companions, who

were joined by the Venetian envoy; they found at the top two vast blocks

of stone one upon the other--perhaps the sacrificial altar of a

pre-historical people--and fancied that in the far distance they saw

Corsica and Sardinia[697] rising above the sea. In the cool air of the

hills, among the old oaks and chestnuts, on the green meadows where

there were no thorns to wound the feet, and no snakes or insects to hurt

or to annoy, the pope passed days of unclouded happiness. For the

‘Segnatura,’ which took place on certain days of the week, he selected

on each occasion some new shady retreat[698] ‘novas in convallibus

fontes et novas inveniens umbras, quæ dubiam facerent electionem.’ At

such times the dogs would perhaps start a great stag from his lair, who,

after defending himself a while with hoofs and antlers, would fly at

last up the mountain. In the evening the pope was accustomed to sit

before the monastery on the spot from which the whole valley of the

Paglia was visible, holding lively conversations with the cardinals. The

courtiers, who ventured down from the heights on their hunting

expeditions, found the heat below intolerable, and the scorched plains

like a very hell, while the monastery, with its cool, shady woods,

seemed like an abode of the blessed.

All this is genuine modern enjoyment, not a reflection of antiquity. As

surely as the ancients themselves felt in the same manner, so surely,

nevertheless, were the scanty expressions of the writers whom Pius knew

insufficient to awaken in him such enthusiasm.[699]

The second great age of Italian poetry, which now followed at the end of

the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, as well as

the Latin poetry of the same period, is rich in proofs of the powerful

effect of nature on the human mind. The first glance at the lyric poets

of that time will suffice to convince us. Elaborate descriptions, it is

true, of natural scenery, are very rare, for the reason that, in this

energetic age, the novels and the lyric or epic poetry had something

else to deal with. Bojardo and Ariosto paint nature vigorously, but as

briefly as possible, and with no effort to appeal by their descriptions

to the feelings of the reader,[700] which they endeavour to reach solely

by their narrative and characters. Letter-writers and the authors of

philosophical dialogues are, in fact, better evidence of the growing

love of nature than the poets. The novelist Bandello, for example,

observes rigorously the rules of his department of literature; he gives

us in his novels themselves not a word more than is necessary on the

natural scenery amid which the action of his tales takes place,[701] but

in the dedications which always precede them we meet with charming

descriptions of nature as the setting for his dialogues and social

pictures. Among letter-writers, Aretino[702] unfortunately must be named

as the first who has fully painted in words the splendid effect of light

and shadow in an Italian sunset.

We sometimes find the feeling of the poets, also, attaching itself with

tenderness to graceful scenes of country life. Tito Strozza, about the

year 1480, describes in a Latin elegy[703] the dwelling of his mistress.

We are shown an old ivy-clad house, half hidden in trees, and adorned

with weather-stained frescoes of the saints, and near it a chapel, much

damaged by the violence of the river Po, which flowed hard by; not far

off, the priest ploughs his few barren roods with borrowed cattle. This

is no reminiscence of the Roman elegists, but true modern sentiment; and

the parallel to it--a sincere, unartificial description of country life

in general--will be found at the end of this part of our work.

It may be objected that the German painters at the beginning of the

sixteenth century succeed in representing with perfect mastery these

scenes of country life, as, for instance, Albrecht Dürer, in his

engraving of the Prodigal Son.[704] But it is one thing if a painter,

brought up in a school of realism, introduces such scenes, and quite

another thing if a poet, accustomed to an ideal or mythological

framework, is driven by inward impulse into realism. Besides which,

priority in point of time is here, as in the descriptions of country

life, on the side of the Italian poets.

CHAPTER IV.

THE DISCOVERY OF MAN. SPIRITUAL DESCRIPTION IN POETRY.

To the discovery of the outward world the Renaissance added a still

greater achievement, by first discerning and bringing to light the full,

whole nature of man.[705]

This period, as we have seen, first gave the highest development to

individuality, and then led the individual to the most zealous and

thorough study of himself in all forms and under all conditions. Indeed,

the development of personality is essentially involved in the

recognition of it in oneself and in others. Between these two great

processes our narrative has placed the influence of ancient literature,

because the mode of conceiving and representing both the individual and

human nature in general was defined and coloured by that influence. But

the power of conception and representation lay in the age and in the

people.

The facts which we shall quote in evidence of our thesis will be few in

number. Here, if anywhere in the course of this discussion, the author

is conscious that he is treading on the perilous ground of conjecture,

and that what seems to him a clear, if delicate and gradual, transition

in the intellectual movement of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,

may not be equally plain to others. The gradual awakening of the soul of

a people is a phenomenon which may produce a different impression on

each spectator. Time will judge which impression is the most faithful.

Happily the study of the intellectual side of human nature began, not

with the search after a theoretical psychology--for that, Aristotle

still sufficed--but with the endeavour to observe and to describe. The

indispensable ballast of theory was limited to the popular doctrine of

the four temperaments, in its then habitual union with the belief in the

influence of the planets. Such conceptions may remain ineradicable in

the minds of individuals, without hindering the general progress of the

age. It certainly makes on us a singular impression, when we meet them

at a time when human nature in its deepest essence and in all its

characteristic expressions was not only known by exact observation, but

represented by an immortal poetry and art. It sounds almost ludicrous

when an otherwise competent observer considers Clement VII. to be of a

melancholy temperament, but defers his judgment to that of the

physicians, who declare the pope of a sanguine-choleric nature;[706] or

when we read that the same Gaston de Foix, the victor of Ravenna, whom

Giorgione painted and Bambaja carved, and whom all the historians

describe, had the saturnine temperament.[707] No doubt those who use

these expressions mean something by them; but the terms in which they

tell us their meaning are strangely out of date in the Italy of the

sixteenth century.

As examples of the free delineation of the human spirit, we shall first

speak of the great poets of the fourteenth century.

If we were to collect the pearls from the courtly and knightly poetry of

all the countries of the West during the two preceding centuries, we

should have a mass of wonderful divinations and single pictures of the

inward life, which at first sight would seem to rival the poetry of the

Italians. Leaving lyrical poetry out of account, Godfrey of Strasburg

gives us, in ‘Tristram and Isolt,’ a representation of human passion,

some features of which are immortal. But these pearls lie scattered in

the ocean of artificial convention, and they are altogether something

very different from a complete objective picture of the inward man and

his spiritual wealth.

Italy, too, in the thirteenth century had, through the ‘Trovatori,’ its

share in the poetry of the courts and of chivalry. To them is mainly due

the ‘Canzone,’ whose construction is as difficult and artificial as that

of the songs of any northern minstrel. Their subject and mode of thought

represents simply the conventional tone of the courts, be the poet a

burgher or a scholar.

But two new paths at length showed themselves, along which Italian

poetry could advance to another and a characteristic future. They are

not the less important for being concerned only with the formal and

external side of the art.

To the same Brunetto Latini--the teacher of Dante--who, in his

‘Canzoni,’ adopts the customary manner of the ‘Trovatori,’ we owe the

first-known ‘Versi Sciolti,’ or blank hendecasyllabic verses,[708] and

in his apparent absence of form, a true and genuine passion suddenly

showed itself. The same voluntary renunciation of outward effect,

through confidence in the power of the inward conception, can be

observed some years later in fresco-painting, and later still in

painting of all kinds, which began to cease to rely on colour for its

effect, using simply a lighter or darker shade. For an age which laid so

much stress on artificial form in poetry, these verses of Brunetto mark

the beginning of a new epoch.[709]

About the same time, or even in the first half of the thirteenth

century, one of the many strictly-balanced forms of metre, in which

Europe was then so fruitful, became a normal and recognised form in

Italy--the sonnet. The order of rhymes and even the number of the lines

varied for a whole century,[710] till Petrarch fixed them permanently.

In this form all higher lyrical or meditative subjects, and at a later

time subjects of every possible description, were treated, and the

madrigals, the sestine, and even the ‘Canzoni’ were reduced to a

subordinate place. Later Italian writers complain, half jestingly, half

resentfully, of this inevitable mould, this Procrustean bed, to which

they were compelled to make their thoughts and feelings fit. Others

were, and still are, quite satisfied with this particular form of verse,

which they freely use to express any personal reminiscence or idle

sing-song without necessity or serious purpose. For which reason there

are many more bad or insignificant sonnets than good ones.

Nevertheless, the sonnet must be held to have been an unspeakable

blessing for Italian poetry. The clearness and beauty of its structure,

the invitation it gave to elevate the thought in the second and more

rapidly moving half, and the ease with which it could be learned by

heart, made it valued even by the greatest masters. In fact, they would

not have kept it in use down to our own century, had they not been

penetrated with a sense of its singular worth. These masters could have

given us the same thoughts in other and wholly different forms. But when

once they had made the sonnet the normal type of lyrical poetry, many

other writers of great, if not the highest, gifts, who otherwise would

have lost themselves in a sea of diffusiveness, were forced to

concentrate their feelings. The sonnet became for Italian literature a

condenser of thoughts and emotions such as was possessed by the poetry

of no other modern people.

Thus the world of Italian sentiment comes before us in a series of

pictures, clear, concise, and most effective in their brevity. Had other

nations possessed a form of expression of the same kind, we should

perhaps have known more of their inward life; we might have had a number

of pictures of inward and outward situations--reflexions of the national

character and temper--and should not be dependent for such knowledge on

the so-called lyrical poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,

who can hardly ever be read with any serious enjoyment. In Italy we can

trace an undoubted progress from the time when the sonnet came into

existence. In the second half of the thirteenth century the ‘Trovatori

della transizione,’ as they have been recently named,[711] mark the

passage from the Troubadours to the poets--that is, to those who wrote

under the influence of antiquity. The simplicity and strength of their

feeling, the vigorous delineation of fact, the precise expression and

rounding off of their sonnets and other poems, herald the coming of a

Dante. Some political sonnets of the Guelphs and Ghibellines (1260-1270)

have about them the ring of his passion, and others remind us of his

sweetest lyrical notes.

Of his own theoretical view of the sonnet, we are unfortunately

ignorant, since the last books of his work, ‘De vulgari eloquio,’ in

which he proposed to treat of ballads and sonnets, either remained

unwritten or have been lost. But, as a matter of fact, he has left us in

his Sonnets and ‘Canzoni,’ a treasure of inward experience. And in what

a framework he has set them! The prose of the ‘Vita Nuova,’ in which he

gives an account of the origin of each poem, is as wonderful as the

verses themselves, and forms with them a uniform whole, inspired with

the deepest glow of passion. With unflinching frankness and sincerity he

lays bare every shade of his joy and his sorrow, and moulds it

resolutely into the strictest forms of art. Reading attentively these

Sonnets and ‘Canzoni,’ and the marvellous fragments of the diary of his

youth which lie between them, we fancy that throughout the Middle Ages

the poets have been purposely fleeing from themselves, and that he was

the first to seek his own soul. Before his time we meet with many an

artistic verse; but he is the first artist in the full sense of the

word--the first who consciously cast immortal matter into an immortal

form. Subjective feeling has here a full objective truth and greatness,

and most of it is so set forth that all ages and peoples can make it

their own.[712] Where he writes in a thoroughly objective spirit, and

lets the force of his sentiment be guessed at only by some outward fact,

as in the magnificent sonnets ‘Tanto gentile,’ etc., and ‘Vedi

perfettamente,’ etc., he seems to feel the need of excusing

himself.[713] The most beautiful of these poems really belongs to this

class--the ‘Deh peregrini che pensosi andate.’

Even apart from the ‘Divine Comedy,’ Dante would have marked by these

youthful poems the boundary between mediævalism and modern times. The

human spirit had taken a mighty step towards the consciousness of its

own secret life.

The revelations in this matter which are contained in the ‘Divine

Comedy’ itself are simply immeasurable; and it would be necessary to go

through the whole poem, one canto after another, in order to do justice

to its value from this point of view. Happily we have no need to do

this, as it has long been a daily food of all the countries of the West.

Its plan, and the ideas on which it is based, belong to the Middle Ages,

and appeal to our interest only historically; but it is nevertheless the

beginning of all modern poetry, through the power and richness shown in

the description of human nature in every shape and attitude.[714]

From this time forwards poetry may have experienced unequal fortunes,

and may show, for half a century together, a so-called relapse. But its

nobler and more vital principle was saved for ever; and whenever in the

fourteenth, fifteenth, and in the beginning of the sixteenth centuries,

an original mind devotes himself to it, he represents a more advanced

stage than any poet out of Italy, given--what is certainly not always

easy to settle satisfactorily--an equality of natural gifts to start

with.

Here, as in other things, in Italy, culture--to which poetry

belongs--precedes the plastic arts and, in fact, gives them their chief

impulse. More than a century elapsed before the spiritual element in

painting and sculpture attained a power of expression in any way

analogous to that of the ‘Divine Comedy.’ How far the same rule holds

good for the artistic development of other nations,[715] and of what

importance the whole question may be, does not concern us here. For

Italian civilisation it is of decisive weight.

The position to be assigned to Petrarch in this respect must be settled

by the many readers of the poet. Those who come to him in the spirit of

a cross-examiner, and busy themselves in detecting the contradictions

between the poet and the man, his infidelities in love, and the other

weak sides of his character, may perhaps, after sufficient effort, end

by losing all taste for his poetry. In place, then, of artistic

enjoyment, we may acquire a knowledge of the man in his ‘totality.’ What

a pity that Petrarch’s letters from Avignon contain so little gossip to

take hold of, and that the letters of his acquaintances and of the

friends of these acquaintances have either been lost or never existed!

Instead of Heaven being thanked when we are not forced to enquire how

and through what struggles a poet has rescued something immortal from

his own poor life and lot, a biography has been stitched together for

Petrarch out of these so-called ‘remains,’ which reads like an

indictment. But the poet may take comfort. If the printing and editing

of the correspondence of celebrated people goes on for another

half-century as it has begun in England and Germany, he will have

illustrious company enough sitting with him on the stool of repentance.

Without shutting our eyes to much that is forced and artificial in his

poetry, where the writer is merely imitating himself and singing on in

the old strain, we cannot fail to admire the marvellous abundance of

pictures of the inmost soul--descriptions of moments of joy and sorrow

which must have been thoroughly his own, since no one before him gives

us anything of the kind, and on which his significance rests for his

country and for the world. His verse is not in all places equally

transparent; by the side of his most beautiful thoughts, stand at times

some allegorical conceit, or some sophistical trick of logic, altogether

foreign to our present taste. But the balance is on the side of

excellence.

Boccaccio, too, in his imperfectly-known Sonnets,[716] succeeds

sometimes in giving a most powerful and effective picture of his

feeling. The return to a spot consecrated by love (Son. 22), the

melancholy of spring (Son. 33), the sadness of the poet who feels

himself growing old (Son. 65), are admirably treated by him. And in the

‘Ameto’ he has described the ennobling and transfiguring power of love

in a manner which would hardly be expected from the author of the

‘Decamerone.’[717] In the ‘Fiammetta’ we have another great and

minutely-painted picture of the human soul, full of the keenest

observation, though executed with anything but uniform power, and in

parts marred by the passion for high-sounding language and by an unlucky

mixture of mythological allusions and learned quotations. The

‘Fiammetta,’ if we are not mistaken, is a sort of feminine counterpart

to the ‘Vita Nuova’ of Dante, or at any rate owes its origin to it.

That the ancient poets, particularly the elegists, and Virgil, in the

fourth book of the Æneid, were not without influence[718] on the

Italians of this and the following generation is beyond a doubt; but the

spring of sentiment within the latter was nevertheless powerful and

original. If we compare them in this respect with their contemporaries

in other countries, we shall find in them the earliest complete

expression of modern European feeling. The question, be it remembered,

is not to know whether eminent men of other nations did not feel as

deeply and as nobly, but who first gave documentary proof of the widest

knowledge of the movements of the human heart.

Why did the Italians of the Renaissance do nothing above the second rank

in tragedy? That was the field on which to display human character,

intellect, and passion, in the thousand forms of their growth, their

struggles, and their decline. In other words: why did Italy produce no

Shakespeare? For with the stage of other northern countries besides

England the Italians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had no

reason to fear a comparison; and with the Spaniards they could not enter

into competition, since Italy had long lost all traces of religious

fanaticism, treated the chivalrous code of honour only as a form, and

was both too proud and too intelligent to bow down before its tyrannical

and illegitimate masters.[719] We have therefore only to consider the

English stage in the period of its brief splendour.

It is an obvious reply that all Europe produced but one Shakespeare, and

that such a mind is the rarest of Heaven’s gifts. It is further possible

that the Italian stage was on the way to something great when the

Counter-reformation broke in upon it, and, aided by the Spanish rule

over Naples and Milan, and indirectly over the whole peninsula, withered

the best flowers of the Italian spirit. It would be hard to conceive of

Shakespeare himself under a Spanish viceroy, or in the neighbourhood of

the Holy Inquisition at Rome, or even in his own country a few decades

later, at the time of the English Revolution. The stage, which in its

perfection is a late product of every civilisation, must wait for its

own time and fortune.

We must not, however, quit this subject without mentioning certain

circumstances, which were of a character to hinder or retard a high

development of the drama in Italy, till the time for it had gone by.

As the most weighty of these causes we must mention without doubt that

the scenic tastes of the people were occupied elsewhere, and chiefly in

the mysteries and religious processions. Throughout all Europe dramatic

representations of sacred history and legend form the origin of the

secular drama; but Italy, as it will be shown more fully in the sequel,

had spent on the mysteries such a wealth of decorative splendour as

could not but be unfavourable to the dramatic element. Out of all the

countless and costly representations, there sprang not even a branch of

poetry like the ‘Autos Sagramentales’ of Calderon and other Spanish

poets, much less any advantage or foundation for the legitimate

drama.[720]

And when the latter did at length appear, it at once gave itself up to

magnificence of scenic effects, to which the mysteries had already

accustomed the public taste to far too great an extent. We learn with

astonishment how rich and splendid the scenes in Italy were, at a time

when in the North the simplest indication of the place was thought

sufficient. This alone might have had no such unfavourable effect on the

drama, if the attention of the audience had not been drawn away from the

poetical conception of the play partly by the splendour of the costumes,

partly and chiefly by fantastic interludes (Intermezzi).

That in many places, particularly in Rome and Ferrara, Plautus and

Terence, as well as pieces by the old tragedians, were given in Latin or

in Italian (pp. 242, 255), that the academies (p. 280) of which we have

already spoken, made this one of their chief objects, and that the poets

of the Renaissance followed these models too servilely, were all

untoward conditions for the Italian stage at the period in

question. Yet I hold them to be of secondary importance. Had not the

Counter-reformation and the rule of foreigners intervened, these very

disadvantages might have been turned into useful means of transition. At

all events, by the year 1520 the victory of the mother-tongue in tragedy

and comedy was, to the great disgust of the humanists, as good as

won.[721] On this side, then, no obstacle stood in the way of the most

developed people in Europe, to hinder them from raising the drama, in

its noblest forms, to be a true reflexion of human life and destiny. It

was the Inquisitors and Spaniards who cowed the Italian spirit, and

rendered impossible the representation of the greatest and most sublime

themes, most of all when they were associated with patriotic memories.

At the same time, there is no doubt that the distracting ‘Intermezzi’

did serious harm to the drama. We must now consider them a little more

closely.

When the marriage of Alfonso of Ferrara with Lucrezia Borgia was

celebrated, Duke Hercules in person showed his illustrious guests the

110 costumes which were to serve at the representation of five comedies

of Plautus, in order that all might see that not one of them was used

twice.[722] But all this display of silk and camlet was nothing to the

ballets and pantomimes which served as interludes between the acts of

the Plautine dramas. That in comparison, Plautus himself seemed mortally

dull to a lively young lady like Isabella Gonzaga, and that while the

play was going on everybody was longing for the interludes, is quite

intelligible, when we think of the picturesque brilliancy with which

they were put on the stage. There were to be seen combats of Roman

warriors, who brandished their weapons to the sound of music,

torch-dances executed by Moors, a dance of savages with horns of plenty,

out of which streamed waves of fire--all as the ballet of a pantomime in

which a maiden was delivered from a dragon. Then came a dance of fools,

got up as punches, beating one another with pigs’ bladders, with more of

the same kind. At the Court of Ferrara they never gave a comedy without

‘its’ ballet (Moresca).[723] In what style the ‘Amphitryo’ of Plautus

was there represented (1491, at the first marriage of Alfonso with Anna

Sforza), is doubtful. Possibly it was given rather as a pantomime with

music, than as a drama.[724] In any case, the accessories were more

considerable than the play itself. There was a choral dance of ivy-clad

youths, moving in intricate figures, done to the music of a ringing

orchestra; then came Apollo, striking the lyre with the plectrum, and

singing an ode to the praise of the House of Este; then followed, as an

interlude within an interlude, a kind of rustic farce, after which the

stage was again occupied by classical mythology--Venus, Bacchus and

their followers--and by a pantomime representing the judgment of Paris.

Not till then was the second half of the fable of Amphitryo performed,

with unmistakable references to the future birth of a Hercules of the

House of Este. At a former representation of the same piece in the

courtyard of the palace (1487), ‘a paradise with stars and other

wheels,’ was constantly burning, by which is probably meant an

illumination with fireworks, that, no doubt, absorbed most of the

attention of the spectators. It was certainly better when such

performances were given separately, as was the case at other courts. We

shall have to speak of the entertainments given by the Cardinal Pietro

Riario, by the Bentivogli at Bologna, and by others, when we come to

treat of the festivals in general.

This scenic magnificence, now become universal, had a disastrous effect

on Italian tragedy. ‘In Venice formerly,’ writes Francesco

Sansovino,[725] ‘besides comedies, tragedies by ancient and modern

writers were put on the stage with great pomp. The fame of the scenic

arrangements (_apparati_) brought spectators from far and near.

Nowadays, performances are given by private individuals in their own

houses, and the custom has long been fixed of passing the carnival in

comedies and other cheerful entertainments.’ In other words, scenic

display had helped to kill tragedy.

The various starts or attempts of these modern tragedians, among which

the ‘Sofonisba’ of Trissino was the most celebrated, belong to the

history of literature. The same may be said of genteel comedy, modelled

on Plautus and Terence. Even Ariosto could do nothing of the first

order in this style. On the other hand, popular prose-comedy, as treated

by Macchiavelli, Bibiena, and Aretino, might have had a future, if its

matter had not condemned it to destruction. This was, on the one hand,

licentious to the last degree, and on the other, aimed at certain

classes in society, which, after the middle of the sixteenth century,

ceased to afford a ground for public attacks. If in the ‘Sofonisba’ the

portrayal of character gave place to brilliant declamation, the latter,

with its half-sister caricature, was used far too freely in comedy also.

Nevertheless, these Italian comedies, if we are not mistaken, were the

first written in prose and copied from real life, and for this reason

deserve mention in the history of European literature.

The writing of tragedies and comedies, and the practice of putting both

ancient and modern plays on the stage, continued without intermission;

but they served only as occasions for display. The national genius

turned elsewhere for living interest. When the opera and the pastoral

fable came up, these attempts were at length wholly abandoned.

One form of comedy only was and remained national--the unwritten,

improvised ‘Commedia dell’Arte.’ It was of no great service in the

delineation of character, since the masks used were few in number and

familiar to everybody. But the talent of the nation had such an affinity

for this style, that often in the middle of written comedies the actors

would throw themselves on their own inspiration,[726] so that a new

mixed form of comedy came into existence in some places. The plays given

in Venice by Burchiello, and afterwards by the company of Armonio, Val.

Zuccato, Lod. Dolce, and others, were perhaps of this character.[727] Of

Burchiello we know expressly that he used to heighten the comic effect

by mixing Greek and Sclavonic words with the Venetian dialect. A

complete ‘Commedia dell’Arte,’ or very nearly so, was represented by

Angelo Beolco, known as ‘Il Ruzzante’ (1502-1542), who enjoyed the

highest reputation as poet and actor, was compared as poet to Plautus,

and as actor to Roscius, and who formed a company with several of his

friends, who appeared in his pieces as Paduan peasants, with the names

Menato, Vezzo, Billora, &c. He studied their dialect when spending the

summer at the villa of his patron Luigi Cornaro (Aloysius Cornelius) at

Codevico.[728] Gradually all the famous local masks made their

appearance, whose remains still delight the Italian populace at our day:

Pantalone, the Doctor, Brighella, Pulcinella, Arlecchino, and the rest.

Most of them are of great antiquity, and possibly are historically

connected with the masks in the old Roman farces; but it was not till

the sixteenth century that several of them were combined in one piece.

At the present time this is less often the case; but every great city

still keeps to its local mask--Naples to the Pulcinella, Florence to the

Stentorello, Milan to its often so admirable Meneghino.[729]

This is indeed scanty compensation for a people which possessed the

power, perhaps to a greater degree than any other, to reflect and

contemplate its own highest qualities in the mirror of the drama. But

this power was destined to be marred for centuries by hostile forces,

for whose predominance the Italians were only in part responsible. The

universal talent for dramatic representation could not indeed be

uprooted, and in music Italy long made good its claim to supremacy in

Europe. Those who can find in this world of sound a compensation for the

drama, to which all future was denied, have, at all events, no meagre

source of consolation.

But perhaps we can find in epic poetry what the stage fails to offer us.

Yet the chief reproach made against the heroic poetry of Italy is

precisely on the score of the insignificance and imperfect

representation of its characters.

Other merits are allowed to belong to it, among the rest, that for three

centuries it has been actually read and constantly reprinted, while

nearly the whole of the epic poetry of other nations has become a mere

matter of literary or historical curiosity. Does this perhaps lie in the

taste of the readers, who demand something different from what would

satisfy a northern public? Certainly, without the power of entering to

some degree into Italian sentiment, it is impossible to appreciate the

characteristic excellence of these poems, and many distinguished men

declare that they can make nothing of them. And in truth, if we

criticise Pulci, Bojardo, Ariosto, and Berni solely with an eye to their

thought and matter, we shall fail to do them justice. They are artists

of a peculiar kind, who write for a people which is distinctly and

eminently artistic.

The mediæval legends had lived on after the gradual extinction of the

poetry of chivalry, partly in the form of rhyming adaptations and

collections, and partly of novels in prose. The latter was the case in

Italy during the fourteenth century; but the newly-awakened memories of

antiquity were rapidly growing up to a gigantic size, and soon cast into

the shade all the fantastic creations of the Middle Ages. Boccaccio, for

example, in his ‘Visione Amorosa,’ names among the heroes in his

enchanted palace Tristram, Arthur, Galeotto, and others, but briefly, as

if he were ashamed to speak of them (p. 206); and following writers

either do not name them at all, or name them only for purposes of

ridicule. But the people kept them in its memory, and from the people

they passed into the hands of the poets of the fifteenth century. These

were now able to conceive and represent their subject in a wholly new

manner. But they did more. They introduced into it a multitude of fresh

elements, and in fact recast it from beginning to end. It must not be

expected of them that they should treat such subjects with the respect

once felt for them. All other countries must envy them the advantage of

having a popular interest of this kind to appeal to; but they could not

without hypocrisy treat these myths with any respect.[730]

Instead of this, they moved with victorious freedom in the new field

which poetry had won. What they chiefly aimed at seems to have been that

their poems, when recited, should produce the most harmonious and

exhilarating effect. These works indeed gain immensely when they are

repeated, not as a whole, but piecemeal, and with a slight touch of

comedy in voice and gesture. A deeper and more detailed portrayal of

character would do little to enhance this effect; though the reader may

desire it, the hearer, who sees the rhapsodist standing before him, and

who hears only one piece at a time, does not think about it at all. With

respect to the figures which the poet found ready made for him, his

feeling was of a double kind; his humanistic culture protested against

their mediæval character, and their combats as counterparts of the

battles and tournaments of the poet’s own age exercised all his

knowledge and artistic power, while at the same time they called forth

all the highest qualities in the reciter. Even in Pulci,[731]

accordingly, we find no parody, strictly speaking, of chivalry, nearly

as the rough humour of his paladins at times approaches it. By their

side stands the ideal of pugnacity--the droll and jovial Morgante--who

masters whole armies with his bell-clapper, and who is himself thrown

into relief by contrast with the grotesque and most interesting monster

Margutte. Yet Pulci lays no special stress on these two rough and

vigorous characters, and his story, long after they had disappeared from

it, maintains its singular course. Bojardo[732] treats his characters

with the same mastery, using them for serious or comic purposes as he

pleases; he has his fun even out of supernatural beings, whom he

sometimes intentionally depicts as louts. But there is one artistic aim

which he pursues as earnestly as Pulci, namely, the lively and exact

description of all that goes forward. Pulci recited his poem, as one

book after another was finished, before the society of Lorenzo

Magnifico, and in the same way Bojardo recited his at the court of

Hercules of Ferrara. It may be easily imagined what sort of excellence

such an audience demanded, and how little thanks a profound exposition

of character would have earned for the poet. Under these circumstances

the poems naturally formed no complete whole, and might just as well be

half or twice as long as they now are. Their composition is not that of

a great historical picture, but rather that of a frieze, or of some rich

festoon entwined among groups of picturesque figures. And precisely as

in the figures or tendrils of a frieze we do not look for minuteness of

execution in the individual forms, or for distant perspectives and

different planes, so we must as little expect anything of the kind from

these poems.

The varied richness of invention which continually astonishes us, most

of all in the case of Bojardo, turns to ridicule all our school

definitions as to the essence of epic poetry. For that age, this form of

literature was the most agreeable diversion from archæological studies,

and, indeed, the only possible means of re-establishing an independent

class of narrative poetry. For the versification of ancient history

could only lead to the false tracks which were trodden by Petrarch in

his ‘Africa,’ written in Latin hexameters, and a hundred and fifty years

later by Trissino in his ‘Italy delivered from the Goths,’ composed in

‘versi sciolti’--a never-ending poem of faultless language and

versification, which only makes us doubt whether an unlucky alliance has

been most disastrous to history or to poetry.[733]

And whither did the example of Dante beguile those who imitated him? The

visionary ‘Trionfi’ of Petrarch were the last of the works written under

this influence which satisfy our taste. The ‘Amorosa Visione’ of

Boccaccio is at bottom no more than an enumeration of historical or

fabulous characters, arranged under allegorical categories.[734] Others

preface what they have to tell with a baroque imitation of Dante’s

first canto, and provide themselves with some allegorical comparison, to

take the place of Virgil. Uberti, for example, chose Solinus for his

geographical poem--the ‘Dittamondo’--and Giovanni Santi, Plutarch for

his encomium on Frederick of Urbino.[735] The only salvation of the time

from these false tendencies lay in the new epic poetry which was

represented by Pulci and Bojardo. The admiration and curiosity with

which it was received, and the like of which will perhaps never fall

again to the lot of epic poetry to the end of time, is a brilliant proof

how great was the need of it. It is idle to ask whether that epic ideal

which our own day has formed from Homer and the ‘Nibelungenlied’ is or

is not realised in these works; an ideal of their own age certainly was.

By their endless descriptions of combats, which to us are the most

fatiguing part of these poems, they satisfied, as we have already said,

a practical interest of which it is hard for us to form a just

conception[736]--as hard, indeed, as of the esteem in which a lively and

faithful reflection of the passing moment was then held.

Nor can a more inappropriate test be applied to Ariosto than the degree

in which his ‘Orlando Furioso’[737] serves for the representation of

character. Characters, indeed, there are, and drawn with an affectionate

care; but the poem does not depend on these for its effect, and would

lose, rather than gain, if more stress were laid upon them. But the

demand for them is part of a wider and more general desire which Ariosto

fails to satisfy as our day would wish it satisfied. From a poet of such

fame and such mighty gifts we would gladly receive something better than

the adventures of Orlando. From him we might have hoped for a work

expressing the deepest conflicts of the human soul, the highest thoughts

of his time on human and divine things--in a word, one of those supreme

syntheses like the ‘Divine Comedy’ or ‘Faust.’ Instead of which he goes

to work like the plastic artists of his own day, not caring for

originality in our sense of the word, simply reproducing a familiar

circle of figures, and even, when it suits his purpose, making use of

the details left him by his predecessors. The excellence which, in spite

of all this, can nevertheless be attained, will be the more

incomprehensible to people born without the artistic sense, the more

learned and intelligent in other respects they are. The artistic aim of

Ariosto is brilliant, living action, which he distributes equally

through the whole of his great poem. For this end he needs to be

excused, not only from all deeper expression of character, but also from

maintaining any strict connection in his narrative. He must be allowed

to take up lost and forgotten threads when and where he pleases; his

heroes must come and go, not because their character, but because the

story requires it. Yet in this apparently irrational and arbitrary style

of composition he displays a harmonious beauty, never losing himself in

description, but giving only such a sketch of scenes and persons as does

not hinder the flowing movement of the narrative. Still less does he

lose himself in conversation and monologue,[738] but maintains the lofty

privilege of the true epos, by transforming all into living narrative.

His pathos does not lie in the words,[739] not even in the famous

twenty-third and following cantos, where Roland’s madness is described.

That the love-stories in the heroic poem are without all lyrical

tenderness, must be reckoned a merit, though from a moral point of view

they cannot be always approved. Yet at times they are of such truth and

reality, notwithstanding all the magic and romance which surrounds them,

that we might think them personal affairs of the poet himself. In the

full consciousness of his own genius, he does not scruple to interweave

the events of his own day into the poem, and to celebrate the fame of

the house of Este in visions and prophecies. The wonderful stream of his

octaves bears it all forwards in even and dignified movement.

With Teofilo Folengo, or, as he here calls himself, Limerno Pitocco, the

parody of the whole system of chivalry attained the end it had so long

desired.[740] But here comedy, with its realism, demanded of necessity a

stricter delineation of character. Exposed to all the rough usage of

the half-savage street-lads in a Roman country town, Sutri, the little

Orlando grows up before our eyes into the hero, the priest-hater, and

the disputant. The conventional world which had been recognised since

the time of Pulci and had served as framework for the epos, falls here

to pieces. The origin and position of the paladins is openly ridiculed,

as in the tournament of donkeys in the second book, where the knights

appear with the most ludicrous armament. The poet utters his ironical

regrets over the inexplicable faithlessness which seems implanted in the

house of Gano of Mainz, over the toilsome acquisition of the sword

Durindana, and so forth. Tradition, in fact, serves him only as a

substratum for episodes, ludicrous fancies, allusions to events of the

time (among which some, like the close of cap. vi. are exceedingly

fine), and indecent jokes. Mixed with all this, a certain derision of

Ariosto is unmistakable, and it was fortunate for the ‘Orlando Furioso’

that the ‘Orlandino,’ with its Lutheran heresies, was soon put out of

the way by the Inquisition. The parody is evident when (cap. v. str. 28)

the house of Gonzaga is deduced from the paladin Guidone, since the

Colonna claimed Orlando, the Orsini Rinaldo, and the house of

Este--according to Ariosto--Ruggiero as their ancestors. Perhaps

Ferrante Gonzaga, the patron of the poet, was a party to this sarcasm on

the house of Este.

That in the ‘Jerusalem Delivered’ of Torquato Tasso the delineation of

character is one of the chief tasks of the poet, proves only how far his

mode of thought differed from that prevalent half a century before. His

admirable work is a true monument of the Counter-reformation which had

been meanwhile accomplished, and of the spirit and tendency of that

movement.

CHAPTER V.

BIOGRAPHY.

Outside the sphere of poetry also, the Italians were the first of all

European nations who displayed any remarkable power and inclination

accurately to describe man as shown in history, according to his inward

and outward characteristics.

It is true that in the Middle Ages considerable attempts were made in

the same direction; and the legends of the Church, as a kind of standing

biographical task, must, to some extent, have kept alive the interest

and the gift for such descriptions. In the annals of the monasteries and

cathedrals, many of the churchmen, such as Meinwerk of Paderborn,

Godehard of Kildesheim, and others, are brought vividly before our eyes;

and descriptions exist of several of the German emperors, modelled after

old authors--particularly Suetonius--which contain admirable features.

Indeed these and other profane ‘vitae’ came in time to form a continuous

counterpart to the sacred legends. Yet neither Einhard nor

Radevicus[741] can be named by the side of Joinville’s picture of St.

Louis, which certainly stands almost alone as the first complete

spiritual portrait of a modern European nature. Characters like St.

Louis are rare at all times, and his was favoured by the rare good

fortune that a sincere and naïve observer caught the spirit of all the

events and actions of his life, and represented it admirably. From what

scanty sources are we left to guess at the inward nature of Frederick

II. or of Philip the Fair. Much of what, till the close of the Middle

Ages, passed for biography, is properly speaking nothing but

contemporary narrative, written without any sense of what is individual

in the subject of the memoir.

Among the Italians, on the contrary, the search for the characteristic

features of remarkable men was a prevailing tendency; and this it is

which separates them from the other western peoples, among whom the same

thing happens but seldom, and in exceptional cases. This keen eye for

individuality belongs only to those who have emerged from the

half-conscious life of the race and become themselves individuals.

Under the influence of the prevailing conception of fame (p. 139, sqq.),

an art of comparative biography arose which no longer found it

necessary, like Anastasius,[742] Agnellus,[743] and their successors, or

like the biographers of the Venetian doges, to adhere to a dynastic or

ecclesiastical succession. It felt itself free to describe a man if and

because he was remarkable. It took as models Suetonius, Nepos (the ‘viri

illustres’), and Plutarch, so far as he was known and translated; for

sketches of literary history, the lives of the grammarians,

rhetoricians, and poets, known to us as the ‘Appendices’ to

Suetonius,[744] seem to have served as patterns, as well as the

widely-read life of Virgil by Donatus.

It has been already mentioned that biographical collections--lives of

famous men and famous women--began to appear in the fourteenth century

(p. 146). Where they do not describe contemporaries, they are naturally

dependent on earlier narratives. The first great original effort is the

life of Dante by Boccaccio. Lightly and rhetorically written, and full,

as it is, of arbitrary fancies, this work nevertheless gives us a lively

sense of the extraordinary features in Dante’s nature.[745] Then follow,

at the end of the fourteenth century, the ‘vite’ of illustrious

Florentines, by Filippo Villani. They are men of every calling: poets,

jurists, physicians, scholars, artists, statesmen, and soldiers, some of

them then still living. Florence is here treated like a gifted family,

in which all the members are noticed in whom the spirit of the house

expresses itself vigorously. The descriptions are brief, but show a

remarkable eye for what is characteristic, and are noteworthy for

including the inward and outward physiognomy in the same sketch.[746]

From that time forward,[747] the Tuscans never ceased to consider the

description of man as lying within their special competence, and to them

we owe the most valuable portraits of the Italians of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries. Giovanni Cavalcanti, in the appendices to his

Florentine history, written before the year 1450,[748] collects

instances of civil virtue and abnegation, of political discernment and

of military valour, all shown by Florentines. Pius II. gives us in his

‘Commentaries’ valuable portraits of famous contemporaries; and not long

ago a separate work of his earlier years,[749] which seems preparatory

to these portraits, but which has colours and features that are very

singular, was reprinted. To Jacob of Volterra we owe piquant sketches of

members of the Curia[750] in the time of Sixtus IV. Vespasiano

Fiorentino has been often referred to already, and as a historical

authority a high place must be assigned to him; but his gift as a

painter of character is not to be compared with that of Macchiavelli,

Niccolò Valori, Guicciardini, Varchi, Francesco Vettori, and others, by

whom European history has been probably as much influenced in this

direction as by the ancients. It must not be forgotten that some of

these authors soon found their way into northern countries by means of

Latin translations. And without Giorgio Vasari of Arezzo and his

all-important work, we should perhaps to this day have no history of

northern art, or of the art of modern Europe, at all.[751]

Among the biographers of North Italy in the fifteenth century,

Bartolommeo Facio of Spezzia holds a high rank (p. 147). Platina, born

in the territory of Cremona, gives us, in his ‘Life of Paul II.’ (p.

231), examples of biographical caricatures. The description of the last

Visconti,[752] written by Piercandido Decembrio--an enlarged imitation

of Suetonius--is of special importance. Sismondi regrets that so much

trouble has been spent on so unworthy an object, but the author would

hardly have been equal to deal with a greater man, while he was

thoroughly competent to describe the mixed nature of Filippo Maria, and

in and through it to represent with accuracy the conditions, the forms,

and the consequences of this particular kind of despotism. The picture

of the fifteenth century would be incomplete without this unique

biography, which is characteristic down to its minutest details. Milan

afterwards possessed, in the historian Corio, an excellent

portrait-painter; and after him came Paolo Giovio of Como, whose larger

biographies and shorter ‘Elogia’ have achieved a world-wide reputation,

and become models for future writers in all countries. It is easy to

prove by a hundred passages how superficial and even dishonest he was;

nor from a man like him can any high and serious purpose be expected.

But the breath of the age moves in his pages, and his Leo, his Alfonso,

his Pompeo Colonna, live and act before us with such perfect truth and

reality, that we seem admitted to the deepest recesses of their nature.

Among Neapolitan writers, Tristano Caracciolo (p. 36), so far as we are

able to judge, holds indisputably the first place in this respect,

although his purpose was not strictly biographical. In the figures which

he brings before us, guilt and destiny are wondrously mingled. He is a

kind of unconscious tragedian. That genuine tragedy which then found no

place on the stage, ‘swept by’ in the palace, the street, and the public

square. The ‘Words and Deeds of Alfonso the Great,’ written by Antonio

Panormita[753] during the lifetime of the king, and consequently showing

more of the spirit of flattery than is consistent with historical truth,

are remarkable as one of the first of such collections of anecdotes and

of wise and witty sayings.

The rest of Europe followed the example of Italy in this respect but

slowly,[754] although great political and religious movements had broken

so many bands, and had awakened so many thousands to new spiritual life.

Italians, whether scholars or diplomatists, still remained, on the

whole, the best source of information for the characters of the leading

men all over Europe. It is well known how speedily and unanimously in

recent times the reports of the Venetian embassies in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries have been recognised as authorities of the first

order for personal description.[755] Even autobiography takes here and

there in Italy a bold and vigorous flight, and puts before us, together

with the most varied incidents of external life, striking revelations of

the inner man. Among other nations, even in Germany at the time of the

Reformation, it deals only with outward experiences, and leaves us to

guess at the spirit within from the style of the narrative.[756] It

seems as though Dante’s ‘Vita Nuova,’ with the inexorable truthfulness

which runs through it, had shown his people the way.

The beginnings of autobiography are to be traced in the family histories

of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which are said to be not

uncommon as manuscripts in the Florentine libraries--unaffected

narratives written for the sake of the individual or of his family, like

that of Buonaccorso Pitti.

A profound self-analysis is not to be looked for in the ‘Commentaries’

of Pius II. What we here learn of him as a man seems at first sight to

be chiefly confined to the account which he gives of the different steps

in his career. But further reflexion will lead us to a different

conclusion with regard to this remarkable book. There are men who are by

nature mirrors of what surrounds them. It would be irrelevant to ask

incessantly after their convictions, their spiritual struggles, their

inmost victories and achievements. Æneas Sylvius lived wholly in the

interest which lay near, without troubling himself about the problems

and contradictions of life. His Catholic orthodoxy gave him all the help

of this kind which he needed. And at all events, after taking part in

every intellectual movement which interested his age, and notably

furthering some of them, he still at the close of his earthly course

retained character enough to preach a crusade against the Turks, and to

die of grief when it came to nothing.

Nor is the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, any more than that of

Pius II., founded on introspection. And yet it describes the whole

man--not always willingly--with marvellous truth and completeness. It is

no small matter that Benvenuto, whose most important works have perished

half finished, and who, as an artist, is perfect only in his little

decorative specialty, but in other respects, if judged by the works of

him which remain, is surpassed by so many of his greater

contemporaries--that Benvenuto as a man will interest mankind to the end

of time. It does not spoil the impression when the reader often detects

him bragging or lying; the stamp of a mighty, energetic, and thoroughly

developed nature remains. By his side our northern autobiographers,

though their tendency and moral character may stand much higher, appear

incomplete beings. He is a man who can do all and dares do all, and who

carries his measure in himself.[757] Whether we like him or not, he

lives, such as he was, as a significant type of the modern spirit.

Another man deserves a brief mention in connection with this subject--a

man who, like Benvenuto, was not a model of veracity: Girolamo Cardano

of Milan (b. 1500). His little book, ‘De propria vita’[758] will outlive

and eclipse his fame in philosophy and natural science, just as

Benvenuto’s life, though its value is of another kind, has thrown his

works into the shade. Cardano is a physician who feels his own pulse,

and describes his own physical, moral, and intellectual nature, together

with all the conditions under which it had developed, and this, to the

best of his ability, honestly and sincerely. The work which he avowedly

took as his model--the ‘Confessions’ of Marcus Aurelius--he was able,

hampered as he was by no stoical maxims, to surpass in this particular.

He desires to spare neither himself nor others, and begins the narrative

of his career with the statement that his mother tried, and failed, to

procure abortion. It is worth remark that he attributes to the stars

which presided over his birth only the events of his life and his

intellectual gifts, but not his moral qualities; he confesses (cap. 10)

that the astrological prediction that he would not live to the age of

forty or fifty years did him much harm in his youth. But there is no

need to quote from so well-known and accessible a book; whoever opens it

will not lay it down till the last page. Cardano admits that he cheated

at play, that he was vindictive, incapable of all compunction,

purposely cruel in his speech. He confesses it without impudence and

without feigned contrition, without even wishing to make himself an

object of interest, but with the same simple and sincere love of fact

which guided him in his scientific researches. And, what is to us the

most repulsive of all, the old man, after the most shocking

experiences[759] and with his confidence in his fellow-men gone, finds

himself after all tolerably happy and comfortable. He has still left him

a grandson, immense learning, the fame of his works, money, rank and

credit, powerful friends, the knowledge of many secrets, and, best of

all, belief in God. After this, he counts the teeth in his head, and

finds that he has fifteen.

Yet when Cardano wrote, Inquisitors and Spaniards were already busy in

Italy, either hindering the production of such natures, or, where they

existed, by some means or other putting them out of the way. There lies

a gulf between this book and the memoirs of Alfieri.

Yet it would be unjust to close this list of autobiographers without

listening to a word from one man who was both worthy and happy. This is

the well-known philosopher of practical life, Luigi Cornaro, whose

dwelling at Padua, classical as an architectural work, was at the same

time the home of all the muses. In his famous treatise ‘On the Sober

Life,’[760] he describes the strict regimen by which he succeeded, after

a sickly youth, in reaching an advanced and healthy age, then of

eighty-three years. He goes on to answer those who despise life after

the age of sixty-five as a living death, showing them that his own life

had nothing deadly about it. ‘Let them come and see, and wonder at my

good health, how I mount on horseback without help, how I run upstairs

and up hills, how cheerful, amusing, and contented I am, how free from

care and disagreeable thoughts. Peace and joy never quit me.... My

friends are wise, learned, and distinguished people of good position,

and when they are not with me I read and write, and try thereby, as by

all other means, to be useful to others. Each of these things I do at

the proper time, and at my ease, in my dwelling, which is beautiful and

lies in the best part of Padua, and is arranged both for summer and

winter with all the resources of architecture, and provided with a

garden by the running water. In the spring and autumn, I go for a while

to my hill in the most beautiful part of the Euganean mountains, where I

have fountains and gardens, and a comfortable dwelling; and there I

amuse myself with some easy and pleasant chase, which is suitable to my

years. At other times I go to my villa on the plain;[761] there all the

paths lead to an open space, in the middle of which stands a pretty

church; an arm of the Brenta flows through the plantations--fruitful,

well-cultivated fields, now fully peopled, which the marshes and the

foul air once made fitter for snakes than for men. It was I who drained

the country; then the air became good, and people settled there and

multiplied, and the land became cultivated as it now is, so that I can

truly say: “On this spot I gave to God an altar and a temple, and souls

to worship Him.” This is my consolation and my happiness whenever I come

here. In the spring and autumn, I also visit the neighbouring towns, to

see and converse with my friends, through whom I make the acquaintance

of other distinguished men, architects, painters, sculptors, musicians,

and cultivators of the soil. I see what new things they have done, I

look again at what I know already, and learn much that is of use to me.

I see palaces, gardens, antiquities, public grounds, churches, and

fortifications. But what most of all delights me when I travel, is the

beauty of the country and the cities, lying now on the plain, now on the

slopes of the hills, or on the banks of rivers and streams, surrounded

by gardens and villas. And these enjoyments are not diminished through

weakness of the eyes or the ears; all my senses (thank God!) are in the

best condition, including the sense of taste; for I enjoy more the

simple food which I now take in moderation, than all the delicacies

which I ate in my years of disorder.’

After mentioning the works he had undertaken on behalf of the republic

for draining the marshes, and the projects which he had constantly

advocated for preserving the lagunes, he thus concludes:--

‘These are the true recreations of an old age which God has permitted to

be healthy, and which is free from those mental and bodily sufferings to

which so many young people and so many sickly older people succumb. And

if it be allowable to add the little to the great, to add jest to

earnest, it may be mentioned as a result of my moderate life, that in my

eighty-third year I have written a most amusing comedy, full of

blameless wit. Such works are generally the business of youth, as

tragedy is the business of old age. If it is reckoned to the credit of

the famous Greek that he wrote a tragedy in his seventy-third year, must

I not, with my ten years more, be more cheerful and healthy than he ever

was? And that no consolation may be wanting in the overflowing cup of my

old age, I see before my eyes a sort of bodily immortality in the

persons of my descendants. When I come home I see before me, not one or

two, but eleven grandchildren, between the ages of two and eighteen, all

from the same father and mother, all healthy, and, so far as can already

be judged, all gifted with the talent and disposition for learning and a

good life. One of the younger I have as my playmate (buffoncello), since

children from the third to the fifth year are born to tricks; the elder

ones I treat as my companions, and, as they have admirable voices, I

take delight in hearing them sing and play on different instruments. And

I sing myself, and find my voice better, clearer, and louder than ever.

These are the pleasures of my last years. My life, therefore, is alive,

and not dead; nor would I exchange my age for the youth of such as live

in the service of their passions.

In the ‘Exhortation’ which Cornaro added at a much later time, in his

ninety-fifth year, he reckons it among the elements of his happiness

that his ‘Treatise’ had made many converts. He died at Padua in 1565, at

the age of over a hundred years.

CHAPTER VI.

THE DESCRIPTION OF NATIONS AND CITIES.

This national gift did not, however, confine itself to the criticism and

description of individuals, but felt itself competent to deal with the

qualities and characteristics of whole peoples. Throughout the Middle

Ages the cities, families, and nations of all Europe were in the habit

of making insulting and derisive attacks on one another, which, with

much caricature, contained commonly a kernel of truth. But from the

first the Italians surpassed all others in their quick apprehension of

the mental differences among cities and populations. Their local

patriotism, stronger probably than in any other mediæval people, soon

found expression in literature, and allied itself with the current

conception of ‘Fame.’ Topography became the counterpart of biography (p.

145); while all the more important cities began to celebrate their own

praises in prose and verse,[762] writers appeared who made the chief

towns and districts the subject partly of a serious comparative

description, partly of satire, and sometimes of notices in which jest

and earnest are not easy to be distinguished. Brunetto Latini must first

be mentioned. Besides his own country, he knew France from a residence

of seven years, and gives a long list of the characteristic differences

in costume and modes of life between Frenchmen and Italians, noticing

the distinction between the monarchical government of France and the

republican constitution of the Italian cities.[763] After this, next to

some famous passages in the ‘Divine Comedy,’ comes the ‘Dittamondo’ of

Uberti (about 1360). As a rule, only single remarkable facts and

characteristics are here mentioned: the Feast of the Crows at Sant’

Apollinare in Ravenna, the springs at Treviso, the great cellar near

Vicenza, the high duties at Mantua, the forest of towers at Lucca. Yet

mixed up with all this, we find laudatory and satirical criticisms of

every kind. Arezzo figures with the crafty disposition of its citizens,

Genoa with the artificially blackened eyes and teeth (?) of its women,

Bologna with its prodigality, Bergamo with its coarse dialect and

hard-headed people.[764] In the fifteenth century the fashion was to

belaud one’s own city even at the expense of others. Michele Savonarola

allows that, in comparison with his native Padua, only Rome and Venice

are more splendid, and Florence perhaps more joyous[765]--by which our

knowledge is naturally not much extended. At the end of the century,

Jovianus Pontanus, in his ‘Antonius,’ writes an imaginary journey

through Italy, simply as a vehicle for malicious observations. But in

the sixteenth century we meet with a series of exact and profound

studies of national characteristics, such as no other people of that

time could rival.[766] Macchiavelli sets forth in some of his valuable

essays the character and the political condition of the Germans and

French in such a way, that the born northerner, familiar with the

history of his own country, is grateful to the Florentine thinker for

his flashes of insight. The Florentines (p. 71 sqq.) begin to take

pleasure in describing themselves;[767] and basking in the well-earned

sunshine of their intellectual glory, their pride seems to attain its

height when they derive the artistic pre-eminence of Tuscany among

Italians, not from any special gifts of nature, but from hard patient

work.[768] The homage of famous men from other parts of Italy, of which

the sixteenth Capitolo of Ariosto is a splendid example, they accepted

as a merited tribute to their excellence.

An admirable description of the Italians, with their various pursuits

and characteristics, though in few words and with special stress laid on

the Lucchese, to whom the work was dedicated, was given by Ortensio

Landi, who, however, is so fond of playing hide-and-seek with his own

name, and fast-and-loose with historical facts, that even when he seems

to be most in earnest, he must be accepted with caution and only after

close examination.[769] The same Landi published an anonymous

‘Commentario’ some ten years later,[770] which contains among many

follies not a few valuable hints on the unhappy ruined condition of

Italy in the middle of the century.[771] Leandro Alberti[772] is not so

fruitful as might be expected in his description of the character of the

different cities.

To what extent this comparative study of national and local

characteristics may, by means of Italian humanism, have influenced the

rest of Europe, we cannot say with precision. To Italy, at all events,

belongs the priority in this respect, as in the description of the world

in general.

CHAPTER VII.

DESCRIPTION OF THE OUTWARD MAN.

But the discoveries made with regard to man were not confined to the

spiritual characteristics of individuals and nations; his outward

appearance was in Italy the subject of an entirely different interest

from that shown in it by northern peoples.[773]

Of the position held by the great Italian physicians with respect to the

progress of physiology, we cannot venture to speak; and the artistic

study of the human figure belongs, not to a work like the present, but

to the history of art. But something must here be said of that universal

education of the eye, which rendered the judgment of the Italians as to

bodily beauty or ugliness perfect and final.

On reading the Italian authors of that period attentively, we are

astounded at the keenness and accuracy with which outward features are

seized, and at the completeness with which personal appearance in

general is described.[774] Even to-day the Italians, and especially the

Romans, have the art of sketching a man’s picture in a couple of words.

This rapid apprehension of what is characteristic is an essential

condition for detecting and representing the beautiful. In poetry, it is

true, circumstantial description may be a fault, not a merit, since a

single feature, suggested by deep passion or insight, will often awaken

in the reader a far more powerful impression of the figure described.

Dante gives us nowhere a more splendid idea of his Beatrice than where

he only describes the influence which goes forth from her upon all

around. But here we have not to treat particularly of poetry, which

follows its own laws and pursues its own ends, but rather of the general

capacity to paint in words real or imaginary forms.

In this Boccaccio is a master--not in the ‘Decameron,’ where the

character of the tales forbids lengthy description, but in the romances,

where he is free to take his time. In his ‘Ameto’[775] he describes a

blonde and a brunette much as an artist a hundred years later would have

painted them--for here, too, culture long precedes art. In the account

of the brunette--or, strictly speaking, of the less blonde of the

two--there are touches which deserve to be called classical. In the

words ‘la spaziosa testa e distesa’ lies the feeling for grander forms,

which go beyond a graceful prettiness; the eyebrows with him no longer

resemble two bows, as in the Byzantine ideal, but a single wavy line;

the nose seems to have been meant to be aquiline;[776] the broad, full

breast, the arms of moderate length, the effect of the beautiful hand,

as it lies on the purple mantle--all both foretells the sense of beauty

of a coming time, and unconsciously approaches to that of classical

antiquity. In other descriptions Boccaccio mentions a flat (not

mediævally rounded) brow, a long, earnest, brown eye, and round, not

hollowed neck, as well as--in a very modern tone--the ‘little feet’ and

the ‘two roguish eyes’ of a black-haired nymph.[777]