The same moderate praise might be awarded to the more ambitious poem of Luigi Alamanni, entitledColtivazione, but for its immoderate prolixity.[298]Alamanni resolved to combine the precepts of Hesiod, Virgil and Varro, together with the pastoral passages of Lucretius, in one work, adapting them to modern usage, and producing a comprehensive treatise upon farming. With this object he divided his poem into six books, the first four devoted to the labors of the several seasons, the fifth to gardens, and the sixth to lucky and unlucky days. On a rough computation, the whole six contain some 5,500 lines.La Coltivazioneis dedicated to Francis I., and is marred by inordinate flatteries of the French people and their king. Students who have the heart to peruse its always chaste and limpidly flowing blank verse, will be rewarded from time to time with passages like the following, in which the sad circumstances of the poet and the pathos of his regrets for Italy raise the style to more than usual energy and dignity:[299]
Luigi Alamanni was the member of a noble Florentine family, who for several generations had been devoted to the Medicean cause. He was born in 1495, and early joined the band of patriots and scholars who assembled in the Rucellai gardens to hear Machiavelli read his notes on Livy. After the discovery of the conspiracy against Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, in which Machiavelli was implicated, and which cost his cousin Luigi di Tommaso Alamanni and his friend Jacopo del Diacceto their lives, Luigi escaped across the mountains by Borgo San Sepolcro to Urbino. Finally, after running many risks, and being imprisoned for a while at Brescia by Giulio's emissaries, he made good his flight to France. His wife and three children had been left at Florence. He was poor and miserable, suffering as only exiles suffer when their home is such a paradise as Italy. In 1527, after the expulsion of the Medici, Luigi returned to Florence, and took an active part in the preparations for the siege as well as in the diplomatic negotiations which followed the fall of the city. Alessandro de' Medici declared him a rebel; and he was forced to avail himself again of French protection. With the exception of a few years passed in Italy between 1537 and 1540, the rest of his life was spent as a French courtier. Both Francis I. and Henri II. treated him with distinction and bounty. Catherine de Medicis made him her master of the household; and his son received the bishopric of Macon. In 1556 he died at Amboise following the Court.
Luigi Alamanni was the greatest Italian poet of whose services Francis I. could boast, as Cellini wasthe greatest Italian artist. His works are numerous, and all are marked by the same qualities of limpid facility, tending to prolixity and feebleness. Sonnets andcanzoni, satires, romantic epics, eclogues, translations, comedies, he tried them all. His translation of theAntigonedeserves commendation for its style. HisFlorais curious for its attempt to reproduce the comic iambic of the Latin poets. If his satires dealt less in generalities, they might aspire to comparison with Ariosto's. As it is, the poet's bile vents itself in abstract invectives, of which the following verses upon Rome may stand for a fair specimen:[301]
Alamanni is said to have been an admirable improvisatore; and this we can readily believe, for his verseseven when they are most polished, flow with a placidity of movement that betrays excessive case.
We have traced the pastoral ideal from its commencement in Boccaccio, through theArcadiaof Sannazzaro, Poliziano'sOrfeo, and the didactic poets, up to the point when it was destined soon to find its perfect form in theAmintaand thePastor Fido. Both Tasso and Guarini lived beyond the chronological limits assigned to this work. The Renaissance was finished; and Italy had passed into a new phase of existence, under the ecclesiastical reaction which is called the Counter-Reformation. It is no part of my programme to enter with particularity into the history of the second half of the sixteenth century. And yet the subject of this and the preceding chapter would be incomplete were I not to notice the two poems which combined the drama and the pastoral in a work of art no less characteristic for the people and the age than fruitful of results for European literature. Great tragedy and great comedy were denied to the Italians. But they produced a novel species in the pastoral drama, which testified to their artistic originality, and led by natural transitions to the opera. Poetry was on the point of expiring; but music was rising to take her place. And the imaginative medium prepared by the lyrical scenes of the Arcadian play, afforded just that generality and aloofness from actual conditions of life, which were needed by the new art in its first dramatic essays.
It would be a mistake to suppose that because the form of the Arcadian romance was artificial, it could not lend itself to the presentation of real passion whenadapted to the theater. The study of theAmintaand thePastor Fidois sufficient to remove this misconception. Though the latter is the more carefully constructed of the two, the plot in either case presents a series of emotional situations, developed with refined art and expressed with lyrical abundance. The rustic fable is but a veil, through which the everlasting lineaments of love are shown. Arcadia, stripped of pedantry and affectation, has become the ideal world of sentiment. Like amber, it incloses in its glittering transparency the hopes and fears, the pains and joys, which flit from heart to heart of men and women when they love. The very conventionality of the pastoral style assists the lyrical utterance of real feeling. For it must be borne in mind that bothAmintaand thePastor Fidoare essentially lyrical. The salt and savor of each play are in their choruses and monologues. The dialogue, the fable and the characters serve to supply the poet with motives for emotion that finds vent in song. This being conceded, it will be understood how from their scenes as a whole world of melodrama issued. Whatever may have been the subject of an opera before the days of Gluck, it drew its life-blood from these pastorals.
The central motive ofAmintaand thePastor Fidois the contrast between the actual world of ambition, treachery and sordid strife, and the ideal world of pleasure, loyalty and tranquil ease. Nature is placed in opposition to civil society, the laws of honor to the laws of love, the manners of Arcadia to the manners of Italy. This cardinal motive finds its highest utterance in Tasso's chorus on the Age of Gold:
The last phrase,S'ei piace, ei lice, might be written on the frontispiece of both dramas, together with Dafne's sigh:Il mondo invecchia, E invecchiando intristisce. Of what use is life unless we love?
The girl who wastes her youth in proud virginity, prepares a sad old age of vain regret:
It is the old cry of the FlorentineCantiandBallate,"Gather ye rose-buds while ye may!"Di doman non c'è certezza.And the stories ofAmintaandPastor Fidoteach the same lesson, that nature's laws cannot be violated, that even fate and the most stubborn bosoms bow to love.
Of the music and beauty of these two dramas, I find it difficult to speak. Before some masterpieces criticism bends in silence. We cannot describe what must be felt. All the melodies that had been growing through two centuries in Italy, are concentrated in their songs. The idyllic voluptuousness, which permeated literature and art, steeps their pictures in a golden glow. It is easy enough to object that their apparent simplicity conceals seduction, that their sentimentalism is unmanly, and their suggestions of physical beauty effeminating:—
This passage warns us that an age ofcicisbeiandcastratihas begun, and that the Italian sensuousness has reached its final dissolution. Silvia's kisses inAminta, Mirtillo's kisses inPastor Fido, introduce a new refinement of enervation. Marino with hisAdoneis not distant. But, while we recognize in both these poems—the one perfumed and delicate like flowers of spring, the other sculptured in pure forms of classic grace—evidentsigns of a civilization sinking to decay; though we almost loathe the beauty which relaxes every chord of manhood in the soul that feels it; we are bound to confess that to this goal the Italian genius had been steadily advancing since the publication of theFilocopo. The negation of chivalry, mysticism, asceticism, is accomplished. After traversing the cycle of comedy, romance, satire, burlesque poetry, the plastic arts, and invading every province of human thought, the Italian reaction against the middle ages assumes a final shape of hitherto unapprehended loveliness in theAmintaand thePastor Fido. They complete and close the Renaissance, bequeathing in a new species of art its form and pressure to succeeding generations.
The Italians lose their Language—Prejudice against the Mother Tongue—Problem of the Dialects—Want of a Metropolis—The Tuscan Classics—Petrarch and Boccaccio—Dante Rejected—False Attitude of the Petrarchisti—Renaissance Sense of Beauty unexpressed in Lyric—False Attitude of Boccaccio's Followers—Ornamental Prose—Speron Sperone—The Dictator Bembo—His Conception of the Problem—TheAsolani—Grammatical Essay—Treatise on the Language—Poems—Letters—Bembo's Place in theCortegiano—Castiglione on Italian Style—His Good Sense—Controversies on the Language—Academical Spirit—Innumerable Poetasters—La Casa—His Life—Il Forno—Peculiar Melancholy—His Sonnets—Guidiccioni's Poems on Italy—Court Life—Caro and Castelvetro—Their Controversies—Castelvetro accused of Heresy—Literary Ladies—Veronica Gambara—Vittoria Colonna—Her Life—Her Friendship for Michelangelo—Life of Bernardo Tasso—HisAmadigiand other Works—Life of Giangiorgio Trissino—His Quarrel with his Son Giulio—His Critical Works—TheItalia Liberata.
The Italians lose their Language—Prejudice against the Mother Tongue—Problem of the Dialects—Want of a Metropolis—The Tuscan Classics—Petrarch and Boccaccio—Dante Rejected—False Attitude of the Petrarchisti—Renaissance Sense of Beauty unexpressed in Lyric—False Attitude of Boccaccio's Followers—Ornamental Prose—Speron Sperone—The Dictator Bembo—His Conception of the Problem—TheAsolani—Grammatical Essay—Treatise on the Language—Poems—Letters—Bembo's Place in theCortegiano—Castiglione on Italian Style—His Good Sense—Controversies on the Language—Academical Spirit—Innumerable Poetasters—La Casa—His Life—Il Forno—Peculiar Melancholy—His Sonnets—Guidiccioni's Poems on Italy—Court Life—Caro and Castelvetro—Their Controversies—Castelvetro accused of Heresy—Literary Ladies—Veronica Gambara—Vittoria Colonna—Her Life—Her Friendship for Michelangelo—Life of Bernardo Tasso—HisAmadigiand other Works—Life of Giangiorgio Trissino—His Quarrel with his Son Giulio—His Critical Works—TheItalia Liberata.
Itwas the misfortune of the Italians that, when culture had become national and the revival of the vulgar literature had been effected, they found themselves in nearly the same relation to their own language as to Latin. After more than a hundred years absorbed in humanistic studies, the authors of the fourteenth century were hardly less remote than the Augustan classics; and to all but Tuscans their diction was almost foreign. At the beginning of thecinque cento, the living mother-tongue of Italy which Dante sought—theVulgare, quod superius venabamur, quod in qualibet redolet civitate, nec cubat in ulla—was stillto seek. Since the composition of Dante's essayDe Vulgari Eloquio, the literary activity of the nation had, indeed, created a desire for some fixed standard of style in modern speech. But the experiments of thequattro centohad not far advanced the matter. They only proved that Tuscan was the dialect to imitate, and that success in the future must depend on adherence to the Tuscan authors. Hence it happened that Petrarch and Boccaccio came to be studied with the same diligence, the same obsequious reverence, as Cicero and Virgil. Italian was written with no less effort after formal purity, no less minute observance of rules, than if it had been a dead language. At the same time, as a consequence of this system, the vices of the humanistic style—its tendency to servile imitation, emptiness, rhetorical verbosity, and preference of form to matter—were imported into the vernacular literature.
While noting these drawbacks, which attended the resurgence of Italian at an epoch when the whole nation began to demand a common language, we must give due credit to the sagacity displayed by scholars at that epoch in grappling with the problem before them. The main points at issue were,first, to overcome the prejudice against the mother tongue, which still lingered among educated people;secondly, to adjust Italian to the standards of taste established by the humanistic movement; and,thirdly, to decide whether Tuscan should reign supreme, or be merged in a speech more representative of the Italians as a nation. Early in the century, the battle of Italian against Latin was practically won. There remainedno obstinate antagonism to a purely national and modern literature. Still the type to which this literature should conform, the laws by which it should be regulated, were as yet unsettled. These questions had to be decided by intelligence rather than by instinct; for the Italians possessed no common medium of conversation, no common opportunities of forensic or parliamentary debate. That insensible process whereby French style has been modeled on the usages of conversation, and English style has been adapted to the tone of oratory, had to be performed, so far as this was possible, by conscious analysis. The Italians were aware that they lacked a language, and they set themselves deliberately to remedy this defect. These peculiar circumstances gave a pedantic tone to the discussion of the problem. Yet the problem itself was neither puerile nor pedantic. It concerned nothing less than the formation of an instrument of self-expression for a people, who had reached the highest grade of artistic skill in the exercise of the dead languages, and who, though intellectually raised to an equality of culture, were divided by tenacious local differences.
That Petrarch and Boccaccio should have been chosen as models of classical Italian style, was not only natural but inevitable. Writers, trained in the method of the humanists, required the guidance of authoritative masters. Just as they used Cicero and Virgil for the correction of medieval Latin, so Petrarch and Boccaccio were needed for the castigation of homespun dialects. Dante, had he been comprehended by such men, would not have satisfied ears educatedin the niceties of Latin versification; nor could the builders of Ciceronian perorations have revived the simple prose of the Villani. Petrarch contented their sense of polish; Boccaccio supplied them with intricate periods and cadences of numerous prose. Yet the choice was in either case unfortunate, though for somewhat different reasons.
It was impossible for poets of the sixteenth century to follow Petrarch to the very letter of his diction, without borrowing his tone. Consequently these versifiers affected to languish and adore, wove conceits and complained of cruelty, in the fashion of Vaucluse. Their facile mistresses became Lauras; or else they draped a lay-figure, and wrote sonnets to its painted eyebrows. The confusion between literary ceremony and practical experience of passion wrought an ineradicable discord. Authors of indecent burlesques penned Platonic odes. Bembo, who was answerable for theMentain its Latin form, praised his mistress Morosina in polished sonnets and elegiac threnodies. Firenzuola published the poems to Selvaggia and theCapitoloin praise of a specific against infamous diseases. La Casa gratified the same Academies with his panegyric of the Oven and his scholastic exercises in a metaphysical emotion. Reading thee diverse compositions side by side, we wake to the conviction that the Petrarchistic counterfeits, however excellent in form, have precisely the same mediocrity as Sannazzaro's epic, while the Bernesque effusions express the crudest temper of the men who wrote them. The one class of poems is redolent of affectation, the other of coarse realism. The middle term between these opposites iswanting. Nor could it well be otherwise. The conditions of society in the sixteenth century rendered Petrarch's sentiment impossible. His melancholy, engendered by the contest between passion and religious duty, had become a thing of the far past. The license of the times rendered this halting between two impulses ridiculous, when no man was found to question the divine right of natural appetite. Even the reverential attitude assumed by Petrarch as a lover, was out of date; and when his imitators aped it, their insincerity was patent. The highest enthusiasm of the Renaissance revealed itself through the plastic arts in admiration for corporeal beauty. This feeling, while it easily degenerated into sensuality, had no point of contact with Petrarch's medieval Platonism. Therefore the tone of the Petrarchisti was hypocritical, and the love they professed, a sham.
We have a further reason for resenting this devotion to a poet with whose habitual mood the men of that age could not sympathize. We know that they had much to say which remained buried beneath their fourteenth-century disguises. The sincerity of feeling, the fervid passion of poets like Bembo, Molza, or La Casa, cannot be denied. But their emotion found no natural channel of expression. It is not without irritation that we deplore the intellectual conditions of an age, which forced these artists to give forth what they felt in one of two equally artificial forms. Between transcription from the Latin elegists and reproduction of Petrarch there lay for them no choice. Consequently, the Renaissance lacked its full development upon the side of lyric poetry. The secret of the timesremained unspoken—a something analogous to Venetian painting, a something indicated in Firenzuola's and Luigini's dialogues on female beauty, a something indirectly presented in Ariosto's episodes, which ought to have been uttered from the heart in song by men who felt the loveliness of plastic form. Instead of this lyrical expression of a ruling passion, we have to content ourselves with pseudo-platonic rhymes and with the fervid sensualities of Pontano's elegiacs. The sensibility to corporeal beauty, which was abundantly represented by Titian, Lionardo, Raphael, Correggio, Michelangelo in art, in literature was either shorn of its essential freedom by the limitations of conventional Platonism, or exaggerated on the side of animalism by imitation of erotic Latin poets. Furthermore, we have some right to regard the burlesque obscenity of academical literature as a partial reaction against the hypocritical refinements of the Petrarchistic mannerism. Thus the deepest instinct of the epoch, that which gave its splendor to the painting of the golden age, found no spontaneous utterance in lyric verse.
The academical study of Boccaccio proved disastrous for a different reason. In this case there was no division between the master and his pupils; for we have seen already that the author of the Decameron anticipated the Renaissance in the scope and tenor of his work. But he supplied students with a false standard. His Latinizing periods, his involved construction of sentences and oratorical amplification of motives encouraged the worst qualities of humanistic style. Boccaccio prevented the Italians from forming a masculine prose manner. Each writer, whatevermight be the subject of his work, aimed at ornate diction. Cumbrous and circuitous phrases were admired for their own sake. The simplicity of the Chronicles was abandoned for ponderous verbosity, and Machiavelli's virile force found no successors in the crowd of academicians who dissected the Decameron for flowers of rhetoric.
Thus the efforts of the purists took a false direction from the outset both in prose and verse. The literature which aimed at being national, began with archaistic exercises; and Italy, at the moment of attaining self-consciousness, found herself, without a living language, forced to follow in the steps of antiquated authors. The industry and earnestness of the disciples made their failure the more notable; for while they pursued a track that could not lead to aught but mannerism, they plumed themselves upon the soundness of their method. In order to illustrate the spirit of this movement, I will select a passage from the works of Speron Sperone, who was by no means the least successful stylist of the period. He is describing his earlier essays in the art of writing and the steps by which he arrived at what he clearly thought to be perfection:[302]
"Being in all truth desirous beyond measure from my earliest years to speak and to write my thoughts in our mother tongue, and that not so much with a view to being understood, which lies within the scope of every unlettered person, as with the object of placingmy name upon the roll of famous men, I neglected every other interest, and gave my whole attention to the reading of Petrarch and the hundred Novels; in which studies having exercised myself for many months with little profit and without a guide, under the inspiration of God I finally betook me to our revered Master Trifone Gabrielli[303]; by whose kindly assistance I arrived at perfect comprehension of those authors, whom, through ignorance of what I ought to notice, I had frequently before misunderstood. This excellent man and true father of ours first bade me observe the vocables, then gave me rules for knowing the declension and conjugation of nouns and verbs in Tuscan, and lastly explained to me articles, pronouns, participles, adverbs, and other parts of speech; so that, collecting all that I had learned, I composed a grammar for myself, by following the which while writing I so controlled my style that in a short space of time the world held me for a man of erudition, and still considers me as such. When it seemed to me that I had taken rank as a grammarian, I set myself, with the utmost expectation of every one who knew me, to the making of verses; and then, my head full of rhythms, sentences and words from Petrarch and Boccaccio, for a few years, I produced things that appeared wonderful to my judgment; but afterwards, thinking that my vein was beginning to dry up (inasmuch as words frequently failed me, and, not finding what to say in different sonnets, it occurred to me to rehandle the same thoughts), I had recourse to that which all the world does now[304]; for, using the greatest diligence, I composed a rhyming dictionary or vocabulary of Italian phrases; in the which I classed by the alphabet every word those two authors had used; moreover I collected in another book their divers ways of describing things, as day, night, anger, peace, hate, love, fear, hope, beauty, in such wise that not a single word or thought came from me which had not its precedent in their sonnets and novels." At this point Sperone frankly admits that his practice was too slavish. He then proceeds to tell how he compared Petrarch's Latin with his vulgar style in order to discover the correct rules of Italian versification. "Conquered by the arguments and experiments I have described, I returned to my earlier studies; and then, in addition to continual self-exercise in the reading of Petrarch (which by itself and without any other artifice may procure great benefit), by fixing my mind more diligently than before upon his modes of diction, I observed (as I believed) certain qualities pertaining in an eminent degree to the poet and also the orator; which, since you desire it, I will briefly expound. In the first place, while numbering and weighing his words one by one, I became aware that I discovered none common and none base, few harsh, all clear, allelegant; and all, moreover, so adapted to common use that one might have supposed he had selected and accumulated them with the concurrence of all Italy in conclave. Among the which (like stars amid the limpid space of midnight) some few shone out with special luster; for some part ancient words, but not unpleasing through their age, asuopo,unquanco,sovente; for some part beautiful and very graceful words, which like jewels that delight the eyes of all men, are only used by gentle and high intellects, such asgioia,speme,rai,disio,soggiorno,beltà, and others of like quality, the which no learned tongue would utter, nor hand write, unless the ear consented. Time would fail to tell in detail of the verbs, adverbs, and other parts of speech, which make his verses noble; but one thing I will not pass in silence, namely that, when speaking of his lady, now of her person, now of her soul, now of her tears, now of her smile, now of her movement, now of her taking rest, now of her anger, now of her pity, and now of her age, in a word when describing and magnifying her alive or dead, he generally avoids the proper name of things, and by some wonderful art adorns each thing by words appropriate to others, calling her head fine gold and roof of gold, her eyes suns, stars, sapphires, nest and home of love, her cheeks now snow and roses, now milk and fire, rubies her lips, pearls her teeth, her throat and breast now ivory, now alabaster." Halfway up thisGradus ad Parnassumwe are forced to stop and take deep breath. Sperone has launched the theory of "poetic diction," and advances boldly to its extreme consequences. We need not follow his analysis furtherinto particulars. He carries it through the several topics of tautology, periphrasis, antithesis, and proportion of syllables in words of different length; after which the subject of prosody proper is discussed. Having finished with Petrarch, he then proceeds to render the same account of his studies in Boccaccio, observing the variety and choice of his phrases, but calling special attention to the numbers of his periods, and winding up with this sonorous sentence on prose architecture. "But you must know that as the composition of prose is a marshaling of the sounds of words in proper order, so its numbers are certain orders in their syllables; pleasing the ear wherewith, the art of oratory opens, continues and finishes a period: forasmuch as every clause has not only a beginning but also a middle and an end; at the beginning it puts itself in motion and ascends; in the middle, as though weary with exertion, it rests upon its feet awhile; then it descends, and flies to the conclusion for repose."[305]
What is admirable, in spite of pedantry and servility, in this lengthy diatribe is the sense of art as art, the devotion to form for its own sake, the effort to grapple with the problems of style, the writer's single-hearted seeking after perfection. Nothing but a highly-developed artistic instinct in the nation could have produced students of this type. At the same time we feel an absence of spontaneity,and the tendency to aim at decorative writing is apparent. When the glow of discovery, which impelled Sperone and his fellow-pioneers to open a way across the continent of literature, had failed; when the practice of their school had passed into precepts, and their inventions had been formulated as canons of style; nothing remained for travelers upon this path but frigid repetition, precise observance of conventional limitations, and exercises in sonorous oratory. The rhetoric of the seventeenth century was a necessary outgrowth of pedantic purism. The conceits of Marini and his imitators followed inevitably from a rigorous application of rules that denied to poetry the right of natural expression. It may be urged that for a nation so highly sensitive to form as the Italians, without a metropolis to mold the language in the process of development, and without a spoken dialect of good society, there existed no common school of style but the recognized classics of Tuscany.[306]When each district habitually used a different speech for private and public utterance, men could not write as they talked, and they were therefore forced to write by rule. There is force in these arguments. Yet theconsequences of a too minute and fastidious study of the Tuscan authors proved none the less fatal to the freedom of Italian literature; and what is more, sagacious critics foresaw the danger, though they were unable to avert it.
The leader in this movement, acknowledged throughout Italy for more than half a century as dictator in the republic of letters, "foster-father of the language" (balio della lingua), "guide and master of our tongue" (guida e maestro di questa lingua), was Pietro Bembo.[307]Though only sixteen years junior to Angelo Poliziano, whom he had himself saluted as "ruler of the Ausonian lyre," Bembo outlived his master for the space of fifty-one years, and swayed the literary world at a period when Italian succeeded to the honors of Latin scholarship.[308]He was a Venetian. This fact is not insignificant, since it clearly marks the change that had come over the nation, when the scepter of learning was transferred to the northern provinces, and the exclusive privilege of correct Italian composition was shared with Tuscans by men of other dialects.[309]In his early youth Bembo had the good sense to perceive that the mother tongue was no less worthy of cultivation than Greek and Latin. The argumentsadvanced by Dante, by Alberti, by Lorenzo de' Medici, recurred with fresh force to his mind. He therefore made himself the champion of Italian against those exclusive students who, like Ercole Strozzi, still contended that the dead languages were alone worthy of attention.[310]He also saw that it was necessary to create a standard of correct style for writers who were not fortunate enough to have been born within the bounds of Tuscany. Accordingly, he devoted himself to the precise and formal study of fourteenth-century literature, polishing his own Italian compositions with a diligence that, while it secured transparent purity of diction, deprived them of originality and impulse. It is said that he passed each of his works through forty successive revisions, keeping as many portfolios to represent the stages at which they had arrived.
Having already sketched the life of Bembo, I shall here restrict myself to remarks upon those of his works which were influential in reviving the practice of Italian composition.[311]Among these the first place must be awarded toGli Asolani, a dialogue on Love, written in his early manhood and dedicated to Lucrezia Borgia. The beauty of its language and the interest of the theme discussed rendered this treatise widely fashionable. Yet it is not possible to study it with pleasure now. Those Platonic conversations, in which the refined society of the Italian Courts delighted, havelost their attraction for us. Nothing but the charming description of Asolo, where the Queen of Cyprus had her garden, surrounded by trimmed laurels and divided crosswise with a leafypergolaof vines, retains its freshness. That picture, animated by the figures of the six novitiates of Love, now sauntering through shade and sunlight under the vine-branches, now seated on the grass to hear a lute or viol deftly touched, is in the best idyllic style of the Venetian masters. At the Court of Urbino, where Bembo was residing when his book appeared, it was received with acclamation, as a triumph of divine genius. The illustrious circle celebrated by Castiglione in hisCortegianoperused it with avidity, and there is no doubt that the publication gave a powerful impulse to Italian studies. These were still further fostered by Bembo's Defense of the Vulgar Tongue.[312]He had secured the hearing of the world by hisAsolani. Women and the leaders of fashionable society were with him; and he pushed his arguments home against the Latinizing humanists. "To abandon our own language for another," he reminded them, "is the same as withdrawing supplies from our mother to support a strange woman." This phrase is almost identical with what Dante had written on the same topic two centuries earlier. But Bembo's standing-ground was different from Dante's. The poet of the fourteenth century felt called to create a language for his nation. The student of the sixteenth, imbued with the assimilative principles of scholarship, too fastidious to risk a rough note in his style, too feeble to attempt a new act of creation, was content to"affect the fame of an imitator."[313]His piety toward the mother-tongue was generous; his method of rehabilitation was almost servile.
With the view of illustrating his practice by precepts, Bembo published a short Italian grammar, or compendium ofRegole Grammaticali. It went through fourteen editions, and formed the text-book for future discussions of linguistic problems. Though welcomed with enthusiasm, this first attempt to reduce Italian to system was severely criticised, especially by Sannazzaro, Caro, Castelvetro and the Florentine Academy.
I have already had occasion to observe that, as a Latin poet, Bembo succeeded best with memorial verses. The same may be said about his Italian poems. TheCanzonion the death of his brother, and that on the death of his mistress Morosina, are justly celebrated for their perfection of form; nor are they so wanting in spontaneous emotion as many of his Petrarchistic exercises. Bembo was tenderly attached to this Morosina, whom he first met at Rome, and with whom he lived till her death at Padua in 1525. She was the mother of his three children, Lucilio, Torquato and Elena. TheCanzonein question, beginning:
Donna, de' cui begli occhi alto diletto:
was written so late as 1539, three months after Bembo had been raised to the dignity of Cardinal.[314]As a specimen of the conceits which he tolerated in poetry, I have thought it worth while to present the following translation of a sonnet:[315]
In the sixteenth century verses of this stamp passed for masterpieces of incomparable elegance. The same high value was set on Bembo's familiar letters. He wrote them with a view to publication, and they were frequently reprinted during the course of the next fifty years.[316]These may still be read with profit by students for the light they cast upon Italian society during the first half of thecinque cento, and with pleasure by all who can appreciate the courtesies of refined breeding expressed in language of fastidious delicacy. The chief men of the day, whether Popes, princes, Cardinals or poets, and all the illustrious ladies, including Lucrezia Borgia, Veronica Gambara, and Vittoria Colonna, are addressed with a mingled freedom and ceremony, nicely graduated according to their rank or degree of intimacy, which proves the exquisite tact developed by the intercourse of Courts in men like Bembo.
Since the composition and publication of such lettersformed a main branch of literary industry in the period we have reached,[317]it will be well to offer some examples of Bembo's epistolary style; and for this purpose, the correspondence with Lucrezia Borgia may be chosen, not only because of the interest attaching to her friendship with the author, but also because the topics treated display the refinement of his nature in a very agreeable light.[318]In one of these, written upon the occasion of her father's death, he calls Alexander VI.quel vostro così gran padre. In a second, touched with the deepest personal feeling, he announces the death of his own brother Carlo,mio solo e caro fratello, unico sostegno e sollazzo della vita mia.[319]In a third he thanks her for her letters of condolence:Le lagrime alle quali mi scrivete essere stata constretta leggendo nelle mei lettere la morte del mio caro e amato fratello M. Carlo, sono dolcissimo refrigerio stato al mio dolore, se cosa dolce alcuna m'è potuta venire a questo tempo.In a fourth he turns this graceful compliment:Pregherei eziandio il cielo, che ogni giorno v'accrescerebbe la bellezza; ma considero che non vi se ne può aggiungere.In a fifth he congratulates Lucrezia upon the birth of a son and heir, and in a sixth condoles with her upon his early death. Then another boy is born, just when the Duke of Urbino dies; and Bembo mingles courtly tears withceremonious protestations of his joy. It would be impossible to pen more scholarly exercises upon similar occasions; and through the style of the professed epistolographer we seem to feel that Bembo had real interest in the events he illustrates so elegantly. The fatal defect of his letters is, that he is always thinking more of his manner than of his matter. Like the humanists from whom he drew his mental lineage, he labored for posterity without reckoning on the actual demands posterity would make. Success crowned his efforts in the pleasure he afforded to the public of his day; but this was a success comparable with that of Bernardo Accolti or Tibaldeo of Ferrara, whom he scorned. He little thought that future students would rate an annalist of Corio's stamp, for the sake of his material, at a higher value than the polished author of theLettere. Yet such is the irony of fame that we could willingly exchange Bembo's nicely-turned phrases for a few solid facts, a few spontaneous effusions.
Bembo was a power in literature, the exact force of which it is difficult to estimate without taking his personal influence into consideration. Distinguished by great physical beauty, gifted with a noble presence, cultivated in the commerce of the best society, he added to his insight and his mental energy all the charm that belongs to a man of fashion and persuasive eloquence in conversation. He was untiring in his literary industry, unfailing in his courtesy to scholars, punctual in correspondence, and generous in the use he made of his considerable wealth. At Urbino, at Venice, at Rome, and at Padua, his study was the meeting-place of learned men, who found the graces of the highestaristocracy combined in him with genial enthusiasm for the common interests of letters. Thus the man did even more than the author to promote the revolution he had at heart. This is brought home to us with force when we consider the place assigned to him in Castiglione'sCortegiano—a masterpiece of composition transcending, in my opinion, all the efforts made by Bembo to conquer the difficulties of style. Castiglione is no less correct than the dictator strove to be; but at the same time he is far more natural. He treats the same topics with greater ease, and with a warmth of feeling and conviction which endears him to the heart of those who read his golden periods. Yet Castiglione gives the honors of his dialogue to the author of theAsolani, when he puts into the mouth of Bembo that glowing panegyric of Platonic love, which forms the close and climax of his dialogue upon the qualities of a true gentleman.[320]
The crowning merit of theCortegianois an air of good breeding and disengagement from pedantic prejudices. This urbanity renders it a book to read with profit and instruction through all time. Castiglione's culture was the result of a large experience of men and books, ripened by intercourse with good society in all its forms. His sense and breadth of view are peculiarly valuable when he discusses a subject like that which forms the topic of the present chapter. There is one passage in his book, relating to the problem of Italian style, which, had it been treated with the attention it deserved, might have saved his fellow-countrymen from the rigors of pedagogical despotism.[321]
Starting from his cardinal axiom that good manners demand freedom from all affectation, he deprecates the use in speech or writing of those antiquated Tuscan words the purists loved. As usual, he hits the very center of the subject in his comments on this theme. "It seems to me, therefore, exceedingly strange to employ words in writing which we avoid in all the common usages of conversation. Writing is nothing but a form of speaking, which continues to exist after a man has spoken, and is, as it were, an image or rather the life of the words he utters. Therefore in speech, which, as soon as the voice has issued from the mouth, is lost, some things may be tolerated that are not admissible in composition, because writing preserves the words, subjects them to the criticism of the reader, and allows time for their mature consideration. It is consequently reasonable to use greater diligence with a view to making what we write more polished and correct, yet not to do this so that the written words shall differ from the spoken, but only so that the best in spoken use shall be selected for our composition." After touching on the need of lucidity, he proceeds "I therefore should approve of a man's not only avoiding antiquated Tuscan phrases, but also being careful to employ such as are in present use in Tuscany and other parts of Italy, provided they have a certain grace and harmony."[322]At this point another interlocutor in the dialogue observes that Italy possesses no common language. In the difficulty of knowing whether to follow the custom of Florence or of Bergamo, it is desirable to recognize a classical standard of style. Petrarch and Boccaccio should be selected as models. To refuse to imitate them is mere presumption. Here Castiglione states the position of the school he combats. In his answer to their argument he makes Giuliano de' Medici, one of the company, declare that he, a Tuscan of the Tuscans as he is, should never think of employing any words of Petrarch or Boccaccio which were obsolete in good society. Then the thread of exposition is resumed. The Italian language, in spite of its long past, may still be called young and unformed. When the Roman Empire decayed, spoken Latin suffered from the corruptions introduced by barbarian invaders. It retained greater purity in Tuscany than elsewhere. Yet other districts of Italy preserved certain elements of the ancient language that have a right to be incorporated with the living tongue; nor is it reasonable to suppose that a modern dialect should at a certain moment have reached perfection any more than Latin did. The true rule to follow is to see that a man has something good to say. "Making a division between thoughts and words is much the same as separating soul and body. In order, therefore, to speak or write well, our courtier must have knowledge; for he who has none, and whose mind is void of matter worthy to be apprehended, has naught to say or write." He must be careful to clothe his thoughts in select and fitting words, but above all things to use such "as are still upon the lips of thepeople." He need not shun foreign phrases, if there be a special force in them above their synonyms in his own language. Nor is there cause to fear lest the vulgar tongue should prove deficient in resources when examined by grammarians and stylists. "Even though it be not ancient Tuscan of the purest water, it will be Italian, common to the nation, copious and varied, like a delicious garden full of divers fruits and flowers." Here Castiglione quotes the precedent of Greek, showing that each of its dialects contributed something to the common stock, though Attic was recognized as sovereign for its polish. Among the Romans likewise, Livy was not tabooed because of his patavinity, nor Virgil because the Romans recognized a something in him of rusticity. "We, meanwhile, far more severe than the ancients, impose upon ourselves certain newfangled laws that have no true relation to the object. With a beaten track before our eyes, we try to walk in bypaths. We take a willful pleasure in obscurity, though our language, like all others, is only meant to express our thoughts with force and clearness. While we call it the popular speech, we plume ourselves on using phrases that are not only unknown to the people, but unintelligible to men of birth and learning, and which have fallen out of conversation in every district of the land." If Petrarch and Boccaccio were living at our epoch, they would certainly omit words that have fallen out of fashion since their days; and it is mere impertinence for a purist to tell me that I ought to sayCampidoglioinstead ofCapitolioand so forth, because some elder Tuscan author wrote it, or the peasants of the Tuscan district speak it so. You argue that onlypride prevents our imitating Petrarch and Boccaccio. But pray inform me whom they imitated? To model Latin poems upon Virgil or Catullus is necessary, because Latin is a dead language. But since Italian is alive and spoken, let us write it as we use it, with due attention to artistic elegance. "The final master of style is genius, and the ultimate guide is a sound natural judgment." Do we require all our painters to follow one precedent? Lionardo, Mantegna, Raphael, Michelangelo, Giorgione have struck out different paths of excellence in art. Writers should claim the same liberty of choice, the same spontaneity of inspiration. "I cannot comprehend how it should be right, instead of enriching Italian and giving it spirit, dignity and luster, to make it poor, attenuated, humble and obscure, and so to pen it up within fixed limits as that every one should have to copy Petrarch and Boccaccio. Why should we, for example, not put equal faith in Poliziano, Lorenzo de' Medici, Francesco Diaceto, and others who are Tuscan too, and possibly of no less learning and discretion than were Petrarch and Boccaccio? However, there are certain scrupulous persons abroad nowadays, who make a religion and ineffable mystery of their Tuscan tongue, frightening those who listen to them, to the length of preventing many noble and lettered men from opening their lips, and forcing them to admit they do not know how to talk the language they learned from their nurses in the cradle."[323]
If the Italians could have accepted Castiglione's principles, and approached the problem of their language in this liberal spirit, the nation would have been spared its wearisome, perpetually recurrent quarrel about words. But the matter had already got into the hands of theorists; and local jealousies were inflamed. The municipal wars of the middle ages were resuscitated on the ground of rhetoric and grammar. Unluckily, the quarrel is not over;adhuc sub judice lis est, and there is no judge to decide it. But in the nineteenth century it no longer rages with the violence that made it a matter of duels, assassinations and lifelong hatreds in the sixteenth. The Italians have recently secured for the first time in their history the external conditions which are necessary to a natural settlement of the dispute by the formation of a common speech through common usage. The parliament, the army, the newspapers of United Italy are rapidly creating a language adequate to all the needs of modern life; and though purists may still be found, who maintain that Passavanti'sSpecchiois a model of style for leading articles inFanfulla, yet the nation, having passed into a new phase of existence, must be congratulated on having exchanged the "golden simplicity of thetrecento" for a powerful and variously-colored instrument of self-expression.
To stir the dust of those obsolete controversies on the language of Italy—to make extracts from Varchi's, Sperone's or Bembo's treatises upon the Tongues—toset Tolommei's claims for Tuscan priority in the balance against Muzio's more modest pleas in favor of Italian[324]—to describe how one set of scholars argued that the vernacular ought to be called Tuscan, how another dubbed it Florentine or Sienese, and how a third, more sensible, voted for Italian[325]—to enumerate the blasts and counterblasts of criticism blown about each sentence in Boccaccio and Petrarch[326]—to resuscitate the orthographical encounters between Trissino and Firenzuola on the matter of the letter K—is no part of my present purpose. It must suffice to have noted that these problems occupied the serious attention of the literary world, and to have indicated by extracts from Sperone and Castiglione the extreme limits of pedantry and sound sense between which the opinion of the learned vibrated. The details of the quarrel may be left to the obscurity of treatises, long since doomed to "dust and an endless darkness."
Much unprofitable expenditure of time and thought upon verbal questions of no vital interest was encouraged by the Academies, which now began to sprout like mushrooms in all towns of Italy.[327]The oldhumanistic societies founded by Cosimo de' Medici, Pomponius Lætus, Pontano, and Aldo for the promotion of classical studies, had done their work and died away. Their successor, the Umidi of Florence, the Pellegrini of Venice, the Eterei of Padua, the Vignaiuoli of Rome, professed to follow the same objects, with special attention to the reformation of Italian literature. Yet their very titles indicate a certain triviality and want of manly purpose. They were clubs combining conviviality with he pursuit of study; and it too frequently happened that the spirit of their jovial meetings extended itself to thedicerie,cicalateandcapitolirecited by their members, when the cloth was drawn and the society sat down to intellectual banquets. At the same time the Academies were so fashionable and so universal that they gave the tone to literature. It was the ambition of all rising students to be numbered with the more illustrious bodies; and when a writer of promise joined one of these, he naturally felt the influence of his companions. Member vied with member in producing sonnets and rhetorical effusions on the slenderest themes; for it was less an object to probe weighty matters or to discover truth, than to make a display of ingenuity by clothing trifles in sonorous language. Surrounded by a crowd of empty-pated but censorious critics, exercised in the minutiæ of style and armed with precedents from Petrarch, the poet read his verses to the company. They were approved or rejected according as they satisfied the sense of correctness, or fell below the conventional standard of imitative diction. To think profoundly, to feel intensely, to imagine boldly, to invent novelties, to be original inany line, was perilous. The wealth of the Academies, the interest of the public in purely literary questions, and the activity of the press encouraged the publication and circulation of these pedantic exercises. Time would fail to tell of all the poems and orations poured forth at the expense of these societies and greedily devoured by friends prepared to eulogize, or rival bodies eager to dissect and criticise. Students who are desirous of forming some conception of the multitudes of poets at this period, must be referred to the pages of Quadrio with a warning that Tiraboschi is inclined to think that even Quadrio's lists are incomplete. All ranks and conditions both of men and women joined in the pursuit. Princes and plebeians, scholars and worldlings, noble ladies and leaders of thedemi-monde, high-placed ecclesiastics and penniless Bohemians aspired to the same honors; and the one idol of the motley crowd was Petrarch. There is no doubt that the final result of their labors was the attainment of a certain grace and the diffusion of literary elegance. Yet these gains carried with them a false feeling about poetry in general, a wrong conception of its purpose and its scope. The Italian purists could scarcely have comprehended the drift of Milton's excursion, in his "Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty," upon the high vocation of the prophet-bard. They would have been no less puzzled by Sidney's definition of poetry, and have felt Shelley's last word upon the poetic office, "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," to be no better than a piece of pardonable lunacy.
In this thick-spreading undergrowth of verse,where, as Tiraboschi aptly remarks, "beneath the green and ample foliage we seek in vain for fruit," it is difficult to see the wood by reason of the trees. Poet so closely resembles poet in the mediocrity of similar attainment, that we are forced to sigh for the energy of Michelangelo's unfinished sonnets, or the crudities of Campanella's muse. Yet it is possible to make a representative selection of writers, who, while they belonged to the school of the purists and were associated with the chief Academies of the day, distinguished themselves by some originality of style or by enduring qualities of literary excellence. Foremost among these may be placed Monsignore Giovanni della Casa. He was born in 1503 of noble Florentine parents, his mother being a member of the Tornabuoni family. Educated at Bologna, he entered the service of the Church, and already in 1538 had reached the dignity of Apostolic Clerk. Rome was still what Lorenzo de' Medici had called it, "a sink of all the vices," and very few ecclesiastics escaped its immoralities. La Casa formed some permanent connection, the fruit of which was his acknowledged son Quirino.[328]In 1540 he was sent on a special mission to Florence with the title of Apostolic Commissary; and in 1544 he was raised to the Archbishopric of Benevento, and soon afterwards appointed Nuncio at Venice. During the pontificate of Julius III., finding himself out of favor with theVatican, he continued to reside at Venice, employing his leisure in literary occupations. Paul IV. recalled him to Rome, and made him Secretary of State. But though he seemed upon the point of touching the highest ecclesiastical dignity, La Casa was never promoted to the Cardinalate. It is difficult to find a reason for this omission, unless we accept the traditional belief that the scandal of hisCapitolo del Fornobarred La Casa's entrance to the Sacred College.[329]This burlesque poem, at any rate, supplied the Protestants with a weapon which they used against the Church. The legend based upon its audacious obscenities was credited by Bayle, and in part refuted by theAntibailletof Ménage. Though by no means more offensive to good taste than scores of similar compositions, the high rank of its author and the offices of trust he had discharged for the Papal Curia, emphasized its infamy, and caused La Casa to be chosen as the scapegoat for his comrades. He died in 1556.
La Casa's name is best known in modern literature by his treatise on the manners of the finished gentleman. In his short essay, entitledGalateo, he discusses the particulars of social conduct, descending to rules about the proper use of the drinking-glass at table, the employment of the napkin, the dressing of the hair,and the treatment of immodest topics by polite periphrases.[330]Galateo is recommended not to breathe hard in the face of the persons he is speaking to, not to swear at his servants in company, not to trim his nails in public, not to tell indecent anecdotes to girls, and so forth. He is shown how to dress with proper pomp, what ceremonies to observe, and which to omit as servile or superfluous, how to choose his words, and how to behave at dinner. The book is an elaborate discourse on etiquette; and while it never goes far below the surface, it is full of useful precepts based upon the principles of mutual respect and tolerance which govern good society. We might accept it as a sequel to theCourtier; for while Castiglione drew the portrait of a gentleman, La Casa explained how this gentleman should conduct himself among his equals. The chief curiosity about the book is, that a man of its author's distinction should have thought it worthy of his pains to formulate so many rules of simple decency. From the introduction it is clear that La Casa meant theGalateoto be a handbook for young men entering upon the world. That it fulfilled this purpose, seems proved by the fact that its title passed into a proverb. "To teach the Galateo" is synonymous in Italian with to teach good manners.
One whole volume of La Casa's collected works is devoted to his official and familiar correspondence, composed in choice but colorless Italian.[331]Another contains his Italian and Latin poems. No poet of the century expressed his inner self more plainly than LaCasa in his verse. The spectacle is stern and grave. From the vocabulary of the Tuscan classics he seems to have chosen the gloomiest phrases, to adumbrate some unknown terror of the soul.[332]Sometimes his sonnets, in their vivid but polished grandeur, rise even to sublimity, as when he compares himself to a leafless wood in winter, beaten by fiercer storms, with days more cold and short in front, and with a longer night to follow.[333]It is a cheerless prospect of old age and death, uncomforted by hope, unvisited by human love. The same shadow, intensified by even a deeper horror of some coming doom, rests upon another sonnet in which he deplores his wasted life.[334]It drapes, as with a funeral pall, the long majestic ode describing his early errors and the vanity of worldly pomp.[335]It adds despair to his lines on jealousy, intensity to his satire on Court-life, and incommunicable sadness to the poems of his love.[336]Very judicious were the Italian criticswho pronounced his style too stern for the erotic muse. We find something at once sinister and solemn in his mood. The darkness that envelops him, issues from the depth of his own heart. The world around is bright with beautiful women and goodly men; but he is alone, shut up with fear and self-reproach. Such a voice befits the age, as we learn to know it in our books of history, far better than the light effusions of contemporary rhymsters. It suits the black-robed personages painted by Moroni, whose calm pale eyes seem gazing on a world made desolate, they know not why. Its accents are all the more melancholy because La Casa yielded to no impulses of rage. He remained sober, cold, sedate; but by some fatal instinct shunned the light and sought the shade. The gloom that envelops him is only broken by the baleful fires of hisCapitoli. That those burlesque verses, of which I shall speak in another place, were written in his early manhood, and that theRimewere perhaps the composition of his age, need not prevent us from connecting them together. The dreariness of La Casa's later years may well have been engendered by the follies of his youth. It is the despondency of exhaustion following on ill-expended energy, thetædium vitæwhich fell on Italy when she awoke from laughter.
In illustration of the foregoing remarks I have translated six of La Casa's sonnets, which I shall here insert without further comment.[337]In point of form, Italian literature can show few masterpieces superior to the first and second.