Having slept off my fatigue that night, I paid a visit of congratulation to the Cavaliere Bragadino on the elevation of his brother to the Patriarchate. He received me with the utmost affability; expressed annoyance at what he had learned from his majordomo, and told me with the most open candour that the patrician Count Ignazio Barziza had positively dispatched a courier with a letter to me in Friuli, begging permission to use my mansion for the feast-days of the Patriarch, and that I had by my answer given full consent. To this I replied that in truth I had seen neither messenger nor letters, but that he had done me the greatest pleasure by making use of my poor dwelling. Wishing higher honours to his family, I added that if such should befall, without seeking the intervention of Count Barziza, he was at liberty to throw my doors and windows open and freely to avail himself of my abode. Take this affair as you choose, it earned for me the estimable good-will of the patrician Bragadino, caused me to sojourn three days and three nights in an inn, and gave me occasion to relate one of my innumerable contretemps.{85}
If I were to expand this chapter with an account of all the contrarieties I suffered as a house-owner in Venice, it would grow into a volume.[11]Having to reside in the city, I judged it prudent to take our property there in exchange for some farms in Friuli. I very soon perceived that the advantage of this barter fell to my brothers Francesco and Almorò. My tenants refused to pay their rents, and made perpetual demands for alterations and repairs. Masons, carpenters, glaziers, smiths, pavement-layers, emptiers of cesspools, ate up a third of my revenues. Lawsuits to recover arrears devoured a large part of the remaining two-thirds. Bad debts, empty houses, and taxes reduced the total to a bare fifth. Beside this annual loss to my pocket, I was driven to my wits' ends by the vagaries of the tenants.
I will select two examples. One day a woman of respectable appearance came, and asked for the lease of an empty house I had on the Giudecca. I granted her request, and she paid the first instalment of her rent. After this first payment, all my clamours, demands for arrears, and menaces were thrown to the winds. She actually inhabited my house for three years, and discharged her obligations with the coin of promises and sometimes insults. I offered to make her a free present of her debt if she would only decamp. This roused her to a state of fury.{86}"Was she not a woman of honour?" she exclaimed: "she was wont to pay up punctually, and not to accept alms." At last I had recourse to the Avvogadori, one of whom sent for the woman, endured her chatter, and intimated that she must give the house up at the expiration of eight days. Accordingly, I went to take possession of my property; but no!—there was the woman, comfortably ensconced with her own family, as though the house belonged to her. Again I applied to the court. Bailiffs were dispatched, who turned my tenants with their furniture into the streets. The keys of the house were placed in my hands, and I crossed over to the Giudecca to inspect the damaged tenement, of which, at last, I felt myself once more the owner. Vain error! That heroic woman, at the head of her family, had scaled the walls of the fortress by a ladder, entered through a window, and encamped herself in the middle of the conquered citadel. I need not add that I finally got rid of this tormenting gadfly. But what a state the house was in! No locks, no bolts, no doors, no windows; everything reduced to desolation.
On another occasion I happened to have a house empty at S. Maria Mater Domini. One morning a man, who had the dress and appearance of a gondolier, presented himself. He informed me that he was a gondolier in the service of a cittadino at S. Jacopo dall'Orio. His own abode was at S. Geremia; and the great distance from his master's dwelling made{87}his service difficult. My house at S. Maria would exactly suit him; the money for the first instalment of the rent was ready, if I would take him as a tenant. "What is your name?" I asked. "Domenico Bianchi." "And your master's?" "Signor Colombo." "Very well," said I; "I shall make inquiries of your master; for I have so often got into hot water that I am even afraid of cold." He urged me not to postpone matters; his wife was expecting her confinement every hour; it was of the utmost importance that he should be able to install her at once in their new abode. "Well, well," said I, "you don't suppose that she will be laid-in this afternoon, do you? I will go to Signor Colombo after dinner; and if his report of you is satisfactory, you may take the keys as early as you like to-morrow." "You are right," replied the fellow; "although I know myself to be an honest man, I do not pretend that you should not inquire into my character. Only pray be quick about the business."
With this he went away; but scarcely had I dined, when the gondolier reappeared, leading by the hand a young woman. Half in tears, he began as follows: "Here is my poor wife in the first pangs of labour. For the love of Jesus, let us into your house. I am afraid it is already too late, and that she will be confined upon the street." As a matter of fact, the young person showed by her figure, and by the extraordinary contortions of her face and body,{88}that what he said was the truth. Mortally afraid that she might not be able to leave my mansion, I rushed to the writing-table, scribbled out an agreement, took the customary month's payment, and sent the couple off with the keys of my house.
Some weeks later on, the parish priest of S. Maria arrived all fuming with excitement, and cried out: "To whom the devil have you let your house in such-and-such a street?" "To a certain Domenico Bianchi, the gondolier of the Colombo family, whose wife was on the point of being confined." "What Domenico Bianchi? What Colombo? What gondolier? What wife?" exclaimed he in still greater heat. "The fellow keeps a disorderly house; and she is one of his hussies. When they came to you, she had a cushion stuffed beneath her clothes. They sell wine, draw all the disreputable people of the quarter together, and are the scandal of my parish. If you do not immediately get rid of the nuisance, you will be guilty of a mortal sin." I calmed him down, and made him laugh by the account I gave him of my interview with thesoi-disantmarried couple. Then I promised to dislodge the people on the spot.
This was sooner said than done. I first applied to the Avvogadori, who washed their hands of the affair. Then I begged the priest to lay an information before the Esecutori contro la Bestemmia.[12]He positively{89}refused, telling me that loose women were only too powerfully protected at Venice, and that he had already burned his fingers on a previous occasion by proceeding against a notorious evil-liver. It was no business of his, and I must get out of the scrape as well as I could.
To cut the story short, I was eventually relieved by my friend Paolo Balbi, who applied the following summary but efficacious remedy. "I informed Messer Grande of your affair,"[13]said Balbi, while explaining his proceedings: "he, as you are well aware, commands the whole tribe of constables and tipstaves; and I begged him to find some way of ousting thecanaillefrom your house. Messer Grande dispatched one of his myrmidons, one who knows these hussies, to tell them, under the pretext of a charitable warning, that the chief of the police had orders to take them all up and send them handcuffed to prison. In their fright, the nest of rogues dispersed and left the quarter." After laughing heartily over the affair, and thanking my good friend, I walked home, reflecting deeply on red tape in public offices, perversions of legal justice, and the high-handed proceedings of that generous and expeditious judge,Messer Grande.[14]
{90}
A review of the origin and progress of the literary quarrels in which I was engaged.—Also of the foundation of the Accademia Granellesca.—A diatribe on prejudice.—Father Bettinelli.
The introduction to the first volume of my dramatic caprices (published in 1772) gave a sufficiently full account of the dates and origins of my tenFiabe Teatrali, together with some notice of the literary quarrels which occasioned them.[15]Yet I find it necessary to pass these matters once more in review, since they concerned me not a little for the space of twenty-five years and more, and have consequently much to do with my Memoirs.
Here then are the steps which led me to bring those poetical extravagances on the stage—extravagances which I never sought to value or have valued at more than their true worth—which never had, or have, or will have detractors among real lovers of literature—which always had, and have, and will have the entire population of great cities for their friends—which made, and make, and will for ever make a certain sort of self-styledliteratimad{91}with rage—Here then, as I said, are the steps which led me to their publication.
I must begin by confessing three weaknesses, which pertained to my way of looking upon literature.
In the first place, I resented the ruin of Italian poetry, established in the thirteenth century, fortified and strengthened in the fourteenth, somewhat shaken in the fifteenth, revived and consolidated in the sixteenth by so many noble writers, spoiled in the seventeenth, rehabilitated at the end of the last and at the beginning of the present eighteenth century, then given over to the dogs and utterly corrupted by a band of blustering fanatics during the period which we are doomed to live in. These men, who have wrought the ruin I resent by their pretence to be original, by their habit of damning our real masters and institutors in the art of writing as puerile and frigid pedants,—these men who lead the youth astray from solid methods and praiseworthy simplicity, incite them to trample under foot whatever in past centuries was venerated like the angel who conducted young Tobias, hurl them with hungry and devouring intellects into the gulf of entities which have no actual existence—these men, I say, have turned a multitude of hopeful neophytes, if only they were guided by sound principles, into mere visionary fools and the demoniacs of spurious inspiration.
In the second place, I resented the decadence of our Italian language and the usurpations of sheer{92}ignorance upon its purity. Purity of diction I regarded as indispensable to plain harmonious beauty of expression, to felicitous development of thought, to just illumination of ideas, and to the proper colouring of sentiment, especially in works of wit and genius in our idiom.
In the third place, I resented the extinction of all sense for proportion and propriety in style, that sense which prompts us to treat matters sublime, familiar, and facetious upon various planes and in different keys of feeling, whether the vehicle employed be verse or prose. Instead of this, one monstrous style, now bombastically turgid, now stupidly commonplace, has become the fashion for everything which is written or sent to press, from the weightiest of arguments down to the daily letter which a fellow scribbles to his mistress.
Let it not be supposed, however, that my resentment against these literary curses of our century—for such I thought them—ever goaded me beyond my naturally jesting humour. All the compositions I have printed on the topics in dispute, regarding purity of diction, ancient authors, and the corrupters of young minds in Italy, witness to my joviality and coolness in the zeal and ardour of the conflict.
Finally, I must confess that all my endeavours in the good cause, joined to those of others, have been impotent to stem the tide of extravagance, the exaltation of heated brains, the absurdities of so-called{93}philosophical reforms; also, as regards the purity of Italian diction, all that we have said and written has been thrown away. The charlatans have had the upper hand of us, by persuading the vast multitude of working brains that to seek purity in language is a waste of time and hide-bound imbecility, and that to spare the pains of gaining it is a mark of free and liberal talent. The remedy must be left to time and to the inscrutable ebb and flow of fashion, which makes the world at one time eager for the true, at another no less eager for the false, in spite of any human efforts to control it.
It was about the year 1740, when an Academy was founded in Venice by some people of gay humour, versed in literary studies, and amateurs of polish and simplicity and nature. Caprice and chance brought us together. But we followed in the wake of Chiabrera, Redi, Zeno, Manfredi, Lazarini, valiant predecessors in the warfare against those false, emphatic, metaphorical, and figured fashions, which had been introduced like plague-germs by the Seicentisti.[16]This Academy imbued the minds of young men with higher ideas, and fostered the seeds it planted by a generous emulation.
The lively and learned little band happened to alight upon a simpleton called Giuseppe Secchellari, who had been bamboozled by his own vanity and{94}the cozenage of merry knaves agog for fun into thinking himself a man of profound erudition, and who accordingly blackened reams of paper with ineptitudes and blunders so ridiculous that nobody could listen to them without fits of laughter. It was decided to elect this queer fish Prince of the Academy. The election took place unanimously amid shouts of merriment. He was dubbed Arcigranellone, and received the title of Prince of the Accademia Granellesca, by which names he and the club were henceforth to be known.[17]
A solemn coronation of this precious simpleton with a wreath of plums followed in due course. All the Academicians were grouped around him, and nothing could be more burlesque than his proud satisfaction at the honours he received, the air and grace with which he thanked us for some thirty odes and rigmaroles, which were really witty squibs and gibes upon our princely butt, and which he took for panegyrics.
A large arm-chair of antique build and very high, so high that the dwarfish Prince had to take two or{95}three jumps before he leaped into it, was the throne from which he lorded over us. There he sat and swaggered, having been gulled into thinking it the chair of Cardinal Pietro Bembo, that renowned and illustrious author. An owl with two balls in its right claw stood over him, and was the object of his veneration as the crest of the Academy. Perched there aloft, he used to draw from his bosom a roll of papers, and recited in a quavering falsetto some preposterous gibberish or other which he styled a dissertation. After a few lines had been declaimed, the clapping of hands and mocking plaudits of his audience brought him to a pause. Fully persuaded that he had entranced his hearers, he then handed his manuscripts with majestic condescension to the secretary, and bade him enroll them in the archives of the Academy.
When we met together in the heat of summer, iced drinks were handed round to the members; but the prince, to mark his superiority, received a bowl of boiling tea upon a silver salver. In the depth of winter, on the other hand, hot coffee was served out to us and iced water to the Prince. The venerable Arcigranellone, puffed up with this distinction, swallowed the tea in summer and the water in winter, dissolving into sweat or shivering with cold according to the season.
I could not reckon all the pleasantries, for ever new and always witty, which we played off upon{96}our Prince, and which his stupid vanity made him accept as honours. Each time the Academy met, these diversions acted like an antidote to melancholy. And since he never would admit that he was ignorant of anything a member asked, at one time he was made to rhyme extempore, at another to sing a song, and sometimes even to descend and strip to the shirt and fence with a master in the noble art, who rained down whacks with the foil upon his hide and sent him spinning like a peg-top round the room. Arcigranellone as he truly was, the man essayed everything, and never failed to triumph in the deafening derisive plaudits which he raised.
This novel kind of Calandrino,[18]of whom I am sketching a mere outline, served chiefly as a lure to young men who care more for mirth than serious scholarship, and drew them to enroll themselves with zeal beneath the banner of the owl.
When we had amused ourselves enough, at the commencement of our sessions, with the marvellous diatribes, wholly unexpected answers, and harlequinesque contortions of our Arcigranellone, we left him up there alone upon the chair of Bembo, and drew from our portfolios compositions in prose and verse, serious or facetious as the theme might be, but sensible, judicious, elegant in phrase, varied in style, and correct in diction. An agreeable reading{97}followed, which entertained the audience for at least two hours. Each reader, when he had finished his recitation, turned to the Arcigranellone, whose whimsical opinions and distorted reasonings renewed the clatter of tongues and laughter.
This serio-comic Academy had for its object to promote the study of our best old authors, the simplicity and harmony of chastened style, and above all the purity of the Italian tongue. It drew together a very large number of young men emulous of these things; and few foreigners of culture came to Venice without seeking to be admitted to its sessions. I shall not attempt to catalogue the names of its innumerable members. But I may observe that many names might be found upon our books whose owners had no inkling of the fact; for the following reason. Some of our merriest wags used to amuse themselves and the company by inflating the Arcigranellone's vanity with burlesque epistles addressed to him by very exalted personages. These great people wrote to say that, induced by the renown of his learning, wise rule, and sublime administration of his principality, they begged to be inscribed by him upon the list of his fortunate subjects, the Academicians. In this way it came about that Frederick II. of Prussia, the Sultan, the Sophy of Persia, Prester John, and other notables of like eminence, appeared among us on paper. All the members, I ought to mention, had an academical{98}name assigned to them and published by his Magnificence the Prince. I was dubbed the Solitary.
The compositions produced in our Academy were candidly exposed to criticism; and, after receiving polish at the hands of accomplished scholars in the club, many works of style and value, in all kinds of verse and prose, went forth to the world. Serious poems, humorous poems, satires in the manner of Berni, Horatian satires with the masculine and trenchant phrase of ancient Rome, orations on occasions of importance in the State, dissertations in defence of the great masters of Italian literature, commentaries upon Dante, novellettes in graceful diction, familiar letters, volumes of occasional and moral essays, Latin verses and prose exercises, translations from choice books in foreign languages; all these, after passing the review of the Academicians, were sent to press. I need not speak further about what has become common property through publication.
Perhaps I shall be accused by modern innovators of seeking to attach importance to frivolities. That will not hurt me. Those are far more hurt and wounded who allow themselves to be seduced into believing that the works of these same innovators contain things better worth their notice than frivolities—uncouth frivolities, ill-thought, unnatural, and written in a monstrous jargon.
Who could have imagined that a single word,{99}wrested from its proper sense, made common in the mouths of boys and women to denote what does not suit their inclinations, should have the power to turn established rules—based on the experience of sages, and confirmed by ancient usage—all topsy-turvy? This word is nothing more nor less, in naked truth, than—prejudice.[19]
I have just said that the word in question has been wrested from its proper meaning; and I am prepared to maintain this proposition. According to my principles, which will have to bear the shame of being stigmatised asprejudicesby the innovators, it is impossible to apply the term 'prejudice' to things which are not only harmless, but beneficial, nay, necessary to the totality of mankind.
Now I am bound to believe that religion and its{100}accessories are beneficial to society and nations. But our new-fangled philosophers have dubbed all these things the prejudices of intellects enfeebled and intimidated by seductive superstition. Consequently, religion, that salutary curb on human passion, has languished and become a laughing-stock.
I am bound to believe that the gallows is beneficial to society, being an instrument for punishing crime and deterring would-be criminals. But our new-fangled philosophers have denounced the gallows as a tyrannical prejudice, and by so doing have multiplied murders on the highway, robberies and acts of sacrilege, a hundred-fold.
I am bound to believe that heroism, probity, good faith and equity are beneficial to society. But our unprejudiced philosophers, who identify felicity with{101}enjoyment and getting hold by any means of what you can, call these virtues mere romantic prejudices. Accordingly, justice has been sold with brazen impudence, knaveries and tricks and treachery have triumphed, and a multitude of simple, innocent, down-trodden creatures, poor in spirit and impoverished in substance, have wept tears of blood.
It was pronounced a musty and barbarous prejudice to keep women at home, for the supervision of their sons and daughters, their hirelings, their domestic service and economy. Immediately, the women poured forth from their doors, storming like Bacchantes, screaming out "Liberty! liberty!" The streets swarmed with them. Their children, servants, daily duties, were neglected. They meanwhile abandoned their vapoury brains to fashions, frivolous inventions, rivalries in games, amusements, loves, coquetries, and all sorts of nonsense which their own caprices and their counsellors, the upstart sages, could suggest. The husbands had not courage to oppose this ruin of their honour, of their substance, of their families. They were afraid of being pilloried with that dreadful word, prejudice.
The law which punishes infanticide with death was styled a prejudice. Good morals, modesty, and chastity received the name of prejudice—enforced, so ran the tale, by bugbears of the Levites and the foolish training of poor superstitious females. What the result was, I blush to record. The infinite advantages{102}conferred upon society and families by these fine philosophical discoveries, and by their triumph over prejudices of the sort I have described, had better remain unwritten.
The few who stood aloof and mocked at fashions—fashions which fade and fall each year like autumn leaves—were quizzed as ignoramuses, blockheads, zanies tainted with the leprosy of prejudice.[20]They passed for stolid, coarse-grained creatures, void of thrill, of sentiment, of taste, of culture, delicacy, and refined perception. Women and men, in one vast herd, became illuminated visionaries. They piqued themselves upon their intuition and originality. They discovered endless harmonies and discords, all imaginary; endless comforts and discomforts, all imaginary; endless imaginary savours, insipidities, depravities in things about them, in furniture, in dress, in colours, in decorations, in the kitchen, in food, in wine, in dressing of the table, all imaginary. They detected elegance or inelegance in every dumb and senseless object: down to the basest of utensils there was nothing which escaped the epithet of elegant. Let thus much be said for truth's sake, with the patience which is needful nowadays in speaking truth to folk infected by the real and not the spurious leprosy of prejudice.
Well, when all the so-called prejudices which I{103}have just described had been put to flight and dissipated by the piercing sunbeams of the innovators, many great and remarkable blessings appeared in their room. These were the blessings of irreligion, of respect and reverence annulled, of justice overturned, of law-courts made the play-ground for flagitious vices, of criminals encouraged and bewept, of heated imaginations, sharpened senses, animalism, indulgence in all lusts and passions, of imperious luxury, with her brood of violent insatiable desires, deceits, intrigues, oppressions, losses of faith and honesty and honour, swindlings, pilferings, bankruptcies, pecuniary straits, base traffickings in sexual bargains, adulteries, the marriage-tie made unendurable and snapped by force or cold collusion.
After such wise, by turning the innocent word 'prejudice' into a weapon of attack against everything which restrained vice, crime, illicit pleasure, violence, and social profligacy—against whatever, in short, rationally deserves to be called prejudice—the human race plunged willingly and universally into a pitiable and apparently immedicable state of pure unvarnished prejudice. And this has been effected by the flattering enthusiasm for curing us of prejudices! Indeed it is fine to notice how that poor word 'prejudice' is bandied about. The folk who suffer from the real disease, and who complain most loudly of its miserable consequences, declare themselves atheists, declaim against what{104}they call prejudice in their sophisticated jargon, while they bless the legitimate, veracious prejudice, which is the fount and source of all the evils over which they weep, lament, and shriek.
Compared with these weighty topics, what follows may appear a trifle hardly worthy of consideration. I allude to the revolution in literary taste attempted by the Jesuit Father, now the Abbé Xavier Bettinelli, together with some other restless spirits. Twisting that unfortunate word 'prejudice' to suit their purpose, they scouted sound studies, established models, correction of style, and the authority of acknowledged masters. All such things were reckoned prejudices by these iconoclasts, who would fain have burned down the temple of Diana in their insolent ambition to be stared at as new stars, original thinkers, independent writers.
Bettinelli, a man not destitute of parts, fecundity, and eloquence, began by preaching to our youth that it was a prejudice to stand at gaze and slumber over our old authors. What good could the study of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio do us now? How could the imitation of their successors in Italian poetry and prose be profitable to us in the middle of the eighteenth century? Students of the good old type he derided as arid word-mongers, who had lost their wits by poring over languid, prosy, frigid models of an antiquated style. To Dante, without understanding him, he condescendingly allowed a few{105}fine verses, a few felicitous images, amid that vast ocean of scurrilities and repulsive barbarisms—the Divine Comedy!
This would-be innovator was possibly justified in his contempt for the fashionable keepsake books of poetry which we callRaccolte.[21]I will not defend them, though much might plausibly be urged in favour of a custom which does no harm, which reflects lustre on noble families, and which affords the rich an opportunity of succouring needy men of letters. However that may be, Bettinelli wrote and published a satire entitledLe Raccolte, which was intended to crush them, and to serve as a specimen of his originality in works of fancy. The Granelleschi had always watched with humorous attention Signor Bettinelli's pranks and gambols, and they now resolved on doing something to sober him down a bit. Two of the best scholars in the Academy, Signor Marco Forcellini and the Abbé Dottore Natale dalle Laste, undertook the task of examining his poem. They had little difficulty in proving that its author, while seeking to pass for a giant of original genius, was nothing better than the servile plagiarist of Ariosto and Boileau. This conclusion they put forth in an essay, entitled "A criticism of the little poemLe Raccolte." It seemed to us, however, that the essay was somewhat serious in style for an Academy which aimed at playfulness. Accordingly, I was{106}commissioned to enliven it with an epistle in a lighter strain. This epistle I wrote, as my poor brains dictated, but with perhaps too much of boldness and asperity. The essay and the epistle were published together in one volume. Meanwhile, my brother Gasparo, indignant that Dante, whose resplendent genius has shed the light of glory upon Italy through so many centuries, should become the butt of a mere seeker after notoriety, wrote hisDefence of Dante, which was also printed. Intelligent judges allow that this book is full of truth, and that its arguments are convincingly victorious over Bettinelli's arrogant and puerile scoffings. I am therefore at liberty to say that my brother'sDifesa di Danteis a really fine work.
What good came of these polemics? Very little, I am bound to say. Novelties, whether they are really new or only seem to be so, have the power of seducing and exciting innumerable intellects among the mass of those who cannot grasp the truth, but who respond at once to clamorous fanaticism. In number such folk infinitely exceed the small minority who, remaining loyal to truth, seek her even at the bottom of the well into which imposture plunges her.
I have always shared the hardihood of politicians, who dare to raise their minds aloft, and look down from a height upon the lowly vale in which humanity resides. But with this difference: They regard the{107}valley as inhabited by a swarm of insects, whom it is their art to sway, oppress, and drive about in their own interest; nor do they stoop to fraternise with these same insects until death reduces all to one brotherhood. I regard the valley as peopled by creatures of my kith and kindred, making observations on them, laughing at their grotesque gestures, motions, and contortions; then I descend to their level, associate once more with my neighbour, assure him that we are all alike ridiculous, and try to make him laugh at himself no less than at me by the proofs I give him of my proposition.
I do not need to study astronomy in order to discover whether there are planets which control the course of human thought. The natural seeds of levity, inconsistency, ennui, thirst for new sensations, with which our brains are crowded, when they begin to germinate, suffice to change the thoughts of mortals, and occasion fits of fashion, which not all the cables of all the dockyards in the world can check before their course is run. When one fashion is exhausted, the seeds I have described above set others in motion; and without interrogating the stars—unless indeed it be the vogue to do so—any patient student of past history may easily arrive at the conclusion that an unbroken chain of such manias and fits of fashion, due to the same natural causes, have always swayed, and will always sway, the stupidity of man; and man in his stupidity is{108}always blind, always possessed of the assurance that his glance is eagle-eyed.
What our forefathers saw, we see, and our posterity is doomed to see—a constant ebb and flow of opinions, determined in some part by a few bold thinkers, who publish to the world discoveries now useful and now useless, now frivolous and now pernicious. Let not, however, these thinkers flatter themselves that when they have contrived to set a fashion going, their most clamorous supporters will take and stick to it more firmly than they do to the vogue created by the opening of some new magnificent caffè or by Blondi's magazine of novelties, that very phœnix of fashion-makers in things our butterflies of human frailty think the most important.
As regards literature, in the middle of this century, and under the rising sun of Signor Bettinelli, we were condemned to behold a decided change for the worse. All that had been done to restore purity and simplicity, after the decadence of seventeenth-century taste, was swept away by a new and monstrous fit of fashion. The Granelleschi cried out in vain for sound principles and cultivated taste; contended in vain that, Italy being a nation which could boast a mother-language, with its literary usage, its vulgar usage, and its several dialects, reason bade us hold fast by the Della Cruscan vocabulary, and seek to enrich that, instead of disputing its authority. We cried to the winds, and were obliged to look on while{109}the world was deluged with fanatical, obscure, bombastic lucubrations—laboured sophisms, rounded periods with nothing in them, the flimsy dreams of sick folk, sentiments inverted and distorted—and the whole of this farrago indited in a language mixed of all the vernacular dialects, with interlarded bits of the Greek tongue, but above all with so many French words and phrases that our own Italian dictionaries and grammars seemed to have become superfluous.
Sequel of my literary quarrels.—Goldoni and Chiari.—My resolve to amuse my fellow-citizens with fantastic dramatic pieces on the stage.
This new fashion of unlicensed freedom and of sheer enthusiasm made rapid strides, because it was convenient and comfortable. Intellects, misled and muddled, lost the sense of what is good and bad in writing. They applauded the worst and the best without distinction. Little by little, commonplace and transparent stupidities on the one hand—stupidities sonorous and oracular upon the other, were adopted in the practice of literature. Pure, cultivated, judicious, and natural style took on the aspect of debilitated languor and despicable affectation.
The contagion spread so rapidly and so widely,{110}that even men like Doctor Carlo Goldoni and the Abbé Pietro Chiari were universally hailed and eulogized as first-rate Italian authors. Their original and incomparable achievements were lauded to the skies. To them we owed a fit of fashion, which lasted some few lustres, and which helped to overthrow the principles of sound and chaste expression.
These rivals, both of them dramatic poets, and each the critic of the other, were strong enough to heat the brains of our Venetian folk to boiling-point, so that the public formed two stormy parties, which came well-nigh to fisticuffs over the sublimities of their respective idols.
A whirlwind of comedies, tragi-comedies, and tragedies, composts of imperfections, occupied the public stage; the one genius of inculture vying with the other in the quantity he could produce. A diarrhœa of dramatic works, romances, critical epistles, poems, cantatas, and apologies by both the Vandals poured from the press and deluged Venice. All the youth were stunned, distracted, and diverted from good sense by din and tumult. Only the Granelleschi kept themselves untainted by this Goldonio-Chiaristic epidemic.
We did not shun the theatres. We were not so unjust as to refuse his share of merit as a playwright to Goldoni. We did not confound him with Chiari, to whom we conceded nothing, or but little. Yet we were unable to glance with other eyes than{111}those of pitying derision upon the tables of fine ladies, the writing-desks of gentlemen, the stalls of booksellers and artisans, the hands and arms of passers in the street, the rooms of public and private schools, colleges, even convents—all of which were loaded with Goldoni's comedies, Chiari's comedies and romances, the thousand trivialities and absurdities of both quill-drivers—while everything the scribblers sent to press was valued as a mirror of reform in literature, a model of right thinking and good writing.
I hope that no one will be scandalised if I report a saying which I heard with my own ears. There was a certain Abbé Salerni, Venetian-born, a preacher of the gospel. He was in the habit of thundering forth Lenten-sermons from the pulpits, and had a multitude of eager listeners. This man announced one day, with the air of frank and sturdy self-conceit, that he had arrived at composing his oratorical masterpieces upon sacred themes by the unremitting study of Goldoni's comedies.
I ought to render a candid account here of the impression made upon me by those two deluges of ink, Goldoni and Chiari. To begin with Goldoni. I recognised in him an abundance of comic motives, truth, and naturalness. Yet I detected a poverty and meanness of intrigue; nature copied from the fact, not imitated; virtues and vices ill-adjusted, vice too frequently triumphant; plebeian phrases of low double meaning, particularly in his Venetian plays;{112}surcharged characters; scraps and tags of erudition, stolen Heaven knows where, and clumsily brought in to impose upon the crowd of ignoramusses. Finally, as a writer of Italian—except in the Venetian dialect, of which he showed himself a master—he seemed to me not unworthy to be placed among the dullest, basest, and least correct authors who have used our idiom.
In spite of all the praises showered upon Goldoni, paid for or gratis, by journalists, preface-writers, romancers, apologists, Voltaires, I do not think that, with the single exception of hisBourru Bienfaisant, which he wrote at Paris, which suited the French theatre, but which had no success in its Italian translation here, he ever produced a perfect dramatic piece. At the same time I must add that he never produced one without some excellent comic trait. In my eyes he had always the appearance of a man who was born with the innate sense of how sterling comedies should be composed, but who, by defect of education, by want of discernment, by the necessity of satisfying the public and supplying new wares to the poor Italian comedians through whom he gained his livelihood, and by the hurry in which he produced so many pieces every year to keep himself afloat, was never able to fabricate a single play which does not swarm with faults.
In the course of our playful and airy polemics—polemics which had more the form of witty squibs{113}than formal criticisms—polemics which we Granelleschi never deigned to aim directly, in due form of siege, against the outpoured torrents of Goldoni and Chiari, but which we meant to act as sinapisms on the minds of sluggish youths, besotted by that trash and froth of ignorance—I once defied the whole world to point out a single play of Goldoni's which could be styled perfect. I confined myself to one, because I did not care to be drowned in an ocean; and I felt confident that I could fulfil my part of the challenge by making even boys and children see how the public had been taken in. No one stooped to take my glove up, and to name the perfect comedy. The goad and lash of pleasantry, with which I exposed Goldoni's stupidities, only elicited the following two verses, which he wrote and printed, and which exactly illustrate the stupidity I accused him of:—
Proceeding next to Abbé Chiari. In him I found a brain inflamed, disordered, bold to rashness, and pedantic; plots dark as astrological predictions; leaps and jumps demanding seven-league boots; scenes isolated, disconnected from the action, foisted in for the display of philosophical sententious verbiage; some good theatrical surprises, some descriptions{114}felicitous in their bluntnaiveté; pernicious ethics; and, as for the writer, I found him one of the most turgid, most inflated, nay, the most turgid, the most inflated, of this century. I once saw a sonnet of his, printed and posted on the shops in Venice; it was composed to celebrate the recovery from illness of a patrician, and began with this verse:—
Nothing more need be said. With such monstrosities in metre, he had the courage to proclaim himself a modern Pindar. Goldoni he looked down upon like some gull of the lagoons. Yet, such as he was, Chiari succeeded in mystifying a thousand empty brains, who admired him without understanding a line he wrote.
It is not to be wondered at if a Goldoni and a Chiari, with a few disciples and adherents, were able to create a temporaryfurore, when we consider that thisfuroreflamed up in the precincts of the theatres. Here all the population was divided into hostile camps, and each party was so blind and bewitched as not to recognise the infinite superiority of Goldoni as a comic playwright over his rival.
What is the force of righteous indignation when a vogue of this sort has been launched on its career? That of Goldoni and Chiari was bound to run its natural course, and when it died away, the{115}other, which I have described in the foregoing chapter, the vogue of immoderate, unnatural, incorrect enthusiasts, so-styled sublime philosophers, came in, who discovered new worlds in literature, and who are fawning now upon the young men of our days, threatening new vocabularies, nay, new alphabets, treating antiquity as a short-sighted idiot, and involving humanity in an undistinguishable chaos of literary follies.
With regard to the mania created by Goldoni and Chiari, as may easily be imagined, I looked upon it as a fungus growth upon opinion, worthy at the best of laughter. I deemed that, at any rate, I had the right to be the master of my own thoughts; and a trifle in verse which I wrote for my amusement, without the intention of sending it to press, was the accidental cause of obliging me to maintain my views against these poets by a series of good-naturedjeux d'esprit. My real friends know that I harboured no envy, no sentiment of rivalry against them and their swamps of volumes in octavo. Any one who has the justice to remember that I was a mere amateur in literature, giving away gratis whatever issued from my pen, will agree with my friends, and acknowledge that I was prompted by a disinterested zeal in the cause of pure and unaffected writing. May Heaven pardon those, and there are many of them, who have held me up for detestation as a malignant satirist, seeking to found my{116}own fame and fortune upon the ruin of others! The players and publishers would be able to disabuse them of this notion. But I do not choose to beg for testimonials to my generosity; and perhaps I have not told the whole truth about it in the chapter already written upon my own character.[22]
It was in the year 1757 then that I composed the little book in verse which I have mentioned, closely following the style of good old Tuscan masters, and giving it the title ofLa Tartana degl'influssi per l'anno bisestile 1757.[23]This little work contained a gay critique in abstract on the uses and abuses of the times. It was composed upon certain verses of that obscure Florentine poet Burchiello, which I selected as prophetic texts for my own disquisitions. It took the humour of our literary club, and I dedicated it to a patrician of Venice, Daniele Farsetti, to whom I also gave the autograph, without retaining any copy for my own use. This Cavaliere, a man of excellent culture, and a Mecænas of the Granelleschi, wishing to give me an agreeable surprise, and thinking perhaps that he would meet with difficulty in getting the poem printed at Venice, sent it to Paris to be put in type, and distributed the few copies which were struck off among his friends in Venice.
This trifling volume might have gone the round{117}of many hands, affording innocent amusement by its broad and humorous survey over characters and customs, if a few drops of somewhat pungent ink, employed in lashing the bad writers of those days, had not played the part of venomous and sacrilegious asps. Goldoni, besides being a regular deluge of dramatic works, had in him I know not what diuretic medicine for composing little things in verse, songs, rhyming diatribes, and other such-like poems of a very muddy order. This gift he now exercised, while putting together a collection of panegyrics on the patrician Veniero's retirement from the rectorship of Bergamo, to vent one of his commonplaceterza-rimarigmaroles against myTartana degli influssi. He abused the book as a stale piece of mustiness, an inept and insufferable scarecrow; treating its author as an angry man who deserved compassion, because (he chose to say) I had wooed fortune in vain. Many other polite expressions of the same stamp adorned these triplets.
Meanwhile, the famous Signor Lami, who at that time wrote the literary paper of Florence, thought myTartanaworthy of notice in his journal, and extracted some of its stanzas on the decadence and corruption of the language. Padre Calogerà, too, who was then editing theGiornale de' Letterati d'Italia, composed and published praises on it, which were certainly above its merits. I flatter myself that my readers will not think I record these facts out of{118}vanity. I was not personally acquainted with either Lami or Calogerà. It is not my habit to correspond with celebrated men of letters in order to manufacture testimonials out of their civil and flattering replies. I do not condescend to wheedle journalists and reviewers into imposing on the credulity of the public by calling bad things good and good things bad in my behoof. I have always been so far sensible as to check self-esteem, and to appreciate my literary toys at their due worthlessness. Writers who by tricks of this kind, extortions, canvassings, and subterfuges, seek to gratify their thirst for fame, and to found a reputation upon bought or begged for attestations, are the objects of my scorn and loathing. For Lami and Calogerà I cherished sentiments of gratitude. I seemed to find in them a spirit kindred to my own, and a conviction that I had uttered what was useful in the cause of culture.
As a matter of fact, although theTartanawas written in strict literary Tuscan, although its style was modelled upon that of antiquated Tuscan authors, especially of Luigi Pulci, and was therefore "caviare to the general," the book obtained a rapid and wide success. The partisans of Goldoni and Chiari took it for a gross malignant satire.
Possibly the rarity of copies, and the fact that it came from Paris, helped to float the little poem. Anyhow, it created such a sensation, raised so much controversy, and brought so many young students{119}into relations with myself and membership among the Granelleschi, that I almost dared to hope for a new turn of the tide in literature.
It was this hope which made me follow up the missile I had cast into the wasp's nest of bad authorship by a pleasant retort against Goldoni's strictures on myTartana. Goldoni was a good fellow at bottom, but splenetic, and a miserable writer. Having begun life as a pleader at the bar of Venice, he never succeeded in throwing off a certain air of professional coarseness and a tincture of forensic rhetoric. I seized upon this point of weakness, and indited an epistle, which he was supposed to have written me, larded with all the jargon of the law-courts. The object of the letter was to introduce his terzets to my notice. I gave it the following title:Scrittura contestativa al taglio della Tartana degli Influssi stampata a Parigi l'anno 1757. After this I set myself to examine histerza-rimapoem, and had no difficulty in exposing a long list of stupidities, improprieties, puerilities, and injustices. Without altering the low and trivial sentiments expressed in it, I rewrote the whole in a style of greater elegance and elevation, so as to prove that even the most plebeian thoughts may acquire harmony and decent grace by choiceness of diction. Finally, I dissuaded him from sending his unhappy pamphlet to the press, and concluded by addressing some octave stanzas to the public, in which I begged them to set him free in future{120}from his self-imposed obligation of composing in verse.
I did not stop here. MyTartanacontained some satirical sallies against the comedies in vogue upon our stage; and Goldoni had appropriated these to himself. In his invective he inserted a couple of forensic lines against me, which conveyed a kind of challenge. Here they are:—
This excited me to write another little book, in which I proved the proposition and the argument, and at the same time afforded my readers food for mirth.
I feigned that the Granelleschi were assembled one day during Carnival, to dine at the tavern of the Pellegrino, which looks out upon the Piazza di San Marco. My comrades gathered round the windows to observe the passing masqueraders, when a monstrous creature, wearing a mask of four strongly-marked and different faces, entered the inn. They entreated it to come up into our room, in order that they might examine it at leisure. This mask of the the four faces and four mouths represented the Comic Theatre of Goldoni, personified by me in the way I shall explain. As soon as it caught sight of me, the author ofTartana, it turned to fly off in a rage, but{121}was forced to stay and sustain an argument with me upon the theme of its dramatic productions.
In the dialogue which ensued, I maintained and proved that Goldoni had striven to gain popularity rather by changing the aspect of his wares than by any real merit which they possessed. After scribbling plots in outline for the old-fashioned comedy of improvisation, which he afterwards attacked and repudiated, he had begun by putting into written dialogue certain motives neglected by that kind of drama. Then seeing that this first manner began to pall, he dropped his so-called Reform of the Stage, and assailed the public with hisPamelasand other romances. When this novelty in its turn ceased to draw, he bethought himself of those Venetian farces, which were indeed the best and longest-lived of his dramatic hashes. In time they suffered the fate of their predecessors, because such vulgar scenes from life could not fail to be monotonous. Accordingly, he tried another novelty, tickling the ears of his audience with rhymed Martellian verses and semi-tragic pieces, stuffed out with absurdities, improprieties, and the licentiousness of Oriental manners. TheseSpose Persiane, brutalIrcane, dirtyEunuchi, and unspeakableCurcume, by the mere fact of their bad morality, monstrosity, and improbability, raised Goldoni's fame among a crowd of fools and fanatics, who learned his long-winded Martellian lines by heart, and went about the alleys of the town reciting{122}them aloud, to the annoyance of people who knew what good poetry really is.
I maintained and proved that he had rashly essayed tragedy of the sublime style, but had prudently fallen back on such plebeian representations as thePettegolezzi delle Donne, theFemmine gelose della Signora Lucrezia, thePutta Onorata, theBona Muger, theRusteghi, theTodero Brontolone. The arguments of comedies like these were well adapted to his talent. He displayed in them a really extraordinary ability for interweaving dialogues in the Venetian dialect, taken down by him with pencil and notebook in the houses of the common people, taverns, gaming hells,traghetti, coffee-houses, places of ill-fame, and the most obscure alleys of our city. Audiences were delighted by the realism of these plays, a realism which had never before been so brilliantly illustrated, illuminated, and adorned, as it now was by the ability of actors who faithfully responded to the spirit of this new and popular type of farce.
I maintained and proved that he had frequently charged the noble persons of his plays with fraud, absurdity, and baseness, reserving serious and heroic virtues for personages of the lower class, in order to curry favour with the multitude, who are always too disposed to envy and malign the great. I also showed that hisPutta Onoratawas not honest, and that he had incited to vice while praising virtue with the dullness of a tiresome sermon. With regard to this{123}point, the four-mouthed Comic Theatre kept protesting that it wished to drive the time-honoured masks of improvised comedy off the stage, accusing them of imposture, immodesty, and bad example for the public. I, on the other hand, clearly proved that Goldoni's plays were a hundred times more lascivious, more indecent, and more injurious to morals. My arguments were rendered irrefutable by a whole bundle of obscene expressions, dirty double-entendres, suggestive and equivocal situations, and other nastinesses, which I had collected and textually copied from his works. The monstrous mask defended itself but poorly, and at last fell to abusing me personally with all its four mouths at once. This did not serve it; and when I had argued it down and exposed it to the contempt of the Granelleschi, it lifted up its clothes in front, and exhibited a fifth mouth, which it carried in the middle of its stomach. This fifth allegorical mouth raised up its voice and wept, declaring itself beaten and begging for mercy. I admit that my satire here was somewhat harsh and broad; but it had been provoked by an expression of Goldoni's, who twitted me with beinga man out of temper with fortune.
As a preface to these two little works, I composed an epistle in blank verse, in which I dedicated them to a certain well-known poverty-stricken citizen of Venice, called Pietro Carati. The man used to go about the streets, wrapt in a ragged mantle, with a{124}rusty periwig, and black stockings, mended in a thousand places with green, grey, or white silk (the surest signs of beggary), modestly demanding from his acquaintances some trifle to support his dignity as cittadino.
In this epistle I repeated that I was not out of temper with fortune, that I sought no favours from that goddess by my writings, and that my only object was to carry on the war against bad authors, and to uphold the rules and purity of literature. These two little pamphlets became the property of the public before I had time and opportunity to print them. The stir they made while yet in manuscript occasioned a series of events which I will now relate.[24]
The noble gentleman, Giuseppe Farsetti, who was a member of our Academy, came to me one day, and told me that another patrician, Count Ludovico Widiman, and he would take it very kindly if I consented to withdraw my little works from publication. I was somewhat surprised, because I knew that the Cavaliere Farsetti was a lover of good literature. Count Widiman, on the other hand, had declared himself a partisan of Goldoni. Nevertheless, I{125}readily assented to their request, and promised to bury my two pamphlets in oblivion. I added, at the same time, that I felt sure that Goldoni, when he was aware of this act of generosity on my part, would begin hostilities against me, trusting to his numerous and enthusiastic following.
I was not mistaken when I made this prophecy. It soon became evident that Goldoni intended to carry on the war against us lovers of pure writing in all theRaccoltewhich appeared from time to time in Venice. He also introduced affected and unpleasant types of character upon the stage under Florentine names, and otherwise jeered at us in the coarse little poems which he styled hisTavole Rotonde. Confiding in his popularity and the influence of those fine gentlemen whom he called his "beloved patrons," he hoped to revenge himself on me and to suppress myTartana.
To break my promise given to the two Cavalieri, and to publish the satirical pieces I have described above, was out of the question. So I prepared myself for a guerilla warfare, something after Goldoni's own kind, but more witty and amusing. I judged it better to fight the quarrel out with short and cutting pieces, which should throw ridicule upon my adversary and amuse the public, than to begin a critical controversy in due form. Squibs and satires were now exchanged daily between Polisseno Fegejo (such was Goldoni's high-sounding title in the Arcadi of Rome){126}and my humble self, the Solitario in our modest Academy of the Granelleschi.
To meet Goldoni's lumbering diatribes in verse, I brought out a little burlesque poem, which I calledSudori d'Imeneo. It was printed on the occasion of a wedding, and created a revolution among the wits which exceeded my most sanguine expectations. At this distance of time I find it impossible to render a precise account of the innumerable compositions which I produced in this controversy. They were read at the time with avidity, because of their novelty and audacity. I never cared to keep a register of my published or unpublished writings in prose and verse. If I were asked where these trifles could be found, I should reply: "Certainly not in my hands." Some of my friends, however—among them the Venetian gentleman, Raffaele Todeschini, and Sebastiano Muletti of Bergamo—thought it worth while to form complete collections of such pieces from my pen.
It must not be imagined that Abbé Chiari escaped without blows in this battle of the books. It so happened that an unknown writer subjected one of his prologues to a scathing satire in an essay calledFive Doubts. The piece was mistakenly attributed to me; and Chiari answered it by six cowardly, filthy, satirical sonnets, which he circulated in manuscript, against myself and the Granelleschi. Upon this there arose a whole jungle of pens in our defence. The five doubts were multiplied by four, by six; and{127}the Abbé was argued and twitted out of his wits. In these straits, he condescended to extend the kiss of peace to his old foe Goldoni, and Goldoni abased himself to the point of accepting the salute. Drowning their former rivalries and differences, they now entered into an offensive and defensive alliance against the Academy and me.
Meanwhile our party grew steadily in numbers. The head-quarters of the Granelleschi as a belligerent body were at this time established in the shop of the bookseller Paolo Colombani. Every month we issued here in parts a series of critical and satirical papers, which drew crowds of purchasers round Colombani's counter. The papers appeared under the title ofAtti Granelleschi, and were prefaced with an introduction in octave stanzas from my pen. The noise they created all about the town was quite remarkable, and young men eagerly enrolled themselves under our standard of the Owl. Chiari and Goldoni, on their side, were not idle; but the alliance they had struck took off considerably from their vogue. This depended in no small measure on their former rivalry. The dropping fire which had been exchanged between their partisans kept their names and fames before the public. Now that they were fighting under one flag against us, the interest in their personalities declined.
Without pursuing the details of this literary war, which raged between the years 1757 and 1761, I{128}will only touch upon those circumstances which led me to try my fortune on the stage as a dramatic writer. Both Goldoni and Chiari professed themselves the champions of theatrical reform; and part of their programme was to cut the throat of the innocentCommedia dell'Arte, which had been so well supported in Venice by four principal and deservedly popular masks: Sacchi, Fiorelli, Zannoni, and Derbes. It seemed to me that I could not castigate the arrogance of these self-styled Menanders better than by taking our old friends Truffaldino, Tartaglia, Brighella, Pantalone, and Smeraldina under my protection. Accordingly, I opened fire with a dithyrambic poem, praising the extempore comedians in question, and comparing their gay farces favourably with the dull and heavy pieces of the reformers.[25]Chiari and Goldoni replied to my attacks and those of my associates by challenging us to produce a comedy. Goldoni, in particular, called me a verbose word-monger, and kept asserting that the enormous crowds which flocked together to enjoy his plays constituted a convincing proof of their essential merit. It is one thing, he said, to write subtle verbal criticisms, another thing to compose dramas which shall fill the public theatres with enthusiastic audiences. Spurred by this continual appeal to popularity and vogue, I uttered the deliberate opinion that crowded theatres{129}proved nothing with regard to the goodness or the badness of the plays which people came to see; and I further staked my reputation on drawing more folk together than he could do with all his scenic tricks, by simply putting the old wives' fairy-story of theLove of the Three Orangesupon the boards.
Shouts of incredulous and mocking laughter, not unnaturally, greeted this Quixotic challenge. They stung my sense of honour, and made me gird up my loins for the perilous adventure. When I had composed the scheme of my strange drama, and had read it to the Granelleschi, I could see, by the laughter it excited, that there was stuff and bottom in the business. Yet my friends dissuaded me from producing such a piece of child's-play before the public; it would certainly be hissed, they said, and compromise the dignity of our Academy.
I replied that the whole public had to be attacked in front upon the theatre, in order to create a sensation, and to divert attention from our adversaries. I meant to give, and not to sell this play, which I hoped would vindicate the honour and revenge the insults of our Academy. Finally, I humbly submitted that men of culture and learning were not always profoundly acquainted with human nature and the foibles of their neighbours.
Well, I made a present ofL'Amore delle Tre Melarancieto Sacchi's company of comic players, and the extravaganza was produced in the theatre of{130}San Samuele at Venice during the Carnival of 1761. Its novelty and unexpectedness,—the surprise created by a fairy-tale adapted to the drama, seasoned with trenchant parodies of both Chiari's and Goldoni's plays, and not withal devoid of moral allegory—created such a sudden and noisy revolution of taste that these poets saw in it the sentence of their doom.
Who could have imagined that this twinkling spark of a child's fable on the stage should have outshone the admired and universally applauded illumination of two famous talents, condemning them to obscurity, while my own dramatised fairy-tales throve and enthralled the public for a period of many years? So wags the world!
My plan of campaign for assailing Goldoni and Chiari through the militia of actors I had chosen.—The four Fiabe: Il Corvo, Il Rè Cervo, La Turandotte, I Pitocchi Fortunati.
In the long course of my observations upon human nature and the different sorts of men, I had not as yet enjoyed an opportunity of studying the race of actors. I was curious to do so, and the time had come.
With the view of attacking my two poet adversaries{131}in the theatre, I made choice of the comic troupe of Sacchi, the famous Truffaldino.[26]It was composed for the most part of close relatives, and bore the reputation of being better behaved and more honest than any others. Professionally, they sustained our old national comedy of improvisation with the greatest spirit. This type of drama, as I have said above, Goldoni and Chiari, under the mask of zeal for culture, but really with an eager eye to gain, had set themselves to ruin and abolish.
Antonio Sacchi, Agostino Fiorelli, Atanagio Zannoni, and Cesare Derbes, all of them excellent players in their several lines, represented the four masks, Truffaldino, Tartaglia, Brighella, and Pantalone. Each of these men could boast of perfect practice in their art, readiness of wit, grace, fertility of ideas, variety of sallies, bye-play, drollery, naturalness, and some philosophy. The soubrette of the company, Andriana Sacchi-Zannoni, possessed the same qualities. Its other members, at the time when I took up their cause, were old men and women, persons of good parts but unattractive physique, lifeless sticks, and inexperienced children. Some time earlier, the troupe had been extremely well-to-do and popular in Italy.{132}But the two playwrights in question, after having lived in partnership with them, had turned round and taken the bread out of their mouths. Sacchi, in these circumstances, withdrew his company to the Court of Portugal, where they prospered, until a far more formidable enemy than a brace of poets assailed them. The terrible earthquake of Lisbon put a stop to all amusements in that capital; and our poor players, having lost their occupation, returned to Venice after an absence of some four years, and encamped in the theatre of San Samuele.
Upon their arrival, they met with a temporary success. Many amateurs of the old drama, who were bored to death with Martellian verses and such plays as theFilosofi Inglesi,Pamelas,Pastorelle Fedeli,Plautuses,Molières,Terences, andTorquato Tassos, then in vogue, hailed them with enthusiasm. During the first year the four masks and the soubrette, with some other actors of merit in the extempore style, took the wind out of Goldoni's and Chiari's sails. Little by little, however, the novelties poured forth by these two fertile writers, who kept on treating the clever fellows as contemptible mountebanks and insipid buffoons, prevailed, and reduced them to almost total neglect.
It seemed to me that I should be able to indulge my humour for laughter if I made myself the colonel of this regiment. I also hoped to score a victory for the insulted Granelleschi by drawing crowds to{133}Sacchi's theatre with my dramatic allegories based on nursery-tales. The fable ofL'Amore delle Tre Melaranciemade a good beginning. My adversaries were driven mad by the revolt it caused among playgoers, by its parodies and hidden meanings, which the newspapers industriously explained, describing many things which I had never put there. They attempted to hoot it down by clumsy abuse, affecting at the same time disgust and contempt for its literary triviality. Forgetting that it had been appreciated and enjoyed by people of good birth and culture, they called it a mere buffoonery to catch the vulgar. Its popularity they attributed to the co-operation of the four talented masks, whom they had sought to extirpate, and to the effect of the transformation scenes which it contained, ignoring the real spirit and intention of this comic sketch in a new style.
Laughing at their empty malice, I publicly maintained that art in the construction of a piece, well-managed conduct of its action, propriety of rhetoric and harmony of diction, were sufficient to invest a puerile fantastic motive, if taken seriously, with the illusion of reality, and to arrest the attention of the whole human race—excepting perhaps some thirty confirmed enemies, who would be sure, when my contention had been proved before their eyes and ears, to accuse a hundred thousand men of ignorance, and to renounce their sex rather than admit the truth.{134}
This proposition was met with new gibes; and I found myself committed to make good my bold assertion. The fable ofIl Corvo, extracted from a Neapolitan story-book,Cunto delle cunte, trattenemiento pe le piccierelle, and treated by me in the tone of lofty tragedy, wrought the miracle. I must add that I assigned some humorous passages to the four masks, whom I wished to keep upon the stage for the benefit of hypochondriacs, and in contempt of misunderstood and falsely applied rules from Aristotle.
The success ofIl Corvowas complete. The public wept and laughed at my bidding. Multitudes flocked to hear this old wives' tale, as though it had been solemn history. The play had a long run; and the two poets were seriously damaged in their interests, while the newspapers applauded and extolled the allegory as a splendid example of fraternal affection.
I wished to strike while the iron was hot. Accordingly, my third fable, theRè Cervo, appeared with similar results of popularity and sympathetic criticism. A thousand beauties were discovered, which I, who wrote it, had not seen. Folk regarded its allegory as a mirror for those monarchs who allow themselves to be blinded by their confidence in Ministers, and are in consequence transformed into the semblance of monsters. Meanwhile, my opponents persisted in ascribing the great success of these three pieces to stage decorations and the marvellous effect{135}of magic metamorphoses, neglecting the writer's art and science, the charm of his verse, and his adroit employment of rhetoric, morality, and allegory. This impelled me to produce two more fables,TurandotteandI Pitocchi Fortunati, in which magic marvels were conspicuous by their absence, while the literary art and science remained the same. A like success clinched my argument, without, however, disarming my antagonists.
I had formed the habit of conversing with my family of players in our hours of leisure; and very racy did I find the recreation of their society. In a short space of time I learned to understand and see into the characters and talents of my soldiers, with insight so perfect that all the parts I wrote for them and fitted, so to speak, upon their mental frames, were represented on the stage as though they issued naturally from their hearts and tempers. This added hugely to the attraction of the spectacle. The gift of writing for particular actors, which does not seem to be possessed or put in use by every dramatist, is almost indispensable while dealing with the comic troupes of Italy. The moderate payments which are customary in our theatres prevent these people from engaging so large a number of actors and actresses as to be able to select the proper representatives of all the varied characters in nature. To the accident of my possessing this gift, and the ability with which I exercised it, must be ascribed a large part of my{136}success. Goldoni alone devoted himself with patience to the study of the players who put his premeditated pieces on the boards;[27]but I defy Goldoni and all the writers for our stage to compose, as I did, parts differing in character, containing jokes, witticisms, drolleries, moral satire, and discourses in soliloquy or dialogue, adapted to the native genius of my Truffaldino, Tartaglia, Brighella, Pantaloni, and Servette, without lapsing into languor and frigidity, and with the same result of reiterated applause.