illustrate or explain the maxims of political philosophy, it can never be the legitimate foundation of them; and every conclusion so deduced must be weakened by the fallacy of its premises. We may justly, however, recommend the perusal of this part of the work for the force and ingenuity of many of its detached positions; some of which merit the praise of originality, and all breathe a spirit of justice and temperate philosophy. We would particularly notice the third chapter of the first book, in which the author exposes with great force the confusion of ideas involved in pretended theories of the sovereignty of the people.

The first and second books are occupied by the former part of the subject; and the two following, which conclude the work, are engaged in sketching the two different forms of government, viz. the monarchical and republican. The first is divided into absolute and limited, the second into aristocratical and democratical. The old government of France and the government of England are both classed under the denomination of limited monarchies. The author denies that the English is a mixed government according to the denomination applied to it by several celebrated publicists; and he points out the causes which have led to their error, in the twelfth chapter of the third book, which contains several judicious and interesting reflections on the constitution of our government civil and ecclesiastical.

Book iv. concludes with a discussion of the question, which is the best form of government adapted to each state? In the solution, the author subscribes in general to the opinions of Montesquieu and Rousseau; namely, that a republican form of government is adapted only to small states; that a limited monarchy is the system best suited to those of considerable but moderate extent; and that states consisting of immense expansion of territory, or great variety of combinations, can be governed only by an absolute monarchy. Proceeding thence in the last chapter to a solution of the problem, what is the state best calculated for strength and duration? he alleges with remarkable clearness and precision the reasons which lead him to pronounce in favour of a limited monarchy, as less exposed to sudden and violent change than the absolute monarchy; and as free from the alternative risk incident to republics, of being overwhelmed by external force, if small, or dissolved by internal convulsions, if large. This conclusion in favour of limited in preference to absolute monarchy, which evidently discovers the bent of the author's mind, is cautiously guarded by a salvo which bespeaks his prudence or his fears, rather than his conviction, and may be suspected of being addressed

II

addressed to the police rather than to his disciples. We trans scribe it as a proof how inevitably the reign of despotism leads to a restraint of the powers of free inquiry and discussion :

From these considerations, I conclude that it is in a represent ative and limited monarchy that political strength and true liberty are the most concentrated: but let it not be inferred that I adopt this form to the exclusion of all others; for I declare that I reject it with regard to all those states in which it might be found incom patible with the dimensions of territory or the dispositions of the people.'

ART. VIII. De la Littérature, &c.'; i. e. On the Literature of the South of Europe. By J. C. L. SIMONDE DE SISMONDI,

THE

[Article concluded from the last Appendix.]

HE Provençal dialect had now received a degree of polish, perhaps the greatest to which it was capable of attaining Spain and Portugal had produced poets; and the Norman Trouvères had done much for the entertainment of civilized Europe, before the riches or even the existence of a language obscurely born among the people of Italy was known. The invasion of the Norman adventurers who founded a kingdom in Apuleia had but little effect on the language of their new territory; and under their dominion the Italian or Sicilian assumed, for the first time, a degree of consistency. The court of Palermo had already become rich and voluptuous; and even in the early part of the twelfth century, when every other country was sunken in prejudice and bigotry, the two Rogers and Williams of Sicily patronized the ingenious Arabians who settled in their states, adopted many of their customs, and were rewarded in return by the entertaining and useful arts which were introduced into their court by this ingenious people. The first William committed the guard of his palace, in imitation of the eastern monarchs, to eunuchs, and they were all Musulmans. Among them, moreover, he selected his confidents, his friends, and even his ministers; all those who cultivated the arts, or who contributed to the pleasures of life, were Saracens; and one half of that delicious isle was even in those days inhabited by the enemies of Christendom. Frederic the Second, who succeeded to the Norman monarchs, sent over powerful colonies of Saracens into Apuleia and the principality: but he did not dismiss them from his service or from his court; on the contrary, he composed his army of these subjects; and among. them he selected, almost always, his governors of provinces, whom he named justiciaries. Thus in the east as well as the

west

west of Europe, the Arabians communicated to the Latins their sciences and their poesy.

The Latin language was now absolutely separated from the vulgar tongue: the ladies no longer studied it; and those who desired their good graces were compelled to speak of love in a language which borrowed its charm from their lips. It began therefore to be submitted to regulations, and to be animated by that sensibility to which a dead and pedantic language was no longer accessible. The Italian was now known and spoken; and the lingua cortigiana of Sicily took the ascendancy over all other dialects of Italy. It had become popular in Tuscany; and, before the conclusion of the thirteenth century, many poets and even some prose-writers of that province conferred on it a degree of consistency, and brought it almost to that perfection at which it now remains. Ricardino Malaspina, who wrote the history of Florence in 1280, may be considered even at this day as equal to the best living authors, for purity and elegance of language.

Still, no poet had yet made a forcible impression on the minds of men, and no philosopher had penetrated into the depths of thought and sentiment, when the patriarch of Italian poesy, the grand, the gloomy, the sublime, the original Dante appeared, and proved the power of genius by converting the gross materials which he found at hand to the purposes for which they appeared least suited. The mysteries of religion were at this time the objects of chief interest and importance; and Saint Francis and Saint Dominic had succeeded in training a sort of religious soldiery, more active and more fanatical than any order of monks which had existed before their time. The pains and pleasures of an hereafter, from being matters of speculation or description, became the subjects of public representations; and dissertations, abounding in all the abuses of perverted learning, detailed the pain of every torment and the glory of every recompence. The plan of Dante's poem may be traced to one of these representations, in which all the punishments of hell were pourtrayed to the eyes of his fellow-citizens. For this purpose, the bed of the river Arno had been destined to represent the gulph of perdition; rivers of boiling pitch, flames, ice, serpents, all that the ingenious cruelty of monks could devise, was set in action, and applied to real sufferers, whose groans and screams completed the illusion.

The subjects, therefore, selected by Dante, viz. the invisible world, the three kingdoms of the dead, hell, purgatory, and paradise, were in this age of all others the most popular, the most profoundly religious, the most immediately connected with the remembrances of his country, of glory, and of party-spirit, as every

dead

dead person was compelled in turn to re-appear on this new theatre. A poem known, translated, and illustrated like that of Dante, makes little call on us for praise or censure. It has for ages reflected honour on the man and on his birth-place. Among other peculiarities, Dante, in conformity with many fathers of the church, adopts all the fables of paganism. We have Acheron, and Charon, and his boat; all the gloomy and all the brilliant colouring of Greek mythology, and all the power of poetic remembrances, united to the terrors of Catholicism. The last judgment of Michael Angelo is but a representation of Dante's idea; and the mixture of Pagan with Christian charac ters, for which this picture has been censured, is in fact conformable to the belief and countenance of the church of Rome. The unbaptized sages of antiquity are placed by Dante in a sort of negative elysium; where, strangers to positive pain, their tears flow incessantly in regret for the baptism of which they were ignorant. Such was the comparatively mild punishment inflicted on them by Dante, the poet of an age of bigotry, and the eye-witness of the spectacle of the Arno: but Chateaubriand, after having granted a pardon to the just and virtuous of Paganism, is filled, at the commencement of the nineteenth century, with new scruples, and reproaches himself with harbouring a notion so pure, and so consistent with the goodness of his Creator.

The want of interest in the hero is the chief fault of the Divina Commedia; and the little which we feel for him diminishes in his purgatory, where his person is never endangered, and where the punishments represented have no longer the force of novelty or surprize. We speak with reverence; and, with that feeling deeply impressed on us by the mighty genius of Dante, and by his five centuries of well-merited fame, we forbear from farther comment. M. DE SISMONDI has been unaccountably induced by his admiration for this great man to disfigure his tremendous picture of Ugolino by a French translation. Ugolino had borne the utmost torture that human ingenuity could apparently invent; and the restraint of these French verses was a stretch of malice unexpected and unmerited.

Few master-pieces,' says M. DE SISMONDI, have testified more fully the power of human genius than the poem of Dante. Completely new in its composition, as in its parts, and without a model in any language, it was the first monument of modern times, the first - great work that had been composed in any new-born literature. It conformed to the essential rules of the art, and to those which are invariable: exhibiting unity of design, unity in its progress, the impression of a powerful genius which perceives at one and the same time the whole and the parts of which it is composed, which disposes APP. REV. VOL. LXXVI.

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of

of its largest masses, and which is comprehensive enough to observe its symmetry without feeling the restraint which it creates. In every other respect, this poem is without the pale of the antient school of poesy; it belongs not properly to any class; and Dante can be tried only by the laws which he has prescribed for his own guidance. To place himself below Virgil, he modestly called his composition a Comedy, from an impression that Virgil's style was the tragic. The ignorance of the age, and of Dante, respecting the dramatic art, led him into this error, which is the wonder of the present day. His countrymen, preserving the title conferred by the poet on his work, yet call it the Divine Comedy; and a name which has no resemblance to any other is properly bestowed on a work without an equal.'

The state of amorous poetry before the birth of Petrarca has been considered in our first notice of the present work. This poet, the son of a Florentine, (who like Dante was an exile,) was born on the 20th of July 1304, and died at Arqua, near Padua, 18th July 1374. During three parts of the century occupied by his life, he was the centre of all Italian literature.

• Passionately devoted,' says the author, to letters, history, and poesy, and an enthusiastic admirer of antiquity, he impressed by his discourse, his writings, and his example, that impulse towards the research and study of Latin manuscripts, which so eminently distinguishes the fourteenth century; which saved the finest productions of the classic writers when threatened with utter dissolution; and which, by these admirable models, changed the whole tenor of human taste and investigation. Petrarca, tormented by the passion which has contributed so largely to his celebrity, wishing to fly from himself, or to change the course of his thoughts, devoted almost the whole of his life to wandering; he traversed France, Germany, and every part of Italy; he visited Spain; and in the continued activity of his life, directed towards the research of monuments of antiquity, he connected himself with all the learned, all the poets, all the philosophers: from one end of Europe to the other, he made them all subservient to the same end; he gave them all an interest in the object of his labours, at the same time that he directed their studies; and his correspondence became the magic chain which, for the first time, united the whole literary republic of Europe. The age in which he lived was that of small states; and no sovereign had yet erected one of those colossal powers, of which the authority inspires fear among nations of a different language. On the contrary, every country was divided into a great number of sovereignties; and the monarch of a small city was powerless at thirty leagues' distance from his palace, and unknown at the distance of a hundred *. But in an

*The above we conceive to be an exaggerated account of the feudal governments. The sovereignty of England, for instance, was, during the greater part of this century, vested firmly in the hands of Edward the Third; and surely both that King and his son were known at the distance of some hundreds of leagues from the sentre of their power. Rev.

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