cusations, where, amongst other delinquencies, he was haps the reader may not be much surprised to find that charged with invidiously omitting, in his comparison a commentator on Suetonius has taken upon himself between France and Italy, to make any mention of the gravely to disprove the imputed virtues of the crown cf cupola of St. Maria del Fiore at Florence. The late Tiberius, by mentioning that a few years before he wrote biographer of Ariosto seems as if willing to renew the a laurel was actually struck by lightning at Rome.* controversy by doubting the interpretation of Tasso's self-estimation related in Serassi's life of the poet. But Tiraboschi had before laid that rivalry at rest, by showing, that between Ariosto and Tasso it is not a question of comparison, but of preference. 19. 21. Know that the lightning sanctifies below. Stanza xli. line 8. The Curtian lake and the Ruminal fig-tree in the Forum, having been touched by lightning, were held sacred, and the memory of the accident was preserved by a puteal, or altar, resembling the mouth of a well, with a little chapel covering the cavity supposed to be made by the thunderbolt. Bodies scathed and persons struck dead were thought to be incorruptible;f and a stroke not fatal conferred perpetual dignity upon the man so distinguished by heaven.‡ The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust The iron crown of laurel's mimick'd leaves. Stanza xli. lines 1 and 2. Before the remains of Ariosto were removed from the Benedictine church to the library of Ferrara, his bust, which surmounted the tomb, was struck by lightning, and a crown of iron laurels melted away. The event has Those killed by lightning were wrapped in a white been recorded by a writer of the last century. The garment, and buried where they fell. The superstition transfer of these sacred ashes on the 6th of June, 1801, was not confined to the worshippers of Jupiter: the was one of the most brilliant spectacles of the short- Lombards believed in the omens furnished by lightning, hved Italian Republic; and to consecrate the memory and a Christian priest confesses that, by a diabolical of the ceremony, the once famous fallen Intrepidi were skill in interpreting thunder, a seer foretold to Agilulf, revived and reformed into the Ariostean academy. duke of Turin, an event which came to pass, and gave The large public place through which the procession him a queen and a crown. There was, however, paraded was then for the first time called Ariosto something equivocal in this sign, which the ancient inSquare. The author of the Oriando is jealously claim-habitants of Rome did not always consider propitious; ed as the Homer, not of Italy, but Ferrara. The and as the fears are likely to last longer than the conmother of Ariosto was of Reggio, and the house in solations of superstition, it is not strange that the Rowhich he was born is carefully distinguished by a tablet mans of the age of Leo X. should have been so much with these words: "Qui nacque Ludovico Ariosto il terrified at some misinterpreted storms as to require the giorno 8 di Settembre dell' anno 1474." But the Ferra-exhortations of a scholar, who arrayed all the learning on rese make light of the accident by which their poet was thunder and lightning to prove the omen favourable; beborn abroad, and claim him exclusively for their own. ginning with the flash which struck the walls of Velitræ, They possess his bones, they show his arm-chair, and and including that which played upon a gate at Florence, his inkstand, and his autographs. and foretold the pontificate of one of its citizens.|| " ...... Hic illius arma Hic currus fuit......" The house where he lived, the room where he died, are designated by his own replaced memorial, and by a recent inscription. The Ferrarese are more jealous of their claims since the animosity of Denina, arising from a cause which their apologists mysteriously hint is not unknown to them, ventured to degrade their soil and climate to a Baotian incapacity for all spiritual productions. A quarto volume has been called forth by the detraction, and this supplement to Barotti's Memoirs of the illustrious Ferrarese has been considered a triumphant reply to the "Quadro Storico Statistico dell' Alta Italia." 20. For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves 22. Italia! oh Italia! &c. Staza xlii. line 1. The two stanzas, XLII. and XIII., are, with the exception of a line or two, a translation of the fame us sonnet of Filicaja: "Italia, Italia, O tu cui feo la sorte." Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him, The celebrated letter of Servius Sulpicius to Cicero on the death of his daughter describes as it then was, and now is, a path which I often traced in Greece, both by sea and land, in different journeys and voyages. "On my return from Asia, as I was sailing from Ægina towards Megara, I began to contemplate the Stanza xli. lines 4 and 5. prospect of the countries around me: Egina was beThe eagle, the sea calf, the laurel, ** and the white hind, Megara before me; Piræus on the right, Corinth vine,tt were amongst the most approved preservatives on the left; all which towns, once famous and flourishagainst lightning: Jupiter chose the first, Augustus ing, now lie overturned and buried in their ruins. Upon Cæsar the second, and Tiberius never failed to wear this sight, I could not but think presently within myself, a wreath of the third when the sky threatened a thunder- Alas! how do we poor mortals fret and vex ourselves storm.§§ These superstitions may be received without if any of our friends happen to die or to be killed, whose a sneer in a country where the magical properties of life is yet so short, when the carcasses of so many noble the hazel twig have not lost all their credit; and per-cities lie here exposed before me in one view."¶ "Cotanto poté sempre in lui il veleno della sua pessima volontà contro ella nazion Fiorentina." La Vita, lib. iii. p. 96, 95. tom. ii. La Vita di M. L. Ariosto, scritta dall' Abate Girolamo Baraffaldi Gluniore, &c. Ferrara, 1807, lib. iii. p. 252. See Historical Illustrations, c. p. 26. 1 Storia della Lett. &c. lib. i. tom. vii. par. iii. p. 1220, sect. 4. It is Poggio who, looking from the Capitoline hill "Mi raccontarono que' monaci, ch' essendo caduto un fulmine nella upon ruined Rome, breaks forth into the exclamation, loro chiesa schianto esso dalle tempie la corona di lauro a quell' immortale goeta. Op. di Bianconi, vol. iii. p. 176. ed. Milano, 1802; lettera al Signor Guido Savini Arcifisiocritico, sull' indole di un fulmine caduto in Dresda l'anno 1759. Appassionato samiratore ed Invitto apologista dell' Omero Ferra rese." The title was first given by Tasso, and is quoted to the confusion of the Tassiati, lib. iii. pp. 262. 255. La Vita di M. L.. Ariosto, &c. "Parva sed apta mihi, sed nulli obnoxia, sed non Sordida, parta meo sed tamen ære domnus." Aquila, vitulus marinus, et laurus, fulmine non feriuntur. Plin. Nat. Hiat. lib. ii. cap. lv. It Columella, lib. x. 11 Sueton. in Vit. August, cap. xc. Sueton. in Vit. Tiberii, cap. Ixix. Note 2. p. 409. edit. Lugd. Bat. 1667. t Vid. J. C. Bullanger, de Terre Moto et Fulminib. lib. v. cap. xi. † Ουδείς κεραυνωθεὶς ἀτιμος ἐστι, ὅθεν καὶ ὡς θεὺς τιμᾶται. Plat. Sympos, vid. J. C. Bulleng. ut sup. Pauli Diaconi, de Gestis Langobard. lib. iii. cap. xiv. fo. 15. edit. Taurin. 1527. II. P. Valeriani de fulminum significationibus declamatio, ap. Grm. Antiq. Rom. tom. v. p. 533. The declamation is addressed to Julian of Medicis. Dr. Middleton-History of the Life of M. Tullius Cicero, sect. vii. p 371 vol. ii. Ut nunc omni decore nudata, prostrata jacet, instar gigantei cadaveris corrupti atque undique exesi.* 25. There, too, the Goddess loves in stone. Stanza xlix. line 1. The view of the Venus of Medicis instantly suggests the lines in the Seasons, and the comparison of the object with the description proves not only the correct ness of the portrait, but the peculiar turn of thought, and, if the term may be used, the sexual imagination of the descriptive poet. The same conclusion may be deduced from another hint in the same episode of Musidora; for Thomson's notion of the privileges of favoured love must have been either very primitive, or rather deficient in delicacy, when he made his grateful nymph inform her discreet Damon that in some happier moment he might, perhaps, be the companion of her bath: "The time may come you need not Cy." unaffected graces lege; Corinna has ceased to be a woman-she is only an author: and it may be foreseen that many will repay themselves for former complaisance, by a severity to which the extravagance of previous praises may per haps give the colour of truth. The latest posterity, for have to pronounce upon her various productions; and to the latest posterity they will assuredly descend, will the longer the vista through which they are seen, the more accurately minute will be the object, the more certain the justice, of the decision. She will enter inte that existence in which the great writers of all ages and nations are, as it were, associated in a world of their influence for the control and consolation of mankind. own, and, from that superior sphere, shed their eternal But the individual will gradually disappear as the author is more distinctly seen: some one, whom the charms of involuntary wit, and of easy hospi therefore, of all those tality, attracted within the friendly circles of Coppet, should rescue from oblivion those virtues which, although they are said to love the shade, are, in fact, more frequently chilled than excited by the domestic cares of private life. Some one should be found to portray the with which she adorned those dearer relationships, the performance of whose duties is rather I discovered among the interior secrets, than seen in the outward management, of family intercourse; and which, indeed, it requires the delicacy of genuine affec ion to qualify for the eye of an indifferent spectator. Some one should be found, not to celebrate, but to describe, the amiable mistress of an open mansion, the centre of a society, ever varied, and always pleased, the of public rivalry, shone forth only to give fresh animation creator of which, divested of the ambition and the arts to those around her. The mother tenderly affectionate and tenderly beloved, the friend unboundedly generous, but still esteemed, the charitable patroness of all distress, cannot be forgotten by those whom she cherished, and protected, and fed. Her loss will be mourned the most where she was known the best; and, to the sorrows of very many friends and more dependents, may be offered Among the bronzes of the same princely collection the disinterested regret of a stranger, who, amid the is still to be seen the inscribed tablet copied and com-sublimer scenes of the Leman lake received his chief mented upon by Mr. Gibbon. Our historian found satisfaction from contemplating the engaging qualities some difficulties, but did not desist from his illustra- of the incomparable Corinna. tion: he might be vexed to hear that his criticism has been thrown away on an inscription now generally recognised to be a forgery. tolerable The reader will recollect the anecdote 1-ld in the Life 28. Here repose Angelo's, Alfieri's bones. Stanza liv. lines 6 and 7. Alfieri is the great name of this age. The Italians, without waiting for the hundred years, consider him as "a poet good in law."-His memory is the more dear to them because he is the bard of freedom; and because, as such, his tragedies can receive no countenance from any of their sovereigns. They are but very seldom, and but very few of them, allowed to be acted. It was ob served by Cicero, that nowhere were the true opinions and feelings of the Romans so clearly shown as at the theatre. In the autumn of 1816, a celebrated improvisatore exhibited his talents at the Opera-house of Milan. The reading of the theses handed in for the subjects of his poetry was received by a very numerous audience, for the most part in silence, or with laughter; but when the assistant, unfolding one of the papers, exclaimed, "The apotheosis of Victor Alfieri," the whole theatre burst into a shout, and the applause was continued for some moments. The lot did not fall on Alfieri; and the Signor Sgricci had to pour forth his extemporary common-places on the bombardment of Algiers. The choice, indeed, is not left to accident quite so much as might be thought from a first view of the ceremony; and the police not only takes care to This name will recall the memory, not only of those whose tombs have raised the Santa Croce into the centre of pilgrimage, the Mecca of Italy, but of her whose eloquence was poured over the illustrious ashes, and whose voice is now as mute as those she sung. CORINNA is no more; and with her should expire the fear, the flattery, and the envy, which threw too dazzling or too dark a cloud round the march of genius, and forbad the steady gaze of disinterested criticism. We have her picture embellished or distorted, as friendship or detraction has held the pencil: the impartial portrait was hardly to be expected from a contemporary. The immediate voice of her survivors will, it is probable, be far from affording a just estimate of her singular capacity. The gallantry, the love of wonder, and the hope of associated fame, which blunted the edge of censure, must cease to exist.-The dead have no sex; they can surprise by no new miracles; they can confer no privi-had murdered the son of Pompey: they drove him from the theatre with De fortune varietate urbis Rome, et de ruinis ejusdem descriptio, ap. Sellehgre, Thesaur tom. i. p. 501. See Mouim. Ant. ind. par. i. cap. xvii. n. xlili. pag. 50; and Storia delli Arti, c. lib. xi. cap. I. tom. ii. pag. 314. not. B. 1 Nomina genteaque Antique Italie, p. 204, edit. oct. Titius, the friend of Antony, presented them with games in the theatre of curses. The moral sense of a populace, spontaneously expressed, is never wrong. Even the soldiers of the triumvirs joined in the execration of the citizens, hy stouting round the chariots of Lepidus and Plancus, who had proscribed their brothers, De Germanis non de Gallis dun triumphant Consules; a saying worth a record, were it nothing but a good pun. [C. Vell. Paterculi Hist. lib. ii. cap.l xxix. pag. 78, edit. Elzevir. 1639. Ibid. lib. ii. cap xxvii.] to look at the papers beforehand, but in case of any absent on an embassy to Pope Boniface VIII., and was prudential afterthought, steps in to correct the blind-condemned to two years' banishment, and to a fine of ness of chance. The proposal for deifying Alfieri was 8000 lire; on the non-payment of which he was further received with immediate enthusiasm, the rather because punished by the sequestration of all his property. The it was conjectured there would be no opportunity of carrying it into effect. 29. Here Machiavelli's earth return'd to whence it rose. Stanza liv. line 9. The affectation of simplicity in sepulchral inscriptions, which so often leaves us uncertain whether the structure before us is an actual depository, or a cenotaph, or a simple memorial not of death but life, has given to the tomb of Machiavelli no information as to the place or time of the birth or death, the age or parentage, of the historian. TANTO NOMINI NVLLVM PAR ELOGIVM There seems at least no reason why the name should to it. republic, however, was not content with this satisfaction, for in 1772 was discovered in the archives at Florence a sentence in which Dante is the eleventh of a list of fifteen condemned in 1302 to be burnt alive; Talis perveniens igne comburatur sic quod moriatur. The pretext for this judgment was a proof of unfair barter, extortions, and illicit gains. Baracteriarum iniquarum, extorsionum, et illicitorum lucrorum,* and with such an accusation it is not strange that Dante should have always protested his innocence, and the injustice of his fellow-citizens. His appeal to Florence was accom panied by another to the Emperor Henry; and the death of that sovereign in 1313, was the signal for a sentence of irrevocable banishment. He had before lingered near Tuscany with hopes of recall; then travelled into the north of Italy, where Verona had to boast of his longest residence; and he finally settled at Ra venna, which was his ordinary but not constant abode It will readily be imagined that the prejudices which until his death. The refusal of the Venetians to grant have passed the name of Machiavelli into an epithet Polenta, his protector, is said to have been the principal him a public audience, on the part of Guido Novello da proverbial of iniquity exist no longer at Florence. His memory was persecuted as his life had been for an at- buried ("in sacra minoruma rede") at Ravenna, in a cause of this event, which happened in 1321. He was tachment to liberty incompatible with the new system handsome tomb, which was erected by Guido, restored of despotism, which succeeded the fall of the free governments of Italy. He was put to the torture for by Bernardo Bembo in 1483, prætor that republic being a "libertine," that is, for wishing to restore the which had refused to hear him, agairestored by Catrepublic of Florence; and such are the undying efforts dinal Corsi in 1692, and replaced by a more magnificent of those who are interested in the perversion not only sepulchre, constructed in 1780, at the expense of the of the nature of actions, but the meaning of words, that Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga. The offence or what was once patriotism, has by degrees come to sig-misfortune of Dante was an attachment to a defeated nify debauch. We have ourselves outlived the old party, and, as his least favourable biographers allege meaning of "liberality," which is now another word for against him, too great a freedom of speech and haughttreason in one country and for infatuation in all. It divine to the exile. The Florentines, having in vain ness of manner. But the next age paid honours almost seems to have been a strange mistake to accuse the author of the Prince, as being a pander to tyranny his image in a church, and his picture is still one of and frequently attempted to recover his body, crowned and to think that the Inquisition would condemn his work the idols of their cathedral. They struck medals, they for such a delinquency. The fact is that Machiavelli, raised statues to him. The cities of Italy, not being as is usual with those against whom no crime can be able to dispute about his own birth, contended for that proved, was suspected of and charged with atheism; of his great poem, and the Florentines thought it for and the first and last most violent opposers of the Prince their honour to prove that he had finished the seventh were both Jesuits, one of whom persuaded the Inquisi- Canto before they drove him from his native city. tion "benchè fosse tardo," to prohibit the treatise, and the other qualified the secretary of the Florentine re-fessorial chair for the expounding of his verses, and Fifty-one years after his death, they endowed a propublic as no better than a fool. The father Possevin was proved never to have read the book, and the father Lucchesini not to have understood it. It is clear, how The example was imitated by Bologna and Pisa, and Boccaccio was appointed to this patriotic employment. the commentators, if they performed but little service ever, that such critics must have objected not to the slavery of the doctrines, but to the supposed tendency to literature, augmented the veneration which beheld of a lesson which shows how distinct are the interests a sacred or moral allegor in all the images of his mystic of a monarch from the happiness of mankind. The have been distinguished above those of ordinary men; muse. His birth and infancy were discovered to Jesuits are re-established in Italy, and tho iast chapter the author of the Decameron, his earliest biographer, of the Prince may again call forth a particular refuta- relates, that his mother was warned in a dream of the tion, from those who are employed once more in moulding the minds of the rising generation, so as to importance of her pregnancy: and it was found, by receive the impressions of despotism. The chapter precocious passion for that wisdom or theology, which, others, that at ten years of age he had manifested his bears for title, "Esortazione a liberare la Italia dai under the name of Beatrice, had been mistaken for a Barbari," and concludes with a libertine excitement to substantial mistress. When the Divine Comedy had the future redemption of Italy. "Non si deve adunque been recognised as a mere mortal production, and at lasciar passare questa occasione, acciocchè la Italia vegga the distance of two centuries, when criticism and dopo tanto tempo apparire un suo redentore. Ne posso competition had sobered the judgment of Italians, esprimere con qual more et fusse ricevuto in tutte quelle Dante was seriously declared superior to Homer; provincie, che hanno patito per queste illuvioni esterne, con and though the preference appeared to some casuists qual sete di vendetta, con che ostinata fede, con che lacrime.«an heretical blasphemy worthy of the flames," the Quali porte se li serrerebeno? Quali popoli li negherebbeno contest la obbedienza? Quale Italiano li negherebbe l'ossequio? AD OGNUNO PUZZA QUESTO BARBARO DOMINIO."* 30. Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar. Stanza Ivii. line 1. Dante was born in Florence in the year 1261. He fought in two battles, was fourteen times ambassador, and once prior of the republic. When the party of Charles of Anjou triumphed over the Bianchi, he was Il Principe di Niccolò Machiavelli, &c. con la prefazione e le note isto siche e politiche di Mr. Armelot de la Houssaye el' esame e confutazione dell'opera. . Casmopoli 1769. was vigorously maintained for nearly fifty years. In later times it was made a question which of the Lords of Verona could boast of having patronized him, and the jealous skepticism of one writer would not allow Ravenna the undoubted possession of his bones. Even the critical Tiraboschi was inclined to incorrect: the dates of the three decrees against Dante are A. D. 1302, ⚫ Storia della Lett. Ital. tom. v. lib. iii. par. 2. p. 448. Tiraboschi h 1314, and 1316. † So relates Ficino, but some think his coronation only an a' legory. See Storia, &c. ut sup. p. 453. By Varchi in his Ercolano. The controversy continue 1 from 1570 te 1616. See Storia, &c. tom. vii. lib. i. par. iii. p. 1280. Gio. Jacopo Dionisi Canonico di Veroca. Serie di reddeti, n. 2 See Storia, &c. tom. v. 'ib i. par. I. p. 24. believe that the poet had foreseen and foretold one of citizens than the Greek republics. Liberty, botn with the discoveries of Galileo.-Like the great originals of the one and the other, seems to have been a national, other nations, his popularity has not always maintained not an individual object: and, notwithstanding the the same level. The last age seemed inclined to under- boasted equality before the laws, which an ancient Greek value him as a model and a study; and Bettinelli one writer* considered the great distinctive mark between day rebuked his pupil Monti, for poring over the harsh his countrymen and the barbarians, the mutual rights and obsolete extravagances of the Commedia. The of fellow-citizens seem never to have been the principal present generation, having recovered from the Gallic scope of the old democracies. The world may have idolatries of Cesarotti, has returned to the ancient not yet seen an essay by the author of the Italian Reworship, and the Danteggiare of the northern Italians is thought even indiscreet by the more moderate Tuscans. There is still much curious information relative to the life and writings of this great poet which has not as yet been collected even by the Italians; but the celebrated Ugo Foscolo meditates to supply this defect, and it is not to be regretted that this national work has been reserved for one so devoted to his country and the cause of truth. 31. Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore; Stanza lvii lines 2, 3, and 4. The elder Scipio Africanus had a tomb if he was not buried at Liternum, whither he had retired to voluntary banishment. This tomb was near the sea-shore, and the story of an inscription upon it, Ingrata Patria, having given a name to a modern tower, is, if not true, an agreeable fiction. If he was not buried, he certainly ived there.* In cosi angusta e solitaria villa Era 'l grand' uomo che d'Africa s'appella Perché prima col ferro ai vivo aprilla.f Ingratitude is generally supposed the vice peculiar to republics; and it seems to be forgotten that for one publics, in which the distinction between the liberty of former states, and the signification attached to that word by the happier constitution of England, is ingeniously developed. The Italians, however, when they had ceased to be free, still looked back with a sigh upon those times of turbulence, when every citizen might rise to a share of sovereign power, and have never been taught fully to appreciate the repose of a monarchy. Sperone Speroni, when Francis Maria II. Duke of Rovere proposed the question, "which was preferable. the republic or the principality-the perfect and not durable, or the less perfect and not so liable to change," replied, "that our happiness is to be measured by its quality, not by its duration; and that he preferred to live for one day like a man, than for a hundred years like a brute, a stock, or a stone." This was thought, and called, a magnificent answer, down to the last days of Italian servitude.† 32. And the crown Stanza Ivii. lines 6, 7, and 8. The Florentines did not take the opportunity of Petrarch's short visit to their city in 1350 to revoke the decree which confiscated the property of his father, who had been banished shortly after the exile of Dante. His crown did not dazzle them; but when in the next year instance of popular inconstancy, we have a hundred they were in want of his assistance in the formation of examples of the fall of courtly favourites. Besides, a their university, they repented of their injustice, and people have often repented-a monarch seldom or never. Leaving apart many familiar proofs of this fact, a short Boccaccio, was sent to Padua to entreat the laureate to conclude his wanderings in the bosom of his native story may show the difference between even an aristo- country, where he might finish his immortal Africa, and cracy and the multitude. Vettor Pisani, having been defeated in 1354 at Porto- enjoy with his recovered possessions, the esteem of all longo, and many years afterwards in the more decisive of the book and the science he might condescend to classes of his fellow-citizens. They gave him the option action of Pola, by the Genoese, was recalled by the Venetian government, and thrown into chains. The expound: they called him the glory of his country, who Avvogadori proposed to behead him, but the supreme that if there was any thing unpleasing in their letter, was dear, and would be dearer to them; and they added, tribunal was content with the sentence of imprisonment. he ought to return among them, were it only to corWhilst Pisani was suffering this unmerited disgrace, rect their style. Petrarch seemed at first to listen to Chioza, in the vicinity of the capital, was by the assistance of the Signor of Padua, delivered into the hands the flattery and to the entreaties of his friend, but he did of Pietro Doria. At the intelligence of that disaster, the tomb of Laura and the shades of Vaucluse not return to Florence, and preferred a pilgrimage to the great bell of St. Mark's tower tolled to arms, and the people and the soldiery of the galleys were summoned to the repulse of the approaching enemy; but they protested they would not move a step, unless Pisani were liberated and placed at their head. The great council was instantly assembled; the prisoner was called before them, and the Doge, Andrea Contarini, informed him of the demands of the people and the necessities of the state, whose only hope of safety was reposed on his efforts, and who implored him to forget the indignities he had endured in her service. "I have submitted," replied the magnanimous republican, "I have submitted to your deliberations without complaint; I have supported patiently the pains of imprisonment, for they were inflicted at your command: this is no time to inquire whether I deserved them-the good of the republic may have seemed to require it, and that which the republic resolves is always resolved wisely. Behold me ready to lay down my life for the preservation of my country." Pisani was appointed generalissimo, and by his exertions, in conjunction with those of Carlo Zeno, the Venetians soon recovered the ascendency over their maritime rivals. The Italian communities were no less unjust to their 33. Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed Stanza lviii. lines 1 and 2. Boccaccio was buried in the church of St. Michael and St. James, at Certaldo, a small town in the Valdelsa, which was by some supposed the place of his birth. There he passed the latter part of his life in a course of laborious study, which shortened his existence, and there might his ashes have been secure, if not of honour, at least of repose. But the "hyæna bigots" of Certaldo tore up the tombstone of Boccaccio, and ejected it from the holy precincts of St. Michael and St. James. The occasion, and, it may be hoped, the excuse, of this ejectment was the making of a new floor for the church; but the fact is, that the tombstone was taken up and thrown aside at the bottom of the building. Ignorance may share the sin with bigotry. It would be painful to relate such an exception to the devotion of the Italians for their great names, could it not be accompanied by a trait more honourably conformable • The Greek boasted that he was toovopos. See the ast chapter of the first book of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. 1"E intorno alla magnifica risposta," &c. Serassi Vita del Tasso, lib. iii. pag. 149. tom. ii. edit. 2. Bergamo. "Accingiti innoltre, se ci è iecito ancor l'esortarti, a compire l'immor tal tua Africa... Se ti avviene d'incontrare nel nostro stile cosa che ti dispiaccia, ciò debb' essere un altro motivo ad esaudire i desideri deila tua patria." Storia della Lett. Ital. tom. v. par. i. lib. i. pag. 76. to the general character of the nation. The principal old age he wrote a letter entreating his friend to dis person of the district, the last branch of the house of courage the reading of the Decameron, for the sake of Medicis, afforded that protection to the memory of the modesty, and for the sake of the author, who would not insulted dead which her best ancestors had dispensed have an apologist always at hand to state in his excuse upon all cotemporary merit. The Marchioness Lenzoni that he wrote it when young, and at the command of rescued the tombstone of Boccaccio from the neglect in his superiors.* It is neither the licentiousness of the which it had sometime lain, and found for it an honour-writer, nor the evil propensities of the reader, which able elevation in her own mansion. She has done have given to the Decameron alone, of all the works of more: the house in which the poet lived has been as Boccaccio, a perpetual popularity. The establishment little respected as his tomb, and is falling to ruin over of a new and delightful dialect conferred an immortality the head of one indifferent to the name of its former on the works in which it was first fixed. The sonnets tenant. It consists of two or three little chambers, and of Petrarch were, for the same reason, fated to survive a low tower, on which Cosmo II. affixed an inscription. his self-admired Africa, the "favourite of kings." The This house she has taken measures to purchase, and invariable traits of nature and feeling with which the proposes to devote to it that care and consideration novels, as well as the verses, abound, have doubtless which are attached to the cradle and to the roof of been the chief source of the foreign celebrity of both genius. authors; but Boccaccio, as a man, is no more to be This is not the place to undertake the defence of estimated by that work, than Petrarch is to be regarded Boccaccio; but the man who exhausted his little in no other light than as the lover of Laura. Even, patrimony in the acquirement of learning, who was however, had the father of the Tuscan prose been among the first, if not the first, to allure the science known only as the author of the Decameron, a consiand the poetry of Greece to the bosom of Italy;-who derate writer would have been cautious to pronounce a not only invented a new style, but founded, or certainly sentence irreconcilable with the unerring voice of many fixed, a new language; who, besides the esteem of every ages and nations. An irrevocable value has never polite court of Europe, was thought worthy of employ-been stamped upon any work solely recommended by ment by the predominant republic of his own country, impurity. and, what is more, of the friendship of Petrarch, who The true source of the outery against Boccaccio lived the life of a philosopher and a freeman, and who which began at a very early period, was the choice of died in the pursuit of knowledge,-such a man might his scandalous personages in the cloisters as well as the have found more consideration than he has met with courts; but the princes only laughed at the gallant adfrom the priest of Certaldo, and from a late English ventures so unjustly charged upon queen Theodelinda, traveller, who strikes off his portrait as an odious, con- whilst the priesthood cried shame upon the debauches temptible, licentious writer, whose impure remains drawn from the convent and the hermitage; and most should be suffered to rot without a record.* That probably for the opposite reason, namely, that the picEnglish traveller, unfortunately for those who have to ture was faithful to the life. Two of the novels are deplore the loss of a very amiable person, is beyond all allowed to be facts usefully turned into tales, to deride criticism; but the mortality which did not protect Boc- the canonization of rogues and laymen. Ser Ciappe caccio from Mr. Eustace, must not defend Mr. Eustace letto and Marcellinus are cited with applause even by from the impartial judgment of his successors.-Death the decent Muratori. The great Arnaud, as he is may canonize his virtues, not his errors; and it may quoted in Bayle, states, that a new edition of the novels be modestly pronounced that he transgressed, not only as an author, but as a man, when he evoked the shade of Boccaccio in company with that of Aretine, amidst the sepulchres of Santa Croce, merely to dismiss it with indignity. As far as respects "Il flagello de' Principi, Il divin Pietro Aretino," was proposed, of which the expurgation consisted in omitting the words "monk" and "nun," and tacking the immoralities to other names. The literary history of Italy particularizes no such edition; but it was not long before the whole of Europe had but one opinion of the Decameron; and the absolution of the author seems to have been a point settled at least a hundred years ago is is of little import what censure is passed upon a "On se feroit siffler si l'on prétendoit convaincre Boc coxcomb who owes his present existence to the above cace de n'avoir pas été honnête homme, puis qu'il a fait burlesque character given to him by the poet whose le Decameron." So said one of the best men, and peramber has preserved many other grubs and worms: haps the best critic, that ever lived-the very martyr but to classify Boccaccio with such a person, and to to impartiality. But as this information, that in the excommunicate his very ashes, must of itself make us beginning of the last century one would have been doubt of the qualification of the classical tourist for hooted at for pretending that Boccaccio was not a good writing upon Italian, or, indeed, upon any other litera- man, may seem to come from one of those enemies who ture; for ignorance on one point may incapacitate an are to be suspected, even when they make us a present author merely for that particular topic, but subjection of truth, a more acceptable contrast with the proscripto a professional prejudice must render him an unsafe tion of the body, soul, and muse of Boccaccio may director on all occasions. Any perversion and injustice found in a few words from the virtuous, the patriotic may be made what is vulgarly called "a case of con- cotemporary, who thought one of the tales of this impure science," and this poor excuse is all that can be offered writer worthy a Latin version from his own pen. "I for the priest of Certaldo, or the author of the Classical have remarked elsewhere," says Petrarch, writing to Tour. It would have answered the purpose to confine Boccaccio, “that the book itself has been worried by cer. the censure to the novels of Boccaccio, and gratitude tain dogs, but stoutly defended by your staff and voice to that source which supplied the muse of Dryden with Nor was I astonished, for I have had proof of the vigour her last and most harmonious numbers might perhaps of your mind, and I know you have fallen on that unachave restricted that censure to the objectionable quali-commodating incapable race of mortals who, whatever they ties of the hundred tales. At any rate the repentance either like not, or know not, or cannot do, are sure to of Boccaccio might have arrested his exhumation, and reprehend in others; and on those occasions only put on a it should have been recollected and told, that in his show of learning and eloquence, but otherwise are entirely • Classical Tour, cap. ix. vol. ii. p. 355. edit. 3d "Of Boccaccio, the modern Petronius, we say nothing; the abuse of genius is more odious and more contemptible than its absence; and it imports little where the impure remains of a licentious author are consigned to their kindred dust. For the same reason the traveller may pass unnoticed the tomb of the malignant Aretino." dumb."§ be "Non enim ubique est, qui in excusationem meam consurgens dat Juvenis scripsit, et majoris coactus imperio," The letter was addressed to Maghinard of Cavalcanti, marshal of the kingdom of Sicily. See Tirabosthi, Storia, &c. tom. v. par. ii. lib. iii. pag. 525. ed. Ven. 1795. ↑ Dissertazioni sopra le antichità Italiane. Diss. viii. p. 253. tom. iil. edit. Milan, 1751. Eclaircissement, &c. &c. p. 638. edit. Basle, 1741, in the Supplement to Bayle's Dictionary. This dubious phrase is hardly enough to save the tourist from the sus picium of another blunder respecting the burial-place of Aretine, whose tomb was in the church of St. Luke at Venice, and gave rise to the $Animadverti alicubi librum ipsum canum dentibus lacessium, tue famous controversy of which some notice is taken in Bayle. Now the tamen baculo egregiè tuâque voce defensam. Nec miratus sum: nam et words of Mr. Eustace would lead us to think the tomb was at Florence, vires ingenii tui novi, et scio expertus esses hominum genus insolens et or at least was to be somewhere recognised. Whether the inscription so ignavum, qui quicquid ipsi vel nolunt vel nesciunt, vel non possunt, mact sputed was ever written on the tomb cannot now be decided, for alis reprehendunt: ad hoc unum deen et arguti, sed elingues cd reliqua." al metrial of this author has disappeared from the church of St. Luke.... Epist. Joan. Boccatio. Opp. tom. 1. p. 540. edit. Basil. |