but that I am sad myself. More wine | vegetable diet are derived from India. there. I wish to all the gods that II met a Brachman in Sogdianahad fairly sailed from Athens.

CHARICLEA.

And from me, Alcibiades?

ALCIBIADES.

Yes, from you, dear lady. The days which immediately precede separation are the most melancholy of our lives.

CHARICLEA.

Except those which immediately follow it.

ALCIBIADES.

No; when I cease to see you, other objects may compel my attention; but can I be near you without thinking how lovely you are, and how soon I must leave you?

HIPPOMACHUS.

CALLICLES.

All nonsense!

CHARICLEA.

What think you, Alcibiades?

ALCIBIADES.

I think that, if the doctrine be true, your spirit will be transfused into one of the doves who carry* ambrosia to the gods or verses to the mistresses of poets. Do you remember Anacreon's lines? How should you like such an office?

CHARICLEA.

and you would treat me as Anacreon If I were to be your dove, Alcibiades, treated his, and let me nestle in your breast and drink from your cup, I would submit even to carry your love-letters

Ay; travelling soon puts such thoughts to other ladies.

out of men's heads.

CALLICLES.

CALLICLES.

What, in the name of Jupiter, is the

A battle is the best remedy for them. use of all these speculations about

CHARICLEA.

death? Socrates once † lectured me upon it the best part of a day. I have A battle, I should think, might sup-hated the sight of him ever since. Such ply their place with others as unpleasant. things may suit an old sophist when he is fasting; but in the midst of wine and music

Yes, and the greatest of philosophers, initiated at the Eleusinian mysteries? ‡ if he can answer it.

SPEUSIPPUS.

Pythagoras is of opinion

HIPPOMACHUS.

Pythagoras stole that and all his other opinions from Asia and Egypt. The transmigration of the soul and the

* Homer's Odyssey, xii. 63.

† See the close of Plato's Gorgias.

The scene which follows is founded upon history. Thucydides tells us, in his sixth book, that about this time Alcibiades was suspected of having assisted at a mock celebra

tion of these famous mysteries. It was the that extraordinary privileges were granted in the other world to all who had been initiated.

opinion of the vulgar among the Athenians

Or shall you sit starved and thirsty in the midst of fruit and wine like

And nine days of rigid mortification Tantalus? Poor fellow! I think I see

Never fear. Minos will not be so cruel. Your eloquence will triumph over all accusations. The Furies will skulk away like disappointed sycophants. Only address the judges of hell in the speech which you were prevented from speaking last assembly. "When I consider" is not that the beginning of it? Come, man, do not be angry. Why do you pace up and down with such long steps? You are not in Tartarus yet. You seem to think that you are already stalking, like poor Achilles,

ALCIBIADES.

It is not very pleasant to be tried before` the king.*

ALCIBIADES.

Never fear: there is not a sycophant in Attica who would dare to breathe a word against me, for the golden † planetree of the great king.

HIPPOMACHUS.

That plane-tree

ALCIBIADES.

Never mind the plane-tree. Come, Callicles, you were not so timid when you plundered the merchantman off Cape Malea. Take up the torch and move. Hippomachus, tell one of the slaves to bring a sow.‡

CALLICLES.

And what part are you to play?

ALCIBIADES.

I shall be hierophant. Herald, to your office. Torchbearer, advance with the lights. Come forward, fair novice. We will celebrate the rite within. (Exeunt.)

CRITICISMS ON THE PRINCIPAL
ITALIAN WRITERS.

No. I. DANTE. (JANUARY 1824.)
"Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,
If better thou belong not to the dawn,
Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling

morn

With thy bright circlet.”

MILTON.

Nay, surely you are not taken with a fit of piety. If all be true that is told of you, you have as little reason to think In a review of Italian literature, Dante the gods vindictive as any man breath- has a double claim to precedency. He ing. If you be not belied, a certain golden goblet which I have seen at your house was once in the temple of Juno at Corcyra. And men say that there was a priestess at Tarentum

CALLICLES.

A fig for the gods! I was thinking about the Archons. You will have an accusation laid against you to-morrow.

*See Homer's Odyssey, xi. 538.

The crier and torchbearer were important functionaries at the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries.

was the earliest and the greatest writer
of his country. He was the first man
who fully descried and exhibited the
powers of his native dialect. The Latin
tongue, which, under the most favourable
circumstances, and in the hands of the

Athenian democracy to the magistrate who
*The name of king was given in the
exercised those spiritual functions which in
the monarchical times had belonged to the
sovereign. His court took cognisance of
offences against the religion of the state.
† See Herodotus, viii. 28.

A sow was sacrificed to Ceres at the admission to the greater mysteries.

greatest masters, had still been poor, detract from the merits of Petrarch.

No one can doubt that his poems exhibit, amidst some imbecility and more affectation, much elegance, ingenuity, and tenderness. They present us with a mixture which can only be compared to the whimsical concert described by the humorous poet of Modena :

feeble, and singularly unpoetical, and which had, in the age of Dante, been debased by the admixture of innumerable barbarous words and idioms, was still cultivated with superstitious veneration, and received, in the last stage of corruption, more honours than it had deserved in the period of its life and "S' udian gli usignuoli, al primo albore, vigour. It was the language of the E gli asini cantar versi d'amore."* cabinet, of the university, of the church. It was employed by all who aspired to of the intrinsic excellencies of his writI am not, however, at present speaking distinction in the higher walks of poetry.ings, which I shall take another opporIn compassion to the ignorance of his mistress, a cavalier might now and then proclaim his passion in Tuscan or Provençal rhymes. The vulgar might occasionally be edified by a pious allegory in the popular jargon. But no writer had conceived it possible that the dialect of peasants and market-women should possess sufficient energy and precision for a majestic and durable

work. Dante adventured first. He

few who can create, but bad for the many who can only imitate and judge. Great and active minds cannot remain at rest. In a cultivated age they are too often contented to move on in the

tunity to examine, but of the effect which they produced on the literature of Italy. The florid and luxurious charms of his style enticed the poets and the public from the contemplation of nobler and sterner models. In truth, though a rude state of society is that in which great original works are most frequently produced, it is also that in which they are worst appreciated. This detected the rich treasures of thought may appear paradoxical; but it is and diction which still lay latent in proved by experience, and is consistent with reason. To be without any retheir ore. He refined them into purity.ceived canons of taste is good for the He burnished them into splendour. He fitted them for every purpose of use and magnificence. And he has thus acquired the glory, not only of producing the finest narrative poem of modern times, but also of creating a language, dis-beaten path. But where no path exists tinguished by unrivalled melody, and they will make one. Thus the Iliad, peculiarly capable of furnishing to lofty the Odyssey, the Divine Comedy, apand passionate thoughts their appeared in dark and half barbarous propriate garb of severe and concise times: and thus of the few original expression. works which have been produced in Το many this may appear a singular panegyric on the Italian tongue. Indeed more polished ages we owe a large prothe great majority of the young gentle-Portion to men in low stations and of uninformed minds. I will instance, in men and young ladies, who, when they our own language, the Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe. Of all the prose works of fiction which we possess, these the most peculiar, the most unpreceI will not say the best, but dented, the most inimitable. brick as a canto of Dante. Hence it is Bunyan and Defoe been educated gena general opinion, among those who know little or nothing of the subject, lished translations and imitations of tlemen, they would probably have pubthat this admirable language is adapted French romances "by a person of only to the effeminate cant of sonnet-quality." I am not sure that we should teers, musicians, and connoisseurs. The fact is that Dante and Petrarch have had Lear if Shakspeare had been able to read Sophocles.

are asked whether they read Italian,
answer 'yes,' never go beyond the stories
at the end of their grammar,-The
or an act of Artaserse.
Pastor Fido,-
They could as soon read a Babylonian

have been the Oromasdes and Arimanes of Italian literature. I wish not to

are,

Had

* Tassoni; Secchia Rapita, canto i. stanza 6.

thor never dreamed, the great powers of his imagination, and the incomparable force of his style, were neither admired nor imitated. Arimanes had prevailed. The Divine Comedy was to that age what St. Paul's Cathedral was to Omai. The poor Otaheitean stared listlessly for a moment at the huge cupola, and ran into a toyshop to play with beads. Italy, too, was charmed with literary trinkets, and played with them for four centuries.

But these circumstances, while they | sics, his theology, all bad of their kind, foster genius, are unfavourable to the-while annotators laboured to detect science of criticism. Men judge by allegorical meanings of which the aucomparison. They are unable to estimate the grandeur of an object when there is no standard by which they can measure it. One of the French philosophers (I beg Gerard's pardon), who accompanied Napoleon to Egypt, tells us that, when he first visited the great Pyramid, he was surprised to see it so diminutive. It stood alone in a boundless plain. There was nothing near it from which he could calculate its magnitude. But when the camp was pitched beside it, and the tents appeared like diminutive specks around its base, he then perceived the immensity of this mightiest work of man. In the same manner, it is not till a crowd of petty writers has sprung up that the merit of the great masterspirits of literature is understood.

66

From the time of Petrarch to the appearance of Alfieri's tragedies, we may trace in almost every page of Italian literature the influence of those celebrated sonnets which, from the nature both of their beauties and their faults, were peculiarly unfit to be models for general imitation. Almost all the poets of that period, however different in the degree and quality of their talents, are characterised by great exaggeration, and, as a necessary consequence, great coldness of sentiment; by a passion for frivolous and tawdry ornament; and, above all, by an extreme feebleness and diffuseness of style. Tasso, Marino, Guarini, Metastasio, and a crowd of writers of inferior merit and celebrity, were spell-bound in the enchanted gardens of a gaudy and meretricious Alcina, who concealed debility and deformity beneath the deceitful semblance of loveliness and health. Ariosto, the great Ariosto himself, like his own Ruggiero, stooped for a time to linger amidst the magic flowers and fountains, and to caress the

We have indeed ample proof that Dante was highly admired in his own and the following age. I wish that we had equal proof that he was admired for his excellencies. But it is a remarkable corroboration of what has been said, that this great man seems to have been utterly unable to appreciate himself. In his treatise De Vulgari Eloquentia he talks with satisfaction of what he has done for Italian literature, of the purity and correctness of his style. Cependant," says a favourite writer of mine, il n'est ni pur, ni correct, mais il est créateur." Considering the difficulties with which Dante had to struggle, we may perhaps be more inclined than the French critic to allow him this praise. Still it is by no means his highest or most peculiar title to ap-gay and painted sorceress. But to him, plause. It is scarcely necessary to say that those qualities which escaped the notice of the poet himself were not likely to attract the attention of the commentators. The fact is, that, while the public homage was paid to some absurdities with which his works may be justly charged, and to many more which were falsely imputed to them, -while lecturers were paid to expound and eulogise his physics, his metaphy

as to his own Ruggiero, had been given the omnipotent ring and the winged courser, which bore him from the paradise of deception to the regions of light and nature.

The evil of which I speak was not confined to the graver poets. It infected satire, comedy, burlesque. No person can admire more than I do the great masterpieces of wit and humour which Italy has produced. Still I cannot but discern and lament a great deficiency, which is common to them