of our existence, with the nourishment | have been imitators, and imitators at a of our infancy, with the passions of our disadvantage. Euripides and Catullus youth, with the hopes of our age-with believed in Bacchus and Cybele as little elegance, with vivacity, with tender- as we do. But they lived among men ness, with the strongest of natural who did. Their imaginations, if not instincts, with the dearest of social their opinions, took the colour of the ties? age. Hence the glorious inspiration of the Baccha and the Atys. Our minds are formed by circumstances: and I do not believe that it would be in the power of the greatest modern poet to lash himself up to a degree of enthusiasm adequate to the production of such works. To those who think thus, the insensibility of the Florentine poet to the beauties of nature will not appear an unpardonable deficiency. On mankind no writer, with the exception of Shakspeare, has looked with a more penetrating eye. I have said that his poetical character had derived a tinge from his peculiar temper. It is on the sterner and darker passions that he delights to dwell. All love, excepting the half-mystic passion which he still felt for his buried Beatrice, had palled on the fierce and restless exile. The sad story of Rimini is almost a single exception. I know not whether it has been remarked, that, in one point, misanthropy seems to have affected his mind as it did that of Swift. Nauseous and revolting images seem to have had a fascination for his mind; and he repeatedly places before his readers, with all the energy of his incomparable style, the most loathsome objects of the sewer and the dissecting-nothing in these passages that appears puerile or pedantic. On the contrary, room. Dante alone, among the poets of later times, has been, in this respect, neither an allegorist nor an imitator; and, consequently, he alone has introduced the ancient fictions with effect. His Minos, his Charon, his Pluto, are absolutely terrific. Nothing can be more beautiful or original than the use which he has made of the River of Lethe. He has never assigned to his mythological characters any functions inconsistent with the creed of the Catholic Church. He has related nothing concerning them which a good Christian of that age might not believe possible. On this account, there is Indeed the mythology of the Divine Comedy is of the elder and more colossal mould. It breathes the spirit of Homer and Eschylus, not of Ovid and Claudian. There is another peculiarity in the this singular use of classical names poem of Dante, which, I think, deserves suggests to the mind a vague and awful notice. Ancient mythology has hardly idea of some mysterious revelation, ever been successfully interwoven with anterior to all recorded history, of modern poetry. One class of writers which the dispersed fragments might have introduced the fabulous deities have been retained amidst the imposmerely as allegorical representatives of tures and superstitions of later relilove, wine, or wisdom. This necessa-gions. rily renders their works tame and cold. We may sometimes admire their ingenuity; but with what interest can we read of beings of whose personal existence the writer does not suffer us to entertain, for a moment, even a conventional belief? Even Spenser's allegory is scarcely tolerable, till we contrive to forget that Una signifies innocence, and consider her merely as an oppressed lady under the protection of a generous knight. Those writers who have, more judiciously, attempted to preserve the personality of the classical divinities have failed from a different cause. They This is the more extraordinary, since Dante seems to have been utterly ignorant of the Greek language; and his favourite Latin models could only have served to mislead him. Indeed, it is impossible not to remark his admiration of writers far inferior to himself; and, in particular, his idolatry of Virgil, who, elegant and splendid as he is, has no pretensions to the depth and origi nality of mind which characterise his Tuscan worshipper. In truth, it may be laid down as an almost universal with which this division of the work rule that good poets are bad critics. too much abounds. It may seem alTheir minds are under the tyranny of most absurd to quote particular speciten thousand associations imperceptible mens of an excellence which is diffused to others. The worst writer may easily over all his hundred cantos. I will, happen to touch a spring which is con- however, instance the third canto of nected in their minds with a long suc- the Inferno, and the sixth of the Purcession of beautiful images. They are gatorio, as passages incomparable in like the gigantic slaves of Aladdin, their kind. The merit of the latter is, gifted with matchless power, but bound perhaps, rather oratorical than poetiby spells so mighty that when a child cal; nor can I recollect anything in whom they could have crushed touched the great Athenian speeches which a talisman, of whose secret he was equals it in force of invective and bitignorant, they immediately became his terness of sarcasm. I have heard the vassals. It has more than once hap- most eloquent statesman of the age pened to me to see minds, graceful and remark that, next to Demosthenes, majestic as the Titania of Shakspeare, Dante is the writer who ought to be bewitched by the charms of an ass's most attentively studied by every man head, bestowing on it the fondest ca- who desires to attain oratorical emiresses, and crowning it with the sweet-nence. est flowers. I need only mention the poems attributed to Ossian. They are utterly worthless, except as an edifying instance of the success of a story without evidence, and of a book without merit. They are a chaos of words which present no image, of images which have no archetype:-they are without form and void; and darkness is upon the face of them. Yet how Translations ought never to be written many men of genius have panegyrised and imitated them! The style of Dante is, if not his highest, perhaps his most peculiar excellence. I know nothing with which it can be compared. The noblest models of Greek composition must yield to it. His words are the fewest and the best which it is possible to use. The first expression in which he elothes his thoughts is always so energetic and comprehensive that amplification would only injure the effect. There is probably no writer in any language who has presented so many strong pictures to the mind. Yet there is probably no writer equally concise. This perfection of style is the principal merit of the Paradiso, which, as I have already remarked, is by no means equal in other respects to the two preceding parts of the poem. The force and felicity of the diction, however, irresistibly attract the reader through the theological lectures and the sketches of ecclesiastical biography, But it is time to close this feeble and rambling critique. I cannot refrain, however, from saying a few words upon the translations of the Divine Comedy. Boyd's is as tedious and languid as the original is rapid and forcible. The strange measure which he has chosen, and, for aught I know, invented, is most unfit for such a work. in a verse which requires much command of rhyme. The stanza becomes a bed of Procrustes; and the thoughts of the unfortunate author are alternately racked and curtailed to fit their new receptacle. The abrupt and yet consecutive style of Dante suffers more than that of any other poet by a version diffuse in style, and divided into paragraphs, for they deserve no other name, of equal length. Nothing can be said in favour of Hayley's attempt, but that it is better than Boyd's. His mind was a toleraable specimen of filigree work,—rather elegant, and very feeble. All that can be said for his best works is that they are neat. All that can be said against his worst is that they are stupid. He might have translated Metastasio tolerably. But he was utterly unable to do justice to the "rime e aspre e chiocce, "Come si converrebbe al tristo buco."* I turn with pleasure from these *Inferno, canto xxxii. It is not difficult to discover some of the causes to which this great man has owed a celebrity, which I cannot but think disproportioned to his real claims on the admiration of mankind. In the first place, he is an egotist. Egotism in conversation is universally abhorred. Lovers, and, I believe, lovers alone, pardon it in each other. No services, no talents, no powers of pleasing, render it endurable. Gratitude, admiration, interest, fear, scarcely prevent those who are condemned to listen to it from indicating their disgust and The childless uncle, the wretched performances to Mr. Cary's retained possession,--an European retranslation. It is a work which well putation. deserves a separate discussion, and on which, if this article were not already too long, I could dwell with great pleasure. At present I will only say that there is no other version in the world, as far as I know, so faithful, yet that there is no other version which so fully proves that the translator is himself a man of poetical genius. Those who are ignorant of the Italian language should read it to become acquainted with the Divine Comedy. Those who are most intimate with Italian literature should read it for its original merits: and I believe that fatigue. they will find it difficult to determine powerful patron, can scarcely extort whether the author deserves most this compliance. praise for his intimacy with the language of Dante, or for his extraordinary mastery over his own. CRITICISMS ON THE PRINCIPAL ITALIAN WRITERS. No. II. PETRARCH. (APRIL 1824.) Et vos, o lauri, carpam, et te, proxima myrte, VIRGIL. It would not be easy to name a writer whose celebrity, when both its extent and its duration are taken into the account, can be considered as equal to that of Petrarch. Four centuries and a half have elapsed since his death. Yet still the inhabitants of every nation throughout the western world are as familiar with his character and his adventures as with the most illustrious names, and the most recent anecdotes, of their own literary history. This is indeed a rare distinction. His detractors must acknowledge that it could not have been acquired by a poet destitute of merit. His admirers will scarcely maintain that the unassisted merit of Petrarch could have raised him to that eminence which has not yet been attained by Shakspeare, Milton, or Dante,-that eminence, of which perhaps no modern writer, excepting himself and Cervantes, has long We leave the inside of the mail in a storm, and mount the box, rather than hear the history of our companion. The chaplain bites his lips in the presence of the archbishop. The midshipman yawns at the table of the First Lord. Yet, from whatever cause, this practice, the pest of conversation, gives to writing a zest which nothing else can impart. Rousseau made the boldest experiment of this kind; and it fully succeeded. In our own time Lord Byron, by a series of attempts of the same nature, made himself the object of general interest and admiration. Wordsworth wrote with egotism more intense, but less obvious; and he has been rewarded with a sect of worshippers, comparatively small in number, but far more enthusiastic in their devotion. It is needless to multiply instances. Even now all the walks of literature are infosted with mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting all the distortions of their intellects, and stripping the covering from all the putrid sores of their feelings. Nor are there wanting many who push their imitation of the beggars whom they resemble a step further, and who find it easier to extort a pittance from the spectator, by simulating deformity and debility from which they are exempt, than by such honest labour as their health and strength enable them to perform. In the meantime the credulous public pities and pampers a The state of society in Rome was, in this point, far happier; and the Latin literature partook of the superiority. The Roman poets have decidedly surpassed those of Greece in the delineation of the passion of love. There is no subject which they have treated with so much success. Ovid, Catullus, Tibullus, Horace, and Propertius, in spite of all their faults, must be allowed to rank high in this department of the art. To these I would add my favourite Plautus; who, though he took his plots from Greece, found, I suspect, the originals of his enchanting female characters at Rome. nuisance which requires only the of honourable and chivalrous love treadmill and the whip. This art, were nowhere to be found united. The often successful when employed by matrons and their daughters, confined dunces, gives irresistible fascination to in the harem,-insipid, uneducated, works which possess intrinsic merit. ignorant of all but the mechanical arts, We are always desirous to know some-scarcely seen till they were married,thing of the character and situation of could rarely excite interest; while those whose writings we have perused their brilliant rivals, half graces, half with pleasure. The passages in which harpies, elegant and informed, but Milton has alluded to his own cir- fickle and rapacious, could never incumstances are perhaps read more spire respect. frequently, and with more interest, than any other lines in his poems. It is amusing to observe with what labour critics have attempted to glean from the poems of Homer some hints as to his situation and feelings. According to one hypothesis, he intended to describe himself under the name of Demodocus. Others maintain that he was the identical Phemius whose life Ulysses spared. This propensity of the human mind explains, I think, in a great degree, the extensive popularity of a poet whose works are little else than the expression of his personal feelings. In the second place, Petrarch was not only an egotist, but an amatory Still many evils remained: and, in egotist. The hopes and fears, the joys the decline of the great empire, all that and sorrows, which he described, were was pernicious in its domestic instituderived from the passion which of all tions appeared more strongly. Under passions exerts the widest influence, the influence of governments at once and which of all passions borrows most dependent and tyrannical, which purfrom the imagination. He had also chased, by cringing to their enemies, another immense advantage. He was the power of trampling on their subthe first eminent amatory poet who ap-jects, the Romans sunk into the lowest peared after the great convulsion which state of effeminacy and debasement. had changed, not only the political, but Falsehood, cowardice, sloth, conscious the moral, state of the world. The and unrepining degradation, formed Greeks, who, in their public institu- the national character. Such a charactions and their literary tastes, were ter is totally incompatible with the diametrically opposed to the oriental stronger passions. Love, in particular, nations, bore a considerable resem- which, in the modern sense of the blance to those nations in their word, implies protection and devotion domestic habits. Like them, they de- on the one side, confidence on the spised the intellects and immured the other, respect and fidelity on both, persons of their women; and it was could not exist among the sluggish and among the least of the frightful evils heartless slaves who cringed around to which this pernicious system gave the thrones of Honorius and Augusbirth, that all the accomplishments of tulus. At this period the great renomind, and all the fascinations of man-vation commenced. The warriors of ner, which, in a highly-cultivated age, the north, destitute as they were of will generally be necessary to attach knowledge and humanity, brought with men to their female associates, were them, from their forests and marshes, monopolised by the Phrynes and the those qualities without which humanity Lamias. The indispensable ingredients is a weakness and knowledge a curse, D —energy—independence the dread of shame the contempt of danger. It would be most interesting to examine the manner in which the admixture of the savage conquerors and the effeminate slaves, after many generations of darkness and agitation, produced the modern European character;-to trace back, from the first conflict to the final amalgamation, the operation of that mysterious alchemy which, from hostile and worthless elements, has extracted the pure gold of human nature to analyse the mass, and to determine the proportion in which the ingredients are mingled. But I will confine myself to the subject to which I nave more particularly referred. The nature of the passion of love had undergone a complete change. It still retained, indeed, the fanciful and voluptuous character which it had possessed among the southern nations of antiquity. But it was tinged with the superstitious veneration with which the northern warriors had been accustomed to regard women. Devotion and war had imparted to it their most solemn and animating feelings. It was sanctified by the blessings of the Church, and decorated with the wreaths of the tournament. Venus, as in the ancient fable, was again rising above the dark and tempestuous waves which had so long covered her beauty. But she rose not now, as of old, in exposed and luxurious loveliness. She still wore the cestus of her ancient witchcraft; but the diadem of Juno was on her brow, and the aegis of Pallas in her hand. Love might, in fact, be called a new passion; and it is not astonishing that the first poet of eminence who wholly devoted his genius to this theme should have excited an extraordinary sensation. He may be compared to an adventurer who accidentally lands in a rich and unknown island; and who, though he may only set up an ill-shaped cross upon the shore, acquires possession of its treasures, and gives it his name. The claim of Petrarch was indeed somewhat like that of Amerigo Vespucci to the continent which should have derived its appellation from Columbus. The Provençal poets were unquestionably the masters of the Florentine. But they wrote in an age which could not appreciate their merits; and their imitator lived at the very period when composition in the vernacular language began to attract general attention. Petrarch was in literature what a Valentine is in love. The public preferred him, not because his merits were of a transcendent order, but because he was the first person whom they saw after they awoke from their long sleep. Nor did Petrarch gain less by comparison with his immediate successors than with those who had preceded him. Till more than a century after his death Italy produced no poet who could be compared to him. This decay of genius is doubtless to be ascribed, in a great measure, to the influence which his own works had exercised upon the literature of his country. Yet it has conduced much to his fame. Nothing is more favourable to the reputation of a writer than to be succeeded by a race inferior to himself; and it is an advantage, from obvious causes, much more frequently enjoyed by those who corrupt the national taste than by those who improve it. Another cause has co-operated with those which I have mentioned to spread the renown of Petrarch. I mean the interest which is inspired by the events of his life-an interest which must have been strongly felt by his contemporaries, since, after an interval of five hundred years, no critic can be wholly exempt from its influence. Among the great men to whom we owe the resuscitation of science he deserves the foremost place; and his enthusiastic attachment to this great cause constitutes his most just and splendid title to the gratitude of posterity. He was the votary of literature. He loved it with a perfect love. He worshipped it with an almost fanatical devotion. He was the missionary, who proclaimed its discoveries to distant countries-the pilgrim, who travelled far and wide to collect its reliques-the hermit, who retired to seclusion to meditate on its beauties-the champion, who fought its battles-the conqueror, who, in more |