those trains of feeling under which alone they can pour out the unpremeditated strains of lyric song. Several of the Italian improvisatrice, in their raised and inspired moods, pouring forth their unpremeditated strains, exactly as if possessed,-remind me of all I have heard of the Sybils of old, who, I believe, were nothing more than improvisatrice, except that they spoke and were heard, under the belief of their oracular divine mission.

LETTER LXXXIV.

POETRY, LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE.

THERE are few places in which the Latin classics are more generally studied, or understood, than at Rome, nor are the great Italian poets less duly appreciated. There is not a line of Dante, or Tasso, or Petrarch, that is not diligently conned. Yet, in spite of all this studying of poets, there is no poetry. Tides of verse are poured forth in an unceasing flow, but nothing remains. They all pass into the quiet stream of oblivion.

Of all the innumerable living poets of Rome, there is not one whose works I ever yet could read to an end; perhaps, therefore, I am not competent to give an opinion upon their merits; and posterity, I suspect, will not have the means of deciding upon them. It certainly proves a disinterested love of the Muses, that there should be so many of their votaries in a country where a poet must be poor, and where indeed no author can easily make any

money; but these capricious ladies do by no means seem to respond to the passion entertained for them, or bless with their favours their importunate Ro man suitors.

If I am not struck with the charms of their verse, I am scarcely more captivated with their prose. Its tedious formality, its unvaried dulness, and its wearisome verbosity, are inconceivable, except to those who have laboured at it; and these qualities, with few exceptions, are characteristic alike of the old and of the new writers. At least, I can truly say, that, during the two years that have elapsed since I first came to Rome, not a work has passed the press to which their own expressive" Seccatura !" does not apply. Why they always think it necessary to involve their meaning, when they have any, in such a cloud of words, is more than I can pretend to explain. Neither do I understand how it happens that men, who, in conversation, are so clever and entertaining, should, in their writings, be so tedious and stupid.

These observations, in some measure, apply not to Rome only, but to the whole of Italy. At the same time, wide is the difference at present between the south and the north of this country. The scale of intellectual gradation may be said to rise regularly with the degrees of latitude, from Naples to Milan. It is there you must look for literature and science. It is there, too, that the last poets of Italy flourished. Perhaps I ought to speak in the present tense, for Pindemonte is still alive, and it would be ungrateful to pass over one who sang the praise of

the beauty, the virtue, and the mental charms and graces of my countrywomen, in strains that ought to live. Passerone's poems, too, possess great merit; but none, in my opinion, are equal to Parini, the Pope of Italy, whose admirable Giornata, in its witty strain of satire, may even court a comparison with the Rape of the Lock.

Like Pope, too, he was deformed, and even from childhood a cripple ;-and like Burns, this elegant satirist, the idol and the scourge of drawing-rooms, and the bugbear of a court, raised himself from the station of a ploughman, and struggled with poverty and with hardship, cruelly aggravated by a long life of sickness and suffering. He wrote many admirable pieces, but La Giornata is by far the best.*

With this solitary exception, and we can scarcely call that a poem of the day, which has been read nearly half a century, the most popular modern poems in Italy are, at present, translations from the English; and Ossian and the Seasons are scarcely less admired in the vales of Italy, than among their native Caledonian mountains. Poetic genius, indeed, seems to have taken its flight to our favoured island, and while the name and the lays of Byron, Campbell, Moore, Scott, Crabbe, Southey, &c. &c., resound beneath our gloomy skies, none have

*It is divided into four parts, "Il Mattino, il Meriggio, il Vespro, e la Notte," and gives an exquisite satirical picture of the life of an Italian Fashionable.

caught the ear of Fame, in the country which would seem to be the native land and to boast the native language of song.

The modern bards of England surpass those of Italy as much as the immortal poets of Italy's better days excel all other nations. I scarcely know how to name another modern Italian poet,-Ugo Foscolo's prose is better than his verse, and neither are of pre-eminent merit.

Casti is dead; and his Animali Parlanti, though it had all the advantages of being prohibited, first by Buonaparte, and next by the existing government, is, in my humble opinion, more talked of than read, more praised than admired, and more admired than it deserves. The strain of bitter sarcasm, which runs through it, shews quite as much malignity as wit; and who can read with patience the colloquies of lions, and other beasts, through three long volumes?

No work of modern days boasts any of the fire of fancy-the bright creations or inspired spirit of true poetry; and sickened with the dull, maudlin common-place that is thrust upon one in every circle, one is tempted to ask one's-self if this is really the country that produced an Ariosto? But it did produce Ariosto, and that is atonement sufficient. One delightful flight of his imagination is worth all that Italy has to boast in latter days.

His inexhaustible beauties and magic creations, that master both the fancy and the heart, have to me a witchery, beyond all that the strains, even of my native language, ever possessed. But it is not