ART. VIII. Storia della Letteratura Italiana, del Cavaliere Abate Giuseppe Maffei, &c. &c. &c. Seconda Edizione Originale, emendata ed accresciuta colla Storia dei primi trenta-due Anni del Secolo XIX. (History of Italian Literature, by Joseph Maffei, &c. &c. &c. A Second Original Edition, corrected and enlarged with the History of the first thirtytwo Years of the 19th Century.) 4 vols. 12mo. Milano. 1834. SHORTLY after the first establishment in this country of a periodical expressly and exclusively dedicated to making the British reading public acquainted with the actual and progressive colldition of intellect and literature in other lands, we reviewed at considerable length, and with appropriate eulogy, the Storia della Letteratura Italiana by Camillo Ugoni,* making, at the same time, honourable mention of the slighter and humbler production of a fellow-labourer in the same vineyard, Giuseppe Maffei Upon that occasion we took a survey of the rise, development, and character of Italian literature, which, though brief and with out reference to our author-indeed, Ugoni's history relates solely to the last half of the last century-was sufficiently comprehen sive to render any recurrence to the subject, save in the way of controversy, a mere work of supererogation; and in such controversy we are not at present, or, for aught we know, likely to be engaged. Turning away, therefore, from the alluring field of original disquisition, and confining our pen, and yet more discur sive thoughts, to the matter immediately before us, we shall begin by saying a few words of our former paper, intended to save trouble to the reader who may have forgotten it.

We therein devoted our criticism solely to Ugoni, from whom all our extracts were taken, whilst of Maffei we merely observed, "the work of Maffei is a pleasing resumé of the whole of Italian literature, from its earliest time to the end of the last century. The author, who is Italian professor at Munich, has compressed into a small compass the notices contained in the various Italian historians and biographers, Corniani and Ugoni included.”

we

And, had Ugoni published the fourth volume, on the authors of the present century, of which we then spoke doubtfully, should probably have again followed the same course; since it is self-evident that a writer, who allots three volumes to fifty years, must afford more food for reviewers than one who condenses eight centuries into the same space which very comparison, by the way, shows us that we should have said, the fourth and fifth volumes, to keep any proportion between the quantities of mat

See Foreign Quarterly Review, Vol. 1I. p. 621.

ter contained in the different volumes. But Ugoni's continuation has not yet appeared, probably for the same reasons, whatever they might be, that originally suspended his purpose. We are, therefore, now fain to content ourselves with Maffei's fourth volume; which being the case, we must speak somewhat more at large of himself and the general character of his work.

Giuseppe Maffei, as we learn from himself, is a native of the Italian Tyrol, and a Cavaliere Abate,—an odd combination of titles, to English apprehension,-with more literary dignities and honorary additions to his name than we have patience to read, let alone transcribe; though we must needs state that, amongst other high offices, he held that of preceptor in Italian, or, more humbly, Italian master, to Prince Otho of Bavaria, now King of Greece. To this youthful monarch Maffei dedicates the present new and enlarged edition of his History of Italian Literature, and in his dedication thus intimates his expectations of what King Otho is to do for Greece and her literature,

"When I had the high honour of teaching your majesty the Italian language, I witnessed the zeal with which you learned it, the care with which you translated the first three volumes of this history of mine into German... ... When you read of the protection afforded to arts and letters by the Medici at Florence, the Visconti and Sforzas at Milan, the Aragonese at Naples, the Popes at Rome, the Estes at Ferrara, the Gonzagas at Mantua, and the Dukes of Savoy in Piedmont, I saw in your countenance how keenly you desired to emulate them. The lists are now open to you."

Having already stated this book to be a resumé, when we shall have added that it is designed rather to direct the course of reading of the learner of Italian, than to instruct and form the critical taste of the Italian scholar, need we say further that it is somewhat dry, the criticism little raisonné, and the biographical portion generally too short to be interesting? From this last censure, however, we may except those Italian classics with whose lives few persons, who are not absolute tyros in Italian literature, are unacquainted, as Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and their mighty compeers. But let us not be understood as meaning altogether to condemn Maffei's book. To the novice it will afford much useful information, besides teaching him where to seek more. To the Italian scholar, who has not fortitude to encounter Tiraboschi's numerous, over-circumstantial volumes, which, moréover, only come down to the end of the 17th century, it will recal and systematize his desultory knowledge.*££90k

* That this work is well calculated to answer these ends, at least, seems to be the general opinion, if we are to judge from the information contained in a note, that "ten VOL. XVII. NO. XXXIV.

G G

We have hitherto spoken, be it observed, only of the first three volumes. The last stands upon very different ground with respect to its claims upon our attention. But we have not yet

quite done with its predecessors.

There is one thing which, we frankly confess, marvellously conciliates our favour towards the Cavaliere Abate and his volumes, somewhat dull though they be. It is, that he does not adopt the new-fangled notion, started by a few modern Italian critics, respecting the great early poets of Italy and their amatory effusions. As this neo-critical fancy may not be, and indeed we hope is not, known to all readers, we must inform them that we allude to an hypothesis representing the loves of these poets to be not merely a little fantastical, which we are willing to allow, but actually and altogether allegorical, typifying, or, to speak more correctly, mystifying-what, think you, courteous reader? neither more nor less than Protestantism, if such an anachronism in the use of the word be allowable. Thus do these critics convert Dante's Bice, Boccaccio's Fiametta, and, yet more outrageously, Petrarch's Laura, to omit ladies of less note, into so many avatars, or, at the least, prosopopeias of the spirit of religious reform; and they further assert the ever-recurring word amor to be tout bonnement the anagram of Roma.

Now, as Maffei neither adopts nor rebuts this whimsical theory -by the by we are not quite sure whether it had been broached when his first three volumes were published-it might seem hardly fair in us to delay our account of his book in order to discuss it; nor will we do so, although, having mentioned the subject, we cannot refrain from adding two remarks which appear to us to be pretty strong, we will not say decisive, against it. We will, however, do this as concisely as may be, and hasten to our proper and present business.

The first of these remarks is, that most of those early poets held the beautiful Italian language cheap, considering it as a vulgar tongue, unfit to be employed upon any loftier or graver topic than love, or some such light matter as might be adapted to the capacity of woman, unacquainted with any other than the said vulgar, commonly called her mother, tongue. It was only the grand and daring genius, the master-mind of Dante, that conceived the bold and happy idea of embodying in this despised vulgar tongue the wildest, noblest, sublimest, the most audacious as well as the most exalted, conceptions of the muse. His rivals and immediate successors, when they meant to treat of

editions (pirated we conceive) have been published and sold in different parts of Italy, and that the periodicals of Italy, France, Germany, and even England, have concurred in its praises."

serious or important themes, had recourse to Latin; and it was upon his now forgotten Latin poem, " Africa," not upon his exquisite Italian lyrics, that Petrarch relied for an immortality of fame. Nor was this an individual mistake of the poet, as is proved by the fact, that it was as the author of " Africa," not as the Italian lyrist, that Petrarch was crowned in the Capitol. Is it then likely that these same men should have written seriously of religious abuses, religious reform, except in Latin, although they might and did seemingly without fear of consequences, since without any sort of caution or disguise-laugh in Italian at the vices of the monks? And with respect to Dante, whose veneration for Latin was less exclusive, he, as a professed Ghibelline, attacked the Popes, very irreverently placing many of them in the various bolge (or divisions of the abyss) of his Inferno, in plain Italian: why then should he mask any other portion of his anti-papal, or, more properly, his Ghibelline, opinions under what the advocates of this notion call gergo, Anglice slang?

Our second remark relates to the supposed anagram. One of Petrarch's principal charges against the Popes is, that they had forsaken Rome for Avignon; and he repeatedly exerted all the powers of his eloquence, in prose and rhyme, to recal them to what he esteemed the natural site of the Papal See. Is this circumstance reconcileable with the anagrammatical hypothesis, according to which, Amor-Roma-is spoken of as the seat of all the abuses and abominations of Popery?

Proceed we now to the especial subject of this article, namely, Signor Maffei's fourth volume, the dry conciseness of which we shall occasionally endeavour to relieve or enliven, by introducing a few specimens of poetry, of which our author is singularly sparing, or, when practicable, referring to the criticisms of the German lecturer upon the belles-lettres of the nineteenth century, whose opinions of our modern English poets are already known to our readers-we mean Professor Wolff.*

The first point that strikes us on opening this volume is a little discouraging; for, though it professes to give us the literary history of Italy during the first thirty-two years of the current -nineteenth century, Maffei omits, or, as he tells us, designedly avoids, saying a word of any author who still breathes the vital air. Now, although such a course must always have been dis-appointing, there was a time when we could have understood such forbearance; a time when all gentlemen, men of letters included, were somewhat touchily sensitive to the voice of re

See For. Quar. Rev. Vol. XV. p. 347.

proof, and when the office of censor might therefore be attended with unpleasant consequences. But this species of delicacy seems now to be so thoroughly perruque, or rococo,* or whatever be the newest and most approved term for old-fashioned, that we really cannot conceive why authors, who are now, like eels, used to being skinned alive, ay, and dissected alive too, by those professional literary anatomists, the reviewers, should not as fairly be criticised and appreciated in a history of the literature of their country, as in Travels, Pencillings, or Courses of Lectures. The German professor, Dr. Wolff, does actually give us the literature of the present century, whilst Maffei, in this season of ephemeral excitement, when the books, like the scandal or the politics, of the past year are as though they had never been, gives us biography and criticism appertaining in reality rather to the last than to the present generation. Many of the authors and philosophers of whom he speaks were born not much less than a hundred years ago, and flourished at least as much in the eighteenth as in the nineteenth century. Their masterpieces and great discoveries often bear the date of the former, and we should be perplexed to guess why they did not grace the third volume, did it not occur to us that, at the moment of its publication, those authors and philosophers might still, though wellstricken in years, be denizens of this sublunary sphere.

This omission of living literati is, as before said, most disappointing in this our from-day-to-day age; and would have been so even in soberer times. Eagerly we looked for compatriot criticisms upon the works of Botta, Colletta, Manzoni, Rosini, Grossi, Pellico, Nota, Niccolini, &c., to compare with our own, as also for a little amusing gossip relative to the admired authors— and when it was clear that we looked in vain, we were more than half tempted to fling away the volume in anger. But, if thus less interesting than we had a right to expect, the volume is by no means uninteresting. The list of names, whether belonging to this century or the last, contains, amongst numbers little known out of Italy, many which we have long been accustomed to revere, respecting the bearers of which we must needs be desirous to learn the opinions of the critics of their own country.

This list contains to follow the order adopted for the nineteenth century by our historian of literature, who varies his order of precedence according as the different centuries were most fruitful in poetry, history, or philosophy of poets, Monti, Per

*For these words we must refer our readers to Blackwood and Mrs. Trollope.

+ Colletta was dead in 1832, but, his history not being published, he was not yet a known author,