taken for models. The greater part of these have written poems on didactic subjects. This kind of composition appears, in fact, to suit better than any other with authors who sub. mitted their genius to prescribed rules, and who, wishing to restore a nation and a literature which would not harmonize with their own age and manners, have in their poems studied more the form than the substance. Nor shall we further speak of several distinguished historians of this epoch, Giovio, Nardi, and Nerli; nor of a man more celebrated and universally read, Francesco Guicciardini, whose history is quoted, even at the present day, as a school of politics, and a model of judicious criticism. In works of this nature, the literary merit, that of expression, is only secondary. It is from their profoundness of thought, and their vivacity, that we assign a rank to historians; and, in order to pass an opinion on Guicciardini, we should be obliged to go beyond the bounds which we have prescribed to ourselves, on a subject already too extensive in itself. We shall conclude this review of Italian literature of the sixteenth century, by some remarks on the progress of the comic drama. This branch of the dramatic art, which arose at the beginning of the age, if it was not brought to perfection, had at least rapidly advanced. The first pieces were little more than pedantic copies of the Latin comedy. They were represented at the expense of the Courts, before learned audiences. But at the end of a little time, although we do not know the precise period, troops of mercenary comedians possessed themselves of these dramas, and recited them before the public, who paid for their seats. From that time, the taste of the public became a matter of greater importance to the actors and to the authors. It was no longer sufficient that a piece was made conformable to the rules which the critics pretended to have deduced from the ancients. It was also requisite that it should interest or amuse. Machiavelli and Pietro Aretino had shown how laughter might be excited by the delineation of modern manners and vices. The example of Terence was gradually neglected, and a crowd of authors undertook, with less erudition, indeed, but with more vivacity, to entertain the public. The most remarkable amongst them was Anton Maria Grassini, of Florence, surnamed Il Lasca, (the name of a fish), who endeavoured to give to his native drama manners and rules entirely national, and who overwhelmed with ridicule both the pedants and the Petrarchists. He ridiculed, in the first, the hard and starched imitation of the ancients; in the second, their Platonic love, the devotion to their mistresses, and the tender mysticism which rendered all their lyric poetry equally insipid and affected. A great number of comic authors followed in the footsteps of Lasca; Giovanni Battista Gelli, Angelo Firenzuola, Francesco Dambra, Salviati, Caro, and many others. Leontius Allacci, in his Dramaturgy, enumerates more than a thousand comedies composed in Italian in the sixteenth century; and Riccoboni assures us, that between the periods of 1500 and 1736, more than five thousand were printed. But amidst this prodigious number of writers, Italy does not boast a single great comic genius. If the early authors of this class were justly reproached with pedantry, those who followed were equally chargeable with ignorance and negligence. Content to draw laughter from the populace by their coarse and unpolished jests, they renounce the art of disposing and unravelling the plot, and of giving a true delineation of character. These comedies, so numerous and so indifferent, almost all arose in the bosom of the academies, and were there represented. Italy was thronged in this age with literary societies, which took the title of Academies, and which assumed at the same time fanciful and absurd names. Among other exercises of the mind, the composition and recitation of comedies, with a view of restoring the drama of the ancients, was one of the earliest occupations of these literary societies. To this object their efforts were principally directed; and, as the performance of a comedy was at the same time amusing and profitable, there was scarcely a small town where an academy was not found, with the sole view of giving theatrical performances to the public. It is in this manner that we must explain that singular and rapid multiplication of academies, so remarkable in the history of Italy, and of which no one seems to have discovered the real object. Even to the present day, nearly all the theatres of Italy belong to academies. The title and academical privileges pass from father to son, and are sometimes sold. Since the academicians have given up performing themselves, they hire out their theatres to strolling companies; and we are surprised to find a literary title given to an association devoted to pleasure and to profit. Those wandering companies, who at the present day occupy the theatres of Italy, also took their rise in the sixteenth century, but in an obscure manner, and in a way which literature has not traced. This arose from the mountebanks and empirics attempting to represent, on their stages, farces of a greater length; and what was at first only an extempore dialogue between a quack and his fellow, assumed, by degrees, the form of a comedy. The pieces were not written before-hand, but a certain character was assigned to each actor, as well as his country, and a provincial dialect. It was this which gave rise to the invention of the masks of Pantaloon, the Doctor, and Harlequin and Columbine, who, always preserving the same characters, found them more easy to support. We shall again refer to these extempore comedies, which were called Comedie dell' Arte, and to the masks peculiar to the Italian theatre, when we arrive at the period when they exercised a greater influence on the national taste. Their first appearance in the literary world is marked by farces in the Paduan dialect, which Angelo Beolco Ruzzante, of Padua, published in 1530.* It is proper to notice, at least by a single word, the commencement of the existence of Pantaloon and Harlequin, to whom three succeeding centuries have been indebted for a fund of inexhaustible buffoonery. It may gratify the curiosity of the reader to present him with a specimen of these old harlequinades, in their original dialect, which is exceedingly grotesque. Il Tascho, Atto 1. SITON. An frello stetu chi? DALDURA. Se a stesse chi, critu que andera via con a vago? SIT. No, a digo, se ti e chi, via? DALD. A no son za oltra 'l mare, siando chi. SIT. Favella un puo con mi. DALD. Ste vuo que a favella mi, tasi ti. SIT. Haristu vezu un certo huomo, rizzo, griso, con una mala ciera, el nazo rebeccò in sù, con le mascelle grande, color fumegaizzo, barba chiara, e guardaura scura? DALD. E lo me stò apiecò questu? al pora sier vezu su una forca. DALD. El no passerae de chi via, que 'l no ghe va per sta via, nome chi se và a insantare a Roma. SIT. A ponto là se spazia la so mercandaria. DALD. Que elo mercadante da perdoni, o da giubilei questu? SIT. A dighe de femene, e si ne mena via una.—- CHAPTER XVI. ON THE DECLINE OF ITALIAN LITERATURE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: THE AGE OF THE SEICENTISTI.* It is sometimes found that events, which overthrow the fortunes of whole nations, are more rapid in their career than the lives of individuals, and that a whole people may be deprived of their energy, their glory, and all that constituted their character, while the nobler principles, which they have forfeited, still continue to animate the breasts of many of the citizens. They, in whom the seeds of genius and talent, fostered by favourable circumstances, have early sprung up, will not be easily deterred from their cultivation, even by public calamities, which deprive their country of its independence, and extinguish the spirit of the people. Indeed, men have often attained to a high degree of literary eminence, at a period when the downfall of political institutions seemed to discourage the noblest views, and to repress the efforts of the human mind. Thus, notwithstanding the fatal revolutions which ushered in the close of the fifteenth century, the succeeding age was distinguished by a greater number of celebrated characters, in Italy, than, perhaps, had ever appeared in any other nation during an equal period of time. Had the calamities of that country ceased, and could Italy, after a war of half a century, have been restored to the situation which she held towards the close of the year fifteen hundred, these great characters would have maintained that national excellence, in all the fine arts and in every species of intellectual pursuits, which had been handed down to them by their illustrious predecessors. Italy might again have arisen, with fresh vigour, from the grave of her renown, and we should not have witnessed the blank, which we discover, in the annals of the human mind. But the unfortunate events which occurred at the commencement of the sixteenth century, were hardly so fatal to the progress of letters as the death-like repose which followed. An universal and organized system of oppression The seventeenth century is called by the Italians Mille Seicento, or Seicento; and the writers, who flourished during that period, are generally termed Seicentisti. succeeded to the calamities of war; and enfeebled Italy produced, during a century and a half, only a race of cold and contemptible imitators, tamely following in the paths of their predecessors; or of false and affected originals, who mistook an inflated style for grandeur of sentiment, antithesis for eloquence, and witty conceits for a proof of brilliant powers. This was the reign of corrupted taste; a taste which strove, by a profusion of ornament, to disguise the want of native talent, and which maintained its authority from the time of the imprisonment of Tasso, until the appearance of Metastasio in the zenith of his fame.* Although the reigns of Charles V. and of Philip II. appear among the most brilliant in history, for the triumphs of the human mind, in the career both of letters and of art, we must not forget that it was also the fatal period when chains were forged to subdue the intellect of mankind, and when genius, arrested in its course, was compelled to retrace its steps. These monarchs, who reaped the advantage of the munificent labours of their predecessors, failed to scatter, in their turn, the seeds of cultivation; and, as the harvest of the human mind requires half a century to bring it to perfection, every province subjected to their dominion was, after the expiration of that time, doomed to the general fate of sterility. It is almost impossible to convey an idea of the suspicious yet lethargic nature of the Spanish government under the three Philips, (Philip II., III., and IV.) over nearly one half of Italy; embracing the Milanese, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. It extended likewise, with scarcely less authority, over the territories of the Pope, and over the dukedoms of Italy, which had occasion to solicit its protection. Enormous duties, unequally and absurdly exacted, destroyed commerce, and exhausted and depopulated the country; while governors enriched themselves by cruel and overwhelming extortions, which excited an universal feeling of hatred and contempt, against the blind infatuation and injustice of such a system. The course of interminable war, in which the court of Madrid persisted during the whole period that the house of Austria wielded the sceptre of Spain, had drained the finest provinces of their wealth and population, and left them open to the |