Chapter XIV

HISTORY OF POETRY FROM 1550 TO 1600.

Sect. I.—On Italian Poetry.

Character of the Italian Poets of this Age—Some of the best enumerated—Bernardino Rota—Gaspara Stampa—Bernardo Tasso—Gierusalemme Liberata of Torquato Tasso.

General character of Italian poets in this age. 1. The school of Petrarch, restored by Bembo, was prevalent in Italy at the beginning of this period. It would demand the use of a library, formed peculiarly for this purpose, as well as a great expenditure of time, to read the original volumes which this immensely numerous class of poets, the Italians of the sixteenth century, filled with their sonnets. In the lists of Crescimbeni, they reach the number of 661. We must, therefore, judge of them chiefly through selections, which, though they may not always have done justice to every poet, cannot but present to us an adequate picture of the general style of poetry. |Their usual faults.| The majority are feeble copyists of Petrarch. Even in most of those who have been preferred to the rest, an affected intensity of passion, a monotonous repetition of customary metaphors, of hyperboles reduced to commonplaces by familiarity, of mythological allusions, pedantic without novelty, cannot be denied incessantly to recur. But, in observing how much they generally want of that which is essentially the best, we might be in danger of forgetting that there is a praise due to selection of words, to harmony of sound, and to skill in overcoming metrical impediments, which it is for natives alone to award. The authority of Italian critics should, therefore, be respected, though not without keeping in mind both their national prejudice, and that which the habit of admiring a very artificial style must always generate.

Their beauties. 2. It is perhaps hardly fair to read a number of these compositions in succession. Every sonnet has its own unity, and is not, it might be pleaded, to be charged with tediousness or monotony, because the same structure of verse, or even the same general sentiment, may recur in an equally independent production. Even collectively taken, the minor Italian poetry of the sixteenth century may be deemed a great repertory of beautiful language, of sentiments and images, that none but minds finely tuned by nature produce, and that will ever be dear to congenial readers, presented to us with exquisite felicity and grace, and sometimes with an original and impressive vigour. The sweetness of the Italian versification goes far towards their charm; but are poets forbidden to avail themselves of this felicity of their native tongue, or do we invidiously detract, as we might on the same ground, from the praise of Theocritus and Bion?

Character given by Muratori. 3. The poets of this age, says one of their best critics, had, in general, a just taste, wrote with elegance, employed deep, noble, and natural sentiments, and filled their compositions with well-chosen ornaments. There may be observed, however, some difference between the authors who lived before the middle of the century and those who followed them. The former were more attentive to imitate Petrarch, and unequal to reach the fertility and imagination of this great master, seemed rather dry, with the exception, always, of Casa and Costanzo, whom, in their style of composition, I greatly admire. The later writers, in order to gain more applause, deviated in some measure from the spirit of Petrarch, seeking ingenious thoughts, florid conceits, splendid ornaments, of which they became so fond, that they fell sometimes into the vicious extreme of saying too much.[1141]

Poetry of Casa. 4. Casa and Costanzo, whom Muratori seems to place in the earlier part of the century, belong, by the date of publication at least, to this latter period. The former was the first to quit the style of Petrarch, which Bembo had rendered so popular. Its smoothness evidently wanted vigour, and it was the aim of Casa to inspire a more masculine tone into the sonnet, at the expense of a harsher versification. He occasionally ventured to carry on the sense without pause from the first to the second tercet; an innovation praised by many, but which, at that time, few attempted to imitate, though, in later ages, it has become common, not much perhaps to the advantage of the sonnet. The poetry of Casa speaks less to the imagination, the heart, or the ear, than to the understanding.[1142]

Of Costanzo. 5. Angelo di Costanzo, a Neapolitan, and author of a well-known history of his country, is highly extolled by Crescimbeni and Muratori; perhaps no one of these lyric poets of the sixteenth century is so much in favour with the critics. Costanzo is so regular in his versification, and so strict in adhering to the unity of subject, that the Society of Arcadians, when, towards the close of the seventeenth century, they endeavoured to rescue Italian poetry from the school of Marini, selected him as the best model of imitation. He is ingenious, but perhaps a little too refined; and by no means free from that coldly hyperbolical tone in addressing his mistress, which most of these sonnetteers assume. Costanzo is not to me, in general, a pleasing writer; though sometimes he is very beautiful, as in the sonnet on Virgil, Quella cetra gentil, justly praised by Muratori, and which will be found in most collections; remarkable, among higher merits, for being contained in a single sentence. Another, on the same subject, Cigni felici, is still better. The poetry of Camillo Pellegrini much resembles that of Costanzo.[1143] |Baldi.| The sonnets of Baldi, especially a series on the ruins and antiquities of Rome, appear to me deserving of a high place among those of the age. They may be read among his poems; but few have found their way into the collections by Gobbi and Rubbi, which are not made with the best taste. |Caro.| Caro, says Crescimbeni, is less rough than Casa, and more original than Bembo. Salfi extols the felicity of his style, and the harmony of his versification; while he owns that his thoughts are often forced and obscure.[1144]

Odes of Celio Magno. 6. Among the canzoni of this period, one by Celio Magno on the Deity stands in the eyes of foreigners, and I believe of many Italians, prominent above the rest. It is certainly a noble ode.[1145] Rubbi, editor of the Parnaso Italiano, says that he would call Celio the greatest lyric poet of his age, if he did not dread the clamour of the Petrarchists. The poetry of Celio Magno, more than one hundred pages extracted from which will be found in the thirty-second volume of that collection, is not in general amatory, and displays much of that sonorous rhythm and copious expression which afterwards made Chiabrera and Guidi famous. Some of his odes, like those of Pindar, seem to have been written for pay, and have somewhat of that frigid exaggeration which such conditions produce. Crescimbeni thinks that Tansillo, in the ode, has no rival but Petrarch.[1146] The poetry in general of Tansillo, especially La Balia, which contains good advice to mothers about nursing their infants very prosaically delivered, seems deficient in spirit.[1147]

Coldness of the amatory sonnets. 7. The amatory sonnets of this age, forming the greater number, are very frequently cold and affected. This might possibly be ascribed in some measure to the state of manners in Italy, where, with abundant licentiousness, there was still much of jealousy, and public sentiment applauded alike the successful lover and the vindictive husband. A respect for the honour of families, if not for virtue, would impose on the poet who felt or assumed a passion for any distinguished lady, the conditions of Tasso’s Olindo, to desire much, to hope for little, and to ask nothing. It is also at least very doubtful, whether much of the amorous sorrow of the sonnetteers were not purely ideal.

Studied imitation of Petrarch. 8. Lines and phrases from Petrarch are as studiously introduced as we find those of classical writers in modern Latin poetry. It cannot be said that this is unpleasing; and to the Italians, who knew every passage of their favourite poet, it must have seemed at once a grateful homage of respect, and an ingenious artifice to bespeak attention. They might well look up to him as their master, but could not hope that even a foreigner would ever mistake the hand through a single sonnet. He is to his disciples, especially those towards the latter part of the century, as Guido is to Franceschini or Elisabetta Serena; an effeminate and mannered touch enfeebles the beauty which still lingers round the pencil of the imitator. If they produce any effect upon us beyond sweetness of sound and delicacy of expression, it is from some natural feeling, some real sorrow, or from some occasional originality of thought, in which they cease for a moment to pace the banks of their favourite Sorga. It would be easy to point out not a few sonnets of this higher character, among those especially of Francesco Coppetta, of Claudio Tolomei, of Ludovico Paterno, or of Bernardo Tasso.

Their fondness for description. 9. A school of poets, that has little vigour of sentiment, falls readily into description, as painters of history or portrait that want expression of character endeavour to please by their landscape. The Italians, especially in this part of the sixteenth century, are profuse in the song of birds, the murmur of waters, the shade of woods; and, as these images are always delightful, they shed a charm over much of their poetry, which only the critical reader, who knows its secret, is apt to resist, and that to his own loss of gratification. The pastoral character, which it became customary to assume, gives much opportunity for these secondary, yet very seducing beauties of style. They belong to the decline of the art, and have something of the voluptuous charm of evening. Unfortunately they generally presage a dull twilight, or a thick darkness of creative poetry. The Greeks had much of this in the Ptolemaic age, and again in that of the first Byzantine emperors. It is conspicuous in Tansillo, Paterno, and both the Tassos.

Judgment of Italian critics. 10. The Italian critics, Crescimbeni, Muratori, and Quadrio, have given minute attention to the beauties of particular sonnets culled from the vast stores of the sixteenth century. But as the development of the thought, the management of the four constituent clauses of the sonnet, especially the last, the propriety of every line, for nothing digressive or merely ornamental should be admitted, constitute in their eyes the chief merit of these short compositions, they extol some which in our eyes are not so pleasing, as what a less regular taste might select. Without presuming to rely on my own judgment, defective both as that of a foreigner, and of one not so extensively acquainted with the minor poetry of this age, I will mention two writers, well-known indeed, but less prominent in the critical treatises than some others, as possessing a more natural sensibility and a greater truth of sorrow than most of their contemporaries, Bernardino Rota and Gaspara Stampa.

Bernardino Rota. 11. Bernardino Rota, a Neapolitan of ancient lineage and considerable wealth, left poems in Latin as well as Italian; and among the latter his eclogues are highly praised by his editor. But he is chiefly known by a series of sonnets intermixed with canzoni, upon a single subject, Portia Capece, his wife, whom, what is unusual among our Tuscan poets (says his editor), he loved with an exclusive affection. But be it understood, lest the reader should be discouraged, that the poetry addressed to Portia Capece is all written before their marriage, or after her death. The earlier division of the series, Rime in Vita seems not to rise much above the level of amorous poetry. He wooed, was delayed; complained, and won—the natural history of an equal and reasonable love. Sixteen years intervened of that tranquil bliss which contents the heart without moving it, and seldom affords much to the poet in which the reader can find interest. Her death in 1559 gave rise to poetical sorrows, as real and certainly full as rational as those of Petrarch, to whom some of his contemporaries gave him the second place; rather probably from the similarity of their subject, than from the graces of his language. Rota is by no means free from conceits, and uses sometimes affected and unpleasing expressions, as mia dolce guerra, speaking of his wife, even after her death; but his images are often striking;[1148] and, above all, he resembles Petrarch, with whatever inferiority, in combining the ideality of a poetical mind with the naturalness of real grief. It has never again been given to man, nor will it probably be given, to dip his pen in those streams of ethereal purity which have made the name of Laura immortal; but a sonnet of Rota may be not disadvantageously compared with one of Milton, which we justly admire for its general feeling, though it begins in pedantry and ends in conceit.[1149] For my own part, I would much rather read again the collection of Rota’s sonnets than those of Costanzo.

It seems to me not beyond the limits of poetry, nor more hyperbolical than many others which have been much admired. It is, at least, Petrarchesque in a high degree.

In one of Rota’s sonnets we have the thought of Pope’s epitaph on Gay.

He proceeds very beautifully:—

The poems of Rota are separately published in two volumes. Naples, 1726. They contain a mixture of Latin. Whether Milton intentionally borrowed the sonnet on his wife’s death,

from that above quoted, I cannot pretend to say; certainly his resemblances to the Italian poets often seem more than accidental. Thus two lines in an indifferent writer, Girolamo Preti (Mathias, iii. 329) are exactly like one of the sublimest flights in the Paradise Lost.

Gaspara Stampa. Her love for Collalto. 12. The sorrows of Gaspara Stampa were of a different kind, but not less genuine than those of Rota. She was a lady of the Paduan territory, living near the small river Anaso, from which she adopted the poetical name of Anasilla. This stream bathes the foot of certain lofty hills, from which a distinguished family, the Counts of Collalto, took their appellation. The representative of this house, himself a poet as well as a soldier, and, if we believe his fond admirer, endowed with every virtue except constancy, was loved by Gaspara with enthusiastic passion. Unhappily she learned only by sad experience the want of generosity too common to man, and sacrificing, not the honour, but the pride of her sex, by submissive affection, and finally by querulous importunity, she estranged a heart never so susceptible as her own. Her sonnets, which seem arranged nearly in order, begin with the delirium of sanguine love; they are extravagant effusions of admiration, mingled with joy and hope; but soon the sense of Collalto’s coldness glides in and overpowers her bliss.[1150] After three years’ expectation of seeing his promise of marriage fulfilled, and when he had already caused alarm by his indifference, she was compelled to endure the pangs of absence by his entering the service of France. This does not seem to have been of long continuance; but his letters were infrequent, and her complaints, always vented in a sonnet, become more fretful. He returned, and Anasilla exults with tenderness, yet still timid in the midst of her joy.

|Is ill-requited.| But jealousy, not groundless, soon intruded, and we find her doubly miserable. Collalto became more harsh, avowed his indifference, forbade her to importune him with her complaints; and in a few months espoused another woman. It is said by the historians of Italian literature, that the broken heart of Gaspara sunk very soon under these accumulated sorrows into the grave.[1151] And such, no doubt, is what my readers expect, and (at least the gentler of them), wish to find. But inexorable truth, to whom I am the sworn vassal, compels me to say that the poems of the lady herself contain unequivocal proof that she avenged herself better on Collalto,—by falling in love again. |Her second love.| We find the acknowledgment of another incipient passion, which speedily comes to maturity; and, while declaring that her present flame is much stronger than the last, she dismisses her faithless lover with the handsome compliment, that it was her destiny always to fix her affections on a noble object. The name of her second choice does not appear in her poems; nor has any one hitherto, it would seem, made the very easy discovery of his existence. It is true that she died young; but not of love.[1152]

And afterwards more fully:

Style of Gaspara Stampa. 13. The style of Gaspara Stampa is clear, simple, graceful; the Italian critics find something to censure in the versification. In purity of taste, I should incline to set her above Bernardino Rota, though she has less vigour of imagination. Corniani has applied to her the well-known lines of Horace upon Sappho.[1153] But the fires of guilt and shame, that glow along the strings of the Æolian lyre, ill resemble the pure sorrows of the tender Anasilla. Her passion for Collalto, ardent and undisguised, was ever virtuous; the sense of gentle birth, though so inferior to his, as perhaps to make a proud man fear disparagement, sustained her against dishonourable submission.

But not less in elevation of genius than in dignity of character, she is very far inferior to Vittoria Colonna, or even to Veronica Gambara, a poetess, who, without equalling Vittoria, had much of her nobleness and purity. We pity the Gasparas; we should worship, if we could find them, the Vittorias.

Corniani, v. 212, and Salfi in Ginguéné, ix. 406, have done some justice to the poetry of Gaspara Stampa, though by no means more than it deserves. Bouterwek, ii. 150, observes only, viel Poesie zeigt sich nicht in diesen Sonetten; which, I humbly conceive, shows, that either he had not read them, or was an indifferent judge; and from his general taste I prefer the former hypothesis.

La Nautica, of Baldi. 14. Among the longer poems which Italy produced in this period two may be selected. The Art of Navigation, La Nautica, published by Bernardino Baldi in 1590, is a didactic poem in blank verse, too minute sometimes and prosaic in its details, like most of that class, but neither low, nor turgid, nor obscure, as many others have been. The descriptions, though never very animated, are sometimes poetical and pleasing. Baldi is diffuse; and this conspires with the triteness of his matter to render the poem somewhat uninteresting. He by no means wants the power to adorn his subject, but does not always trouble himself to exert it, and is tame where he might be spirited. Few poems bear more evident marks that their substance had been previously written down in prose.

Amadigi of Bernardo Tasso. 15. Bernardo Tasso, whose memory has almost been effaced with the majority of mankind by the splendour of his son, was not only the most conspicuous poet of the age wherein he lived, but was placed by its critics, in some points of view, above Ariosto himself. His minor poetry is of considerable merit.[1156] But that to which he owed most of his reputation is an heroic romance on the story of Amadis, written about 1540, and first published in 1560. L’Amadigi is of prodigious length, containing 100 cantos, and about 57,000 lines. The praise of facility, in the best sense, is fully due to Bernardo. His narration is fluent, rapid, and clear; his style not in general feeble or low, though I am not aware that many brilliant passages will be found. He followed Ariosto in his tone of relating the story: his lines perpetually remind us of the Orlando; and I believe it would appear on close examination that much has been borrowed with slight change. My own acquaintance, however, with the Amadigi is not sufficient to warrant more than a general judgment. Ginguéné, who rates this poem very highly, praises the skill with which the disposition of the original romance has been altered and its canvas enriched by new insertions, the beauty of the images and sentiments, the variety of the descriptions, the sweetness, though not always free from languor, of the style, and finally recommends its perusal to all lovers of romantic poetry, and to all who would appreciate that of Italy.[1157] It is evident, however, that the choice of a subject become frivolous in the eyes of mankind, not less than the extreme length of Bernardo Tasso’s poem, must render it almost impossible to follow this advice.

A sonnet of Bernardo Tasso, so much admired at the time, that almost every one, it is said, of a refined taste had it by heart, will be found in Panizzi’s edition of the Orlando Innamorato, vol. i. p. 376, with a translation by a lady well known for the skill with which she has transferred the grace and feeling of Petrarch into our language. The sonnet, which begins, Poichè la parte men perfetta e bella, is not found in Gobbi or Mathias. It is distinguished from the common crowd of Italian sonnets in the sixteenth century by a novelty, truth, and delicacy of sentiment, which is comparatively rare in them.

Satirical and burlesque poetry; Aretin. 16. The satires of Bentivoglio, it is agreed, fall short of those by Ariosto, though some have placed them above those of Alamanni.[1158] But all these are satires on the regular model, assuming at least a half-serious tone. A style more congenial to the Italians was that of burlesque poetry, sometimes poignantly satirical, but as destitute of any grave aim, as it was light and familiar, even to popular vulgarity, in its expression, though capable of grace in the midst of its gaiety, and worthy to employ the best master of Tuscan language.[1159] But it was disgraced by some of its cultivators, and by none more than Peter Aretin. The character of this profligate and impudent person is well known; it appears extraordinary that, in an age so little scrupulous as to political or private revenge, some great princes, who had never spared a worthy adversary, thought it not unbecoming to purchase the silence of an odious libeller, who called himself their scourge. In a literary sense, the writings of Aretin are unequal; the serious are for the most part reckoned wearisome and prosaic; in his satires a poignancy and spirit, it is said, frequently breaks out; and though his popularity, like that of most satirists, was chiefly founded on the ill-nature of mankind, he gratified this with a neatness and point of expression, which those who cared nothing for the satire might admire.[1160]

Other burlesque writers. 17. Among the writers of satirical, burlesque, or licentious poetry, after Aretin, the most remarkable are Firenzuola, Casa (one of whose compositions passed so much all bounds as to have excluded him from the purple, and has become the subject of a sort of literary controversy, to which I can only allude),[1161] Franco, and Grazzini, surnamed Il Lasco. |Attempts at Latin metres.| I must refer to the regular historians of Italian literature for accounts of these, as well as for the styles of poetry called macaronica and pedantesca, which appear wholly contemptible, and the attempts to introduce Latin metres, a folly with which every nation has been inoculated in its turn.[1162] Claudio Tolomei, and Angelo Costanzo himself, by writing sapphics and hexameters, did more honour to so strange a pedantry than it deserved.

He ends by lamenting that no alteration mends the name.

Poetical translations. 18. The translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid by Anguillara, seems to have acquired the highest name with the critics;[1163] but that of the Æneid by Caro is certainly the best known in Europe. It is not, however, very faithful, though written in blank verse, which leaves a translator no good excuse for deviating from his original; the style is diffuse, and, upon the whole, it is better that those who read it should not remember Virgil. Many more Italian poets ought, possibly, to be commemorated; but we must hasten forward to the greatest of them all.

Torquato Tasso. 19. The life of Tasso is excluded from these pages by the rule I have adopted; but I cannot suppose any reader to be ignorant of one of the most interesting and affecting stories that literary biography presents. It was in the first stages of a morbid melancholy, almost of intellectual derangement, that the Gierusalemme Liberata was finished; it was during a confinement, harsh in all its circumstances, though perhaps necessary, that it was given to the world. Several portions had been clandestinely published, in consequence of the author’s inability to protect his rights; and even the first complete edition in 1581 seems to have been without his previous consent. In the later editions of the same year he is said to have been consulted; but his disorder was then at a height, from which it afterwards receded, leaving his genius undiminished, and his reason somewhat more sound, though always unsteady. Tasso died at Rome in 1595, already the object of the world’s enthusiastic admiration, rather than of its kindness and sympathy.

The Jerusalem excellent in choice of subject. 20. The Jerusalem is the great epic poem, in the strict sense, of modern times. It was justly observed by Voltaire, that in the choice of his subject Tasso is superior to Homer. Whatever interest tradition might have attached among the Greeks to the wrath of Achilles and the death of Hector, was slight to those genuine recollections which were associated with the first crusade. It was not the theme of a single people, but of Europe; not a fluctuating tradition, but certain history; yet history so far remote from the poet’s time, as to adapt itself to his purpose with almost the flexibility of fable. Nor could the subject have been chosen so well in another age or country; it was still the holy war, and the sympathies of his readers were easily excited for religious chivalry; but, in Italy, this was no longer an absorbing sentiment; and the stern tone of bigotry, which perhaps might still have been required from a Castilian poet, would have been dissonant amidst the soft notes that charmed the court of Ferrara.

Superior to Homer and Virgil in some points. 21. In the variety of occurrences, the change of scenes and images, and of the trains of sentiment connected with them in the reader’s mind, we cannot place the Iliad on a level with the Jerusalem. And again, by the manifest unity of subject, and by the continuance of the crusading army before the walls of Jerusalem, the poem of Tasso has a coherence and singleness, which is wanting to that of Virgil. Every circumstance is in its place; we expect the victory of the Christians, but acknowledge the probability and adequacy of the events that delay it. The episodes, properly so to be called, are few and short; for the expedition of those who recall Rinaldo from the arms of Armida, though occupying too large a portion of the poem, unlike the fifth and sixth, or even the second and third books of the Æneid, is an indispensable link in the chain of its narrative.

Its characters. 22. In the delineation of character, at once natural, distinct, and original, Tasso must give way to Homer, perhaps to some other epic and romantic poets. There are some indications of the age in which he wrote, some want of that truth to nature, by which the poet, like the painter, must give reality to the conceptions of his fancy. Yet here also the sweetness and nobleness of his mind, and his fine sense of moral beauty are displayed. The female warrior had been an old invention, and few, except Homer, had missed the opportunity of diversifying their battles with such a character. But it is of difficult management; we know not how to draw the line between the savage virago, from whom the imagination revolts, and the gentler fair one, whose feats in arms are ridiculously incongruous to her person and disposition. Virgil first threw a romantic charm over his Camilla; but he did not render her the object of love. In modern poetry, this seemed the necessary compliment to every lady; but we hardly envy Rogero the possession of Bradamante, or Arthegal that of Britomart. Tasso alone, with little sacrifice of poetical probability, has made his readers sympathise with the enthusiastic devotion of Tancred for Clorinda. She is so bright an ideality, so heroic, and yet, by the enchantment of verse, so lovely, that no one follows her through the combat without delight, or reads her death without sorrow. And how beautiful is the contrast of this character with the tender and modest Erminia! The heroes, as has been hinted, are drawn with less power. Godfrey is a noble example of calm and faultless virtue, but we find little distinctive character in Rinaldo. Tancred has seemed to some rather too much enfeebled by his passion, but this may be justly considered as part of the moral of the poem.

Excellence of its style. 23. The Jerusalem is read with pleasure in almost every canto. No poem, perhaps, if we except the Æneid, has so few weak or tedious pages; the worst passages are the speeches, which are too diffuse. The native melancholy of Tasso tinges all his poem; we meet with no lighter strain, no comic sally, no effort to relieve for an instant the tone of seriousness that pervades every stanza. But it is probable, that some become wearied by this uniformity which his metre serves to augment. The ottava rima has its inconveniences; even its intricacy, when once mastered, renders it more monotonous, and the recurrence of marked rhymes, the breaking of the sense into equal divisions, while they communicate to it a regularity that secures the humblest verse from sinking to the level of prose, deprive it of that variety which the hexameter most eminently possesses. Ariosto lessened this effect by the rapid flow of his language, and perhaps by its negligence and inequality; in Tasso, who is more sustained at a high pitch of elaborate expression than any great poet except Virgil, and in whom a prosaic or feeble stanza will rarely be found, the uniformity of cadence may conspire with the lusciousness of style to produce a sense of satiety in the reader. This is said rather to account for the injustice, as it seems to me, with which some speak of Tasso, than to express my own sentiments; for there are few poems of great length which I so little wish to lay aside as the Jerusalem.

24. The diction of Tasso excites perpetual admiration; it is rarely turgid or harsh; and though more figurative than that of Ariosto, it is so much less than that of most of our own or the ancient poets, that it appears simple in our eyes. Virgil to whom we most readily compare him, is far superior in energy, but not in grace. Yet his grace is often too artificial, and the marks of the file are too evident in the exquisiteness of his language. Lines of superior beauty occur in almost every stanza; pages after pages may be found, in which, not pretending to weigh the style in the scales of the Florentine academy, I do not perceive one feeble verse or improper expression.

Some faults in it. 25. The conceits so often censured in Tasso, though they bespeak the false taste that had begun to prevail, do not seem quite so numerous as his critics have been apt to insinuate; but we find sometimes a trivial or affected phrase, or, according to the usage of the times, an idle allusion to mythology, when the verse or stanza requires to be filled up. A striking instance may be given from the admirable passage where Tancred discovers Clorinda in the warrior on whom he has just inflicted a mortal blow—

The effect is here complete, and here he would have desired to stop. But the necessity of the verse induced him to finish it with feebleness and affectation. Ahi vista! Ahi conoscenza! Such difficult metres as the ottava rima demand these sacrifices too frequently. Ariosto has innumerable lines of necessity.

Defects of the poem. 26. It is easy to censure the faults of this admirable poem. The supernatural machinery is perhaps somewhat in excess; yet this had been characteristic of the romantic school of poetry, which had moulded the taste of Europe, and is seldom displeasing to the reader. A still more unequivocal blemish is the disproportionate influence of love upon the heroic crusaders, giving a tinge of effeminacy to the whole poem, and exciting something like contempt in the austere critics, who have no standard of excellence in epic song but what the ancients have erected for us. But while we must acknowledge that Tasso has indulged too far the inspirations of his own temperament, it may be candid to ask ourselves, whether a subject so grave, and by necessity so full of carnage, did not require many of the softer touches which he has given it. His battles are as spirited and picturesque as those of Ariosto, and perhaps more so than those of Virgil; but to the taste of our times he has a little too much of promiscuous slaughter. The Iliad had here set an unfortunate precedent, which epic poets thought themselves bound to copy. If Erminia and Armida had not been introduced, the classical critic might have censured less in the Jerusalem; but it would have been far less also the delight of mankind.

It indicates the peculiar genius of Tasso. 27. Whatever may be the laws of criticism, every poet will best obey the dictates of his own genius. The skill and imagination of Tasso made him equal to descriptions of war; but his heart was formed for that sort of pensive voluptuousness which most distinguishes his poetry, and which is very unlike the coarser sensuality of Ariosto. He lingers around the gardens of Armida, as though he had been himself her thrall. The Florentine critics vehemently attacked her final reconciliation with Rinaldo in the twentieth canto, and the renewal of their loves; for the reader is left with no other expectation. Nor was their censure unjust; since it is a sacrifice of what should be the predominant sentiment in the conclusion of the poem. But Tasso seems to have become fond of Armida, and could not endure to leave in sorrow and despair the creature of his ethereal fancy, whom he had made so fair and so winning. It is probable that the majority of readers are pleased with this passage, but it can never escape the condemnation of severe judges.

Tasso compared to Virgil; 28. Tasso, doubtless, bears a considerable resemblance to Virgil. But, independently of the vast advantages which the Latin language possesses in majesty and vigour, and which render exact comparison difficult as well as unfair, it may be said that Virgil displays more justness of taste, a more extensive observation, and, if we may speak thus in the absence of so much poetry which he might have imitated, a more genuine originality. Tasso did not possess much of the self-springing invention which we find in a few great poets, and which, in this higher sense, I cannot concede to Ariosto; he not only borrows freely, and perhaps studiously, from the ancients, but introduces frequent lines from earlier Italian poets, and especially from Petrarch. He has also some favourite turns of phrase, which serve to give a certain mannerism to his stanzas.

to Ariosto; 29. The Jerusalem was no sooner published, than it was weighed against the Orlando Furioso, and neither Italy nor Europe have yet agreed which scale inclines. It is indeed one of those critical problems, that admit of no certain solution, whether we look to the suffrage of those who feel acutely and justly, or to the general sense of mankind. We cannot determine one poet to be superior to the other, without assuming premises which no one is bound to grant. Those who read for a stimulating variety of circumstances, and the enlivening of a leisure hour, must prefer Ariosto; and he is probably, on this account, a poet of more universal popularity. It might be said perhaps by some, that he is more a favourite of men, and Tasso of women. And yet, in Italy, the sympathy with tender and graceful poetry is so general, that the Jerusalem has hardly been less in favour with the people than its livelier rival; and its fine stanzas may still be heard by moonlight from the lips of a gondolier, floating along the calm bosom of the Giudecca.[1164]

In the latter of these stanzas there is rather too studied an effort at imitative sound; the lines are grand and nobly expressed, but they do not hurry along the reader like those of Ariosto. In his there is little attempt at vocal imitation, yet we seem to hear the cries of the suffering, and the crackling of the flames.

30. Ariosto must be placed much more below Homer, than Tasso falls short of Virgil. The Orlando has not the impetuosity of the Iliad; each is prodigiously rapid, but Homer has more momentum by his weight; the one is a hunter, the other a war-horse. The finest stanzas in Ariosto are fully equal to any in Tasso, but the latter has by no means so many feeble lines. Yet his language, though never affectedly obscure, is not so pellucid, and has a certain refinement which makes us sometimes pause to perceive the meaning. Whoever reads Ariosto slowly, will probably be offended by his negligence; whoever reads Tasso quickly, will lose something of the elaborate finish of his style.

to the Bolognese painters. 31. It is not easy to find a counterpart among painters for Ariosto. His brilliancy and fertile invention might remind us of Tintoret; but he is more natural, and less solicitous of effect. If indeed poetical diction be the correlative of colouring in our comparison of the arts, none of the Venetian school can represent the simplicity and averseness to ornament of language which belong to the Orlando Furioso; and it would be impossible, for other reasons, to look for a parallel in a Roman or Tuscan pencil. But with Tasso the case is different: and though it would be an affected expression to call him the founder of the Bolognese school, it is evident that he had a great influence on its chief painters, who came but a little after him. They imbued themselves with the spirit of a poem so congenial to their age, and so much admired in it. No one, I think, can consider their works without perceiving both the analogy of the place each hold in their respective arts, and the traces of a feeling, caught directly from Tasso as their prototype and model. We recognise his spirit in the sylvan shades and voluptuous forms of Albano and Domenichino, in the pure beauty that radiates from the ideal heads of Guido, in the skilful composition, exact design, and noble expression of the Caracci. Yet the school of Bologna seems to furnish no parallel to the enchanting grace and diffused harmony of Tasso; and we must, in this respect, look back to Correggio as his representative.

Sect. II.—On Spanish Poetry.

Luis de Leon—Herrera—Ercilla—Camoens—Spanish Ballads.

Poetry cultivated under Charles and Philip. 32. The reigns of Charles and his son have long been reckoned the golden age of Spanish poetry; and if the art of verse was not cultivated in the latter period by any quite so successful as Garcilasso and Mendoza, who belonged to the earlier part of the century, the vast number of names that have been collected by diligent inquiry show, at least, a national taste which deserves some attention. The means of exhibiting a full account of even the most select names in this crowd are not readily at hand. In Spain itself, the poets of the age of Philip II., like those who lived under his great enemy in England, were, with very few exceptions, little regarded till after the middle of the eighteenth century. The Parnaso Español of Sedano, the first volumes of which were published in 1768, made them better known; but Bouterwek observes, that it would have been easy to make a better collection, as we do not find several poems of the chief writers, with which the editor seems to have fancied the public to be sufficiently acquainted. An imperfect knowledge of the language, and a cursory view of these volumes, must disable me from speaking confidently of Castilian poetry; so far as I feel myself competent to judge, the specimens chosen by Bouterwek do no injustice to the compilation.[1165]

Luis de Leon. 33. The best lyric poet of Spain in the opinion of many, with whom I venture to concur, was Fra Luis Ponce de Leon, born in 1527, and whose poems were probably written not very long after the middle of the century. The greater part are translations, but his original productions are chiefly religious, and full of that soft mysticism which allies itself so well to the emotions of a poetical mind. One of his odes, De la Vida del Cielo, which will be found entire in Bouterwek, is an exquisite pieces of lyric poetry, which, in its peculiar line of devout aspiration, has perhaps never been excelled.[1166] But the warmth of his piety was tempered by a classical taste, which he had matured by the habitual imitation of Horace. At an early age, says Bouterwek, he became intimately acquainted with the odes of Horace, and the elegance and purity of style which distinguish those compositions made a deep impression on his imagination. Classical simplicity and dignity were the models constantly present to his creative fancy. He, however, appropriated to himself the character of Horace’s poetry too naturally ever to incur the danger of servile imitation. He discarded the prolix style of the canzone, and imitated the brevity of the strophes of Horace in romantic measures of syllables and rhymes; more just feeling for the imitation of the ancients was never evinced by any modern poet. His odes have, however, a character totally different from those of Horace, though the sententious air which marks the style of both authors imparts to them a deceptive resemblance. The religious austerity of Luis de Leon’s life was not to be reconciled with the epicurism of the Latin poet; but notwithstanding this very different disposition of the mind, it is not surprising that they should have adopted the same form of poetic expression, for each possessed a fine imagination, subordinate to the control of a sound understanding. Which of the two is the superior poet, in the most extended sense of the word, it would be difficult to determine, as each formed his style by free imitation, and neither overstepped the boundaries of a certain sphere of practical observation. Horace’s odes exhibit a superior style of art; and from the relationship between the thoughts and images, possess a degree of attraction which is wanting in those of Luis de Leon; but, on the other hand, the latter are the more rich in that natural kind of poetry, which may be regarded as the overflowing of a pure soul, elevated to the loftiest regions of moral and religious idealism.[1167] Among the fruits of these Horatian studies of Luis de Leon, we must place an admirable ode suggested by the prophecy of Nereus, wherein the genius of the Tagus, rising from its waters to Rodrigo, the last of the Goths, as he lay encircled in the arms of Cava, denounces the ruin which their guilty loves were to entail upon Spain.[1168]

Herrera. 34. Next to Luis de Leon in merit, and perhaps above him in European renown, we find Herrera surnamed the divine. He died in 1578; and his poems seem to have been first collectively published in 1582. He was an innovator in poetical language, whose boldness was sustained by popularity, though it may have diminished his fame. Herrera was a poet, says Bouterwek, of powerful talent, and one who evinced undaunted resolution in pursuing the new path which he had struck out for himself. The noble style, however, which he wished to introduce into Spanish poetry, was not the result of a spontaneous essay, flowing from immediate inspiration, but was theoretically constructed on artificial principles. Thus, amidst traits of real beauty, his poetry everywhere presents marks of affectation. The great fault of his language is too much singularity; and his expression, where it ought to be elevated, is merely far fetched.[1169] Velasquez observes that, notwithstanding the genius and spirit of Herrera, his extreme care to polish his versification has rendered it sometimes unpleasing to those who require harmony and ease.[1170]

35. Of these defects in the style of Herrera I cannot judge; his odes appear to possess a lyric elevation and richness of phrase, derived in some measure from the study of Pindar, or still more, perhaps, of the Old Testament, and worthy of comparison with Chiabrera. Those on the battle of Lepanto are most celebrated; they pour forth a torrent of resounding song, in those rich tones which the Castilian language so abundantly supplies. I cannot so thoroughly admire the ode addressed to sleep, which Bouterwek as well as Sedano extol. The images are in themselves pleasing and appropriate, the lines steal with a graceful flow on the ear; but we should desire to find something more raised above the commonplaces of poetry.

General tone of Castilian poetry. 36. The poets of this age belong generally, more or less, to the Italian school. Many of them were also translators from Latin. In their odes, epistles, and sonnets, the resemblance of style, as well as that of the languages, make us sometimes almost believe that we are reading the Italian instead of the Spanish Parnaso. There seem however to be some shades of difference even in those who trod the same path. The Castilian amatory verse is more hyperbolical, more full of extravagant metaphors, but less subtle, less prone to ingenious trifling, less blemished by verbal conceits than the Italian. Such at least is what has struck me in the slight acquaintance I have with the former. The Spanish poets are also more redundant in descriptions of nature, and more sensible to her beauties. I dare not assert that they have less grace and less power of exciting emotion; it may be my misfortune to have fallen rarely on such passages.

Castillejo. 37. It is at least evident that the imitation of Italy, propagated by Boscan and his followers, was not the indigenous style of Castile. And of this some of her most distinguished poets were always sensible. In the Diana of Montemayor, a romance which, as such, we shall have to mention hereafter, the poetry, largely interspersed, bears partly the character of the new, partly that of the old or native school. The latter is esteemed superior. Castillejo endeavoured to restore the gay rhythm of the redondilla, and turned into ridicule the imitators of Petrarch. Bouterwek speaks rather slightingly of his generally poetic powers; though some of his canciones have a considerable share of elegance. His genius, playful and witty, rather than elegant, seemed not ill-fitted to revive the popular poetry.[1171] But those who claimed the praise of superior talents did not cease to cultivate the polished style of Italy. The most conspicuous, perhaps, before the end of the century were Gil Polo, Espinel, Lope de Vega, Barahona de Soto, and Figueroa.[1172] Several other names, not without extracts, will be found in Bouterwek.

The translation of Tasso’s Aminta, by Jauregui, has been preferred by Menage as well as Cervantes to the original. But there is no extraordinary merit in turning Italian into Spanish, even with some improvement of the diction.

Araucana of Ercilla. 38. Voltaire, in his early and very defective essay on epic poetry, made known to Europe the Araucana of Ercilla, which has ever since enjoyed a certain share of reputation, though condemned by many critics as tedious and prosaic. Bouterwek depreciates it in rather more sweeping a manner than seems consistent with the admissions he afterwards makes.[1173] A talent for lively description and for painting situations, a natural and correct diction, which he ascribes to Ercilla, if they do not constitute a claim to a high rank among poets, are at least as much as many have possessed. An English writer of good taste has placed him in a triumvirate with Homer and Ariosto for power of narration.[1174] Raynouard observes, that Ercilla has taken Ariosto as his model, especially in the opening of his cantos. But the long digressions and episodes of the Araucana, which the poet has not had the art to connect with his subject, render it fatiguing. The first edition, in 1569, contains but fifteen books; the second part was published in 1578, the whole together in 1590.[1175]

Many epic poems in Spain. 39. The Araucana is so far from standing alone in this class of poetry, that not less than twenty-five epic poems appeared in Spain within little more than half a century. These will be found enumerated, and, as far as possible, described and characterised, in Velasquez’s History of Spanish Poetry, which I always quote in the German translation with the valuable notes of Dieze.[1176] Bouterwek mentions but a part of the number, and a few of them may be conjectured by the titles not to be properly epic. It is denied by these writers, that Ercilla excelled all his contemporaries in heroic song. I find, however, a different sentence in a Spanish poet of that age, who names him as superior to the rest.[1177]

La Casa de la Memoria, por Vicente Espinel, in Parnaso Espanol, viii. 352.

Antonio, near the end of the seventeenth century, extols Ercilla very highly, but intimates that some did not relish his simple perspicuity. Ad hunc usque diem ob iis omnibus avidissime legitur, qui facile dicendi genus atque perspicuum admittere vim suam et nervos, nativaque sublimitate quadam attolli posse, cothurnatumque ire non ignorant.

Camoens. 40. But in Portugal there had arisen a poet, in comparison of whose glory that of Ercilla is as nothing. The name of Camoens has truly an European reputation, but the Lusiad is written in a language not generally familiar. From Portuguese critics it would be unreasonable to demand want of prejudice in favour of a poet so illustrious, and of a poem so peculiarly national. The Æneid reflects the glory of Rome as from a mirror; the Lusiad is directly and exclusively what its name The Portuguese (Os Lusiadas) denotes, the praise of the Lusitanian people. Their past history chimes in, by means of episodes, with the great event of Gama’s voyage to India. The faults of Camoens, in the management of his fable and the choice of machinery, are sufficiently obvious; it is, nevertheless, the first successful attempt in modern Europe to construct an epic poem on the ancient model; for the Gierusalemme Liberata, though incomparably superior, was not written or published so soon. In consequence, perhaps, of this epic form, which, even when imperfectly delineated, long obtained, from the general veneration for antiquity, a greater respect at the hands of critics than perhaps it deserved, the celebrity of Camoens has always been considerable. |Defects of the Lusiad.| In point of fame he ranks among the poets of the south, immediately after the first names of Italy; nor is the distinctive character that belongs to the poetry of the southern languages anywhere more fully perceived than in the Lusiad. In a general estimate of its merits it must appear rather feeble and prosaic; the geographical and historical details are insipid and tedious; a skilful use of poetical artifice is never exhibited; we are little detained to admire an ornamented diction, or glowing thoughts, or brilliant imagery; a certain negligence disappoints us in the most beautiful passages; and it is not till a second perusal, that their sweetness has time to glide into the heart. The celebrated stanzas on Inez De Castro are a proof of this.

Its excellencies. 41. These deficiencies, as a taste formed in the English school, or in that of classical antiquity, is apt to account them, are greatly compensated, and doubtless far more to a native than they can be to us, by a freedom from all that offends, for he is never turgid, nor affected, nor obscure, by a perfect ease and transparency of narration, by scenes and descriptions, possessing a certain charm of colouring, and perhaps not less pleasing from the apparent negligence of the pencil, by a style kept up at a level just above common language, by a mellifluous versification, and, above all, by a kind of soft languor which tones, as it were, the whole poem, and brings perpetually home to our minds the poetical character and interesting fortunes of its author. As the mirror of a heart so full of love, courage, generosity, and patriotism, as that of Camoens, the Lusiad can never fail to please us, whatever place we may assign to it in the records of poetical genius.[1178]

Mickle’s translation. 42. The Lusiad is best known in England by the translation of Mickle, who has been thought to have done something more than justice to his author, both by the unmeasured eulogies he bestows upon him, and by the more substantial service of excelling the original in his unfaithful delineation.[1179] The style of Mickle is certainly more poetical, according to our standard, than that of Camoens, that is, more figurative and emphatic; but it seems to me replenished with commonplace phrases, and wanting in the facility and sweetness of the original; in which it is well known that he has interpolated a great deal without a pretence.

Celebrated passage in the Lusiad. 43. The most celebrated passage in the Lusiad is that wherein the Spirit of the Cape, rising in the midst of his stormy seas, threatens the daring adventurer that violates their unploughed waters. In order to judge fairly of this conception, we should endeavour to forget all that has been written in imitation of it. Nothing has become more commonplace in poetry than one of its highest flights, supernatural personification; and, as children draw notable monsters when they cannot come near the human form, so every poetaster, who knows not how to describe one object in nature, is quite at home with a goblin. Considered by itself, the idea is impressive and even sublime. Nor am I aware of any evidence to impeach its originality, in the only sense which originality of poetical invention can bear; it is a combination which strikes us with the force of novelty, and which we cannot instantly resolve into any constituent elements. The prophecy of Nereus, to which we have lately alluded, is much removed in grandeur and appropriateness of circumstance from this passage of Camoens, though it may contain the germ of his conception. It is, however, one that seems much above the genius of its author. Mild, graceful, melancholy, he has never given in any other place signs of such vigorous imagination. And when we read these lines on the Spirit of the Cape, it is impossible not to perceive that, like Frankenstein, he is unable to deal with the monster he has created. The formidable Adamastor is rendered mean by particularity of description, descending even to yellow teeth. The speech put into his mouth is feeble and prolix; and it is a serious objection to the whole, that the awful vision answers no purpose but that of ornament, and is impotent against the success and glory of the navigators. A spirit of whatever dimensions, that can neither overwhelm a ship, nor even raise a tempest, is incomparably less terrible than a real hurricane.

Minor poems of Camoens. 44. Camoens is still, in his shorter poems, esteemed the chief of Portuguese poets in this age, and possibly in every other; his countrymen deem him their model, and judge of later verse by comparison with his. In every kind of composition then used in Portugal, he has left proofs of excellence. Most of his sonnets, says Bouterwek, have love for their theme, and they are of very unequal merit; some are full of Petrarchic tenderness and grace, and moulded with classic correctness, others are impetuous and romantic, or disfigured by false learning, or full of tedious pictures of the conflicts of passion with reason. Upon the whole, however, no Portuguese poet has so correctly seized the character of the sonnet as Camoens. Without apparent effort, merely by the ingenious contrast of the first eight with the last six lines, he knew how to make these little effusions convey a poetic unity of ideas and impressions, after the model of the best Italian sonnets, in so natural a manner, that the first lines or quartets of the sonnet excite a soft expectation, which is harmoniously fulfilled by the tercets or last six lines.[1180] The same writer praises several other of the miscellaneous compositions of Camoens.

Ferreira. 45. But, though no Portuguese of the sixteenth century has come near to this illustrious poet, Ferreira endeavoured with much good sense, if not with great elevation, to emulate the didactic tone of Horace, both in lyric poems and epistles, of which the latter have been most esteemed.[1181] The classical school formed by Ferreira produced other poets in the sixteenth century; but it seems to have been little in unison with the national character. The reader will find as full an account of these as, if he is unacquainted with the Portuguese language, he is likely to desire, in the author on whom I have chiefly relied.

Spanish ballads. 46. The Spanish ballads or romances are of very different ages. Some of them, as has been observed in another place, belong to the fifteenth century; and there seems sufficient ground for referring a small number to even an earlier date. But by far the greater portion is of the reign of Philip II., or even that of his successor. The Moorish romances, in general, and all those on the Cid, are reckoned by Spanish critics among the most modern. Those published by Depping and Duran have rarely an air of the raciness and simplicity which usually distinguish the poetry of the people, and seem to have been written by poets of Valladolid or Madrid, the contemporaries of Cervantes, with a good deal of elegance, though not much vigour. The Moors of romance, the chivalrous gentlemen of Granada, were displayed by these Castilian poets in attractive colours;[1182] and much more did the traditions of their own heroes, especially of the Cid, the bravest and most noble-minded of them all, furnish materials for their popular songs. Their character, it is observed by the latest editor, is unlike that of the older romances of chivalry, which had been preserved orally, as he conceives, down to the middle of the sixteenth century, when they were inserted in the Cancionero de Romances at Antwerp, 1555.[1183] I have been informed that an earlier edition printed in Spain has lately been discovered. In these there is a certain prolixity and hardness of style, a want of connection, a habit of repeating verses or entire passages from others. They have nothing of the marvellous, nor borrow anything from Arabian sources. In some others of the more ancient poetry there are traces of the oriental manner, and a peculiar tone of wild melancholy. The little poems scattered through the prose romance, entitled, Las Guerras de Granada, are rarely, as I should conceive, older than the reign of Philip II. These Spanish ballads are known to our public, but generally with inconceivable advantage, by the very fine and animated translations of Mr. Lockhart.[1184]

The older romances are usually in alternate verses of eight and seven syllables, and the rhymes are consonant, or real rhymes. The assonance is however older than Lord Holland supposes, who says (Life of Lope de Vega, vol. ii. p. 12), that it was not introduced till the end of the sixteenth century. It occurs in several that Duran reckons ancient.

The romance of the Conde Alarcos is probably of the fifteenth century. This is written in octosyllable consonant rhymes, without division of strophes. The Moorish ballads, with a very few exceptions, belong to the reigns of Philip II. and Philip III., and those of the Cid, about which so much interest has been taken, are the latest, and among the least valuable of all. All these are, I believe, written on the principle of assonances.

Sect. III.—On French and German Poetry.

French Poetry—Ronsard—His Followers—German Poets.

French poets numerous. 47. This was an age of verse in France; and perhaps in no subsequent period do we find so long a catalogue of her poets. Goujet has recorded not merely the names, but the lives, in some measure, of nearly two hundred, whose works were published in this half century. Of this number scarcely more than five or six are much remembered in their own country. It is possible indeed that the fastidiousness of French criticism, or their idolatry of the age of Louis XIV., and of that of Voltaire, may have led to a little injustice in their estimate of these early versifiers. Our own prejudices are apt of late to take an opposite direction.

Change in the tone of French poetry. 48. A change in the character of French poetry, about the commencement of this period, is referrible to the general revolution of literature. The allegorical personifications which, from the æra of the Roman de la Rose, had been the common field of verse, became far less usual, and gave place to an inundation of mythology and classical allusion. The Désir and Reine d’Amour of the older school became Cupid with his arrows and Venus with her doves; the theological and cardinal virtues, which had gained so many victories over Sensualité and Faux Semblant, vanished themselves from a poetry which had generally enlisted itself under the enemy’s banner. This cutting off of an old resource rendered it necessary to explore other mines. All antiquity was ransacked for analogies; and, where the images were not wearisomely commonplace, they were absurdly far-fetched. This revolution was certainly not instantaneous; but it followed the rapid steps of philological learning, which had been nothing at the accession of Francis I., and was everything at his death. In his court, and in that of his son, if business or gallantry rendered learning impracticable, it was at least the mode to affect an esteem for it. Many names in the list of French poets are conspicuous for high rank, and a greater number are among the famous scholars of the age. These, accustomed to writing in Latin, sometimes in verse, and yielding a superstitious homage to the mighty dead of antiquity, thought they ennobled their native language by destroying her idiomatic purity.

Ronsard. 49. The prevalence however of this pedantry, was chiefly owing to one poet, of great though short-lived renown, Pierre Ronsard. He was the first of seven contemporaries in song under Henry II., then denominated the French Pleiad; the others were Jodelle, Bellay, Baif, Thyard, Dorat, and Belleau. Ronsard, well acquainted with the ancient languages, and full of the most presumptuous vanity, fancied that he was born to mould the speech of his fathers into new forms more adequate to his genius.

His style, therefore, is as barbarous, if the continual adoption of Latin and Greek derivatives renders a modern language barbarous, as his allusions are pedantic. They are more ridiculously such in his amatory sonnets; in his odes these faults are rather less intolerable, and there is a spirit and grandeur which show him to have possessed a poetical mind.[1186] The popularity of Ronsard was extensive; and, though he sometimes complained of the neglect of the great, he wanted not the approbation of those whom poets are most ambitious to please. Charles IX. addressed some lines to Ronsard, which are really elegant, and at least do more honour to that prince than anything else recorded of him; and the verses of this poet are said to have enlightened the weary hours of Mary Stuart’s imprisonment. On his death in 1586 a funeral service was performed in Paris with the best music that the king could command; it was attended by the Cardinal de Bourbon and an immense concourse; eulogies in prose and verse were recited in the university; and in those anxious moments, when the crown of France was almost in its agony, there was leisure to lament that Ronsard had been withdrawn. How differently attended was the grave of Spenser![1187]

50. Ronsard was capable of conceiving strongly, and bringing his conceptions in clear and forcible, though seldom in pure or well-chosen language before the mind. The poem, entitled Promesse, which will be found in Auguis’s Recueil des Anciens Poëtes, is a proof of this, and excels what little besides I have read of this poet.[1188] Bouterwek, whose criticism on Ronsard appears fair and just, and who gives him, and those who belonged to his school, credit for perceiving the necessity of elevating the tone of French verse above the creeping manner of the allegorical rhymers, observes that, even in his errors, we discover a spirit striving upwards, disdaining what is trivial, and restless in the pursuit of excellence.[1189] But such a spirit may produce very bad and tasteless poetry. La Harpe, who admits Ronsard’s occasional beauties and his poetic fire, is repelled by his scheme of versification, full of enjambemens, as disgusting to a correct French ear as they are, in a moderate use, pleasing to our own. After the appearance of Malherbe, the poetry of Ronsard fell into contempt, and the pure correctness of Louis XIV.’s age was not likely to endure his barbarous innovations and false taste.[1190] Balzac not long afterwards turns his pedantry into ridicule, and admitting the abundance of the stream, adds that it was turbid.[1191] In later times more justice has been done to the spirit and imagination of this poet, without repealing the sentence against his style.[1192]

Other French poets. 51. The remaining stars of the Pleiad, except perhaps Bellay, sometimes called the French Ovid, and whose Regrets, or lamentations for his absence from France during a residence at Rome, are almost as querulous, if not quite so reasonable, as those of his prototype on the Ister,[1193] seem scarce worthy of particular notice; for Jodelle, the founder of the stage in France, has deserved much less credit as a poet, and fell into the fashionable absurdity of making French out of Greek. Raynouard bestows some eulogy on Baif.[1194] Those who came afterwards were sometimes imitators of Ronsard, and, like most imitators of a faulty manner, far more pedantic and far-fetched than himself. An unintelligible refinement, that every nation in Europe seems in succession to have admitted into its poetry, has consigned much then written in France to oblivion. As large a proportion of the French verse in this period seems to be amatory as of the Italian; and the Italian style is sometimes followed. But a simpler and more lively turn of language, though without the naïveté of Marot, often distinguishes these compositions. These pass the bounds of decency not seldom; a privilege which seems in Italy to have been reserved for certain Fescennine metres, and is not indulged to the solemnity of the sonnet or canzone. The Italian language is ill-adapted to the epigram, in which the French succeed so well.[1195]

Du Bartas. 52. A few may be selected from the numerous versifiers under the sons of Henry II. Amadis Jamyn, the pupil of Ronsard, was reckoned by his contemporaries almost a rival, and is more natural, less inflated and emphatic than his master.[1196] This praise is by no means due to a more celebrated poet, Du Bartas. His productions, which are numerous, unlike those of his contemporaries, turn mostly upon sacred history; but his poem on the Creation, called La Semaine, is that which obtained most reputation, and by which alone he is now known. The translation by Silvester has rendered it in some measure familiar to the readers of our old poetry; and attempts have been made, not without success, to show that Milton had been diligent in picking jewels from this mass of bad taste and bad writing. Du Bartas, in his style, was a disciple of Ronsard; he affects words derived from the ancient languages, or, if founded on analogy, yet without precedent, and has as little naturalness or dignity in his images as purity in his idiom. But his imagination, though extravagant, is vigorous and original.[1197]

Du Bartas, according to a French writer of the next century, used methods of exciting his imagination which I recommend to the attention of young poets. L’on dit en France, que Du Bartas auparavant que de faire cette belle description de cheval ou il a si bien rencontré, s’enfermoit quelquefois dans une chambre, et se mettant à quatre pattes, souffloit, hennissoit, gambadoit, tirait des ruades, alloit l’amble, le trot, le galop, â courbette, et tachoit par toutes sortes de moyens à bien contrefaire le cheval. Naudé’s Considérations sur les Coups d’Estat. p. 47.

Pibrac; Desportes. 53. Pibrac, a magistrate of great integrity, obtained an extraordinary reputation by his quatrains; a series of moral tetrastichs in the style of Theognis. These first appeared in 1574, fifty in number, and were augmented to 126 in later editions. They were continually republished in the seventeenth century, and translated into many European and even oriental languages. It cannot be wonderful that, in the change of taste and manners, they have ceased to be read.[1198] An imitation of the sixth satire of Horace, by Nicolas Rapin, printed in the collection of Auguis is good and in very pure style.[1199] Philippe Desportes somewhat later chose a better school than that of Ronsard; he rejected its pedantry and affectation, and by the study of Tibullus, as well as by his natural genius, gave a tenderness and grace to the poetry of love which those pompous versifiers had never sought. He has been esteemed the precursor of a better æra; and his versification is rather less lawless,[1200] according to La Harpe, than that of his predecessors.

French metre and versification. 54. The rules of metre became gradually established. Few writers of this period neglect the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes;[1201] but the open vowel will be found in several of the earlier. Du Bartas almost affects the enjambement, or continuation of the sense beyond the couplet; and even Desportes does not avoid it. Their metres are various; the Alexandrine, if so we may call it, or verse of twelve syllables, was occasionally adopted by Ronsard, and in time displaced the old verse of ten syllables, which became appropriated to the lighter style. The sonnets, as far as I have observed, are regular; and this form, which had been very little known in France, after being introduced by Jodelle and Ronsard, became one of the most popular modes of composition.[1202] Several attempts were made to naturalise the Latin metres; but this pedantic innovation could not long have success. Specimens of it may be found in Pasquier.[1203]

Passerat, Ronsard, Nicolas Rapin, and Pasquier, tried their hands in this style. Rapin improved upon it by rhyming in Sapphics. The following stanzas are from his ode on the death of Ronsard:—

General character of French poetry. 55. It may be said, perhaps, of French poetry in general, but at least in this period, that it deviates less from a certain standard than any other. It is not often low, as may be imputed to the earlier writers, because a peculiar style, removed from common speech, and supposed to be classical, was a condition of satisfying the critics; it is not often obscure, at least in syntax, as the Italian sonnet is apt to be, because the genius of the language and the habits of society demanded perspicuity. But it seldom delights us by a natural sentiment or unaffected grace of diction, because both one and the other were fettered by conventional rules. The monotony of amorous song is more wearisome, if that be possible, than among the Italians.

German poetry. 56. The characteristics of German verse impressed upon it by the meister-singers still remained, though the songs of those fraternities seem to have ceased. It was chiefly didactic or religious, often satirical, and employing the veil of apologue. Luther, Hans Sachs, and other more obscure names are counted among the fabulists; but the most successful was Burcard Waldis, whose fables, partly from Æsop, partly original, were first published in 1548. The Froschmauseler of Rollenhagen, in 1545, is in a similar style of political and moral apologue with some liveliness of description. Fischart is another of the moral satirists, but extravagant in style and humour, resembling Rabelais, of whose romance he gave a free translation. One of his poems, Die Gluckhafte Schiff, is praised by Bouterwek for beautiful descriptions and happy inventions; but in general he seems to be the Skelton of Germany. Many German ballads belong to this period, partly taken from the old tales of chivalry: in these the style is humble, with no poetry except that of invention, which is not their own; yet they are true-hearted and unaffected, and better than what the next age produced.[1204]

Sect. IV.—On English Poetry.

Paradise of Dainty Devices—Sackville—Gascoyne—Spenser’s Shepherd’s Kalendar—Improvement in Poetry—England’s Helicon—Sydney—Shakspeare’s Poems—Poets near the Close of the Century—Translations—Scots and English Ballads—Spenser’s Faery Queen.

Paradise of Dainty Devices. 57. The poems of Wyatt and Surrey with several more first appeared in 1557, and were published in a little book, entitled Tottel’s Miscellanies. But as both of these belonged to the reign of Henry VIII. their poetry has come already under our review. It is probable that Lord Vaux’s short pieces, which are next to those of Surrey and Wyatt in merit, were written before the middle of the century. Some of these are published in Tottel, and others in a scarce collection, the first edition of which was in 1576, quaintly named, The Paradise of Dainty Devices. The poems in this volume, as in that of Tottel, are not coeval with its publication; it has been supposed to represent the age of Mary, full as much as that of Elizabeth, and one of the chief contributors, if not framers of the collection, Richard Edwards, died in 1566. Thirteen poems are by Lord Vaux, who certainly did not survive the reign of Mary.

Character of this collection. 58. We are indebted to Sir Egerton Brydges for the republication, in his British Bibliographer, of the Paradise of Dainty Devices, of which, though there had been eight editions, it is said that not above six copies existed.[1205] The poems are almost all short, and by more nearly thirty than twenty different authors. They do not, it must be admitted, says their editor, belong to the higher classes; they are of the moral and didactic kind. In their subject there is too little variety, as they deal very generally in the commonplaces of ethics, such as the fickleness and caprices of love, the falsehood and instability of friendship, and the vanity of all human pleasures. But many of these are often expressed with a vigour which would do credit to any æra.... If my partiality does not mislead me, there is in most of these short pieces some of that indescribable attraction which springs from the colouring of the heart. The charm of imagery is wanting, but the precepts inculcated seem to flow from the feelings of an overloaded bosom. Edwards, he considers, probably with justice, as the best of the contributors, and Lord Vaux the next. We should be inclined to give as high a place to William Hunnis, were his productions all equal to one little poem;[1206] but too often he falls into trivial morality and a ridiculous excess of alliteration. The amorous poetry is the best in this Paradise; it is not imaginative or very graceful, or exempt from the false taste of antithetical conceits, but sometimes natural and pleasing; the serious pieces are in general very heavy, yet there is a dignity and strength in some of the devotional strains. They display the religious earnestness of that age with a kind of austere philosophy in their views of life. Whatever indeed be the subject, a tone of sadness reigns through this misnamed Paradise of Daintiness, as it does through all the English poetry of this particular age. It seems as if the confluence of the poetic melancholy of the Petrarchists with the reflective seriousness of the Reformation overpowered the lighter sentiments of the soul; and some have imagined, I know not how justly, that the persecutions of Mary’s reign contributed to this effect.

When first mine eyes did view and mark.

The little poem of Edwards, called Amantium Iræ, has often been reprinted in modern collections, and is reckoned by Brydges one of the most beautiful in the language. But hardly any light poem of this early period is superior to some lines addressed to Isabella Markham by Sir John Harrington, of the date of 1564. If these are genuine, and I know not how to dispute it, they are as polished as any written at the close of the Queen’s reign. These are not in the Paradise of Dainty Devices.

Sackville’s induction. 59. But at the close of that dark period, while bigotry might be expected to render the human heart torpid, and the English nation seemed too fully absorbed in religious and political discontent, to take much relish in literary amusements, one man shone out for an instant in the higher walks of poetry. This was Thomas Sackville, many years afterwards Lord Buckhurst, and High Treasurer of England, thus withdrawn from the haunts of the muses to a long and honourable career of active life. The Mirrour of Magistrates, published in 1559, is a collection of stories by different authors, on the plan of Boccaccio’s prose work, De Casibus virorum illustrium, recounting the misfortunes and reverses of men eminent in English history. It was designed to form a series of dramatic soliloquies united in one interlude.[1207] Sackville, who seems to have planned the scheme, wrote an Induction, or prologue, and also one of the stories, that of the first Duke of Buckingham. The Induction displays best his poetical genius; it is, like much earlier poetry, a representation of allegorical personages, but with a fertility of imagination, vividness of description, and strength of language, which not only leave his predecessors far behind, but may fairly be compared with some of the most poetical passages in Spenser. Sackville’s Induction forms a link which unites the school of Chaucer and Lydgate to the Faery Queen. It would certainly be vain to look in Chaucer, wherever Chaucer is original, for the grand creations of Sackville’s fancy, yet we should never find any one who would rate Sackville above Chaucer. The strength of an eagle is not to be measured only by the height of his place, but by the time that he continues on the wing. Sackville’s Induction consists of a few hundred lines; and even in these there is a monotony of gloom and sorrow, which prevents us from wishing it to be longer. It is truly styled by Campbell a landscape on which the sun never shines. Chaucer is various, flexible, and observant of all things in outward nature, or in the heart of man. But Sackville is far above the frigid elegance of Surrey; and, in the first days of the virgin reign, is the herald of that splendour in which it was to close.

Inferiority of poets in early years of Elizabeth. 60. English poetry was not speedily animated by the example of Sackville. His genius stands absolutely alone in the age to which as a poet he belongs. Not that there was any deficiency in the number of versifiers; the muses were honoured by the frequency, if not by the dignity, of their worshippers. A different sentence will be found in some books; and it has become common to elevate the Elizabethan age in one undiscriminating panegyric. For wise counsellors, indeed, and acute politicians, we could not perhaps extol one part of that famous reign at the expense of another. Cecil and Bacon, Walsingham, Smith, and Sadler, belong to the earlier days of the queen. But in a literary point of view, the contrast is great between the first and second moiety of her four and forty years. We have seen this already in other subjects than poetry; and in that we may appeal to such parts of the Mirrour of Magistrates as are not written by Sackville, to the writings of Churchyard, or to those of Gouge and Turberville. These writers scarcely venture to leave the ground, or wander in the fields of fancy. They even abstain from the ordinary commonplaces of verse, as if afraid that the reader should distrust or misinterpret their images. |Gascoyne.| The first who deserves to be mentioned as an exception is George Gascoyne, whose Steel Glass, published in 1576, is the earliest instance of English satire, and has strength and sense enough to deserve respect. Chalmers has praised it highly. There is a vein of sly sarcasm in this piece which appears to me to be original; and his intimate knowledge of mankind enabled him to give a more curious picture of the dress, manners, amusements, and follies of the times, than we meet with in almost any other author. His Steel Glass is among the first specimens of blank verse in our language. This blank verse, however, is but indifferently constructed. Gascoyne’s long poem, called The Fruits of War, is in the doggrel style of his age; and the general commendations of Chalmers on this poet seem rather hyperbolical. But his minor poems, especially one called The Arraignment of a Lover, have much spirit and gaiety;[1208] and we may leave him a respectable place among the Elizabethan versifiers.

Spenser’s Shepherd’s Kalendar. 61. An epoch was made, if we may draw an inference from the language of contemporaries, by the publication of Spenser’s Shepherd’s Kalendar in 1579.[1209] His primary idea, that of adapting a pastoral to every month of the year, was pleasing and original, though he has frequently neglected to observe the season, even when it was most abundant in appropriate imagery. But his Kalendar is, in another respect, original, at least when compared with the pastoral writings of that age. This species of composition had become so much the favourite of courts, that no language was thought to suit it but that of courtiers, which, with all its false beauties of thought and expression, was transferred to the mouths of shepherds. A striking instance of this had lately been shown in the Aminta; and it was a proof of Spenser’s judgment, as well as genius, that he struck out a new line of pastoral, far more natural, and therefore more pleasing, so far as imitation of nature is the source of poetical pleasure, instead of vieing, in our more harsh and uncultivated language, with the consummate elegance of Tasso. It must be admitted, however, that he fell too much into the opposite extreme, and gave a Doric rudeness to his dialogue, which is a little repulsive to our taste. The dialect of Theocritus is musical to our ears, and free from vulgarity; praises which we cannot bestow on the uncouth provincial rusticity of Spenser. He has been less justly censured on another account, for intermingling allusions to the political history and religious differences of his own times; and an ingenious critic has asserted that the description of the grand and beautiful objects of nature, with well-selected scenes of rural life, real but not coarse, constitute the only proper materials of pastoral poetry. These limitations, however, seem little conformable to the practice of poets or the taste of mankind; and if Spenser has erred in the allegorical part of his pastorals, he has done so in company with most of those who have tuned the shepherd’s pipe. Several of Virgil’s Eclogues, and certainly the best, have a meaning beyond the simple songs of the hamlet; and it was notorious that the Portuguese and Spanish pastoral romances, so popular in Spenser’s age, teemed with delineations of real character, and sometimes were the mirrors of real story. In fact, mere pastoral must soon become insipid, unless it borrows something from active life or elevated philosophy. The most interesting parts of the Shepherd’s Kalendar are of this description; for Spenser has not displayed the powers of his own imagination so strongly as we might expect in pictures of natural scenery. This poem has spirit and beauty in many passages; but is not much read in the present day, nor does it seem to be approved by modern critics. It was otherwise formerly. Webbe, in his Discourse of English Poetry, 1586, calls Spenser the rightest English poet he ever read, and thinks he would have surpassed Theocritus and Virgil, if the coarseness of our speech had been no greater impediment to him, than their pure native tongues were to them. And Drayton says, Master Edmund Spenser had done enough for the immortality of his name, had he only given us his Shepherd’s Kalendar, a masterpiece, if any.[1210]

Sydney’s character of contemporary poets. 62. Sir Philip Sydney, in his Defence of Poesie, which may have been written at any time between 1581 and his death in 1586, laments that poesy thus embraced in all other places, should only find in our time a bad welcome in England; and, after praising Sackville, Surrey, and Spenser for the Shepherd’s Kalendar, does not remember to have seen many more that have poetical sinews in them. For proof whereof, let but most of the verses be put into prose, and then ask the meaning, and it will be found that one verse did but beget another, without ordering at the first what should be at the last; which becomes a confused mass of words, with a tinkling sound of rhyme, barely accompanied with reason.... Truly many of such writings as come under the banner of irresistible love, if I were a mistress, would never persuade me they were in love; so coldly they apply fiery speeches as men that had rather read lovers’ writings, and so caught up certain swelling phrases, than that in truth they feel those passions.

Improvement soon after this time. 63. It cannot be denied that some of these blemishes are by no means unusual in the writers of the Elizabethan age, as in truth they are found also in much other poetry of many countries. But a change seems to have come over the spirit of English poetry soon after 1580. Sydney, Raleigh, Lodge, Breton, Marlowe, Greene, Watson, are the chief contributors to a collection called England’s Helicon, published in 1600, and comprising many of the fugitive pieces of the last twenty years. Davidson’s Poetical Rhapsody, in 1602, is a miscellany of the same class. A few other collections are known to have existed, but are still more scarce than these. England’s Helicon, by far the most important, has been reprinted in the same volume of the British Bibliographer as the Paradise of Dainty Devices. In this juxtaposition the difference of their tone is very perceptible. Love occupies by far the chief portion of the later miscellany; and love no longer pining and melancholy, but sportive and boastful. Every one is familiar with the beautiful song of Marlowe, Come live with me and be my love; and with the hardly less beautiful answer ascribed to Raleigh. Lodge has ten pieces in this collection, and Breton eight. These are generally full of beauty, grace, and simplicity; and, while in reading the productions of Edwards and his coadjutors every sort of allowance is to be made, and we can only praise a little at intervals, these lyrics, twenty or thirty years later, are among the best in our language. The conventional tone is that of pastoral; and thus, if they have less of the depth sometimes shown in serious poetry, they have less also of obscurity and false refinement.[1211]

Relaxation of moral austerity. 64. We may easily perceive in the literature of the later period of the queen, what our biographical knowledge confirms, that much of the austerity characteristic of her earlier years had vanished away. The course of time, the progress of vanity, the prevalent dislike, above all, of the Puritans, avowed enemies of gaiety, concurred to this change. The most distinguished courtiers, Raleigh, Essex, Blount, and we must add Sydney, were men of brilliant virtues, but not without license of morals; while many of the wits and poets, such as Nash, Greene, Peele, Marlowe, were notoriously of very dissolute lives.

Serious poetry. 65. The graver strains, however, of religion and philosophy were still heard in verse. The Soul’s Errand, printed anonymously in Davison’s Rhapsody, and ascribed by Ellis, probably without reason, to Silvester, is characterised by strength, condensation, and simplicity.[1212] And we might rank in a respectable place among these English poets, though I think he has been lately overrated, one whom the jealous law too prematurely deprived of life, Robert Southwell, executed as a seminary priest in 1591, under one of those persecuting statutes which even the traitorous restlessness of the English Jesuits cannot excuse. Southwell’s poetry wears a deep tinge of gloom, which seems to presage a catastrophe too usual to have been unexpected. It is, as may be supposed, almost wholly religious; the shorter pieces are the best.[1213]

Poetry of Sydney. 66. Astrophel and Stella, a series of amatory poems by Sir Philip Sydney, though written nearly ten years before, was published in 1591. These songs and sonnets recount the loves of Sydney and Lady Rich, sister of Lord Essex; and it is rather a singular circumstance that, in her own and her husband’s lifetime, this ardent courtship of a married woman should have been deemed fit for publication. Sydney’s passion seems indeed to have been unsuccessful, but far enough from being platonic.[1214] Astrophel and Stella is too much disfigured by conceits, but is in some places very beautiful; and it is strange that Chalmers, who reprinted Turberville and Warner, should have left Sydney out of his collection of British poets. A poem by the writer just mentioned, Warner, with the quaint title, Albion’s England, 1586, has at least the equivocal merit of great length. It is rather legendary than historical; some passages are pleasing, but it is not a work of genius, and the style, though natural, seldom rises above that of prose.

Epithalamium of Spenser. 67. Spenser’s Epithalamium on his own marriage, written perhaps in 1594, is of a far higher mood than anything we have named. It is a strain redolent of a bridegroom’s joy, and of a poet’s fancy. The English language seems to expand itself with a copiousness unknown before, while he pours forth the varied imagery of this splendid little poem. I do not know any other nuptial song, ancient or modern, of equal beauty. It is an intoxication of ecstacy, ardent, noble, and pure. But it pleased not heaven that these day dreams of genius and virtue should be undisturbed.