ESSAY

ON THE

PRESENT LITERATURE OF ITALY.

Ir is the boast of the Italians, that their literature has flourished with unequal, but uninterrupted brilliancy, from the thirteenth century to the present day.

The progress of time alone would naturally have produced and obliterated many innovations, but the frequent domestic revolutions, the repeated irruptions, the arms and the arts of strangers, succeeding each other rapidly and imperceptibly, and bringing with them new laws, and manners, and opinions, have occasioned in Italy more vicissitudes than are to be found in the literature of any other country. Thus it is that their critics have been able to point out at least ten different epoques when it has assumed certain characteristics, or, to use a single word,

a physiognomy, altogether distinct from that of any preceding or subsequent period. The average duration assigned to each of these epoques, has been laid down at about half a century. This is the utmost length that any individual taste and mode of writing can be discovered to have prevailed.

The above remark is purposely premised to a short account which it is intended to give of the present state of Italian literature; that is to say, of the character of the actual epoque, which embraces not only those writers at present in existence, but others who have powerfully contributed to form the taste and the tone which will continue to prevail until succeeded by another revolution in the republic of letters. The latter Italian authors may be expected to form a diversity more distinct than those of any other generation, when it is recollected, that whilst they wrote the most extraordinary change was prepared and consummated, that had ever affected the moral or political world. That the great convulsions which shook not only "mightiest monarchies," but also the mind of man, in all the countries of Europe, should communicate itself to these authors, was inevitable, and will be discovered in the works, the principles, the character, and the estimation, of the most celebrated amongst them, whom it is pro

posed to examine and pourtray. These authors will be their poets; who are selected, first, because the verse of every country is the depository of the language, the taste, and the manners, of the times; secondly, because this is found more particularly the case in those nations whose imagination is their predominant faculty; and, in the third place, because the writers chosen on this occasion, are in part distinguished for their compositions in prose.

This method of illustration might be liable to objections in any other country than Italy, where the few men of superior genius are separated from the crowd of writers by a barrier, which in other nations is rarely visible until posterity has pronounced the final decision. In Italy the judgment is in some sort formed and given by their cotemporaries; and thus, although the struggle to attain the eminence may be more serious and protracted, there is less danger of future degradation.

An intimate acquaintance is, however, requisite, to perceive the difference between the esteemed and the popular author: for, otherwise, the above-mentioned singularity of Italian literature would be reduced to a shade only of distinction from that of other countries. A book may be in the hands of all readers, and, during some years, be the study and the talk of

all. This was the case with the animali parlanti of Casti: but the author had no pretence or right to renown. On the other hand, a work which few comparatively shall peruse, because every one cannot understand, having obtained the suffrages of those distinguished above the common class of readers, acquires for the author an established name, which the people themselves are soon taught to repeat with respect, although entirely ignorant or insensible of the specific merit which has obtained their applause. Such esteem may be compared to the blind honours conferred upon a successful general by the peaceful peasantry, who wish no other signal or reason for their shouts than the gazette, but it is not less devoted.

If we endeavour to account for this characteristic in the literature of Italy, a partial, or perhaps a sufficing, reason may be found, in the difference between countries like England and France, and one in which, as there is no single capital, there are, comparatively speaking, none of those court intrigues, none of those party passions, none of those fashionable cabals and tribunals, which are called into play and employed in Paris and London, in deciding the fate of authors. It is not that there are no reviews composed by the personal enemies or friends of the respective writers; it is not that