The London Quarterly Review

E have placed together the titles of two works which, though every way deserving of distinct commemoration, are yet so nearly allied by their subjects, that it would in some measure be an injury to both to consider them separately. In their origin and design this affinity is further remarkable. The first was undertaken in 1802, for the Athenæum at Paris, as the commencement of a series which should embrace the whole range of modern literary history. The extent of this plan may be estimated from that of the portion before us; which,in six volumes, distributed into two parts, comprehends the annals of Italian literature, to the end of the sixteenth century. Its history during the seventeenth and eighteenth, is to be the subject of a third division. It is not surprising that the vastness of the original plan excluded, by degrees, all hope of its accomplishment; and that the author abandoned to others the remainder of a task, undertaken in favour of that nation' with which he is best acquainted, and which, perhaps, is the object of his warmest affection.'

Of M. Sismondi's work, two volumes only are yet before us. They are the substance of public lectures, delivered by him at Geneva, and comprise the sketches, rather than the details, of the literary history of the Arabs, the Provençaux, the writers in the 'Langue Romane,' and the Italians. In two more we are to be conducted through Spain and Portugal. This author, like the former, had proposed to himself a plan of much greater magnitude than he has since found it convenient to execute. It extended, he says, to the whole of Europe, and indeed, if we understand him rightly, it is not to be considered even now as absolutely abandoned. The name of M. Sismondi has long ranked very high in our estimation, and being taught not to expect any immediate continuation of his work on the Italian Republics, we were not a little gratified to find that his attention had

in the mean time been turned to other subjects so nearly connected in interest, and to which his competency could admit of no question. The labours of M. Ginguené demand our first consideration, in a general view of Italian literature; but we shall occasionally recur to the professor of Geneva, whom we may at some future period have to follow, exclusively, as our guide to the literary treasures of the Western Peninsula.

The origin and formation of the Italian language must naturally be the first object of inquiry to those who are desirous of attaining a just notion of Italian literature; and it undoubtedly adds to the interest of this inquiry, when we reflect that the very language which first of all the modern dialects of Europe, served as a vehicle for any great and lasting efforts of human genius, was the last in order of birth, and actually burst into the full splendour of maturity, while yet the world was almost unconscious of its existence. A whole generation of Italian poets intervenes between the age of Dante and that of Chaucer: yet the latter was but the morning star' of English poetry; the former is the meridian sun which rivals in splendour the brightest luminaries of all ages and nations. On the other hand, the language of Chaucer had been that of the people of England, and of English writers, for ages; while the first faint and imperfect articulations of that speech which Dante raised at once to perfection, are with difficulty to be distinguished before the thirteenth century, to the conclusion of which he himself belongs.

The solution of this remarkable phenomenon has long employed the conjectures, and directed the researches of the learned. They bid us ascend to a period of the remotest, even of unknown antiquity, when the Celtic nation, (whose language, if not primitive in an absolute sense, is so at least relatively to almost all known languages,') divided itself into two immense bodies; the one occupying the western shores of Asia, the other spreading through the northern countries of Europe, and following the course of the Danube from its mouths to the source, passing the barrier of the Rhine, and establishing itself at last in the regions that lie between that river, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, the northern and the Mediterranean seas; in short, between those which have of late years been humorously denominated the natural boundaries of the French republic. In process of time, the increase of population forced them, we are told, to infringe these sacred barriers; and the Celtic nation, together with the Celtic language, (already contaminated by its mixture with the forgotten dialects of forgotten people,) poured itself, with little resistance, through the fair fields of Italy,' till it met, mid-way in its course, another torrent flowing from a totally different source;

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The London Quarterly Review, Volumen 11