being preferred, or even compared to, the rest. He who entered on the journey last of the three seemed to rise to a less point of elevation than his predecessors; but it is the style in which he excelled that is less elevated.'-Ging. tom. iii. p. 1.

'Whence has his renown proceeded? From a collection of tales which he held in no esteem, and which he composed, as he says himself, only for the solace of the ladies who, in those days, led a very dismal life; to which, in short, in his declining days, he attached no other importance than the regret with which religious scruples inspired him. Like Petrarch, he looked for his immortality from learned works, composed in a language which had ceased to be understood by the world at large: like him, he received it from the mere sports of imagination, the diversions of genius, in which he brought to purity and perfection a language yet in its infancy and till then abandoned to the people for the common concerns of life; to which he was thus the first to give in prose, as Dante and Petrarch had done in verse, the elegance, the harmony, the measured form, and happy choice of words, which make a literary and polished language.'-Ib. p. 70.

The jealous exactness of antiquarian research will seldom leave any author in peaceable possession of the honours of original invention, and the groundwork of the Decameron must, we fear, be admitted to be discoverable in the old Indian romance of Dolospathos, which early found its way into the national literature of almost every country in Europe, and is cherished by the black letter lovers of our own under the title of The Seven Wise Masters.' With regard to the origin of several of his tales which has been assigned to the fabliers and trouvères of the Roman Wallon, M. Ginguené, though a Frenchman, has ranged himself with the Italian avengers of their national literature, and established, in conformity with them, the probability, at least, that both Bocaccio and his supposed instructors drew, without reference to each other, from the same common sources, and those of oriental derivation.

From this unprofitable subject of inquiry we turn with pleasure to the just and sensible criticisms of M. Ginguené on the work itself. After dwelling with all the attention which it demands on its noble introduction, he characterizes the motley nature of its contents, and apologizes (so far as it is becoming to apologize) for its real and imputed faults. Still, speaking of his eloquent description of the plague of Florence, he thus continues:

Nous ne pouvons apprécier aujourd'hui que le talent du peintre ; inais, ce qui frappa le plus alors, fut la ressemblance et la fidélité du tableau. Les couleurs en étaient bien sombres, et paraîtraient au premier coup-d'œil assez mal assorties avec les peintures gaies dont on croit communément que la collection entière est remplie; mais en passant condemnation sur la gaîté trop libre d'un grand nombre de ces peintures, on ne doit pas oublier qu'elles ne sont pas, à beaucoup près, toutes de ce genre, et qu'il y en a d'intéressantes, de tristes, de tragiques

BA

même et de purement comiques, encore plus que de licentieuses, Boccace répandit cette variété dans son ouvrage, comme le plus sûr môyen d'intéresser et de plaire; et ce qui est admirable, c'est que, dans tous ces genres si divers, il raconte toujours avec la même facilité, la même vérité, la même élégance, la même fidélité à prêter aux personnages les discours qui leur conviennent, à représenter au naturel leurs actions, leurs gestes, à faire de chaque nouvelle un petit drame qui a son exposition, son nœud, son dénouement, dont le dialogue est aussi parfait que la conduite, et dans lequel chacun des acteurs garde jusqu'à la fin sa physionomie et son caractère.

'Les prêtres fourbes et libertins, comme ils l'étaient alors ; les moines livrés au luxe, à la gourmandise et à la débauche; les maris dupes et crédules, les femmes coquettes et rusées, les jeunes gens ne songeant qu'au plaisir, les vieillards et les vieilles qu'à l'argent; des seigneurs oppresseurs et cruels, des chevaliers francs et courtois, des dames, les unes galantes et faibles, les autres nobles et fières, souvent victimes de leur faiblesse, et tyrannisées par des maris jaloux; des corsaires, des malandrins, des ermites, des faiseurs de faux miracles et de tours de gibécière, des gens enfin de toute condition, de tout pays, de tout àge, tous avec leurs passions, leurs habitudes, leur langage; voilà ce qui remplit ce cadre immense, et ce que les hommes du goût le plus sévère ne se lassent point d'admirer.'-Tom. iii. p. 97, &c.

We reluctantly pass over the numerous other points of this able criticism; but we cannot omit one observation which redounds to the credit of our own country. Of the many writers who have undertaken to relate Bocaccio's stories there are scarcely any who have not disgraced themselves by selecting from the Decameron the most reprehensible of all its various subjects for their purpose. Dryden alone, the greatest of all his imitators, possessed a taste too manly for so unworthy a task; and his selection accordingly does equal honour to himself and to his original author.

Among the followers of Bocaccio in the art of story-telling, Franco Sacchetti* and Ser Giovanni,† a Florentine whose family name is now unknown, but who distinguished himself by the whimsical appellation of 'Il Pecorone,' belong to the latter half of the same century, both, no doubt, greatly inferior to their master, but nevertheless deserving of the attention bestowed upon them by all lovers of early Italian literature for the services which they rendered to their native language, and for the lights which they contribute to throw on the spirit and character of the age. Zanobi da Strada, the rival of Petrarch in the honours of the laurel, and Coluccio Salutati, another of his most eminent contemporaries, did not deign to employ the vulgar dialect as the vehicle of their poetical compositions; and the consequence is, that, however they might

have been extolled in their generation, they are almost unknown to posterity.

The Dettamondo of Fazio degl' Uberti, and the Quadriregio of Federigo Frezzi, are poems which evidently owe their birth to the Divina Commedia, and are in many respects servile imitations of their illustrious model. The hackneyed vehicle of a vision, an expedient of which the original insipidity can only be surmounted by the extraordinary and creative energies of the poet who adopts it, is probably the circumstance which more than any other has condemned these imitative efforts to an oblivion in many other respects highly unmerited. The Dettamondo possesses a force of style and expression, often not unworthy of Dante himself, and some passages (for example, the personification of the city of Rome) not only spirited but even sublime. Nevertheless, it has enjoyed the honours of only two editions, both scarce, and the last, which is the least difficult to be met with, so faulty as to be almost illegible. In this latter respect, the Quadriregio has met with better fortune, and has consequently been more read. But notwithstanding it also possesses a tolerable share of poetical merit, its mystical subject, encumbered with all the heavy dulness of the fashionable theology, appears to render it less worthy of preservation.

The list of poets of the fourteenth century is closed with the name of Antonio Pucci, to whom it seems we may ascribe the high honour of giving birth to that peculiar species of national pleasantry which, in a later age, Berni brought to perfection.

'The century which, after the death of Petrarch, was consecrated by the Italians to the study of antiquity, that century during which their national literature was stationary, and their language even retrograde, was not however lost to the arts of imagination. Poetry, at its first flight, had not received a sufficiently abundant nourishment; the three great men of the 14th century, whom we have first presented to the reader's ebservation, had, by the single force of their genius, attained an erudition and elevation of thought which was far above the level of the age they lived in; but these riches were their own personal possessions, and all the rest of the Italian poets, like the Provençaux, had been reduced by their very poverty to those continual sports of wit, to those trifling puerilities of unintelligible ideas and incoherent images, which render them so tedious to the reader. The fifteenth century was entirely devoted to the extension, in every sense, of the acquirements and resources of all the friends of the muses; antiquity was unveiled before them, with her elevated characters, her austere laws, her energetic virtues, her graceful and amusing mythology, her subtle and profound philosophy, her attractive eloquence, and her ravishing poetry. A hundred years were assigned to the modelling anew the clay destined for the formation of great men. Towards the close of the century, a

divine Ray penetrated the inanimate statue, the soul was kindled again, and life recommenced its career.'-Sism. tom. ii. p. 41.

This seems to be the true account of the state of letters in Italy during the fifteenth century, and it affords the most satisfactory solution of the doubts which, in a former work of M. Sismondi* are insisted upon with more eloquence and feeling, perhaps, than solidity of judgment, as to the real advantages derived to Italian literature from the cultivation of the learned languages. How highly at the same time, must our estimate of the three great founders of the national school be exalted by the reflection that they at once soared to a height which could derive no support either from the age in which they lived, or from that which succeeded, from which it therefore became necessary to descend in order to enable their successors, at the distance of more than a hundred years, even to endeavour again to attain it!

The society of Lorenzo de' Medici was that in which a new career was first opened to Italian poetry, and the names of Lorenzo and his friend Politian are the most illustrious in the list of its revivers. To the same period, and to the influence of the same protecting genius, belongs the creation of a higher class of poetry than any yet ventured on in the Italian language, the heroic romance, which constitutes its national epic. The subject demands the greater part of the small space that remains to us.

For the origin of this species of composition we are led back to the grand division of the Langue Romane, already noticed, and presented with a review of the different theories relative to the introduction of chivalrous fiction, and its adoption by the writers in the Langue d' Oil, the second branch of the parent dialect, and the progenitor of the modern language of France. This is not the place to enter on the learned and ingenious disquisition in which our countryman Warton has followed up these several theories, and reconciled the most apparently contradictory in a manner equally pleasing and conclusive. Whatever objections may occur to some of the details, or whatever room there may even now exist for the formation of new hypotheses concerning them, the groundwork of his system seems to remain unquestioned; that system which, making Persia the common and primitive source of romantic fable, deduces its progress through two distinct and widely distant channels to the same ultimate end, receiving, in its double course, the various impressions, on the one hand, of all the gloom of northern superstition and the enthusiasm of northern courage; on the other, of all the brilliancy and voluptuousness, the extravagance and caprice, and the occasional sublimity, also)

of southern genius. It is impossible not to be delighted with this mode of ending the hostility of two contending parties, whose difference of opinion must appear to every one, at first sight, as hopelessly irreconcileable; by assuring the respective advocates of the Scandinavian scalds and the Moorish minstrels that both are in the right as far as they go, and that the cause of their difference is merely this, that neither has ascended so high as to find the common principle from which both proceed. It is further to be observed (and this too is very important) that in this reunion of the two derivative streams of Romance, their several ingredients were mixed in very different proportions according to the genius and habits of the different nations of the west that received them, or of the times and circumstances under which they were received. This diversity has given rise to an infinite variety of conjectures; but,the great point once settled, these are comparatively trivial, if not of easy solution.*

Of this latter description are the doubts respecting the immediate origin of those venerable fictions (Magnanime Mensogne) which are considered by later writers as the parents of two distinct families of romance-the chronicle of Geoffry of Monmouth, and that of Archbishop Turpin. Our present concern is with the latter of these, as it was the first, and for a long while continued to be the only, source of Italian fable. With the Race of King Arthur it never seems to have meddled, and the third romantic family, that of Amadis, which had the honour of contributing to it some of its later ornaments, would, if we had time for it, require distinct consideration.

The 'Magnanimous Lie,' which bears with the name of Turpin the apparent impress of ecclesiastical authority, is generally supposed to have been really the invention of a monk of the eleventh century. Whether he had himself any foundation in yet more ancient legends for the fables which he has detailed it is useless to inquire. The earliest Italian romance on the subject of Charlemagne and his peers, must have been full two centuries later. It is not founded upon Turpin, but is supposed to be a translation from some Latin original now lost. The old romance of Les Quatre Fils Aymon, and a few others connected with it, are pointed out as the concurrent sources of the Italian Epopée.

The earliest poem in the Italian language formed on this model, (the Reali di Francia is in prose) is entitled Buovo d' Antona--it is written in the ottava rima, and, though the author is unknown,

We are aware that we tread on tender ground, and that the names of Percy, Ritson, Leyden, and, above all, that of Ellis, among our own antiquaries as well as of several ingenious French critics, may by some be opposed to an hypothesis which our author (M. Ginguené) adopts without appearing to know that it was ever called in question. But we are inclined to suspect that a certain confusion in the use of general terms is the principal, if not the only source, of the apparent diversity of theories, and to believe that Warton's, in the main, has never yet been invalidated.