The most interesting part of this Report is the series of observations, which the Commissioners think it proper to make on the effect which the "bounty has produced in raising the character of the British fishery, and in adding to its importance as a branch of national wealth." They state, that when the establishment was instituted, (the office for the herring fishery in Edinburgh, but the date is not stated), it was impossible almost to find a barrel of the legal size of thirty-two gallons. No attention whatever appeared to be paid to the strength of the stave, to the number of hoops, or to the structure of the barrel at all, and hence they were unable to retain the pickle for any time. It was the practice also, at the period alluded to, to attempt to cure the herrings in a lump, without gutting them, or removing the viscera in any manner, and in short, that the methods of catching and curing fish, thus in use, were in a very barbarous and backward state. The present state of the fishery is the reverse of all this. The barrels are of full size, substantially made, and adequately hooped, the seams between the staves are stopped by flags, the gutting is carried on on the most approved principles-and the whole process, from the embarkation of the fisherman to the delivery of the cured fish, is now conducted in a manner that leaves nothing whatever for the most fastidious consumer to complain of.

"All these improvements, together with similar improvements in the cure of cod, ling, or hake," the Commissioners are induced to "ascribe to the effect of the bounty, acting as a stimulus to the curers and other persons engaged in the fishery and thus inducing them to abandon their long established slovenly practices, and to adopt a more improved system; from a conviction, that unless they did so, the bounty could not be obtained : and it is gratifying to observe, that the utility of these innovations, although at first in many cases denied, is now universally acknowledged. It may also be mentioned as a further benefit arising from the bounties hitherto granted, that by the extension of the fishery consequent thereon, increased means of employment, and an ample supply of wholesome food have been furnished to the labouring classes that fishing villages have been erected, harbours built, and extensive curing premises raised in the most complete style: and that agriculture has been benefited, and waste land reclaimed, by the use of the offals of the fish as manure, arising from the practice of gutting having become general, in consequence of the bounty being confined to gutted fish alone."

These remarks, we trust, will receive the consideration to which they are entitled, for it certainly ought not to be a slight cause that should compel the legislature to withdraw its encouragement from a branch of industry, when such beneficial consequences have flown from its judicious application.

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ART. XIII.-Lives of the Italian Poets. By the Rev. Henry Stebbing. M.A., M.R.S.L., with twenty medallion portraits. In three volumes. 8vo. London: Edward Bull. 1831.

THE undying names of Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, and Alfieri, would alone be sufficient to give interest and popularity to these volumes, in which Mr. Stebbing has collected with great industry, and arranged with much taste, every thing of importance connected with the biography of those illustrious poets. We are already in possession of their memoirs, published either separately, or prefixed to translations of their various productions. But Mr. Stebbing presents the lives of these, and of several of their poetical countrymen, for the first time in our language, in a combined form; founding his statements upon the best original authorities, mostly Italian, to which he could have recourse; concentrating his materials within a readable compass, and clothing them in a style at once chaste and luminous.

The life of Dante is so well known, that it needs but a passing notice. Few poets, of any age or nation, have had so many commentators. Professorships were instituted for the purpose of expounding his Commedia, and even to the hour in which we write, critics are engaged in controverting the doctrines of each other, respecting the meaning and origin of this extraordinary poem. We perfectly agree with Mr. Stebbing, that these disputes are just as ridiculous, as the commentaries from which they have arisen are burthensome and useless. Does the Commedia reflect the poet's character? Does it betray his thoughts, his affections, his virtues, his prejudices? Does it savour strongly of the manners and vices of the age? Above all, is it a poem, and does it carry with it our excited imagination to whatever regions it bends its way? If these be answered, as well they may be, in the affirmative, then away with Ginguene, and all the tribe of theorists by whom he has been preceded and followed! Away with their fanciful, and often very unfanciful, accounts of the origin of this production! We care not whence or why, or how it has come. If it be before us, and we feel that it moves the soul, and surrounds it with a world of living beings, and events called into creation as if by the spell of an enchanter,--that is all that we require; and we give the historical essays that have been written upon it to the winds.

Mr. Stebbing's reasoning upon this subject, seems to us to hit the nail upon the head. The doctrine of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, formed, when Dante wrote, and still form, part of the popular creed of nearly all Europe. Luther was pleased to cut off Purgatory, indeed, although as it was wittily remarked, one might go farther and speed worse. But Dante was a Catholic, and believed in the existence of the three regions, and it was no great difficulty for his imaginative powers to people them with spirits

of his own, and to render them familiar with controversies and subtleties to which few men of education, in those days were strangers. If we give credit to Dante for the genius that has immortalised his poem, it would surely be but a miserable and inviduous, as well as unjust, drawback, to say that we are to attribute the design of his work to some happy accident, or to some author who had not half his faculty for invention. Mr. Stebbing, however, deserves to be heard in his own person upon the subject.

But it is not in the design, which is far more theological than poetical, that Dante's genius appears in its splendour. The mysterious path which he pursued, had been in a manner traced out for him, and any disciple of Duns Scotus, or Thomas Aquinas, could have led him through the gloomy regions as well as Virgil. It is not till he has fairly entered upon his track, that he manifests the sovereign power of his mind. We begin our journey with him, as if in company with a cowled ecclesiastic, or metaphysician; but as we proceed, his voice and form seem to change, and as the darkness grows around us, he becomes greater and mightier, till when we enter the deep and woody way, and stand before the gate of the doleful city, we feel as he himself felt, when his great master appeared before him in the solemn stillness of his valley of visions, and amid the forms that made even the air seem to tremble.

The distinguishing characteristic of Dante's poetry, through far from wanting in occasional passages of exquisite tenderness and beauty, is its sublimity, and hence, by general consent, the Inferno is placed at an almost immeasurable distance above the other two parts of the Commedia, which required a milder and more brilliant fancy. In respect to sublimity, Dante has but one superior, our own Milton. The scenes he depicts have the terrible distinctness of places beheld in a vivid dream; the language of his personages makes an equally powerful impression on the mind; it is short, pointed, and abrupt, and such as we might expect to hear from miserable beings dreading the fiery lash of pursuing demons, but retaining their sense of human sympathy. The same power appears in his comparisons as in the main subjects of the description. Over the images drawn from natural objects, or real occurrences, he flings the gloom, or the lurid light of his subterranean caverns, rendering, at the same time, the abodes of condemned spirits the more terrible by the contrast of things still earthly and embodied. This sublimity, it is true, is far from being constantly sustained, and the verse not frequently falls off into a style as cold and harsh as it is obscure and unaffecting. But, in the first place, it was not possible that he should be always alike elevated; and in the next, both the object of his poem, the learning which filled his mind, and the literary taste of the age, would lead him into most of the faults which disfigure the Commedia in the eye of a modern reader.

'It may, however, be questioned, whether the sublimity of Dante is ever of that high and moral species which, it may be said, affects the soul as well as the imagination, and diffuses over it that solemn tranquillity of thought which gives, at the same time, the highest moral as well as intellectual delight. The scenes and objects which he describes, are clear and palpable; their very sublimity depends on their distinctness, and the emotions produced are akin to what they would be were the representation real; but it is not

the most distinct view of a terrible object which excites the greatest terror; and deep and powerful, therefore, as is the impression made by Dante's images, it is inferior to that which is felt in the perusal of the Paradise Lost. Milton described scenes of physical torture and misery; we see the condemned writhing beneath the infliction; the fiery soil is palpable; the darkness visible; the raging of the hail and lightning "shot after them in storm" is audible; but the sensible perception of these things is overpowered by the sublimer spiritual feeling which the moral grandeur of his sentiments never fails to inspire. Dante equalled Milton in the one respect, but not in the other, which gave to the English bard a diviner character than was ever attained by any other mortal poet.'-vol. i. pp. 69–71.

Petrarch, emphatically the poet of love, was originally intended for the law. Virgil and Cicero were, however, greatly preferred by him to the commentaries on Justinian. His tastes were fortunate for the revival of literature in Europe, to which they most essentially contributed. He was indefatigable and very successful in collecting manuscript copies of the ancient writers, and in multiplying them at his own expense. Some critics have assured us that his passion for Laura was merely platonic-an ideal flame, like that which animated the philosophers of old in their pursuit of truth, which they invested with a form of captivating beauty. We own that we adhere to this opinion, which derives support from the sonnets which Petrarch addressed to Laura; poems which, to our thinking, breathe any thing, save the glowing attachment of a heart deeply engaged in its passion. It is agreed, at all events, that upon the lady's side no encouragement was given to any stronger feeling. Though married to a most ungracious person, Ugo de Sade, who to his other disagreeable qualifications added that of a lively jealousy, the beautiful Laura appears to have abashed the hopes of all her profane lovers, for there were several of them, by what Mr. Stebbing very characteristically terms her 'pure and serene virtue.' We must give his description of Petrarch's celebrated retreat, Vaucluse, which, though the frequent haunt of disappointed swains and poetical tourists, has never been more clearly pictured to the eye, than it is in the following passage.

'It is to this period also we are to assign the commencement of his visits to Vaucluse, for which he had expressed so great an admiration in his earliest youth, and which the state of his feelings now rendered peculiarly attractive. In his travels he had wandered with delight over the most solitary tracts of country; the gloom of forests, the most deserted plains, the wildest and most rocky valleys, giving him more pleasure than gay and splendid cities: and though naturally timid and averse to enterprise, he passed through several dangerous provinces without company or protection. In the vale of Vaucluse, he found a solitude as complete as that of more distant wilds, and that mixture of gloom and beauty which favours by turns the indulgence of passion and the visitations of fancy. This retreat, which was already famous for the singular attractions of its scenery, but has been rendered

so much more so by Petrarch, is situated at the foot of Monte Ventoso, and is watered by the river Sorga, which here divides itself into several streams. Precipitous rocks rise around its fountain, which thus protected and being singularly pure and limpid, might well seem to a poetic eye to have something sacred in its waters. Soon after the stream overflows the chasm into which the spring empties itself, it is hurled dowu the rocky heights with a fearful noise, which strangely contrasts with the perfect silence and tranquillity of the basin in which the waters are collected. Above this bed of the fountain swells a cliff of prodigious height, the dark and sterile sides of which throw a constant shade over the waters; at its base it opens into a double cavern, which, when the stream is low, can be entered, and to which few other spots in the world may be compared for gloom and desolateness. A degree of mystery also attends the fountain, which increases the solemnity of the scene. It has never, it is said, been fathomed, but rising without noise or bubble, seems to have its origin in the very foundations of the globe. The small patches of ground left open among the cliffs are luxuriously fertile, and are covered, or at least were so in the time of Petrarch, with olives, and the richest vegetation. In the distance, a wide and delicious prospect opposes itself to the rude rocks which occupy nearly the whole valley of Vaucluse, and the dews and frequent showers for which the neighbourhood is noted, temper the summer heats so as to render it constantly cool and fragrant.'-vol. i. pp. 98-100.

We apprehend that, if the truth were known, much of the feeling which attached Petrarch to Vaucluse, arose from the natural beauty of the place, and from his real passion for the occupations of literature. His sonnets to Laura obtained for him a reputation that made his name known throughout Italy, although they are far from being his best productions. The desire to cultivate this fame, and to produce compositions of a still higher order, as well as a little spice of singularity, may sufficiently account for his sojourns at Vaucluse, without supposing that he was constantly babbling to echo, to the streams and trees, of the divine Laura. In fact, he had also errors to atone for, for his passions were not in every instance platonic upon his side, or discouraged upon that of the other sex; and it was the spirit of the age to fly to solitude, when works of penance were to be performed. At Vaucluse, he had the opportunity of making war upon his senses. He resided in a cottage adjoining that of an old fisherman, whose wife was his only attendant, and whose person enkindled no temptations. His only companion was his dog, and his diet was confined to coarse bread, figs, almonds, and the crystal spring. But, says Mr. Stebbing, 'he found ample employment for his thoughts as he wandered through the valley, thinking of his Laura!' It is very amiable of Mr. Stebbing to suppose so, and no doubt it is very romantic to say so; but we would suggest with great deference to the authorities, and particularly to the Abbé de Sade, that literature and religion were the great occupiers of his thoughts at Vaucluse. There were his grand projects to be executed--his History of Rome in Latin, and his intended epic poem, of which Scipio Africanus was to