Buona- pened since in the language of the Florentines. There is no doubt that the Italian language has throughout Italy lost much of its purity by the introduction of French terms and French terminations. Indeed, the French language, and the French manners, are become fashionable all over Italy. Here the higher classes speak French almost perpetually, and that not only to strangers, but to each other. This is at least one proof of the want of vanity in the Italians. The French are so perfectly satisfied of the infinite superiority of their own language, that they would not injure the glory of their country, by exchanging their own tongue for any other under heaven. I may mention a striking instance of their bigoted partiality to their own language. The French General Vignolle's children were brought up in Milan for four years, besides having been for several years in other parts of Italy, and they were not permitted to speak a single word of Italian,-nothing but French. The corruption of the Italian language, by means of the French, has given rise to some desperate literary conflicts among some of the most learned men in Italy. The one party consists of a kind of literary renegadoes, who fight enthusiastically against their own language; the other party is composed of the true patriots in literature, who, with equal ardour, defend the battered citadel in which the last remains of Italian purity have taken refuge. I am heartily on the side of the patriots, although I have neither sword, shield, nor buckler. and intellectual structure. parte urged the celebrated sculptor Canova to come and live at Paris. "No," said Canova, "I have learned my profession in Rome, and I shall exercise it in Rome until my death, since I feel that my talent deserts me when I quit the objects and the country that have given me inspiration." I can assure you, from my own experience, that a man without genius coming from the horrors of an Edinburgh winter to the delights of an Italian one, feels himself changed into a different being. A fortiori must the delicate temperament of a man of true genius be affected by such a transition. And yet Dr Johnson has rash ly ridiculed Milton for having declared that his poetical talent was affected by the autumnal and vernal equinoxes. To-day, the 6th, the sirocco blows, but not with the debilitating and distressing breath of the Neapolitan sirocco. The mountains that surround Florence defend it from this horrid enemy of the more southern and less sheltered regions of Italy. The air is certainly warm and heavy to-day, but it is not disagreeable. It is what a Scotchman would call a still close spring day. The climate of Florence is extremely variable, and does not agree with some people. I find nothing disagreeable here excepting the water, which is, in general, very unwholesome. In England, France, and Italy, I have, as yet, found no water equal to that of Edinburgh in light ness and purity; the water of Paris is quite detestable. * * Some very celebrated modern travellers have spoken very rapturously of the purity, gracefulness, and poetical spirit of the Italian language in the mouths of the lower Florentines. What it may have been in their days I know not, but certainly, at present, the Florentines are not peculiarly remarkable for these accomplishments. The dialect and the pronunciation of the lower class in Florence are by no means remarkably good. Their pronunciation, especially, is in general vicious, and it is not easy to conceive how Alfieri, when he came to Florence, used to frequent its public squares and market places in order to learn the best Italian. At least, it is not easy to conceive this, unless we suppose a great revolution to have hap I sometimes pass by some of the blind Improvisatori, who sit on stones in the streets, chaunting forth a couplet now and then in a strange uncouth kind of recitation, or rather song. I subjoin the notes which one of these men sings, with each couplet. The blind poor only are allowed to beg in the streets, under the form of improvisatori or musicians; all others are prohibited, yet there are some always prowling about the Cascine and the walks round the city. Yesterday I visited the Pia Casa di Lavoro, established in Florence by the French. It is a very extensive institution, occupying two large cidevant convents, which were joined into one for this good work. It contains men, women, and children, who are admitted there on account of poverty, and are employed in different branches of manufacture. The one convent contains the females, the other the males. * To add to the attraction of Florence, the people have conjured up a most terrific skeleton which has walked about the streets for a fortnight with amazing effect upon the nerves of the superstitious Florentines. It was dressed in white, and when any body came near it, it threw open its garment, and discovered a skeleton with a flame in its breast; and while the spectator stood horror struck, the skeleton whistled, and was instantly surrounded by 30 or 40 of its brethren skeletons in white dresses, with whom it melted into thin air. I assure you this strange phenomenon has made a great noise in Florence, and is most firmly believed by many pious and excellent persons. It is quite the town talk, but has now left the city. So the old man believes firmly, at this moment, that sugar-loaves grow upon trees, like apples or pears. He had actually never seen or heard of loafsugar till that day. This poor old man suffers terribly from the gout. In one of his excruciating moments he cried out, " Credo che la morte non mi trovera vivo!" I was very much amused with the oddity of the idea. The state of society here (such as it is) appears to me, from what I have seen, to be exceedingly insipid, trifling, and uncomfortable. There is no such term as domestic happiness in the vocabulary of the upper classes of Florentines. The wives are mere breeders of children; this seems to be all that is expected from them; the nobility are in general very poor, and very proud, and very ignorant. They seem to think that the title of Marchèse or Cavaliere is quite sufficient to make up for the want of every thing else that a wise man would desire, Husband and wife are hardly ever seen together in company-it is not the fashion,-the husband runs about in the evening through one round of parties or amusements, while the wife runs about through another; and the chief business of both is gambling and intrigue. The conse quence of all this, with regard to the children of the gentry and nobility, is, that their conduct is not attended to, and they are left by their parents to act as they please. AmuseThe Florentines are a strange set of ments and dissipation,-in short, killpeople. The lower classes are amazing of time-is here the chief emingly ignorant and superstitious, and this last, I believe, helps to make the low Tuscans very honest in general. The old man at the Poggio Imperiale, from whom I get my wine, was terribly distressed by my servant's joking with him about mixing water with his wine, to make it go farther, and bring more money. The poor simple old animal gazed with horror at Vincenti's grinning face, and replied, "Eh! diavolo! sono povero-è vero -non sono un Angelo ma nemmeno non sono una bestia." The other day Vincent was breaking loaf-sugar for my coffee beside the old man Cherubini, who is my landlord. "Che cosa e quella?" said Cherubini, "dove cresce?" To which Vincent waggishly responded, "E une specie di zucchero, che cresce sopra gli alberi." * * 學 幣 * * ployment of those who are not ob liged to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. The freedom of intercourse between the sexes in Italy is not so much the fault of the women as of the men. Constancy is a disagreeable drug, and, therefore, the married women never think of offering it to their husbands, who, in their turn, are just as little burdened with the commodity. The unmarried women, on the contrary, are very strictly watched, but marriage makes amends for all; the example set by their husbands, and the total absence of moral restraint in married life, corrupt them immediately, if they should happen to have any virtuous dispositions at all. (To be continued.) DESULTORY ESSAYS ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH LITERATURE. No. II, On the Darwinian School of Poetry. "Others for language all their care express, And value books, as women men, for dress: Their praise is still-The style is excellent ;' The sense they humbly take upon content." POPE. IN matter, and in manner, the Lake and Darwinian schools of poetry are the very antipodes of each other, hostile in all their doctrines, and opposite in every characteristic. The one endeavours, and too often succeeds, in debasing what is naturally dignified and lofty, by meanness of style, and triteness of simile, and puerility of description: it clothes Achilles once more in female habiliments, and sets Hercules to the distaff. The other endeavours-if we may be allowed the simile-to buoy up the materials of prose into the etherial regions of poetry, by putting them into the car of an air balloon, not expanded by the divine afflatus, but by means of hydrogenous gas, while the aeronaut, as he ascends, waves his embroidered flag, and scatters among the gaping crowd below, gold leaf, and tinsel, and roses. The one reminds us of Cincinnatus, who, after having held the helm of state, and led the armies of his country to victory, sighed for unambitious retirement, and threw off the ensigns of office, and withdrew from the bustle of cabinets and camps, to the tranquillity of his little farm; and the other to Aben Hassan, in the Arabian Tales, who was transported from the tavern to the palace, when under the influence of a somniferous potion, and awoke amid the music of a morning serenade, and surrounded with all the splendours of mock royalty. Were it not for the similies, which are, however, too frequently pressed into the service, the Botanic Garden and the Temple of Nature, with all their luxuriant description, and splendid imagery, and pompous versification, would be the most tedious and uninteresting performances;-the only redeeming virtue would be found in the notes. The subjects, abstract VOL. II. edly considered, wholly preclude all passion, pathos, and sympathy, which are unquestionably among the more fascinating elements that enter into the composition of poetry. What end could be gained by describing in verse the machinery of a cotton-mill, or the improvements on the steam-engine? If Dr Darwin intended to excite pleasurable feelings in his readers, he might unquestionably have chosen a more appropriate subject; if instruction was his aim, he could have attained it far more commodiously in prose. We are told, indeed, that "it is the design of the Botanic Garden to enlist Imagination under the ban'ner of Science, and to lead her votaries from the looser analogies that dress out the imagery of poetry, to the stricter ones, which form the ratiocinations of philosophy." But the great end of poetry is here forgotten; we look on, and are dazzled; but we have no emotion of any kind. The loves of the plants are wholly different from the metamorphoses of Ovid, because, in the latter, the transmutation is merely a secondary object, both in the eyes of the poet, and in the estimation of the reader. Since the heroine or hero must fall off from all intellectual grandeur, and cease to excite all moral sympathy, we are wholly indifferent, if they must be transformed, into what it may be an animal, or a stone, or a plant. We are told, indeed, that Ajax stabbed himself, and that his blood was turned into the violet; but Ovid, with characteristic sagacity, previously gives us a peep at the assembled court, and tickles our ears with the shouts of the soldiery, and touches our hearts with the eloquence of the champions, as they relate their "hairbreadth 'scapes by flood and field," and all the important services they had rendered to their country. From among a hundred glaring instances, which we could adduce from the Botanic Garden, in proof of our allegations, and of the utter unfitness of the subject for poetical delineation, we will only call the attention of the reader to a very few specimens. "Nymphs! you disjoin, unite, condense, expand, And give new wonders to the chemist's hand; On tepid clouds of rising steam aspire, And fix in sulphur all its solid fire; SS. It appears verily now to be beyond all doubt, that the ancients have exhausted all the subjects capable of poetical embellishment, and that there is no chance in modern times of being distinguished in literature, or of composing singularly wild, and original, and beautiful" poetry, without being fantastic. We have had poems on the "Loves of the Triangles," and on "Washing Days," and "Ironing Days;" and we do not despair of yet being delighted with "The Laws of England, rendered into heroic verse, or "Human Anatomy Illustrated," in a poem of ten cantos. The parts of the Botanic Garden worthy of admiration, are-without an exception that strikes us,-only those passages that are subsidiary to the main object of the poem, and in troduced by way of simile, or for the purpose of illustration. We do not think of the Purple Foxglove, but of Philanthropy and Howard; we do not think of the embryo seeds, but of Herschel and the starry firmament; not of the Carline Thistle, but of the ascent of Montgolfier; not of the Orchis, but of Eliza and the Battle of Minden; and not of the vegetable poisons, but of the desolation of Palmyra! As the chief excellence of dramatic representation is exhibited in "suiting the action to the word," so the principal extrinsic excellence of poetry consists in "suiting the word to the action ;"-but, by the Darwinian school, this is wholly overlooked. Subjects that are naturally low are artificially exalted, stilted into eminence, and loaded with epithet and embellishment; and, whether lofty or trivial, interesting or repulsive, are clothed, by the same unsparing hand, in the most gaudy and gorgeous colouring, without respect to persons or discrimination of subject. If a beggar were to be introduced, it would be in a tattered laced coat; and if "a slaughterer of horned cattle," he would go through his operations in a high style, and make a speech. In fact, we are invited to a mere scenic exhibition, a panorama of picturesque and fanciful objects, where we have the soft and the rugged, the Bay of Naples and Loch-Lomond by moonlight, and the Devil's Bridge and the frowning precipices of the Alps expanded before us, without being obliged to encounter the fatigues or difficulties of travel, and where we may be charmed with the puppet mummery of a sea-fight, without being exposed to the actual dangers of death or captivity. In all the greater poets we have feeling and fancy combined, and, though they can look on the beautics of Nature with a gifted eye, they are not, by the possession of this capacity, excluded from penetrating into the secrets of the inner man, and from describing the wonders of the intellectual world. Here, however, every thing is material, and nothing spiritual; all is addressed to the eye or to the ear; the heart is never touched, nor the affections called into play, nor the passions awakened from the dreamless lethargy of torpor and tranquillity. The following specimen we think highly characteristic of Darwin's finer manner, as it combines a beautiful allegory with some of the chaster graces and peculiar excellencies of his style. It is from the Fourth Canto of the Economy of Vegetation, 189. "So in Sicilia's ever-blooming shade, When playful Proserpine from Ceres stray'd, Led with unwary step her virgin trains O'er Etna's steeps, and Enna's golden plains; Pluck'd with fair hand the silver-blossom'd bower, And purpled mead,-herself a fairer flower; Sudden, unseen amid the twilight glade, Rush'd gloomy Dis, and seiz'd the trembling maid. Her starting damsels sprung from mossy seats, Dropp'd from their gauzy laps the gather'd sweets, Clung round the struggling nymph, with piercing cries Pursued the chariot, and invok'd the skies ; Pleased as he grasps her in his iron arms, Frights with soft sighs, with tender words, alarms, The wheels descending roll'd in smoky rings, Infernal Cupids flapp'd their demon wings; Earth with deep yawn receiv'd the Fair, amaz'd, And far in night celestial beauty blaz'd." Bating some of the epithets, we think this very fine indeed;-but in how much fewer words, and in what a different manner, does Milton tell the same story! In the style of the Botanic Garden, we find much to praise, and a great deal to censure. No poet in our language-not even Dryden exceptedhas given such an extent of modulation to the heroic couplet,-or rung, upon the same specified quantity of syllables, such a variety of changes. But there is little delicacy or nicety of discrimination evinced in the selec tion, or in the arrangement of the materials, for the production of this effect. As is too frequently the case with those who are denominated, technically, fine singers, the sense is made wholly subservient to the sound; they are not very solicitous about your being acquainted with the tenor of the sentiment, provided they can charm you with the melody of the tones. Every thing is overloaded with ornament; and, where you expect to find internal beauty, you too frequently discover that it is merely the dazzling glitter of the drapery. When a Gre they who are ashamed in thy presence will rejoice." Dar-thula. Since we have pointed out a seeming imitation of Darwin's, it is but justice to add, that the concluding paragraph of the Pleasures of Hope bears a great resem blance to some passages in the above ex tract. |