managed, D'Azeglio's first novel has the greatest claims to the gratitude as well as to the admiration of Italy. The second essay by the same author, "Nicolò de' Lapi," is at the present day the delight of all Italian readers. D'Azeglio did not shrink from a competition with Guerrazzi, whose "Assedio di Firenze" already enjoyed an unequalled popularity. Several works had already been published on the subject of Florentine history. Besides Rosini's "Luisa Strozzi," above. noticed, a short but powerful narrative was produced by Nicolò Tommaseo, an eminent name among the living authors of Italy.* Still the appearance of Guerrazzi's high-wrought performance eclipsed that, and any other publication, in any manner coming within range of his subject. Guerrazzi was already illustrious for his "Battaglia di Benevento," a chivalrous novel in four volumes, illustrating one of the most momentous periods of general Italian history-the downfall of the dynasty of the Swabians under the thunders of the Vatican and the sword of Anjou.+ The "Assedio di Firenze" was printed under the name of Anselmo Gualandi; and the Tuscan government, which had winked at its publication, used afterwards every diligence to suppress what proved to be a work of incendiary character. It was, however, immediately republished abroad, and circulated throughout the country with an enthusiasm which no effort of jealous despotism could control. The authorship of the novel was unanimously ascribed to Guerrazzi, who found himself in consequence exposed to reprimands, domiciliary visits, and other vexations without number, on the part of the Tuscan police, anxious to discover the MS., even several years after the publication of the obnoxious work-even long after the agitation created by its appearance had almost altogether subsided. The "Assedio di Firenze " is the work of an enthusiast. The author himself confessed to his friend, Giuseppe Mazzini, "that he had written a book in sheer impossibility of fighting a battle." The work, in fact, breathes all the combative spirit by which the author was actuated. Few men ever displayed a stronger power of abstraction, few writers ever identified themselves more forcibly with their subjects, than this Gualandi or Guerrazzi, who seemed to live in the age he undertook to describe. He is indeed an old Florentine, one of the devoted champions of the beleaguered city. * "Il Duca d'Atene, Narrazione di N. Tommaseo." Paris: Baudry. 1837. 1 vol. "Memorie di Bianca Capello, Granduchessa di Toscana, raccolte ed illustrate da Stefano Ticozzi." 1 vol. Florence. 1827. +"La Battaglia di Benevento, Storia del Secolo XIII, scritta da F. D. Guerrazzi." 4 vols. Leghorn. 1840. 'L'Assedio di Firenze Capitoli XXX di Anselmo Gualandi." MDCCCXXXIX. 4 vols. Italia. His own heart beats under the breastplate of the brave and unfortunate Francesco Ferruccio; he strikes with his arm, he bleeds from his wounds. This terrible earnestness, this incarnation of the poet's genius with the theme of his romance, completely won the Italians,-a class of readers always to be swayed by the display of imaginative powers. The "Assedio," with all its defects of unconnected and wayward plan, of turgid and declamatory style, rose at once to a degree of popularity whieh few novelists could hope, for a considerable period of time, to be able to share. D'Azeglio, however, feared not to grapple with such a formidable antagonist, and even chose to meet him on his own ground. Florence in her death-struggle might, indeed, afford subject for more than two novels. Truly, although we have already stated our objections to that event for a work of fiction, we feel that a history of that siege is a work still unaccomplished. Contemporary writers have left us more than sufficient materials for such an enterprise, but the arrangement and valuation of such documents, and their description, require such powers of criticism and such mastery of style as are seldom found combined in the same individual. Meanwhile, for the present, to supply the want of a history, we have two historical novels; and both of them, if they can do no better, will have the effect of giving their readers a vague idea of the leading events of that fatal catastrophe, and create a longing for a more full and correct acquaintance with it. The "Assedio" and the "Palleschi and Piagnoni" are models of two different branches of the same style of composition. In the former the historical element prevails, in the latter the romantic. In the one, private vicissitudes are only introduced as episodical, in the other public life is made subservient to individual interest; Guerrazzi's subject is Florence-Nicolò de' Lapi is D'Azeglio's hero. The former wrote more after the manner of Bulwer's latest performances,* the latter more after the fashion of Walter Scott's earliest productions. Of these two styles, if we approved at all of historical novels, we should decidedly give preference to the last; for historical events, when incidentally introduced, may indeed partially injure the effect of the main fiction; but when our attention has been from the first engrossed by the importance of historical personages, imaginary heroes will appear mean and contemptible, and their obtrusion untimely and cumbrous. The nobler objects may still * We say "after the manner," not in imitation of Bulwer, for the "Siege of Florence" appeared long before the "Last of the Barons,' so that if there were imitation at all in the case, it would only be on the part of Sir Edward. appear great and interesting, even when thrown into the background, but when they stand foremost in the picture, minor things shrink into utter insignificance, and the artist mars the effect of his canvass in proportion as he strives to force them on the attention of the beholder. In short, we may feel less disposed to quarrel with D'Azeglio, who, having invented his tale, endeavours to dignify it by its association with some great historical epoch; but when we see Guerrazzi, after professing to derive his emotions from well-known sources, resort to fictitious episodes, we believe he has committed an act of voluntary self-degradation, not unlike that of a minstrel who consents to intersperse his noble strains with the vulgar scurrility of the jongleur. "What!" cries, in his emphatic style, Mazzini, in his criticism of the "Assedio," "do you, Guerrazzi, feel equal to the task of receiving the last groan, the last record of Florentine liberty-to launch it, as a war cry, to the face of your countrymen-and you stoop, like a commonplace novelist, to patch together fictitious horrors of one Naldo, one Lucantonio, and their obscure associates? In presence of a city basely bartered, basely betrayed, trodden by Italian and foreign soldiery, do you attempt to engage our sympathy for the fate of a betrayed individual? and whilst we mourn with you over the death of a whole people-whilst we stoop on the corpse of Florence, to feel if with its last breath there should emanate the promise of a second life for us,-would you tear us from those sacred ruins, that we may be led to listen to the ejaculations of an ideal character, to his convulsive and frantic passions, to the ravings of his selfish hatred and love?" But it is not by the form only that these two novels essentially differ. They are also animated by a different spirit. Not indeed that they view their subject with opposite aims, in as far as patriotic principles are concerned,-for on this point it is now-adays hardly possible for two Italian writers to disagree. Both are equally ardent vindicators of the national cause; both derive from that last scene of the great democratic drama of Mediæval Italy, from that final struggle in which all the religious and political creeds of the nation were for the last time brought into the field, a word of admonition for their countrymen, to prepare them for that future strife which every man in Italy firmly believes to be at hand. But in Guerrazzi this patriotic idea developes itself in words of anger and despair. The patriot upbraids and denounces, fretting in a powerless impatience and indignation. D'Azeglio's warnings are uttered in a voice of sorrow and hope, -he soothes and comforts, and writes in a mood of calm though fervent sympathy. By their taste and style, also, the two authors appear to belong to different schools. Guerrazzi, a Tuscan, is a classical-D'Azeglio, a Lombard, a romantic, writer. The former works more on the imagination-the latter speaks more to the heart. Trained in the school of Alfieri and Foscolo, at war with all importation of Ultramontane ideas, the author of the " Assedio" is an eloquent, but often a stiff and vapid, declaimer. Brought up in the more recent school of his father-in-law, Manzoni, familiar with the metaphysical literature of Germany, D'Azeglio is a tender and pathetic, even though sometimes a languid and diffuse, psychologist. The one is a rhetorician, the other a sentimentalist; the former has more nerve and muscle-the second more flesh and blood. It would not be difficult to trace this difference between the Tuscan and Lombard taste back to the primæval ages, pervading every branch of literature and art, and owing, perhaps, to the Teutonic or Greco-Latin element prevailing in different proportions in the two distinct provinces. Certainly Titian, Correggio, and Tasso, are geniuses of a different stamp from Michael Angelo, Dante, or Machiavel. We have hardly time to give more than the titles of the numerous Italian novels still remaining in our hands. We find among them a few containing illustrations of historical events in foreign countries.* One of the most amusing was published anonymously at Milan, under the title of " Franco Allegri." This ideal personage, whose autobiographical memoirs are thus given to the public, was one of the many Italians whom political circumstances or love of adventure drove to foreign countries, during the frequent revolutions of the sixteenth century. Franco Allegri appears at the court of Mary Queen of Scotland, in the train of David Rizzio's band of musicians; and after having been a spectator and nearly a sharer of the fate of that unfortunate favourite, he repairs to the court of Catherine de' Medici, there to witness still darker deeds of treason and murder. The romance is written with spirit, and in a manner that reminded us of Gil Blas. The downfall of the Order of Malta, in 1798, is well described, in two volumes, by an Italian lady, now in exile in that island. It is well known that Walter Scott himself, already with a foot "Franco Allegri, Racconto delle Avventure proprie e d' altri memorabili Fatti del Secolo XVI." Milan. 1833. 3 vols. "Gli Ultimi Giorni dei Cavalieri di Malta, Racconto di Ifigenia Zauli Sajani.” Malta. 1841. 2 vols. "Il Cavalier Bajardo, Racconto del Secolo XVI, narrato da Matteo Benvenuti." 1 vol. Milan. 1841. "La Casa Finnarnos di Spagna, Romanzo nuovo originale di D. A. Ferrary Rodigino." 4 vols. Milan. 1841. "Racconti Storici d'Ignazio Cantù." Milan. 1838. on his grave, was moved at sight of the castles and palaces of that last bulwark of Christianity; and was heard to mutter, that "it must go hard with him if he could do nothing of all that." He, however, most probably alluded to the siege of the island by the Turks, in the days of La Vallette; the last cowardly surrender of the degenerate Knights of St. John to Napoleon being rather a discouraging theme for a man of the heroic disposition of Scott. We have, thus far, noticed no other style of composition than simply the historical novel. Not because a few essays on domestic fiction may not be found among the works before us;* but because, with one or two exceptions, Italian romances on modern manners are by authors of secondary merit, and several of them utterly unreadable. It is not difficult to understand why, in a country in which private life is teeming with incidents full of romantic interest, men of genius have hitherto limited themselves to pictures of manners and passions referring to bygone generations. Independent of the feelings of sorrowful pride with which a fallen race must naturally dwell on the memorials of the past,-independent of the great moral, national scope, every author proposes to himself, of rousing the spirit of his fellowbondsmen by his recital of their ancestral achievements,—the same political reasons which have given a death-blow to Italian comedy, must equally prevent the growth of what might be called the novel of life and society. No author can abstract modern life from its religious and political associations, and no book can be printed in Italy containing any allusion to religious or political topics. In a country constituted on a basis of mutual toleration and freedom of inquiry, as England, politics become either a trade or a luxury; "Conal, Storia novissima di Virginio Soncini." 2 volumes. Milan: Stella. 1835. (An ideal story belonging to modern times; the scene, Switzerland; the hero, an Italian; some account of Napoleon's wars in Spain.) "La Capanna della Vendetta, Racconto di Bartolommeo Signori." 1 vol. Milan. 1835. (The scene in England or Wales, modern times.) "Avventure dei Gemini Fratelli Azor e Savo, e del loro Erede Clodoveo, Figlio di Azor, del Dr. G. Silvola di Milano." Milan. 1832. (Modern times, the scene at Constantinople.) "Ettore Santo, Autobiographia di un Galantuomo come gli altri, publicata da Giuseppe Torelli." Milan. 1829. 1 vol. "Il Vecchio Soldato, ossia alcune Scene del Secolo XIX del già Capitano Italiano A. F." 2 vols. Milan. 1831. (Interesting military anecdotes of Napoleon's campaigns.) "Una Scena della Vita comune, Racconto di Benedetto Bermani." Milan. 1836. 'Michelina, Scena Milanese del 1836, narrata da Temistocle Solera." 2 vols. Mil. 1841. "La Donna, Racconti Storici di Angelo Usiglio." Brussels. 1838. 'Angiola Maria, Storia Domestica di Giulio Carcano." 2 vols. Milan Manzoni. 1839. |