Hic alius arma there can be no doubt,* influenced by a hope to ac- these words: “Qui nacque Ludovico Ariosto il quire the favor of the House of Este; an object giorno 8 di Settembre dell' anno 1474." But the which he thought attainable by exalting the reputa- Ferrarese make light of the accident by which their tion of a native poet at the expense of a rival, then poet was born abroad, and claim him exclusively for a prisoner of state. The hopes and efforts of Sal- their own. They possess his bones, they show his víati must serve to show the cotemporary opinion arm-chair, and his inkstand, and his autographs. as to the nature of the poet's imprisonment; and will fill up the measure of our indignation at the tyrant jailer. In fact, the antagonist of Tasso was not dissappointed in the reception given to his The house where he lived, the room where he eriticism; he was called to the court of Ferrara, died, are designated by his own replaced memorial,❤ where having endeavored to heighten his claims to and by a recent inscription. The Ferrarese are favor by panegyrics on the family of his sovereign, more jealous of their claims since the animosity of he was in turn abandoned, and expired in neglected Denina, arising from a cause which their apologists poverty. The opposition of the Cruscans was mysteriously hint is not unknown to them, ventured brought to a close in six years after the commence to degrade their soil and climate to a Baotian incament of the controversy; and if the academy owed pacity for all spiritual productions. A quarto vol its first renown to having almost opened with such ume has been called forth by the detraction, and a parodox, it is probable that, on the other hand, this supplement to Barotti's Memoirs of the illusthe care of his reputation alleviated rather than ag- trious Ferrarese has been considered a triumphant gravated the imprisonment of the injured poet. The defence of his father and of himself, for both reply to the "Quado Storico Statistico dell' Alta Italia." 20. For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves were involved in the censure of Salviati, found employment for many of his solitary hours, and the captive could have been but little embarassed to reply to accusations, where, amongst other delinquences, he was charged with invidiously omitting, in his comparison between France and Italy, to The eagle, the sea calf, the laurel,† and the make any mention of the cupola of St. Maria del white vine, were among the most approved preFiore at Florence. The late biographer of Ariosto servatives against lightning; Jupiter chose the first, seems as if willing to renew the controversy by Augustus Caesar the second,§ and Tiberius never doubting the interpretation of Tasso's self-estima- failed to wear a wreath of the third when the sky tion related in Serassi's life of the poet. But threatened a thunder-storm. These superstitions Tiraboschi had before laid that rivalry at rest,** by showing, that between Ariosto and Tasso it is not a question of comparison, but of preference. 19. The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust may be received without a sneer in a country where the magical properties of the hazel twig have not lost all their credit; and perhaps the reader may not be much surprised to find that a commentator on Suetonius has taken upon himself gravely to disprove the imputed virtues of the crown of Tiberius, by mentioning that a few years before he wrote a laurel was actually struck by lightning at Rome.¶ 21. Stanza xli. lines 1 and 2. Before the remains of Ariosto were removed from the Benedictine church to the library of Ferrara, his bust, which surmounted the tomb, was struck by Know that the lightning sanctifies below. lightning, and a crown of iron laurels melted away. Stanza xli. line 8. The event has been recorded by a writer of the last The Curtian lake and the Ruminal fig-tree in the century. The transfer of these sacred ashes on Forum, having been touched by lightning, were the 6th of June, 1801, was one of the most brilliant held sacred, and the memory of the accident was spectacles of the short-lived Italian Republic; and preserved by a puteal or altar, resembling the mouth to consecrate the memory of the ceremony, the of a well, with a little chapel covering the cavity onee famous fallen Intrepidi were revived and re-supposed to be made by the thunderbolt. Bodies formed into the Ariostean academy. The large scathed and persons struck dead were thought to public place through which the procession paraded be incorruptible;** and a stroke not fatal conferred was then for the first time called Ariosto Square. perpetual dignity upon the man so distinguished by The author of the Orlando is jealously claimed as the heaven.tt Homer, not of Italy, but Ferrara. The mother of Those killed by lightning were wrapped in a Ariosto was of Reggio, and the house in which he was born is carefully distinguished by a tablet with For further, and, it is hoped, decisive proof, that Tasso was neither more Bor less than a prisoner of state, the reader is referred to "Historical Illus Orazioni funebri... delle lodi Don Luigi Cardinal d'Este... delle lodi Donno Alfonso d'Este. See La Vita, lib. iii. p. 117. trasons of the IV Canto of Childe Harold," pag. 5 and following. It was founded in 1582, and the Cruscan answer to Pellegrino's Caraffa epica poesia was published in 1584. "Cotanto potè sempre in lui il veleno della sua pessima volontà contro alle nazion Fiorentina." La Vita, lib. iii. p. 96, 98, tom. fi. La Vita di M. L. Ariosto, scritta dall' Abate Giorlamo Baroffaldi Giunkare, &c., Ferrara, 1807, lib. iii. p. 262. Soe Historical Illustrations, &c., P. 25. ** Storia della Lett. &c., lib. iii. tom. vil. par. iii. p. 1220, sect. 4. tt "Mi raccontarono que' monaci, ch' essendo caduto un fulmine nella laro chiesa schiantò esso dalle tempie la coronna di lauro à quell' immortale poeta." Op di Bianconi, vol. iii. p. 176, ed. Milano, 1802; lettera al Signor Guido Savini Arcifisiocritico, sull' indole di un fulmine caduto in Dresda l'anno 1759. 11 "Appassionato ammiratore ed invitto apologista dell' Omero Ferra ras." The title was first given by Tasso, and is quoted to the confusion of the Tassist, lib. ii. pp. 282, 265, La Vita di M. L. Ariosto, &c. white garment, and buried where they fell. The superstition was not confined to the worshippers of Jupiter; the Lombards believed in the omens furnished by lightning, and a Christian priest confesses that, by a diabolical skill in interpreting thunder, a seer foretold to Agilulf, Duke of Turin, an event which came to pass, and gave him a queen and a crown. There was, however, something equivocal in this sign, which the ancient inhabitants of Rome did not always consider propitious: and as the fears are likely to last longer than the consola • "Parva sed apta mihi, sed nulli obnoxia, sed non † Aquila, vitulus marinus, et laurus, fulmine non feriunter. Plin. Nat Hist. lib. ii. cap. IV. Columella, lib. z. Sueton. in Vit. August. cap. xc. Vid. J. C. Bullenger, de Terra Motu et Fulminib. lib. v. cap xi. † Οὐδεὶς κεραυνωθεὶς ἄτιμος ἐστι, ὅθεν καὶ ὡς θεὸς τι parai. Plat. Sympos, vid. J. C. Bulleng, ut sup. Pauli Diaconi, de Gestis Langobard. lib. ii. cap. xiv. fo. 15, edit. Taurin. 1527. tions of superstition, it is not strange that the Ro-seems strange that the character of that disputed mans of the age of Leo X. should have been so statue should not be entirely decided, at least in the much terrified at some misinterpreted storms as to mind of any one who has seen a sarcophagus in the require the exhortations of a scholar, who arrayed vestibule of the Basilica of St. Paul without the all the learning on thunder and lightning to prove walls, at Rome, where the whole group of the fable the omen favorable; beginning with the flash which of Marsyas is seen in tolerable preservation; and struck the walls of Velitræ, and including that the Scythian slave whetting the knife is represented which played upon a gate at Florence, and foretold the pontificate of one of its citizens.* 22. Italia! oh Italia! &c. Stanza xlii. line 1. The two stanzas, XLII. and XLIII., are, with the exception of a line or two, a translation of the famous sonnet of Fillicaja: "Italia, Italia, O tu cui feo la sorte." 23. Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him, exactly in the same position as the celebrated masterpiece. The slave is not naked; but it is easier to get rid of this difficulty than to suppose the knife in the hand of the Florentine statue an instrument for shaving, which it must be, if, as Lanzi supposes, the man is no other than the barber of Julius Cæsar. Winkelmann, illustrating a bas relief of the same subject, follows the opinion of Leonard Agostini, and his authority might have been thought conclu sive, even if the resemblance did not strike the most careless observer.* Among the bronzes of the same princely collection is still to be seen the inscribed tablet copied and commented upon by Mr. Gibbon.† Our histo The Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind.rian found some difficulties, but did not desist from Stanza xliv. lines 1 and 2. The celebrated letter of Servius Sulpicus to Cicero on the death of his daughter describes it as it then was, and now is, a path which I often traced in Greece, both by sea and land, in different journeys and voyages. "On my return from Asia, as I was sailing from Egina towards Megara, I began to contemplate the prospect of the countries around me: Egina was behind, Megara before me; Piræus on the right, Corinth on the left; all which towns, once famous and flourishing, now lie overturned and buried in their ruins. Upon this sight, I could not but think presently within myself, Alas! how do we poor mortals fret and vex ourselves, if any of our friends | happen to die or to be killed, whose life is yet so short, when the carcasses of so many noble cities lie here exposed before me in one view." † 24. And we pass The skeleton of her Titanic form his illustration: he might be vexed to hear that his criticism has been thrown away on an inscription now generally recognized to be a forgery. This name will recall the memory, not only of those whose tombs have raised the Santa Croce into the centre of pilgrimage, the Mecca of Italy, but of her whose eloquence was poured over the illustrious ashes, and whose voice is now mute as those she sung. CORINNA is no more; and with her should expire the fear, the flattery, and the envy, which It is Poggio who, looking from the Capitoline threw too dazzling or too dark a cloud round the hill upon ruined Rome, breaks forth into the excla- march of genius, and forbade the steady gaze of mation, "Ut nunc omni decore nudata, próstrata disinterested criticism. We have her picture emjacet, instar gigantei cadaveris corrupti atque un-bellished or distorted, as friendship or detraction dique exesi."I 25. has held the pencil: the impartial portrait was hardly to be expected from a contemporary. The immediate voice of her survivors will, it is probable, There, too, the Goddess loves in stone. be far from affording a just estimate of her singular Stanza xlix. line 1. capacity. The gallantry, the love of wonder, and The view of the Venus of Medecis instantly sug- the hope of associated fame, which blunted the gests the lines in the Seasons, and the comparison edge of censure, must cease to exist.-The dead of the object with the description proves not only have no sex; they can surprise by no new miracles; the correctness of the portrait, but the peculiar they can confer no privilege; Corinna has ceased turn of thought, and, if the term may be used, the to be a woman-she is only an author: and it may sexual imagination of the descriptive poet. The same be foreseen that many will repay themselves for conclusion may be deduced from another hint in the former complaisance, by a severity to which the exsame episode of Musidora; for Thomson's notion of travagance of previous praises may perhaps give the the privileges of favored love must have been either color of truth. The latest posterity, for to the very primitive, or rather deficient in delicacy, when latest posterity they will assuredly descend, will he made his grateful nymph inform her discreet have to pronounce upon her various productions; Damon that in some happier moment he might, and the longer the vista through which they are perhaps, be the companion of her bath: "The time may come you need not fly." seen, the more accurately minute will be the object, the more certain the justice, of the decision. She will enter into that existence in which the great The reader will recollect the anecdote told in the writers of all ages and nations are, as it were, assoLife of Dr. Johnson. We will not leave the Flor-ciated in a world of their own, and, from that supeentine gallery without a word on the Whetter. It rior sphere, shed their eternal influence for the control and consolation of mankind. But the individual will gradually disappear as the author is more 1. P. Valeriana de fulminum significationibus declamatio, ap. Grev. distinctly seen some one, therefore, of all those Antiq. Rom. tom. v. p. 593. The declamation is addressed to Julian of whom the charms of involuntary wit, and of easy Medecis. ↑ Dr. Middleton-History of the Life of M. Tullius Cicero, sect. vii. p. 571, vol. ii. De fortune varietate urbis Rome, et de ruinis ejusdem descriptio, ap. Bellebgre, Thesaur. tom. i. p. 501. See Monim. Ant. ined, par. I, cap. xv. n. xliii. pag. 50; and Storia delli Arti, &c., lib. xi. cap. 1. tom. fi. pag. 314. not. B. ↑ Nomina gentesque Antique Italia, p. 204, edit. oct. hospitality, attracted within the friendly circles of The affectation of simplicity in sepulchral inscripCoppet, should rescue from oblivion those virtues tions, which so often leaves us uncertain whether which, although they are said to love the shade, the structure before us is an actual depository, or a are, in fact, more frequently chilled than excited by cenotaph, or a simple memorial not of death but the domestic cares of private life. Some one life, has given to the tomb of Machiavelli no inshould be found to portray the unaffected graces formation as to the place or time of the birth or with which she adorned those dearer relationships, death, the age or parentage, of the historian. the performance of whose duties is rather discovered among the interior secrets, than seen in the outward management, of family intercourse; and which, indeed, it requires the delicacy of genuine affection to qualify for the eye of an indifferent There seems at least no reason why the name should spectator. Some one should be found, not to cele- not have been put above the sentence which alludes brate, but to describe, the amiable mistress of an to it. open mansion, the centre of a society, ever varied, It will readily be imagined that the prejudices and always pleased, the creator of which, divested which have passed the name of Machiavelli into an of the ambition and the arts of public rivalry, shone epithet proverbial of iniquity, exist no longer at forth only to give fresh animation to those around Florence. His memory was persecuted as his life her. The mother tenderly affectionate and tenderly had been, for an attachment to liberty incompatible beloved, the friend unboundedly generous, but still with the new system of despotism, which succeeded esteemed, the charitable patroness of all distress, the fall of the free governments of Italy. He was cannot be forgotten by those whom she cherished, put to the torture for being a "libertine," that is, and protected, and fed. Her loss will be mourned the for wishing to restore the republic of Florence; and most where she was known the best; and, to the such are the undying efforts of those who are insorrows of very many friends and more dependants, terested in the perversion not only of the nature of may be offered the disinterested regret of a stranger, actions, but the meaning of words, that what was who, amid the sublimer scenes of the Leman lake, received his chief satisfaction from contemplating the engaging qualities of the incomparable Corinna. once patriotism, has by degrees come to signify de bauch. We have ourselves outlived the old meaning of "liberality," which is now another word for treason in one country and for infatuation in all. It seems to have been a strange mistake to accuse the author of the Prince, as being a pander to tyranny; Angelo's, Alfieri's bones. and to think that the Inquisition would condemn his work for such a delinquency. The fact is that Alfieri is the great name of this age. The Ital-Machiavelli, as is usual with those against whom no crime can be proved, was suspected of, and ians, without waiting for the hundred years, con- charged with, atheism; and the first and last most sider him as "a poet good in law."-His memory violent opposers of the Prince were both Jesuits, is the more dear to them because he is the bard of freedom; and because, as such, his tragedies can fosse tardo," to prohibit the treatise, and the other one of whom persuaded the Inquisition "benche receive no countenance from any of their sovereigns. qualified the secretary of the Florentine republic as They are but very seldom, and but very few of no better than a fool. The father Possevin was them, allowed to be acted. It was observed by proved never to have read the book, and the father Cicero, that nowhere were the true opinions and Lucchesini not to have understood it. It is clear, feelings of the Romans so clearly shown as at the however, that such critics must have objected not theatre. In the autumn of 1816, a celebrated im- to the slavery of the doctrines, but to the supposed provisatoire exhibited his talents at the opera-house tendency of a lesson which shows how distinct are of Milan. The reading of the theses handed in for the interests of a monarch from the happiness of the subjects of his poetry was received by a very mankind. The Jesuits are reestablished in Italy, numerous audience, for the most part in silence, or and the last chapter of the Prince may again call with laughter; but when the assistant, unfolding forth a particular refutation, from those who are one of the papers, exclaimed, "The Apotheosis of employed once more in moulding the minds of the Victor Alfieri," the whole theatre burst into a rising generation, so as to receive the impressions shout, and the applause was continued for some of despotism. The chapter bears for title, "Esormoments. The lot did not fall on Alfieri; and the tazione a liberare la Italia dai Barbari," and conSignor Sgricci had to pour forth his extemporary cludes with a libertine excitement to the future recommon-places on the bombardment of Algiers. demption of Italy. "Non si deve adunque lasciar The choice, indeed, is not left to accident quite so much as might be thought from a first view of the Passare questa occasione, acciocchè la Italia vegga ceremony; and the police not only takes care to look dopo tanto tempo appaire un suo redentore. Ne at the papers beforehand, but in case of any pru- tutte quelle provincie, che hanno patito per queste posso esprimere con qual amore ei fusse ricevuto in dential afterthought, steps in to correct the blind-illuvioni esterne, con qual sete di vendetta, con che ness of chance. The proposal for deifying Alfieri ostinata fede, con che lacrime. Quali porte se li was received with immediate enthusiasm, the rather serrerebeno? Quali popoli li negherebbeno la obbedibecause it was conjectured there would be no oppor-enza? Quale Italiano li negherebbe l'ossequio? AD tunity of carrying it into effect. Dante was born in Florence in the year 1261. He Titius, the friend of Antony, presented them with games in the theatre of fought in two battles, was fourteen times ambassaPompey. They did not suffer the brilliancy of the spectacle to efface from dor, and once prior of the republic. When the their memory that the man who furnished them with the entertainment had party of Charles of Anjou triumphed over the Bimurdered the son of Pompey; they drove him from the theatre with curses. anchi, he was absent on an embassy to Pope BoniThe moral sense of a populace, spontaneously expressed, is never wrong face VIII., and was condemned to two years' banEven the soldiers of the triumvirs joined in the execration of the citizens, by shouting round the chariots of Lepidus and Pianous, who had proscribed their brothers, De Germanis non de Gallis duo triumphant Consules; a ishment and to a fine of eight thousand lite; on non- of having patronized him, and the jealous skeptipayment of which he was further punished by the cism of one writer would not allow Ravenna the sequestration of all his property. The republic, undoubted possession of his bones. Even the crithowever, was not content with this satisfaction, for ical Tiraboschi was inclined to believe that the poet in 1772 was discovered in the archives at Florence a had foreseen and foretold one of the discoveries of sentence in which Dante is the eleventh of a list of Galileo.-Like the great originals of other nations, fifteen condemned in 1302 to be burnt alive; Talis his popularity has not always maintained the same perveniens igne comburatur sic quod moriatur. The level. The fast age seemed inclined to undervalue pretext for this judgment was a proof of unfair him as a model and a study; and Bettinelli one day barter, extortions, and illicit gains. Baracteriarum rebuked his pupil Monti, for poring over the harsh iniquarum, extorsionum, et illicitorum lucrorum, and obsolete extravagances of the Commedia. The and with such an accusation it is not strange that present generation, having recovered from the GalDante should have always protested his innocence, lic idolatries of Cesarotti, has returned to the anand the injustice of his fellow-citizens. His appeal cient worship, and the Danteggiare of the northern to Florence was accompanied by another to the Italians is thought even indiscreet by the more Emperor Henry; and the death of that sovereign moderate Tuscans. 31. in 1313, was the signal for a sentence of irrevocable There is still much curious information relative banishment. He had before lingered near Tuscany to the life and writings of this great poet which has with hopes of recall; then travelled into the north not as yet been collected even by the Italians; but of Italy, where Verona had to boast of his longest the celebrated Ugo Foscolo meditates to supply this residence; and he finally settled at Ravenna, which defect, and it is not to be regretted that this notional was his ordinary but not constant abode until his work has been reserved for one so devoted to 's death. The refusal of the Venetians to grant him country and the cause of truth. a public audience, on the part of Guido Novello da Polenta, his protector, is said to have been the principal cause of this event, which happened in 1321. He was buried ("in sacra minorum æde") at Ravenna, in a handsome tomb, which was erected by Guido, restored by Bernardo Bembo in 1483, prætor for that republic which had refused to hear him, again restored by Cardinal Corsi in 1692, and The elder Scipio Africanus had a tomb if he was replaced by a more magnificent sepulchre, con- not buried at Liternum, whither he had retired to structed in 1780, at the expense of the Cardinal voluntary banishment. This tomb was near the Luigi Valenti Gonzaga. The offence or misfortune sea-shore, and the story of an inscription upon it, of Dante was an attachment to a defeated party, Ingrata Patria, having given a name to a modern and, as his least favorable biographers allege against tower, is, if not true, an agreeable fiction. If he him, too great a freedom of speech and haughtiness was not buried, he certainly lived there.t Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore; Stanza Ivii. lines 2, 3, and 4. In cosi angusta e solitaria villa of manner. But the next age paid honors almost divine to the exile. The Florentines, having in vain and frequently attempted to recover his body, crowned his image in a church,t and his picture is still one of the idols of their cathedral. They Ingratitude is generally supposed the vice peculiar struck medals, they raised statues to him. The to republics; and it seems to be forgotten that for cities of Italy, not being able to dispute about his one instance of popular inconstancy, we have a own birth, contended for that of his great poem, hundred examples of the fall of courtly favorites. and the Florentines thought it for their honor to Besides, a people have often repented-a monarch prove that he had finished the seventh canto before seldom or never. Leaving apart many familiar they drove him from his native city. Fifty-one proofs of this fact, a short story may show the difyears after his death, they endowed a professorial ference between even an aristocracy and the multichair for the expounding of his verses, and Boccac- tude. cio was appointed to this patriotic employment. Vettor Pisani, having been defeated in 1354 at The example was imitated by Bologna and Pisa, Potolongo, and many years afterwards in the more and the commentators, if they performed but little decisive action of Pola, by the Genoese, was recalled service to literature, augmented the veneration by the Venetian government, and thrown into which beheld a sacred or moral allegory in all the chains. The Avvogadori proposed to behead him, images of his mystic muse. His birth and his in- but the supreme tribunal was content with the senfancy were discovered to have been distinguished tence of imprisonment. Whilst Pisani was sufferabove those of ordinary men; the author of the De- ing this unmerited disgrace, Chioza, in the vicinity cameron, his earliest biographer, relates, that his of the capital, was, by the assistance of the Signor mother was warned in a dream of the importance of of Padua, delivered into the hands of Pietro Doria. her pregnancy: and it was found, by others, that at At the intelligence of that disaster, the great bell ten years of age he had manifested his precocious of St. Mark's tower tolled to arms, and the people passion for that wisdom or theology, which, under and the soldiery of the galleys were summoned to the name of Beatrice, had been mistaken for a the repulse of the approaching enemy; but they substantial mistress. When the Divine Comedy protested they would not move a step, unless Pisani had been recognized as a mere mortal production, were liberated and placed at their head. The great and at the distance of two centuries, when criticism council was instantly assembled; the prisoner was and competition had sobered the judgment of Ital- called before them, and the Doge, Andrea Contaians, Dante was seriously declared superior to rini, informed him of the demands of the people Homer: and, though the preference appeared to and the necessities of the state, whose only hope of some casuists "an heretical blasphemy worthy of safety was reposed on his efforts, and who implored the flames," the contest was vigorously maintained him to forget the indignities he had endured in her for nearly fifty years. In later times it was made a service. "I have submitted," replied the magnanquestion which of the Lords of Verona could boast imous republican, "I have submitted to your delib • Storia della Lett. Ital. tom. v. lib. ili. par. 2, p. 448. Tiraboschi is incoret: the dates of the three decrees against Dante are A. D. 1302, 1314, and 1816. • Gio. Jacopo Dionisi Canonico di Verona. Serie di Anedotto, n. 2. See Storia, &c., tom. v. lib. I. par. i. p. 24. ↑ Vitam Literni egit sine desideio urbis. See T. Liv. Hist. lib. xxxvii ↑ So relates Ficino, but some think his coronation only an allegory. See Livy reports that some said he was buried at Liternum, others at Rome Ib Btoria, &c., ut sup. p. 453. By Varchi in his Ercolano. The controvery continued from 1570 to 1616. See Storia, &c., tom. vii lib. iii. par. iii. p. 1280 cap. lv. Trionfo della Castita. arations without complaint; I have supported pa- Boccaccio was buried in the church of St. Michael tiently the pains of imprisonment, for they were and St. James, at Certaldo, a small town in the inflicted at your command: this is no time to in- Valdelsa, which was by some supposed the place of quire whether I deserved them-the good of the re- his birth. There he passed the latter part of his public may have seemed to require it, and that life in a course of laborious study, which shortened which the republic resolves is always resolved wisely. his existence; and there might his ashes have been Behold me ready to lay down my life for the preser- secure, if not of honor, at least of repose. But the vation of my country." Pisani was appointed gen-"hyæna bigots" of Certaldo tore up the tombstone eralissimo, and by his exertions, in conjunction with of Boccaccio, and ejected it from the holy precincts those of Carlo Zeno, the Venetians soon recovered of St. Michael and St. James. The occasion, and, the ascendancy over their maritime rivals. it may be hoped, the excuse, of this ejectment was The Italian communities were no less unjust to the making of a new floor for the church; but the fact their citizens than the Greek republics. Liberty, is, that the tombstone was taken up and thrown both with the one and the other, seems to have aside at the bottom of the building. Ignorance been a national, not an individual object: and, not-may share the sin with bigotry. It would be painful withstanding the boasted equality before the laws, to relate such an exception to the devotion of the which an ancient Greek writer considered the Italians for their great names, could it not be acgreat distinctive mark between his countrymen and companied by a trait more honorably conformable to the barbarians, the mutual rights of fellow-citizens the general character of the nation. The principal seem never to have been the principal scope of the person of the district, the last branch of the house old democracies. The world may have not yet seen of Medicis, afforded that protection to the memory an essay by the author of the Italian Republics, in of the insulted dead which her best ancestors had which the distinction between the liberty of former dispensed upon all cotemporary merit. The Marstates, and the signification attached to that word chioness Lenzoni rescued the tombstone of Boccacby the happier constitution of England, is ingeni- cio from the neglect in which it had some time lain, ously developed. The Italians, however, when they and found for it an honorable elevation in her own had ceased to be free, still looked back with a sigh mansion. She has done more: the house in which upon those times of turbulence, when every citizen the poet lived has been as little respected as his might rise to a share of sovereign power, and have tomb, and is falling to ruin over the head of one never been taught fully to appreciate the repose of indifferent to the name of its former tenant. It a monarchy. Sperone Speroni, when Francis Maria consists of two or three little chambers, and a low II. Duke of Rovere proposed the question, "which tower, on which Cosmo II. affixed an inscription. was preferable, the republic or the principality-the This house she has taken measures to purchase, perfect and not durable, or the less perfect and not and proposes to devote to it that care and consider so liable to change," replied, "that our happiness ation which are attached to the cradle and to the is to be measured by its quality, not by its duration; roof of genius. and that he preferred to live for one day like a man, than for a hundred years like a brute, a stock, or a stone." This was thought, and called, a magnificent answer, down to the last days of Italian servitude.† 32. And the crown Stanza Ivii. lines 6, 7, and 8. This is not the place to undertake the defence of Boccaccio; but the man who exhausted his little patrimony in the acquirement of learning, who was among the first, if not the first, to allure the science and the poetry of Greece to the bosom of Italy; who not only invented a new style, but founded, or certainly fixed, a new language; who, besides the esteem of every polite court of Europe, was thought worthy of employment by the predominant republic of his own country, and, what is The Florentines did not take the opportunity of more, of the friendship of Petrarch, who lived the Petrarch's short visit to their city in 1350 to revoke life of a philosopher and a freeman, and who died the decree which confiscated the property of his in the pursuit of knowledge, such a man might father, who had been banished shortly after the have found more consideration than he has met with exile of Dante. His crown did not dazzle them; from the priest of Certaldo, and from a late English but when in the next year they were in want of his traveller, who strikes off his portrait as an odious, conassistance in the formation of their university, they should be suffered to rot without a record. That temptible, licentious writer, whose impure remains repented of their injustice, and Boccaccio was sent to Padua to entreat the laureate to conclude his English traveller, unfortunately for those who have wanderings in the bosom of his native country; vond all criticism; but the mortality which did not to deplore the loss of a very amiable person, is bewhere he might finish his immortal Africa, and enjoy with his recovered possessions, the esteem of protect Boccaccio from Mr. Eustace, must not deall classes of his fellow-citizens. They gave him fend Mr. Eustace from the impartial judgment of the option of the book and the science he might his errors; and it may be modestly pronounced that his successors.-Death may canonize his virtues, not condescend to expound: they called him the glory of his country, who was dear, and would be dearer he transgressed, not only as an author, but as a to them; and they added, that if there was anything man, when he evoked the shade of Boccacio in comunpleasing in their letter, he ought to return among pany with that of Aretine, amidst the sepulchres them, were it only to correct their style. Petrarch of Santa Croce, merely to dismiss it with indignity. seemed at first to listen to their flattery and to the As far as respects entreaties of his friend, but he did not return to Florence, and preferred a pilgrimage to the tomb of Laura and the shades of Vaucluse. 33. Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed • The Greek boasted that he was icovópos. See the last chapter of the first book of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. "II flagello de' Principi, Il Divin Pietro Aretino," • Classical Tour, cap. ix. vol. ii. p. 355, edit. 31. "Of Boccaccio, the modern Petronius, we say nothing; the abuse of genius is more odious and more contemptible than its absence; and it imports little where the impure remains of a licentious author are consigned to their kindred dust. For the same reason the traveller may pass unnoticed the tomb of the malignant Aretino," This dubious phrase is hardly enough to save the tourist from the suspicion of another blunder respecting the burial-place of Antine, whose tomb was in "E intorno alla magnifica risposta," &c. Serassi Vita del Tasso, lib. the church of St. Luke at Venice, and gave rise to the famous controversy of . pag. 149, tom. ii. edit. 2. Bergamo. "Accingiti innoltre, se ci è lecito ancor l'esortarti, a compire l'immortal tua Africa.... Se ti avvienne d'incontrare nel nostro stile cosa che ti dispiaccia, ciò debb' essere un altro motivo ad esaudire i desideri della tua patria," Etoria della Lett. Ital. tom. v. par. L. lib. I. pag. 70. which some notice is taken in Bayle. Now the words of Mr. Eustace would lead us to think the tomb was at Florence, or at least was to be somewhere recognized. Whether the inscription so much disputed was ever written on the tomb cannot now be decided, for all memorial of this author has disag peared from the church of St. Luke. |
