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 Research Library, The Getty Research Institute 
 
 http://archive.org/details/memoirsofcountca01gozz 
 
THE MEMOIRS 
 
 COUNT CARLO GOZZI 
 
 VOLUME THE FIRST 
 
PUBLISHER'S NOTE. 
 
 Five hundred and twenty copies of this book printed for England, 
 and two hundred and sixty for America. Type distributed. Each 
 copy numbered. 
 
 No.J.0./. 
 
 ?' 
 
THE MEMOIRS OF 
 
 COUNT CARLO GOZZI 
 
 TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 
 
 ll\it\) Assays on Etalt'an impromptu (Tomctig, ©o^t's Etfe, 
 <£Ijc ©ramatt'c tfafctes, anto ^iitxa SLongfjt 
 
 By the TRANSLATOR 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT AND SIX ORIGINAL ETCHINGS 
 By ADOLPHE LALAUZE 
 
 ALSO ELEVEN SUBJECTS ILLUSTRATING ITALIAN COMEDY BY MAURICE SAND 
 ENGRAVED ON COPPER BY A. MANCEAU, AND COLOURED BY HAND 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 
 VOLUME THE FIRST 
 
 LONDON 
 JOHN C. NIMMO 
 
 14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND 
 
 MDCCCXC 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 VOLUME THE FIRST. 
 
 The Etchings designed and etched by Ad. Lalauze. The Masks, 
 illustrating the Italian Commedia dell' Arte, by Maurice Sand, 
 engraved by A. jVTanceau, and coloured by hand. 
 
 I. Portrait of Carlo Gozzi {etching) 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 II. The Italian Commedia deli.' Arte, or Impromptu 
 Comedy . 
 
 III. Colombina (1683) . 
 
 IV. Tartaglia (1620) . 
 V. Brighella (1570) . 
 
 VI. Il Dottore (1653) 
 VII. Scaramouch (1645) 
 VIII. The Franciscan Friar on the Galley [etching) 
 IX. Il Capitano (1668) 
 
 2 5 
 48 
 96 
 128 
 160 
 192 
 216 
 2^6 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 After the appearance of my work on Benvenuto 
 Cellini, Mr. J. C. Nimmo proposed that I should 
 undertake a translation of Count Carlo Gozzi's 
 Memorie Inutili. 
 
 The suggestion that such a book might be of 
 interest to the English public emanated originally, 
 I believe, from Mr. E. Hutchings of Manchester, in 
 a letter addressed to the Academy} 
 
 To this gentleman my warmest thanks are due, 
 not only for starting the idea, which I have 
 carried out, but also for the interest he has 
 shown in my work during its progress, and for the 
 assistance he has liberally rendered by the loan of 
 rare books. 
 
 I entertained the proposal with some doubt. What 
 
 1 Under date August 31, 1885, with the assumed signature of E. H. 
 Westbourne. See Academy, No. 696, Sept. 5, 1885. 
 
 VOL. I. b 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 I already knew about Carlo Gozzi amounted to 
 little ; and it seemed to me improbable that the world 
 would willingly have left his Memoirs in oblivion 
 if they possessed solid qualities. 
 
 At the same time, the little that I did know of 
 Gozzi roused my curiosity. The picturesque aspects 
 of Venetian decadence allured my fancy. I foresaw 
 that I should have to handle the attractive subject of 
 Italian impromptu comedy. Finally, it so happens 
 that autobiographies have always exerted a pecu- 
 liar fascination for my mind. I rate them highly 
 as historical and psychological documents. The 
 smallest fragment of a genuine autobiography seems 
 to me valuable for the student of past epochs. 
 
 I had strong inducements, therefore, to undertake 
 the proposed task. 
 
 The first thing to do was to procure a copy of 
 the Memoirs, which exist only in one edition of 
 three volumes. Mr. Hutchings placed the first two 
 volumes of the book at my disposal ; but the third 
 w T as missing. It had been purloined while its 
 owner was stationed in one of the South American 
 cities. Mr. Nimmo and I waited through four 
 months, making continued applications to the best 
 European dealers in old books, before a complete 
 copy was at last disinterred from a Venetian library. 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 The extraordinary rarity of the Memorie stimu- 
 lated my growing interest. After making a pre- 
 liminary study of the text, I perceived that this was 
 no common specimen of self-portraiture. In some 
 respects it seemed to me to be a masterpiece. I 
 felt no doubt that it possessed both psychological 
 and historical value. A man of a very marked type 
 stood forth from those pages. He was, moreover, 
 the Venetian representative of a well-defined social 
 and literary period. This period corresponded pretty 
 closely with that of our own Samuel Johnson, Field- 
 ing, Goldsmith, Reynolds, David Hume. It was 
 the period which ended with the earthquake of the 
 French Revolution, the signs of which catastrophe 
 were felt more ominously in Italy than in our own 
 land. At the same time I recognised salient quali- 
 ties of healthy moral sense, of analytical acumen, of 
 vigorous intelligence, and of caustic humour in the 
 author, mingled with literary merit of no ordinary 
 kind, vivid transcripts from contemporary life, 
 dramatic narration, incisive sketches of character, 
 original reflections on society. 
 
 According to my own standard in such matters, 
 Gozzi's Memoirs ranked as an important document 
 for the study of Italy in the last century. 
 
 But was the book worth translating? Would it 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 not suffice to leave the few existing copies in their 
 obscurity, and to indicate their value for historians 
 by composing a critical treatise on the author and 
 his times ? 
 
 My own predilection for autobiographies, and my 
 sense of their utility, caused me to reject this alter- 
 native. I decided to translate, and to illustrate my 
 translation by tolerably copious original essays. 
 
 While engaged upon the work, I have not, how- 
 ever, felt always quite at ease. It has recurred to 
 my mind that many readers of these volumes will 
 exclaim : " An English version of Gozzi's self-styled 
 ' useless memoirs ' cannot fail to be twice as useless 
 as the original ! " Not all people share that par- 
 tiality for autobiographies which in me amounts 
 almost to a passion. 
 
 Besides, I had to face other difficulties. The 
 three chapters which contain the narratives of Gozzi's 
 love-adventures could not be omitted. They are too 
 valuable for the light they throw upon his age, 
 and too important in the man's estimate of his own 
 character. Their suppression would have been un- 
 fair to Gozzi, and would have shorn his Memoirs of 
 some brilliant bits of local colour. Nevertheless, I 
 knew that the frankness and the cynical humour of 
 these episodes are out of tune with modern taste. 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 Much is pardoned by the virtue of our age to classics 
 — to Plato or Cellini — which would not be excused 
 in a writer of inferior eminence. But Gozzi is no 
 classic. The fact of his neglect by his own nation 
 proves that overwhelmingly. Why drag him from 
 deserved oblivion if these love-stories are indis- 
 pensable to the rehabilitating process ? 
 
 My answer to this perplexing query was that the 
 debated passages are good in literature, true to 
 nature, sound in moral feeling. Their candour is 
 the candour of a cleanly heart, resolved to bare its 
 secret by an effort of self-portraiture. Gozzi de- 
 scribes passions common to that age, and ours, and 
 every age ; but he also shows how a determined 
 character, upright and honourable, can free itself 
 from the entanglements of natural frailty. The 
 lesson may be somewhat harsh, but it is salutary. 
 Gozzi has written no single word unworthy of a man 
 of principle — nothing which is calculated to make 
 vice alluring. Only one — 
 
 " Who winks, and shuts his apprehension up 
 From common sense of what men were and are, 
 Who would not know what men must be : " — 
 
 only such an one can take exception to the narratives 
 of Gozzi's love-adventures. 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 Reasoning thus, I determined to include the love- 
 tales in my translation, having already decided that 
 no translation could be given to the world without 
 them, and that the book was worthy of resuscitation. 
 But I felt myself justified in removing those passages 
 and phrases which might have caused offence to some 
 of my readers. 
 
 To translate Gozzi with the minute attention to 
 his style which I bestowed upon Cellini would have 
 been unpractical. I should even have inflicted an 
 injury upon my author. It is in many respects an 
 annoying style ; redundant, unequal, diffuse ; bearing 
 the stamp of garrulous senility and imperfect (though 
 copious) command of language. 
 
 To condense and manipulate the Memoirs at my 
 own free will, following the plan of Paul de Musset's 
 abridgement, seemed to me unscrupulous, even if I 
 abstained from that amusing writer's deliberate mysti- 
 fications. 
 
 I resolved to convert the larger portion of the book 
 into equivalent English, allowing myself the license 
 of curtailing certain passages, and rearranging the 
 order of some chapters. All cases of important con- 
 densation or omission have been indicated in my 
 notes. My account of the Memoirs and the causes 
 which led to their publication (Introduction, Part i.) 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 sufficiently explains my right to transpose material 
 from one place to another. Readers of the Intro- 
 duction will perceive how carelessly and accidentally, 
 to serve occasion, the original and unique edition 
 was put together. It is due in part, I think, to 
 Gozzi's indifference and haste of compilation that so 
 curious a specimen of autobiography fell into almost 
 absolute oblivion. 
 
 We have only one edition of the Memorie, that 
 of Palese, under the date Venezia, 1797. Therefore 
 nothing need be said upon the topic of bibliography. 
 I may, however, mention that the few copies of this 
 rare book which have fallen under my inspection 
 present some features of difference, indicating the 
 random way in which the sheets were made up for 
 publication. 
 
 Among English critics of distinction, one only, so 
 far as I am aware, has mentioned Gozzi's Memoirs. 
 That is Vernon Lee, in her Studies of the Eighteenth 
 Century in Italy. But Vernon Lee knew the book 
 only through Paul de Musset's "perversion." Ac- 
 cordingly, what she has to say about the man is 
 less valuable than the vivid, if not always accurate, 
 account she gives of his Fiabe. 
 
 The volumes I am now presenting to the public 
 claim at least one merit — that of dealing with a 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 hitherto almost untouched document of historical and 
 literary importance. 
 
 I flatter myself that readers will be found to ap- 
 preciate the brilliant, though prolix and desultory, 
 portraiture of life in Venice during the last century 
 which these " useless memoirs " offer to their imagi- 
 nation. 
 
 Finally, I wish here to record my mature opinion 
 about Carlo Gozzi' s character for veracity and general 
 uprightness. I think that I have been hardly just, 
 and certainly not generous, to Gozzi in the Intro- 
 duction and the notes appended to my version. 
 Wishing to avoid the lues biographica, I assumed a 
 somewhat too purely critical attitude while writing. 
 Careful perusal of the proofs makes me feel that the 
 truth would not have suffered had I entirely sup- 
 pressed some suspicions and concealed some per- 
 sonal want of sympathy with the man. Allowing 
 for his peculiar and occasionally repellent character 
 — the character of an " original " and a confirmed 
 old bachelor — Gozzi seems to me now to have 
 been as honest and open-hearted as a gentleman 
 
 should be. 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. 
 
 Am Hof, Davos Platz, 
 
 March 25, 1889. 
 
BOOKS USED AND REFERRED TO IN 
 THIS WORK. 
 
 i. Carlo Gozzi. " Memorie Inutili." 3 vols. Venice. 1797. 
 
 2. Carlo Gozzi. "Opere." 10 vols. Venice. Colombani and other 
 
 publishers. 177 2-1 791. 
 
 3. Ernesto Ma si. "Le Fiabe di Carlo Gozzi." 2 vols. Bologna. 
 
 Zanichelli. 1885. 
 
 4. Pier Antonio Gratarol. "Narrazione Apologetica." 2 vols. 
 
 Venezia. Gatti. 1797. 
 
 5. Paul de Mxjsset. "Meruoires de Charles Gozzi." Paris. Char- 
 
 pentier. 1848. 
 
 6. Giov. Batt. Magrini. " Carlo Gozzi e le Fiabe." Cremona. Fera- 
 
 boli. 1876. The same -work, second edition : " I Tempi la Vita 
 e gli Scritti di Carlo Gozzi." Benevento. De Gennaro. 1883. 
 
 7. Michele Scherillo. "La Commedia dell' Arte in Italia." 
 
 Torino. Loescher. 1884. 
 
 8. Adolfo Bartoli. " Scenari Inediti della Commedia dell' Arte." 
 
 Firenze. Sansone. 1880. 
 
 9. Alfonse Roter. "Carlo Gozzi, Theatre Fiabesque." Paris. 
 
 Michel Levy. 1865. 
 
 10. Carlo Goldoni. "Memoires." 3 vols. Paris. Veuve Duchesne. 
 
 1787. 
 
 11. Ferdixando Galanti. "Carlo Goldoni e Venezia nel Secolo 
 
 xviii." Padova. Samin. 18S2. 
 
 12. P. G. Molmenti. " Carlo Goldoni." Venezia. Ongania. 1880. 
 
 13. Vernon Lee. "Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy." 
 
 London. Satchell. 1880. 
 
xiv BOOKS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK. 
 
 14. Maurice Sand. " Masques et Bouffons." 2 vols. Paris. A.Levy 
 
 1862. 
 
 15. S. Romanist. " Storia Documentata di Venezia." Vols, vii.-ix. 
 
 Venezia. Naratovitch. i860. 
 
 16. Giuseppe Boerio. " Dizionario del Dialetto Veneziano." Venezia. 
 
 Coccliini. 1856. 
 
 17. Philarete Chasles. " Etudes sur l'Espagne, etc." ("D'un Theatre 
 
 Espagnol-Venitien au xviii me - Siecle et de Charles Gozzi"). 
 Paris. Amyot. 1847. 
 
 18. N. Tommaseo. "Storia Civile nella Letteraria." Roma, Torino, 
 
 Firenze. E. Loescher. 1872. 
 
 19. Eugenio Camerini. " I Precursori del Goldoni." Milano. Son- 
 
 zogno. 1872. 
 
 20. " Memoires de Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, ecrites par lui-meme. 
 
 Bruxelles. Rozet. 1876. 
 
THE MEMOIRS 
 
 COUNT CARLO GOZZI 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 part I. 
 
 CARLO GOZZI AND PIERO ANTONIO GRATA ROL. 
 
 I. The ancestry and social standing of Count Carlo Gozzi — His collision 
 with Piero Antonio Gratarol, Secretary to the Venetian Collegio — 
 How this quarrel led to the composition of Gozzi's Memoirs — Their 
 importance as a document for the social history of Venice in the 
 eighteenth century. — 2. The interweaving of this episode in Gozzi's 
 Life with his literary warfare against Goldoni, which culminated in 
 the production of his ten dramatic fables.— 3. Sketch of Gratarol's 
 life, and his relation to Andrea and Caterina Tron — Gozzi's liaison 
 with the actress Teodora Eicci — Gozzi's comedy, Le Droghe d' Amove 
 — Turned by Mme. Tron into a satire upon Gratarol — Gratarol flies 
 from Venice to Stockholm, is proscribed by the Republic, and loses 
 all his fortune — His Narrazione Apologetica — Gozzi takes up the 
 pen in self-defence — The Inquisitors of State forbid the publication 
 of his autobiographical polemic — Gratarol's death in Madagascar — 
 Circumstances which induced Gozzi in 1797, after the fall of the 
 Republic of St. Mark, to complete and publish his Memoirs. — 4. 
 Gozzi's literary style and personal character — The false conception 
 of the man and his work which has been diffused by Paul de 
 Musset. 
 
 I. 
 
 In the year 1797 there appeared at Venice a book 
 entitled Memorie inutili delta vita di Carlo Gozzi, 
 scritte da lui medesimo e pubblicafe per umilta, 
 " Useless Memoirs of the Life of Carlo Gozzi, written 
 by himself and published from motives of humility." 
 Its author, though he bore the title of Count, and 
 VOL. 1. A 
 
2 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 belonged to an honourable family in Venice, was not 
 of patrician descent. That is to say, none of his 
 lineal ancestors had acquired the right of voting in 
 the Grand Council or of holding the highest offices 
 of state. They ranked with the citizens of the 
 Republic, who took no direct part in the government, 
 but who were permitted to discharge important func- 
 tions as secretaries of several departments and as 
 ambassadors of the second class. By his mother he 
 drew half of his blood from one of the oldest and 
 proudest of Venetian noble families, the Tiepolos. 
 Thus, socially, if not politically, birth placed him 
 almost on a level with the best Venetian aristocracy. 
 In the year 1797 he was seventy-seven; and 
 although he had been a man of some mark in his 
 early days, the public had lost sight of him for the 
 last seventeen years. His reputation depended upon 
 a large number of dramatic pieces, satirical poems, 
 and prose compositions, mostly of a controversial 
 kind. Two main episodes in his literary life con- 
 ferred a slightly dubious notoriety upon his name. 
 The first of these was the long and bitter war he 
 waged against the two playwrights, Chiari and Gol- 
 doni, between the years 1756 and 1762. The other 
 was an unfortunate series of events which brought 
 him into collision with a certain Pier Antonio Gra- 
 tarol in 1777. Gratarol, like his adversary, was a 
 Venetian citizen, allied by descent to the great patri- 
 cian family of Contarini. Unlike Gozzi, he early 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART I. 3 
 
 embarked on a political career, was one of the secre- 
 taries of the Collegio, and looked forward to the 
 highest appointments which were open to a man of 
 his rank. The collision with Count Gozzi, which I 
 shall have to describe with some minuteness, ended 
 in Gratarol's voluntary exile from Venice, the con- 
 fiscation of his property by the State, and a public 
 scandal of sufficient importance to attract the atten- 
 tion of serious historians. 1 Had it not been for this 
 tragi-comic episode in his past life, Gozzi would never 
 have written his Memoirs ; and had the memory of 
 the scandal not been revived some years after Grata- 
 rol's death, when the old Republic of S. Mark had 
 fallen in the crash of the French Revolution, he would 
 never have published them. 
 
 This autobiography is distinctly an apologetical 
 work, a portrait drawn by Gozzi in self-defence, and 
 intended to vindicate himself from the aspersions 
 cast by Gratarol upon his character. Its main object 
 is to set forth in the fairest light his own conduct 
 during the unlucky collision to which I have alluded. 
 Yet though so limited in aim, the interest which 
 it possesses for us at the present time, is far wider 
 than belongs to that unhappy squabble, long since 
 buried in oblivion. Gozzi's conception of an Apo- 
 logia pro vita sua was a comprehensive one. He 
 resolved to reveal his character under all its aspects, 
 
 1 See Romanin, Storia Documentata di Venezia, vol. viii. ch. 7. 
 
4 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 from his childhood until the date 1777, dealing now 
 with matters of general importance, now with the 
 private affairs of his home, touching upon the litera- 
 ture of his age, discussing fashions, criticising philo- 
 sophy, entering into minute particulars regarding 
 theatres and actors, describing his love-affairs with 
 a frankness worthy of Rousseau, and painting a series 
 of lively portraits in which a large variety of indivi- 
 duals from all classes are presented to our notice. 
 The result is that his autobiography, although in the 
 strictest sense of that term an occasional production, 
 forms one of the most valuable documents we possess 
 for a study of Venetian society during the decadence 
 of the Republic. Gozzi was gifted with a penetra- 
 tive and observant mind, strong sense of humour, and 
 a power of brilliant description. On the faults of 
 his style and the defects of his character, I shall speak 
 hereafter. At present it is enough to indicate the 
 importance of the Memoirs as furnishing a vivid 
 picture of Venetian life in the eighteenth century. 
 Venice, at that period, was fortunate in autobio- 
 graphers. She possessed Goldoni and Casanova as 
 w T ell as Gozzi, not to mention smaller folk like Da 
 Ponte, the poet of Mozart's Don Giovanni. But 
 when we compare the three life-records of Goldoni, 
 Casanova, and Gozzi, by far the deepest historical 
 interest, in my opinion, belongs to the last. Casa- 
 nova's Memoirs are almost excluded from general 
 use by the nature of their predominant pre-occupa- 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART I. 5 
 
 tiou. Moreover, they deal but partially with Venice, 
 and only with limited aspects of its social life. 
 Goldoni's, though more humane, and in all that con- 
 cerns tone impeccable, turn too exclusively upon 
 the history of his dramatic works to be of great 
 importance as an historical document. Moreover, 
 the scene is laid in several provinces of Italy and 
 transferred before its close to France. Gozzi, on 
 the contrary, never quits the soil of Venice. Except 
 when he served as a soldier for three years in the 
 Venetian province of Dalmatia, he does not appear to 
 have travelled further than to Pordenone on one side 
 and to Padua on the other. Of strong aristocratic 
 instincts, but condemned to comparative poverty by 
 the reckless expenditure of his parents and grand- 
 parents, Gozzi enjoyed opportunities of studying the 
 society of Venice from several points of view. His 
 enthusiasm for literature and partiality for profes- 
 sional actors brought him acquainted with the scholars 
 and the Bohemians of that epoch. His management 
 of the encumbered estates of his family introduced him 
 to advocates, solicitors, brokers, Jews, tenants, and 
 all manner of strange people. His birth made him 
 the companion of patricians. His military service 
 involved him in the wild pleasures and perils of 
 scapegrace lads upon a foreign soil. Consequently, 
 the records of a life so varied in experience, while 
 strictly confined within the narrow circuit of Venetian 
 society, could not fail to be rich in details for the 
 
6 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 student. It may be regretted that Gozzi chose to 
 write in a didactic spirit. We could willingly have 
 exchanged his long-winded excursions into the sphere 
 of moral philosophy for a few more graphic sketches 
 in the style of his Dalmatian adventures. 
 
 II. 
 
 This biographical and historical interest, far more 
 than Gozzi's quarrel with Goldoni or his collision 
 with Gratarol, is the reason why I thought it worth 
 while to translate a book which has become exces- 
 sively rare in the original. Nothing can be duller 
 or more contemptible, to my mind, than the chronicle 
 of literary quarrels. The Goldoni-Gozzi episode 
 would be devoid of permanent attraction were it 
 not for the curious light thrown by it upon the 
 obscure subject of impromptu comedy, and for the 
 ten extraordinary Fiabe Teatrali from Gozzi's pen 
 to which it gave rise. Again, the Gratarol- Gozzi 
 episode, as we shall presently see, is almost humi- 
 liating in the pettiness of its details, and painful 
 through its tragic termination. 
 
 The Memoirs contain a full and tolerably accurate 
 account of the Gratarol incident. Yet I cannot dis- 
 pense with a summary of this affair, based upon a 
 comparison of Gozzi's story with that of Gratarol in 
 his Narrazione Apologetica. The extreme import- 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART I. 7 
 
 ance of the event in the lives of both men, and 
 the fact that it constitutes the subject of Gozzi's 
 autobiography in quite as serious a sense as that 
 in which the Persian war forms the subject of 
 Herodotus' history, render this unavoidable. 
 
 III. 
 
 Pier Antonio Gratarol was a young man between 
 thirty and forty in the year 1776. He had grown 
 up with an ample fortune and without a father's 
 control ; had imbibed French ways of thinking and 
 French customs ; had married, and after marriage 
 had separated from his wife. 1 He represented that 
 class of intellectual and political Liberals whom 
 Gozzi, with his Conservative prejudices, regarded as 
 dangerous to the well-being of the State. He was 
 an open libertine in his relations with women, and 
 
 1 Gratarol was not formally divorced from his wife. This appears 
 from several passages of his Narrazione Apologetica. It may, however, 
 be here observed that scandalous irregularities with regard to matrimony 
 formed one of the main signs of Venetian decadence. Between 1782 
 and 1796 the Council of Ten received no fewer than 264 petitions for 
 divorce, and the Patriarch is said to have had 900 applications at one 
 time before him, requiring his decision in matters relating to a dis- 
 solution of the marriage tie. See Magrini, op. cit., p. 23 ; and Macchi, 
 Storia del Concilio dei Died, vol. ii. p. 355. It seems that the most 
 shameless reasons were collusively alleged by the parties in these cases 
 for breaking a tie which the Church regarded as indissoluble. In 
 1782 the Ten passed a law requiring a divorced woman to enter a 
 convent. 
 
8 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 did not strive to conceal those principles of personal 
 liberty which the philosophes were spreading through- 
 out Europe. At the same time he represented a 
 family which had served the Republic in distin- 
 guished offices for many generations ; he possessed 
 excellent abilities, and had every reason to expect 
 a brilliant future. There was nothing in his con- 
 duct or in his domestic circumstances to distinguish 
 him unfavourably from a multitude of gay livers and 
 free-thinkers in the corrupt Venice of that epoch. 
 He had recently become eligible for the post of 
 ambassador at a foreign Court ; and was already 
 nominated as Resident in Naples. This nomination 
 required, however, to be confirmed by the Grand 
 Council ; and circumstances, which need not be 
 enlarged upon, rendered the grant of money for his 
 embassy a matter of debate. 1 Unfortunately, Grata- 
 rol was a person of vain, imperious temper, puffed 
 up with the sense of his own merits, and incapable 
 of correcting his antipathies. His French tenden- 
 cies — political, moral, social, literary — fashionable 
 for the most part — prejudiced the minds of influential 
 people in the highest departments of the government 
 against him. Finally, he had made an implacable 
 
 1 A short while before, he had been appointed Resident at Turin, 
 and had received the usual equipment for that service. Circumstances 
 independent of his own will in the matter prevented him from assum- 
 ing the office. His political ill-wishers were able to point to the un- 
 used grant which he had pocketed. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART I. 9 
 
 enemy of a great lady, who at that time exercised 
 almost dictatorial control over the councils of the 
 State. This was Caterina Dolfin Tron, the wife of 
 Andrea Tron, Procuratore di San Marco, whose im- 
 mense influence in the Council of Ten, the Consulta, 
 and the Senate enabled him to do what he liked 
 with the Grand Council. 1 Caterina' s husband was 
 popularly known as II Padrone, or the Master 
 of Venice, and he doted on her with a blind 
 affection. She was a woman of brilliant parts, im- 
 bued, like Gratarol, with advanced French notions, 
 meddlesome in public matters, aspiring to manage 
 the politics of Venice and to dictate laws to society 
 from her own reception-rooms. Gratarol began by 
 paying her wise attentions ; but for some reason un- 
 known to us, he had lately dropped his courtship 
 and indulged in satirical comments upon Caterina's 
 private conduct. She vowed to effect his ruin, and 
 circumstances enabled her to do so. 
 
 Gozzi, meanwhile, had for the last five years or 
 so assumed the position of titular protector to a 
 married actress called Teodora Bicci. He does his 
 best to persuade us that the liaison was one of friend- 
 ship ; but it is clear that, upon whatever footing he 
 stood toward the Ricci, he felt a real affection for 
 
 1 Caterina was the daughter of the ancient and noble, but im- 
 poverished house of Dolfin. She contracted her first marriage with a 
 member of the Tiepolo family, obtained a divorce from him, and mar- 
 ried her lover, Andrea Tron. 
 
io MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 this woman. For her he composed the dramatic 
 works of his second or Spanish manner. He at- 
 tended her in public, introduced her to the houses 
 of his friends, and stood godfather to her second 
 child. We are, in fact, met here by an obscurity not 
 unlike that which involves the more famous connec- 
 tion of Congreve with Mrs. Bracegirdle. Gratarol, 
 pursuing the usual course of his amours, made the 
 Ricci's acquaintance, became her lover, compromised 
 her reputation, and wounded Gozzi so deeply in his 
 sense of honour, that he broke off" familiar relations 
 with the actress. 
 
 Such was the position of affairs when Gozzi, who 
 wrote assiduously for the theatre, produced a drama 
 modelled on a Spanish piece by Tirso da Molina. 
 It was called Le Droghe oV Amove, and contained a 
 minor part, which might well have passed either 
 for a sketch of manners or for a personal satire on 
 Gratarol. Gozzi vehemently and persistently denied 
 that he had any intention of caricaturing his rival on 
 the stage ; and if we trust what he relates about the 
 composition of the play in question, it is hardly pos- 
 sible that he can have had Gratarol in view when he 
 designed it. At the same time, we are bound to 
 concede that the offensive part of Don Adone fitted 
 nicely on to Gratarol. Mme. Ricci, smarting under 
 Gozzi's withdrawal from her intimacy, took for granted 
 that a satire was intended. This woman's hysterical 
 imagination turned a mere jeu oVesprit of her old 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART I. u 
 
 friend into a formidable weapon of attack against 
 her new lover. Through her dangerous interference 
 it became an instrument, in the hands of other parties, 
 to annoy Gozzi and to overwhelm Gratarol. She began 
 by poisoning the latter' s mind with gossiping insinua- 
 tions. Gratarol's fretful vanity and sense of self- 
 importance made him boil with fury at the thought 
 of being put upon the stage. He moved heaven 
 and earth to get the play suspended ; imprudently, 
 as it turned out, because this step brought him 
 face to face with his real enemy, Mme. Tron. The 
 manager of the theatre, to whom Gozzi had given 
 his comedy, took the manuscript at once to that 
 lady. This unscrupulous person now saw her oppor- 
 tunity for inflicting vengeance upon Gratarol. She 
 induced the manager to redistribute the parts so 
 that the role of Don Adone should be assigned to 
 an actor who resembled Gratarol. She taught this 
 man how to imitate Gratarol's dress and gestures, 
 and turned what may in fact have been an innocent 
 production of Gozzi's pen into a satire of the most 
 insulting pungency. At that point the Di*oghe 
 d' Amove passed out of the control of those whom it 
 privately concerned. 
 
 After this, Gratarol, driven mad by wounded self- 
 conceit, floundered from one imprudence into another 
 He applied to the highest tribunal of the State, and 
 laid an information against Gozzi. Whether the In- 
 quisitors did not choose to cancel the license already 
 
12 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 granted for the Droghe d 'Amove, or whether they were 
 influenced by Mme. Iron, does not greatly signify. 
 At any rate, the comedy continued to be acted. 
 Gratarol grew more and more irritated, uttered in- 
 dignant invectives against the tyrants of the State, 
 and displayed a spirit of insubordination which was 
 perilous in Venice. Mme. Tron followed up her 
 advantage, and caused his appointment to the em- 
 bassy at Naples to be suspended. Thereupon Gra- 
 tarol made up his mind to quit Venice. He knew 
 that this act would expose himself to outlawry and 
 his family to ruin. A civil servant of the Republic 
 had no legal right to sever himself from his engage- 
 ments without permission. The mere fact of doing 
 so caused him to be treated as a contumacious rebel. 
 But instead of assuming an indifferent attitude, in- 
 stead of biding his time in patience and letting the 
 storm blow over — which it certainly would have done, 
 since a popular reaction had already begun to operate 
 in his favour — he departed for Padua on the iith 
 of September 1777, proceeded to Ceneda, crossed the 
 frontier on the 25th, travelled to Munich, thence to 
 Brunswick, and finally to Stockholm, where he arrived 
 in March. Meanwhile a proclamation was issued 
 against him at Venice. This curious document is a 
 relic from the savage days of the Middle Ages. 1 It 
 set a price upon his head, offered rewards to any 
 
 1 It may be read in Gratarol's Narrasione Apologetica, vol. ii. p. 78, &c. . 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART I. 13 
 
 one who should bring him alive to Venice or should 
 prove his assassination, cancelled all contracts made 
 by him during twelve months before the date of 
 December 22, 1777, confiscated his property during 
 his lifetime, and ordered the whole of it to be sold 
 by public auction. The latter portions of the ban 
 were carried into effect. Everything which belonged 
 to Gratarol was sold by the Avogadori ; * and what 
 seems really scandalous in this transaction is that 
 his furniture and jewels passed into the possession of 
 an Avogadore, Zorzi Angaran, while his landed estates 
 fell to the share of the Avvocato fiscale dell' Avoga- 
 deria, Galante, at the ridiculously low sum of 2000 
 ducats. 2 Even his wife, who possessed a dowry of 
 25,000 ducats, had to institute long and costly law- 
 suits for the recovery of what belonged to her and 
 formed no part of the outlaw's estate. 
 
 Caterina Dolfin Tron, aided by her victim's rash- 
 ness and impatience, had succeeded in her plan to 
 ruin him. But a retribution awaited this lady in 
 the form of an eloquent invective hurled by Gratarol 
 
 1 These magistrates acted for the Fisco or Treasury of the Republic. 
 
 2 It has been suggested that Gratarol so heavily mortgaged his lands 
 before leaving Venice that they were not worth more than this sum, 
 after allowing for rent charges on them and fidei commissa. See the 
 observations of a self-styled impartial writer printed at the end of the 
 Narrazione Apologetica, ed. 1797. I must, however, observe that this 
 writer is by no means impartial. The essay in question is a piece of 
 skilful special pleading in defence of Mine. Trou, her husband, the 
 oligarchs of Venice, and the officers who executed the bando against 
 Gratarol. 
 
i 4 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 against his enemies from Stockholm. The so-called 
 Narrazione Apologetica was printed there in 1779, 
 and soon found its way to Venice. It contained a 
 detailed account of the events which had induced 
 him to take flight, arraigned his powerful enemies in 
 terms of the bitterest sarcasm, exposed their private 
 foibles, and flashed a sharp light upon the political 
 corruption of the decadent Republic. Gozzi, of 
 course, came in for his share of abuse ; l but Gra- 
 tarol's most telling shafts were directed against Mme. 
 Tron and the patrician ring which tyrannised over 
 Venice. It is believed that the scandal of this pam- 
 phlet was one reason why Andrea Tron failed to be 
 elected Doge in 1779. 
 
 On perusing Gratarol's Narrazione Apologetica, 
 Count Carlo Gozzi determined to clear his own 
 character and to lay his version of the story before 
 the public. With this view he composed a lengthy 
 Epistola Confutatoria, taking up each of Gratarol's 
 points in detail, and discussing his arguments with a 
 strange mixture of acuteness, fury, and contemptuous 
 severity. He also conceived the notion of writing 
 his Memoirs, in order that the whole tenor of his life 
 might be clearly understood. 2 The Confutation and 
 
 1 Gratarol pays high tribute to Gozzi's genius. But he sticks to the 
 conviction that the Droghe d' Amove was meant to turn him into ridicule, 
 and that its author could, if he had chosen, have withdrawn it from the 
 stage. 
 
 2 He tells us that he began the Memoirs on April 30, 1780. Memovie, 
 vol. i. p. 3. The passage occurs in Gozzi's manifesto, of which more 
 
INTRODUCTION : PART I. 15 
 
 the larger part of the Memoirs were finished in 1 780. 
 But the Government decided that Gratarol's scan- 
 dalous pamphlet should be left unanswered. No 
 Venetian pen was allowed to notice it ; l and Gozzi 
 received information that the Inquisitors of State 
 would take the matter up if he attempted to show 
 further fight. The authorities acted with prudence in 
 this matter. Nobody but Gozzi had anything to gain 
 by his refutation of Gratarol. With regard to the 
 corruption of Venice, the despotism of a few leading 
 patricians, and the back-stairs influence of Mme. 
 Tron, Gratarol had only told the truth. He had told 
 it indeed emphatically, bitterly, and probably with 
 some exaggeration. Yet, unhappily, it was the 
 truth. No amount of apologetical rhetoric could have 
 broken down his arguments. A public discussion 
 would have disturbed the public mind, and many 
 dark secrets and dirty jobs must certainly have come 
 to light. 
 
 Gozzi had to choose between the piombi or the 
 sacrifice of his already finished manuscripts. Of 
 course he did not hesitate. Both Confutation and 
 Memoirs were thrown at once aside ; and they might 
 
 anon. I may add that the manifesto is not included in all copies of 
 the Memoirs. 
 
 1 An anonymous answer, entitled Riflessioni d'un Iviparziale, appeared 
 at Lugano. This was ascribed to Carlo Gozzi's pen ; but he repudiated 
 the pamphlet, and it does not bear the mark of his style. It may be 
 found at the end of vol. ii. of Gratarol's Narr. Apol., ed. 1797, Venice, 
 Silvestro Gatti. 
 
1 6 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 even now have been lying in some neglected corner 
 of his ancient mansion had it not been for the events 
 which have to be related. 
 
 Gratarol never returned to Venice. From Sweden 
 he passed to England, where he was hospitably re- 
 ceived and befriended by members of our aristocracy: 
 Failing, however, to get any appointment in London, 
 he crossed to North America, travelled southwards 
 to Brazil, and again left that country in the train of 
 some political adventurers. The party were betrayed 
 and robbed by the captain of their vessel, and cast 
 ashore upon the coast of Madagascar. Here Gratarol 
 perished miserably in October 1785. His English 
 friends sent information of this event to the Venetian 
 Government ; but the evidence was judged insuffi- 
 cient, and the restitution of his estates to two female 
 cousins, who were his only heirs, was refused until 
 the fall of the Kepublic. When that took place, 
 Gratarol' s friends immediately republished the 
 Narrazione Apologetica at Venice, and appealed to 
 General Bonaparte for justice. This was in 1797. 
 
 Gozzi, who had now nothing to fear from Inquisi- 
 tors of State, and whose reputation was again exposed 
 to calumny, took his manuscripts from their drawer, 
 dusted them, and placed them in the hands of a 
 publisher. In the month of July 1797 he issued 
 a manifesto to the Venetian public, proclaiming his 
 intention. 1 "Availing myself of the beneficent free- 
 
 1 Memorie, vol. i. pp. 3-1 5. 
 
INTRODUCTION : PART I. 17 
 
 dom now permitted to the press, I have drawn my 
 manuscript from the tomb in which it has lain during 
 the past seventeen years." He refers to the recent 
 republication of Gratarol's Narrazione, and declares 
 that this alone has forced him to resuscitate the 
 memory of bygone quarrels and offences. At the 
 same time he pays a high tribute to Gratarol's work. 
 "This book, which appeared at Stockholm in 1779, 
 and which I had forgotten, without however for- 
 getting the unjust tricks and jobs by which its truly 
 pitiable author was overwhelmed with ruin, contains 
 a great number of indubitable truths, and it is only 
 to be regretted that he dictated it under the influence 
 of blind anger and venomous resentment, instead of 
 philosophic calm." 
 
 It appears that at this time Gozzi did not intend 
 to publish his Epistola Confutatoria, written in 1780, 
 and certainly dictated under the influence of anger 
 as hot, hatred as fierce, and resentment as venomous 
 as any which inspired his adversary. Indeed, it may 
 here be observed that Gratarol, though he calls Gozzi 
 a hypocrite, a huckster, an impostor, and so forth, is 
 more measured in his language than the latter. Yet, 
 while Gozzi was passing the sheets of his Memoirs 
 through the press, 1 Gratarol's friends issued another 
 book entitled Last Notices regarding Pietro Antonio 
 
 1 This is evident from the appearance of the Ragionamento del Citta- 
 dino Carlo Gozzi a? Cittadini amid della Memoria di P. A. Gratarol at 
 the beginning of the Memorie, \o\. ii. 
 
 VOL I. B 
 
1 8 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Gratarol, with documents relating to his death. In 
 this they expressed a hope that Gozzi would not 
 proceed with the publication announced by his 
 manifesto, and incautiously printed a document 
 alluding to Gozzi in the following by no means 
 nattering terms : " the infernal hypocrisy of a satiri- 
 cal liar." * Furthermore, upon the 29th of August, 
 having obtained a decree for the restitution of Gra- 
 tarol's property to his cousins, they published this 
 edict together with a preface, signed Widiman, 2 in 
 which they had the folly to rake up the whole tedious 
 story of Gratarol' s wrongs again. Once more Gozzi 
 was annoyed with well-worn phrases like the follow- 
 ing : " The persecuting furies of a haughty woman, 
 the talent and the passion of a very famous author, 
 made him (Gratarol), to the horror of all right-minded 
 people, become the object of scorn and ridicule upon 
 a public theatre prostituted to the uses of a vile and 
 infamous buffoon." This was more than Gozzi could 
 stand. Firmly holding to the opinion that it was 
 only Gratarol' s folly and Mme. Tron's vindictiveness 
 which had caused the scandal of Le Droghe d' Amove, 
 he now resolved to publish everything which could 
 establish the truth of his own story. Therefore he 
 incorporated the Epistola Confutatoria in the third 
 volume of the Memoirs, and printed the notorious 
 comedy for the first time at the end of the book. 
 
 1 Memorie Ultime, p. 39 ; Gozzi's Memorie, vol. ii. p. x. 
 
 2 The family of Widiman or Widman was of patrician rank in Venice. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART I. 19 
 
 Meantime he invited Gratarol's friends to inspect the 
 MS. of this play, which he declared to be the sole and 
 original autograph, in order that they might convince 
 themselves that his statements regarding its composi- 
 tion were accurate. Having now made up his mind 
 to supplement the two parts of his book with a third, 
 he carried down his Memoirs to the date of March 
 1798, when they came to a sudden termination. All 
 three volumes bear the date 1797 ; but their pagina- 
 tion and some other trifling matters lead me to 
 believe that the first two were printed in that year, 
 the third in the following spring. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The circumstances under which Gozzi's Memorie 
 were produced sufficiently account for their peculiar 
 form, or rather formlessness. He wrote hurriedly, 
 with a polemical object in view, and paid no atten- 
 tion to style. This he confesses in the manifesto. 1 
 " I have not striven to express myself with the 
 exactitude, the raciness, and the elegances of our 
 language." As a literary performance, this autobio- 
 graphy is remarkably unequal, a thing of rags and 
 patches, some of which are of fine silk or velvet, 
 others of rough sackcloth. Their main defect as 
 
 1 Vol. i. p. 4. 
 
Co MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 regards composition is prolixity. Gozzi does not 
 know when to stop, and he uses three phrases where 
 one would have sufficed. He is also very incoherent, 
 spinning interminable periodic sentences, which some- 
 times do not hang together grammatically or logically. 
 While insisting so magisterially upon the purity of 
 Italian diction, he indulges in uncouth Lombardisms, 
 and slips at times into Venetian dialect. We must 
 remember that he grew up practically without educa- 
 tion. He acquired his knowledge, cultivated his 
 taste, and formed his style by reading without dis- 
 crimination and by writing without fixed purpose. 
 This accounts for the digressive, irregular, improvisa- 
 tory manner of his prose. It has its own merits, 
 however, of vehemence, a copious vocabulary, drama- 
 tic vigour in narration, and occasionally graphic 
 descriptions. 
 
 It may be asked why he called his Memoirs " use- 
 less." Partly no doubt out of an ironical self-con- 
 sciousness, which marked his peculiar species of 
 humour ; but partly also as a slap in the face to his 
 readers. He tells them candidly in one of his pre- 
 faces that he considers the moral reflections with 
 which the book is filled to be both sound and valu- 
 able, but that the false science of the age is certain 
 to render them of no effect. 1 In like manner, when 
 he asserts that the Memoirs were published out of 
 humility, this is partly true and partly false. Gozzi 
 
 1 Vol. ii. p. xvi. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART I. 2 r 
 
 piqued himself on being what I may call a Stoic- 
 Democritean philosopher. It was his pride to bear 
 everything with endurance and to laugh at every- 
 thing, himself and his own concerns included, with 
 contemptuous indulgence. Yet he deserved the 
 stinging epigram which Goldoni uttered on his char- 
 acter : "A smile upon his lips and venom in his 
 heart." His light-heartedness and risibility were often 
 assumed to hide bitter resentment or boiling indig- 
 nation. No man had less of genuine humility than 
 Gozzi, or more of the " pride which apes humility." 
 Umiltd upon his title-page has much the same effect 
 as Umiltd in huge Gothic letters beneath the coro- 
 nets and crests of the Borromeo family above their 
 haughty palace-portals. As a single instance, I might 
 select the supercilious condescension with which he 
 invariably treats his friends the actors. They are 
 canaille, to be consorted with by a gentleman merely 
 for amusement. His repeated boast that he gave his 
 literary work away, and his sneers at his brother 
 Gasparo for making money, do not savour of a really 
 humble spirit. At the bottom of all he says about 
 his foolhardiness in Dalmatia there lurks a proud 
 self-satisfaction. 
 
 To what extent was he truthful ? That is a diffi- 
 cult question to answer. I believe that in the main 
 he tried to be, and was, veracious throughout the 
 Memoirs ; but that he considered a certain economy 
 of statement, a certain evasion of direct facts, and a 
 
22 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 certain forensic chicanery to be permissible in openly 
 controversial composition. This renders his account 
 of the Gratarol episode somewhat suspicious, parti- 
 cularly when we remember that he was writing with 
 the Na rrctzione Apologetica before his eyes. It is clear 
 that he wished to conceal his real age, that he falsi- 
 fied the date of his departure for Dalmatia, and that 
 he somewhat misstated the nature of his intimacy with 
 Mme. Tron. In each of these cases it was his object 
 to put himself in as favourable a light as possible 
 face to face with Gratarol, first by making it appear 
 that he was ten years or so younger than his actual 
 age when he began the liaison with Mme. Ricci, and 
 secondly by slurring over the fact of a partial collu- 
 sion with Gratarol' s deadly enemy. It would take 
 up too much space to expand the arguments by which 
 I have arrived at these conclusions ; but the notes 
 to my translation will make each point clear in its 
 proper place. 
 
 On the whole, Gozzi strikes me as rather inclined 
 to the vices of too open speech and cynicism than to 
 those of dissimulation and hypocrisy. He can hardly 
 have been a lovable man. His language about his 
 mother proves that. She treated him ill, it is true, 
 and gave him but a scanty share of her maternal 
 kindness. Yet this does not justify the freezing 
 sarcasms with which he refers to her. They are 
 no doubt humorous, but their humour is of a 
 savage kind. Toward the rest of his family he 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART I. 2$ 
 
 behaved with fairness, candour, and uprightness. 
 He devoted himself to the task of repairing their 
 ruined fortunes, and discharged the duties of soli- 
 citor and estate-agent for all of them through a long 
 series of years. He bore their bad tempers and 
 frivolities with good-humoured contempt, and did 
 not even resent being satirised by Gasparo in a 
 comedy upon the public stage of Venice. Gasparo, 
 his weak but genial elder brother, he truly loved, 
 although, with characteristic acidity, he always lets 
 us understand what a poor creature he was. Women 
 had not the privilege of being highly appreciated 
 by Gozzi. He treats them in all his writings as 
 inferior creatures, and exposes their frailties with 
 ruthless severity. Either he only knew the worst 
 side of the fair sex, or was incapable of seeing the 
 best. To men he shows himself more just and 
 sympathetic. Though he made but few intimate 
 friends, these remained firmly attached to him till 
 death. 
 
 "We must divest our minds of the false conception 
 of Gozzi's character with which Paul de Musset 
 hoaxed the French critics and Yemon Lee. He 
 was no dramatic dreamer and abstract visionary, 
 but a keen hard-headed man of business, caustic in 
 speech and stubborn in act, adhering tenaciously to 
 his opinions and his rights, acidly and sardonically 
 humorous, eccentric, but fully aware of his eccen- 
 tricities, and apt to use them as the material of 
 
24 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 burlesque humour. Nobody would have laughed 
 more loudly at De Musset's fancy picture of his 
 fairy-haunted palace than Gozzi would have done, 
 or have more keenly relished the joke of turning 
 his practical self into a sprite-tormented idealist. 1 
 
 The Memoirs lie now before English readers, and 
 Carlo Gozzi will be known to them for the first 
 time — certainly for the first time as he really was. 
 It is not necessary, therefore, to spin out this intro- 
 duction. Otherwise, it would have been interesting 
 to compare the portraits painted of themselves by 
 those four eminent Italian contemporaries — Goldoni, 
 Gozzi, Casanova, and Alfieri. Four characters more 
 diverse in quality, and more admirably placed upon 
 the literary canvas, could hardly, I think, be found 
 in any other nation or in any other century. 
 
 1 De Musset, in order to support his view of Gozzi as the precursor 
 of Romanticism and of Hoffmann, strains to the utmost the chapter on 
 Contrattenxfi in the Memoirs. He furthermore professes to have ex- 
 tracted a very bizarre account of the reasons why Gozzi abandoned his 
 Fiabe — in plain words, because the elves and spirits he brought upon 
 the stage were resolved to be revenged on him — from a letter addressed 
 to Gasparo by Carlo Gozzi (Memoires de Charles Gozzi, pp. 184-188). 
 De Musset adds no reference to the source of this alleged letter, 
 which is mentioned by neither Magrini nor Masi. Indeed, Signor 
 Ernesto Masi informs me that he knows nothing about it. I too have 
 failed to discover it. In his Memoirs, and in the prefaces to several 
 plays, Gozzi gives a very different account of the reasons why he 
 stopped producing Fiabe. I am loth to draw the conclusion that the 
 letter in question was a deliberate forgery of Paul de Musset's. Further 
 researches may bring it still to light, but at present it has to be regarded 
 with the greatest possible suspicion. 
 
THE 
 ITALIAN COMMEDIA DELL' ARTE, OR IMPROMPTU COMEDY 
 
%.<£> 
 
INTRODUCTION : PART II. 25 
 
 part II. 
 
 THE ITALIAN COM MEDIA DELL' ARTE OR 
 IMPROMPTU COMEDY. 
 
 1. A brief sketch of the origins of written comedy during the Italian 
 Kenaissance — Its dependence upon Latin models. — 2. Further de- 
 scription of the so-called Commedia Eruclita. — 3. Emergence of 
 dialectical literature in Italy during the period of the Catholic 
 reaction — Improvised comedy begins to supersede the written 
 drama of the Kenaissance. — 4. Farces at Naples and Florence — 
 The Sienese company of I Rozzi — The Paduan Beolco — The four 
 principal masks — Pantalone, II Dottore, Arlecchino, Brighella. — 5. 
 Relation of modern impromptu comedy to the old Latin comedy 
 of mimes and exodia — the Osci Ludi, Fescennini Verses, Satura, 
 &c. — In what sense the modern masks are descended from those 
 antique elements — Infusion of fixed characters adopted from the 
 plays of Plautus and Terence. — 6. Lombard, Neapolitan, Florentine 
 ingredients in the Commedia dell' Arte — Lasca's carnival song of 
 the Zanni and Magnifichi about the year 1550. — 7. A review of 
 the principal masks and their subordinate species, as these were 
 finally developed — Modifications introduced into the masks, or 
 fixed parts, of the Commedia dell' Arte, by men of genius who sup- 
 ported them. — 8. The plots and subjects of improvised comedies — 
 Buffoonery and indecency. — 9. Description of the scenari or plays in 
 outline which were acted impromptu by the comic companies — 
 Method of concerting a comedy and distributing its parts — The 
 function of the Capo Comico. — 10. Qualifications of a good im- 
 promptu comedian — Stock repertories, commonplaces, speeches to 
 be introduced on set occasions, soliloquies, &c. — The Lazzi or sallies 
 of buffoonery and byeplay — Tendency to degeneration in this im- 
 provisatory art of comedy. — 11. European celebrity of the Italian 
 comedians — In Paris, Spain, Portugal, London — References to 
 
26 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Italian companies in England during the sixteenth century. — 12. 
 The decadence of the Corn-media deli' Arte — Moral and artistic germs 
 of dissolution — Goldoni's severe criticism — Garzoni's description of 
 strolling actors, and their association with quacks, mountebanks, 
 and clowns. 
 
 The history of the Italian theatre is closely connected 
 with the history of the Classical Revival. 1 The 
 literary drama — as distinguished from performances 
 by tumblers, mimes, and masquers, from sacred plays 
 and from plebeian farces — began with the representa- 
 tion of Latin tragedies and comedies. At the close 
 of the fifteenth century it was usual to crown courtly 
 festivals with scenic recitations of favourite pieces 
 by Terence and Plautus. Rome vied with Florence, 
 Venice with Naples, Ferrara with Urbino, in the 
 magnificence of these spectacles. At a time when 
 humanistic erudition formed the main preoccupation 
 of society, and when to be illiterate was unfashion- 
 able, princes and great prelates afforded their guests 
 the refined amusement of seeing the Mencechmi or 
 Amphitryon, the Eunuchus or Miles Gloriosus, on 
 their private stages. At the same time, obeying the 
 decorative instinct of the Renaissance, they set these 
 jewels of classical antiquity in arabesques of the 
 richest and most fantastic workmanship. Allegorical 
 masques, dances with musical accompaniment and 
 
 1 I have treated the subject of the Italian drama elsewhere : Renais- 
 sance in Italy, vol. v. ch. 11. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 27 
 
 pantomimic interludes, were interposed between each 
 of the five acts, enhancing the simplicity of the 
 Roman plays and gratifying the vulgar by an appeal 
 to their senses. These hybrid spectacles, eminently 
 characteristic of Italian taste in the age which 
 produced them, contained the germs of several 
 dramatic species, afterwards known as the Corn- 
 media Erudita, the pastoral play, the ballet, and 
 the opera. Meanwhile Italian literature, stimulated 
 and powerfully influenced by humanism, acquired 
 independence ; and the comedies of Plautus and 
 Terence were translated and performed in the ver- 
 nacular. During the last years of the fifteenth 
 century these translations began to take the place of 
 the originals upon the temporary stages of princely 
 patrons. As yet there were no public theatres. 
 
 Such, briefly sketched, was the origin of Italian 
 comedy ; and the specific character of the Corn- 
 media Erudita, or written comedy of the six- 
 teenth century, may be ascribed to the peculiar 
 conditions out of which it grew. The genius of 
 men like Ariosto, Machiavelli, and Aretino never 
 wholly freed the form they handled from subservience 
 to Latin models. It remained, in spite of their close 
 imitation of contemporary life and their audacious 
 realism, a sub-species of that dramatic art which the 
 Romans adapted to their uses from the new comedy 
 of the Attic stage. 
 
28 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 II. 
 
 The first attempts at national Italian comedy were 
 the Calandra of Bibbiena and Ariosto's Cassaria. 
 The former appeared at Urbino between 1503 and 
 1 508 ; the latter, in its earlier prose form, at Ferrara 
 in 1508. During the next fifty years a large num- 
 ber of comedies were produced by a great variety of 
 authors. Men of letters like Machiavelli, Cecchi, 
 Dolce, and II Lasca, men of fashion like Lorenzino 
 de' Medici, philosophers like Bruno, free lances of 
 the pen like Aretino and Doni, artisans like Gelli, 
 devoted themselves to this species of composition. 
 The type remained fixed, although some notable 
 exceptions, especially in the case of Aretino's plays, 
 arrest attention. Taking the intrigue of Latin 
 comedy for their ground material, these playwrights 
 adapted it to conditions of Italian society. The ava- 
 ricious father, the cunning courtesan, the parasite, 
 the slave merchant, the swaggering soldier, the young 
 spendthrift in love with a virgin of unknown par- 
 entage, the astute serving-man, the faithless wife, 
 the pedant, the cynical priest or friar, the vicious old 
 man in his dotage, the reckless adventurer, the pirate, 
 the country-girl exposed to the corruptions of the 
 town ; such are the stock characters of this dramatic 
 hybrid. Everywhere we find the plots of Terence or 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 29 
 
 of Plautus interwoven with a Kovella in the style 
 of Boccaccio. As in Latin comedy, the knot is fre- 
 quently loosed by unexpected discoveries of lost 
 relatives ; and the magnificent realism with which 
 contemporary manners are depicted, clashes too often 
 with the stiff and antiquated ossatura, or dramatic 
 mechanism, to which the authors felt themselves 
 obliged by fashion to adhere. From hints in pro- 
 logues and prefaces we are able to discern that play- 
 wrights chafed against these traditional limitations 
 of the Commedia Erudita. 
 
 Aretino, as I have just observed, broke the fetters 
 of convention, and presented scenes of pure Italian 
 life ; but his plays were too hastily composed or ill- 
 constructed to start a new style. The originality of 
 Machiavelli in his Mandragora was not of the sort 
 to encourage a departure from the beaten track. 
 Like many other masterpieces of Italian art, the 
 Mandragora stands forth by itself, a sole inimitable 
 monument of genius ; peculiar and personal ; accom- 
 plished by one single act of vigorous expression. 
 Before a really national species of written comedy 
 emerged into distinctness from the Commedia Eru- 
 dita, the literary impulse of the Eenaissance began 
 to decline, and the Italians in the middle of the 
 sixteenth century entered upon that new phase of 
 intellectual evolution which is marked by the Tri- 
 dentine Council and the subsequent metamorphosis 
 of Catholicism. 
 
3 o MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 III. 
 
 One prominent feature of this transitional epoch 
 was the reappearance of popular forms of art and lite- 
 rature in Italy. The Italian provinces had retained 
 their local characteristics with undiminished vitality 
 through centuries of civic conflict and the dominance 
 of humanistic culture. Now that this culture was 
 decaying, each district and each city contributed 
 some novelty of its own local vintage. Things which 
 had been overgrown and screened by scholarship put 
 forth their native vigour. A rich jungle of dialec- 
 tical poetry sprouted from long-hidden roots. Men 
 of birth and breeding began to pique themselves 
 upon the use of their provincial language. A polite 
 public, tired perhaps of too much polish, yielded to 
 the charm of realism. The habits of the peasantry 
 and artisans were transmitted to writing by educated 
 pens. Scenic representations of a simple character, 
 which had formed the delight of villagers from time 
 immemorial, claimed the attention of learned coteries. 
 Farces and morris-dances became fashionable. The 
 buffoons and mimes and masquers, against whom the 
 Church had fulminated in the Middle Ages, and whom 
 the scholars of the Revival looked down upon with 
 condescending indulgence, now lifted up their heads. 
 Suddenly, by an imperceptible process of develop- 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 31 
 
 ment, which it is impossible to trace in all its stages, 
 Italy found herself in possession of what looked like 
 a novel type of comedy. This improvised comedy, or 
 Commedia delV Arte, as we must henceforth call it, 
 was not really new. 1 On the contrary, the elements 
 out of which it sprang w r ere among the oldest, most 
 vital, most national possessions of the race. Yet it 
 was due to the peculiar conditions of the last years 
 of the Renaissance, to the reaction against exhausted 
 forms of artificial literature, and to the fresh interest 
 in dialects, that this hitherto neglected plaything of 
 the proletariate assumed a rare and bizarre shape of 
 beauty. The Italians, still capable of exquisite artistic 
 creation, had just now lost their liking for the Com- 
 media Erudita. Public theatres were beginning to 
 be built. These naturally introduced a more popular 
 tone into the drama. Spectacles were adapted to the 
 taste of a mixed audience. Improvised comedy suc- 
 ceeded to the heritage of written comedy. This 
 younger daughter of Thalia invested the motley char- 
 acters and masks of her invention with the cast-off 
 mantle of her elder sister. She entered the sphere 
 of the fine arts by continuing the tradition of Italian 
 comedy upon an altered system, and with novel ele- 
 ments of humour. 
 
 1 The full title would be Commedia delV Arte alV Improviso. It is 
 also called Com/media a soggetto, Commedia non scritta, Commedia impro- 
 visa. The written comedy, beside Commedia Erudita, was also called 
 Commedia sostenuta, scritta, or letteraria. 
 
32 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 To talk of younger and elder with reference to 
 these two types of comedy involves some confusion 
 of ideas. Nothing is more significant of Italy than 
 the antiquity and complexity of all the forms of art 
 which flourished there. The Commedia Erudita, as 
 we have seen, was derived from Latin, and through 
 Latin from Athenian sources. The Commedia delV 
 Arte had an even longer pedigree than this. In a 
 powerfully mimetic race like the Italians, the rudi- 
 ments out of which it was constructed were, as we 
 shall see, indigenous. Before Home rose upon the 
 Tiber, the comedy of masks and improvisation had, 
 in some shape or other, amused the people. The 
 fall of the Empire, the formation of the Christian 
 polity, the centuries of the Middle Ages, the culture 
 of the Renaissance, did not extirpate it. Though 
 we know but little of its history during that long 
 period, there is every reason to believe that the 
 elements which gave it individuality survived all 
 changes. To this topic I shall have to return. For 
 the present, it is enough to point out that the blend- 
 ing of the vulgar improvised comedy of vintage 
 festivals and market-places with what remained of 
 polite written comedy after the middle of the six- 
 teenth century, determined the Commedia delV Arte, 
 considered as a specific and strongly marked type of 
 dramatic art. In this sense, and in this sense only, 
 it may be denominated the younger sister of the 
 Commedia Erudita. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 33 
 
 IV. 
 
 Farces formed a popular species of entertainment 
 all through the years of the Renaissance. At Naples 
 they had the name of Coviole, at Florence of Farse. 
 The playwright Cecchi has left us several specimens 
 of the written Farsa, together with a general descrip- 
 tion of the type, which proves it to have been not 
 unlike the earliest of our owu romantic plays. 1 A 
 company formed itself at Siena, called I Rozzi, for 
 the representation of rustic farces. Composed of 
 artisans and mechanics, this company acquired such 
 celebrity that Leo X. invited them in 1 5 1 7 to the 
 Vatican ; and their influence must be reckoned in the 
 evolution of the new Italian drama. A Paduan actor 
 and playwright also deserves mention here. Angelo 
 Beolco, born in 1502, made himself known upon the 
 stage as II Ruzzante, or the Frolic. He wrote rustic 
 comedies with simple plots, distinguished by their 
 realistic humour and their strong incisive pathos ; 
 and created the ideal character of the peasant or 
 II Villano. Beolco formed a school in the Vene- 
 tian provinces, and died in 1542. 2 
 
 1 See what I have said at length upon this point in my Shakspere's 
 Predecessors, p. 259, and Renaissance in Italy, vol. v. p. 188. 
 
 2 To Maurice Sand, in his Masques et Bouffons, vol. ii. p. jj et seq., 
 is due the merit of having resuscitated the fame of this great local 
 dramatist, yet I think M. Sand exaggerates Beolco's influence in the 
 creation of impromptu comedy. 
 
 VOL. I. C 
 
34 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Such are some of the traces we possess of a dra- 
 matic type in growth, which, after the middle of the 
 sixteenth century, obtained predominance in Italy. 
 It is not possible, however, for the critical historian 
 to explain the several steps whereby the Commedia 
 delV Arte arrived at maturity. Like Harlequin, 
 bounding from the sides and capering before the 
 footlights, this new species makes a sudden appari- 
 tion. We find it in full energy, possessing the public 
 theatres and claiming the attention of all classes, at 
 the close of the cinque cento. Described briefly, 
 this comedy trusted to the improvisatory talent of 
 trained actors and made use of masks. Companies 
 were formed under the direction of a Capocomico, 
 who took his name from one of the masks. Their 
 stock in trade was a collection of plays in outline, 
 scenari or plats (to use an old English phrase), 1 which 
 the troupe studied under the direction of their leader. 
 The development of the intrigue by dialogue and 
 action was left to the native wit of the several players, 
 and the performance varied according to the personal 
 qualities of the members who composed the company. 
 The masks or fixed characters were derived from all 
 provinces of Italy, and represented types peculiar to 
 each district. 2 Venice contributed Pantalone ; Bol- 
 
 1 See Collier's English Dramatic Poet?-// (ed. 1879), vol. iii. p. 197. 
 
 2 It is impossible to avoid the awkwardness of using the word musl- 
 in a double sense, — both to indicate the fixed character assumed by a 
 certain species of actor, and also the vizard which concealed his features. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 35 
 
 ogna lent the Dottore ; Bergamo supplied the two 
 Zanni — Arlecchino and Brighella ; Naples gave Pul- 
 cinella, Tartaglia, and the Captain. Tuscany made up 
 the characters of the comedy with the soubrette and 
 lovers. These Tuscan personages were unmasked 
 and spoke Florentine Italian. 1 The masks repro- 
 duced their native dialects. 2 Like Harlequin in his 
 coat of many colours, the Commedia delV Arte wore 
 motley. Displacing the literary drama, which re- 
 duced contemporary life in Italy to the conventional 
 standard of classical Rome or Athens, this new 
 drama brought into salience local oddities and notes 
 of provincial eccentricity. The masks were perma- 
 nent ; yet they admitted of genial handling, since 
 these parts in the comedy w 7 ere rarely written, and 
 every fresh sustainer of a mask had the opportunity 
 of impressing his own individuality upon the type he 
 represented. 3 In this way, as will soon appear, each 
 
 1 It may here be mentioned that in English we still retain the names 
 of some of these masks, as Zany, Harlequin, Pantaloon, and Punch. 
 Our Columbine is the Neapolitan form of the Servetta or soubrette. 
 Our Scaramouch is one of the numerous forms of the Captain, which 
 obtained great popularity at Paris. "Whether the Clown of our panto- 
 mimes has to be classed with the Villano, or rather with one of the 
 Zanni, I am uncertain. His traditional connection with the part of 
 Pantaloon seems to indicate the latter alternative. 
 
 2 In a comedy by Virgilio Verucci (Li Diversi Linguaggi, Venezia, 
 1609), French, Venetian, Bergamasque, Roman, Sicilian, Bolognese, 
 Neapolitan, Matriccian, Perugian, and Florentine dialects were spoken. 
 See Bartoli, op. cit., p. lxxix. 
 
 3 Conversely, masks were sometimes created out of persons. Thus 
 the plebeian poet of Naples, Francesco Cerlone, moulded the mask of 
 
36 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 mask multiplied and made a hundred. Plasticity 
 and adaptability were the essential qualities of a 
 dramatic species which relied on improvisation, and 
 had only the unwritten code of immemorial tradition. 
 
 V. 
 
 At this point it is necessary to inquire into the 
 relation between the modern Italian Commedia delV 
 Arte and the old Italian comedy of mimes and 
 exodia. Much has been written, with meagre and 
 dubious results, about the origins of the Latin drama 
 One thing, however, appears certain, after shaking 
 the dust from ponderous tomes of erudition. The 
 Romans, like the modern Italians, had their Corn- 
 media Erudita and Commedia dell' Arte. Of the 
 two species, in classical times as afterwards, the Corn- 
 media delV Arte was indigenous and popular, the 
 Commedia Erudita derived and literary. The latter, 
 whether it affected Greek manners, as in the so- 
 
 Don Fastidio upon a barber of his acquaintance, Francesco Massaro. 
 Here the man became a type ; and after be bad made it famous, it was 
 continued by other players, who adapted themselves to his humours. 
 (See Scberillo's Commedia dell' Arte, chap, iii., for the history of Don 
 Fastidio). This mask was very popular for a time in Southern Italy. 
 When Casanova wanted to engage a troop at Otranto for performance at 
 Corfu, be had to choose between the rival companies of Neapolitan 
 Don Fastidio and Sicilian Battipaglia (Me'moires, vol. i. ch. xv.). The 
 Capocomici, as I have previously mentioned, were known by the names 
 of their masks. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 37 
 
 called Fabula palliata, or Roman manners, as in 
 the so-called Fabula togata, remained in the hands 
 of scholarly authors and serious actors (histriones) . 
 The former had its natural origin in popular habits, 
 and only at a comparatively late period submitted to 
 regular artistic treatment. It was represented by 
 masked buffoons, Sanniones, Planipedes, Stupidi, and 
 so forth. We hear of Osci ludi and Fescennini versus, 
 the former pointing to Campania and the vintage, the 
 latter to Etruria and village sports. 1 The Satura, 
 which seems to have been an offshoot from the Fes- 
 cennina, corresponded pretty closely to what we now 
 call farce, and eventually developed into the exodia 
 or hors d'ceuvre of the later Roman theatre. 2 Out of 
 these indigenous elements, but with special relation 
 to the Osci ludi, grew a literary form of comedy 
 which obtained the name of Atellana. It is sup- 
 posed to have originated in the Oscan city of Atella, 
 close to Acerra, Pulcinella's birthplace. In all these 
 native forms of drama, dialects were spoken and 
 masks were used ; and this is a main point of con- 
 nection between them and the modern Italian Corn- 
 media dell Arte. Another feature in common is the 
 rank realism and open obscenity which marked the 
 humours of both species. 
 
 1 Fescenninus is variously derived from the town Fescermia in South 
 Etruria, or from fascinum, the Latin form of phallus. 
 
 2 The common meaning of satura and farsa, both of which have 
 reference to stuffing, is somewhat singular. 
 
38 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Among the ancient Roman masks four types are 
 known to us by name — Maccus, a Protean fool or 
 Harlequin ; Bucco, a garrulous clown or blockhead ; 
 Pappus, a miserly, amorous, befooled old man ; Dos- 
 senus, a moralising charlatan. We also hear of the 
 Stupidus and Morio, Manducus, a notable glutton, 
 and the Sanniones, so called possibly from their grin. 
 
 Further familiarity with the modern Commedia 
 delV Arte will make it clear how tempting it is to 
 conjecture a direct transmission of these Roman 
 masks from ancient to modern times. Maccus and 
 Bucco bear a strong resemblance to the two Zanni. 
 The very word Zanni seems to suggest Sanniones ; 
 although it is probably derived from the Bergamasque 
 name for a varlet — Jack ; Zanni being a contraction 
 of Giovanni. Pappus looks uncommonly like Pan- 
 talone, and Dossenus like the Dottore. The Stupidus 
 has an air of our clown or Mezzettino or II Villano. 
 Manducus might be any glutton with a huge pair of 
 champing jaws. Yet nothing could be more uncritical 
 than to assume that the Italian masks of the sixteenth 
 century a.d. boasted an uninterrupted descent from 
 the Roman masks of the fifth century B.C. That 
 assumption closes our eyes to a far more interesting 
 aspect of the phenomenon. The fact seems to be 
 that ancient and modern Italy possessed the same 
 mimetic faculty and used it in the same fashion. 
 The peasants of modern Tuscany indulged in their 
 Fescennine jibes, stained themselves with wine-lees, 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 39 
 
 and jumped through bonfires, like their most remote 
 ancestors. 1 The grape-gatherers of modern Nola and 
 Capua ridiculed their neighbours with obscene jests, 
 and pranked themselves in travesty, like the earliest 
 Oscans or the first colonists from Hellas. 2 Out of 
 the same persistent habits emerged the same kind 
 of native drama ; and just as the Atellanse of ancient 
 Rome eventually brought the comedy of the prole- 
 tariate upon the public stage in cities, so at the close 
 of the sixteenth century the Commedia delV Arte 
 worked up the rudiments of popular farce and satire 
 into a new form which delighted Europe for two 
 hundred years. 
 
 Many details derived from the Commedia Erudita 
 rendered the resemblance between the modern im- 
 provised drama and the vernacular comedy of ancient 
 Rome superficially striking. The conventional char- 
 acters of Plautus and Terence, the senex, the servus, 
 the meretrix,the mango,ihe a7icilla,the miles gloj'iosus, 
 and the parasitus reappeared. In truth, this peculiar 
 and highly complex hybrid combined strains of mani- 
 fold varieties. Upon the wild and native briar, which 
 in former times produced the Osci ludi, Fescennini 
 
 1 I have seen them doing this with reticence and decorum at Monte- 
 pulciano. 
 
 2 A curious passage in the Life of Don Pietro di Toledo (Arch. 
 Star., vol. ix. p. 23) shows what a startling impression these Diony- 
 siac revels made upon a Spanish Viceroy in the early seventeenth cen- 
 tury. Pontano's Latin poems are full of matter bearing on the vitality 
 of antique rustic habits in the neighbourhood of Naples. 
 
4 o MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 versus, and Satura, and which went on living its 
 own natural life beneath the drums and tramplings 
 of so many conquests, was now grafted the cultivated 
 rose of the Commedia Erudita. This, in its turn, 
 contained elements of the Fabula palliata and togata. 
 The result was a species eminently characteristic of 
 sixteenth-century Italy, and similar to the Atellan 
 farces of the Romans. 
 
 VL 
 
 The Commedia delV Arte yields, upon analysis, three 
 chief component factors. The four leading masks, 
 Arlecchino and Brighella, Pantalone and II Dottore, 
 came respectively from Bergamo, Venice, and Bologna. 
 These were the contribution of Northern Italy. Pulci- 
 nella, Tartaglia, Coviello, and the Captain came from 
 Naples. They were subsidiary characters of great 
 importance, contributed by the South. The lovers, 
 primo amoroso and prima amorosa, upon whose 
 adventures the intrigue turned, and the Servetta, 
 came from Tuscany, or rather from the tradition of 
 written comedy, which adhered to the literary Italian 
 tongue. If priority in time is to be sought for any 
 of these factors, we must look to Lombardy. The 
 four masks which were indispensable to this dramatic 
 species, and which survived all its vicissitudes, had an 
 undoubted Lombardo- Venetian origin. The Neapoli- 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 41 
 
 tan masks were superadded, and the Tuscan intrigue 
 formed little more than a conventional framework 
 for the humours of the fixed characters. Scarcity of 
 documents makes it impossible to speak with absolute 
 authority on any of these points ; yet we have good 
 reason to credit the tradition which connects the 
 origin of the Commedia delT Arte with Northern 
 Italy. 
 
 A carnival song, composed by Anton-Francesco 
 Grazzini, called II Lasca, at Florence some time 
 before the year 1559, throws light upon the sub- 
 ject. 1 It is entitled " Canto di Zanni e Magnifichi." 
 The Magnifico corresponded to Pantalone ; and I 
 need not repeat that the Zanni were best known as 
 Arlecchino and Brighella. Lasca makes it clear in 
 this poem that the Lombard masks were strangers 
 to Tuscany, and that they performed comedies upon 
 a public stage : 2 
 
 " Facendo il Bergamasco e il Yeneziano, 
 N' ancliamo in ogni parte, 
 E '1 recitar commedie e la nostra arte. " 
 
 1 It was included in the first edition of the Canti Camascialeschi, 
 1559, and is reprinted in Verzone's edition of Grazzini's Rime Burlesche, 
 Firenze, Sansone, 1882. 
 
 2 " Acting the Bergamasque and the Venetian, -we roam the whole 
 world over, and the recitation of comedies is our trade. . . . We are all 
 of us Zanni, excellent and perfect players ; the other choice actors of 
 our troupe, lovers, ladies, hermits, and soldiers, have stayed behind to 
 guard our booth. . . . We have a stock of new comedies, so fine, so 
 mirthful, and so witty, that when you hear them you will die of laugh- 
 ing. Afterwards you will see a dance upon our stage, all full of new 
 
42 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 He also shows how the buffoon parts in these plays 
 sre i 
 drama 
 
 were interwoven with the intrigue of the regular 
 
 " E Zanni tutti siamo, 
 Recitatori eccellenti e perfetti ; 
 Gli altri strioni eletti, 
 Amanti, Donne, Romiti e Soldati, 
 Alia stanza per guardia son restati." 
 
 Furthermore, he lets us know that acting was com- 
 bined with dancing and mountebank performances, 
 and drops the information that women in Florence 
 were not allowed to attend the theatres where Zanni 
 played : 
 
 " Commedie nuove abbiam composte in guisa 
 Che quando recitar le sentirete, 
 Morrete delle risa, 
 Tanto son belle, giocose, e facete ; 
 E dopo ancor vedrete 
 Una danza ballar sopra la scena, 
 Di varj e nuovi giuochi tutta piena." 
 
 It is therefore obvious that, at the middle of the 
 sixteenth century, the Commedia dell' Arte had 
 already taken shape and earned popularity. The 
 companies who introduced it into Tuscany were 
 recognised as hailing from Bergamo and Venice. 
 Before another fifty years had passed away, this spe- 
 cies absorbed the attention of Italy, adopted elements 
 
 and varied sports. . . . But since there is a certain custom in this 
 country, ladies, which prevents your coming to our public show, if you 
 will open your house-doors to us, we will let you taste in part the 
 sweetness and the pleasure of our sports." 
 
INTRODUCTION : PART II. 43 
 
 from every district, and settled down into a definite 
 form of comedy, which lasted until the period of 
 Goldoni's reform of the stage. It culminated about 
 the middle of the seventeenth century, and maintained 
 a high degree of excellence during the first half of 
 the eighteenth. But when Goldoni attacked it, and 
 Gozzi rose in its defence, the type was already on 
 the wane. Depending, as any kind of improvised 
 drama must necessarily do, upon the personal talents 
 of successive actors, the Commedia delV Arte died of 
 inanition when theatrical genius was diverted into 
 other channels. 1 Originality of humour then yielded 
 to conventional buffoonery. The masks became more 
 and more stereotyped, more and more insipid. Were 
 it not for Gozzi's Fiabe, we should hardly be able to 
 form a conception of the part they actually played 
 for two centuries in Europe. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Let us watch the carnival procession of the masks 
 defile before us. We may imagine that they are 
 crossing the stage of a theatre, while we sit idle 
 in our stalls. First comes Pantalone, the worthy 
 Venetian merchant, good-hearted, shrewd, and canny, 
 yet preserving a certain child-like simplicity, which 
 
 1 The other channels were French plays, modifications of English 
 plays, adaptations of Spanish plays, and musical melodramas. 
 
44 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 long acquaintance with the world has not contami- 
 nated. His full title is Pantalone de' Bisognosi. 
 Sometimes he is called II Magniflco, sometimes Babi- 
 lonio ; and old tradition gives a singular derivation 
 for his name of Pantalone. Instead of having any- 
 thing to do with the Saint called Pantaleone, he ought 
 really to be known as Piantaleone, or Plant-the- 
 lion. In fact, he is one of those patriotic cittadini 
 who, partly out of zeal for S. Mark and partly with 
 a view to commerce, were reputed to hoist flags with 
 the Venetian lion waving to the breeze on every rock 
 and barren headland of Levantine waters. 1 Pan- 
 talone wears a black mantle, woollen cap, short trou- 
 sers, socks and slippers of bright red. A black 
 domino conceals half of his face. He is sometimes 
 a bachelor, but more frequently a widower with one 
 daughter, who engrosses all his time and care. Easy- 
 going indulgence for the foibles of his neighbours, 
 combined with homely mother-wit, is the funda- 
 mental note of his character. But as time goes on, 
 he degenerates, dotes, yields to senile vices. At last 
 he becomes the shuffling slippered Pantaloon of our 
 Christmas pantomimes. 2 
 
 1 I do not vouch for this etymology, which Boerio, the compiler of the 
 Venetian Glossary, has adopted. For myself, I should be well con- 
 tented with the derivation from San Pantaleone, and would willingly 
 make him the patron saint of pantaloons and professed trousers- 
 makers. 
 
 2 It is singular that Shakespeare, who uses Pantalone as the symbol 
 of old age in As You Like It, knew him already in decrepitude. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 45 
 
 After Pantaloon walks the Doctor in his Bologna 
 gown ; a hideous black mask covers his whole face, 
 smudged with red patches, like skin -disease or 
 wine-stains, on the cheeks. He is Graziano, Balo- 
 ardo Graziano, or Prudentio, and has a kind of 
 bastard brother called the Dottor Balanzon Lom- 
 bardo. Boasting his D.C.L. or M.D. orLL.D. degree 
 from the august University, Graziano makes a vast 
 parade of learning. Bononia docet is always on his 
 lips or in his thoughts ; yet he cannot open his mouth 
 without letting fall some palpable absurdity. Law 
 jargon, quibbles, quiddities, preposterous syllogisms, 
 fragments of distorted Latin, misapplied quotations 
 from the Pandects, mingle with metaphysics, astro- 
 logy, and physical chimseras about the spheres and 
 elements and humours, in his talk. He is a walking- 
 caricature of learning, and the low stupid cunning of 
 his nature contrasts w r ith the vain pomp he makes of 
 erudition. To sustain this mask with spirit taxed 
 the genius of a comedian. He had to keep a volu- 
 minous repertory of pedantic lumber always ready, 
 to blunder with wit and pun in paradoxes, seasoning 
 the whole with broad Bolognese dialect and plebeian 
 phrases. 
 
 Pantalone and the Doctor were only half-masks ; 
 that is to say, they held something in common with 
 the stationary characters of written comedy, and took 
 a decided part in the action of the play. As the 
 Commedia delV Arte coalesced with the Commedia 
 
46 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Eradita, they approached more and more nearly to 
 the type of the series in Latin comedy. The present 
 generation has seen them both in Rossini's Barhiere 
 di Siviglia. 
 
 Next come the two Zanni. These are thorough- 
 going masks ; twin-brothers from the country-side of 
 Bergamo, strongly contrasted in their characters, yet 
 holding certain points in common. 1 First comes 
 Arlecchino, the eldest and most typical of Italian 
 masks, and the one who has preserved its outlines 
 to the present day. His party-coloured, tight-fitting 
 suit reproduces the rags and patches of a rustic 
 servant. On his head is a little round cap, with a 
 tuft made out of a hare's or rabbit's scut. He is 
 always on the move, light-headed, gluttonous, gay, 
 pliable, credulous, ingenuously naive and silly. The 
 glittering ubiquitous Harlequin of our pantomimes 
 transforms him into a mute ballet-dancer ; but when 
 the type was created, Arlecchino spoke and amused 
 the audience as much by his absurdities and uncouth 
 jokes as by his perpetual mobility. 
 
 Time would fail to tell of the infinite modifications 
 which this type assumed under the hands of succes- 
 sive able actors. Truffaldino, the delight of Venice, 
 
 1 It was my good fortune, while writing these pages at Davos in the 
 summer of iSSS, to become acquainted with two brothers from Bergamo, 
 who were living representatives of the Zanni. They had come to help 
 at the hay-harvest, leaving their own farm in the Bergamasque hills. 
 Brighella's wit and knavery amused me. I marvelled at Arlecchino's 
 simplicity and suppleness. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 47 
 
 Zaccaguiuo, Trivellino, Mestolino, Bagattino, Guaz- 
 zetto, Stoppino, Burattino, and the idiotic Mezzettino, 
 were all descended from this parent stock. 
 
 Side by side with Arlecchino goes his more astute 
 and knavish brother Brighella. He is also Berga- 
 masque of the purest breed. But he holds some- 
 thing from the Davus and Geta of Latin comedy. 
 He is the roguish, clever, cowardly, pimping servant 
 of the young spendthrift, who helps his master to 
 deceive his father and seduce his neighbour's wife 
 or daughter. Brighella wears a loose white shirt 
 trimmed with green, and wide white trousers. On 
 his head is a conical hat, plumed with red feathers, 
 which yields place in course of time to the white cap 
 of our clowns. His mask is brown, cut off above the 
 upper lip, over which a pair of short moustachios 
 bristle. Like Arlecchino, Brighella gave birth to a 
 great variety of assimilated types. Unscrupulous 
 Pedrolino, Beltramo, Bagolino, Frontino, Sganarello, 
 Mascarillo, Figaro, Finocchio, Fantino, Gradellino, 
 Traccagnino are his more or less legitimate offspring. 
 He enters French comedy under the names of Scapin, 
 Sganarelle, and Frontin. He creates a character of 
 opera with Figaro. Unlike Arlecchino, who becomes 
 at last a silent ballet-dancer, Brighella grows more 
 vocal and distinct as time advances, until, in the plays 
 of Moliere and Beaumarchais, he is hardly distin- 
 guishable from a servus of Latin comedy modernised. 
 Indeed, just as Pantalone and II Dottore approximate 
 
4 S MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 to the senes, so Arlecchino and Brighella shade off 
 into the servi ; and all their countless progeny are 
 variations on the theme of stupid or roguish varlets. 
 
 The four main masks, with their attendant groups 
 of subordinates, have passed before us ; but a multi- 
 tude whom no man can number and no words can 
 describe press on from behind. Perhaps the first 
 place should be given to the Servetta. Her names 
 are legion. Colombina, the sweetheart of Arlec- 
 chino and Pulcinella, Posetta, Florentine Pasquella, 
 Argentina, Diamantina, Venetian Smeraldina, Sapo- 
 rita, Carmosina ; under all her titles, and with every 
 shade of character ascribed to her by the free hand- 
 ling of successive actresses, she remains the sprightly, 
 witty, shifty pendant to the Zanni. 1 Not a true 
 mask, however ; for the Servetta wears her own face 
 and form, only assuming the costume and dialect of 
 the region she prefers to hail from. Like her lover 
 Arlecchino, Colombina underwent a long series of 
 transformations before she became the fairy-like 
 being who fiits behind the footlights of our theatres 
 on winter evenings. And, like Brighella, written 
 comedy blended her with the fixed characters of 
 drama under the name of the soubrette. Susanna 
 in the Nozze di Figaro is a familiar example of 
 Colombina in her latest dramatic development. 
 
 The Servette in their many-coloured Contadina 
 
 1 Carlo Gozzi at Zara in his youth created a new type of the Servetta, 
 adapted to Dalmatian circumstances, under the name of Luce. 
 
COLOMBINA (1683) 
 Illustrating the Italian Commedia dell' Arte, or Impromptu Comedy 
 
^Ll 
 
INTRODUCTION : PART II. 49 
 
 dresses have passed by. Close upon their heels 
 press forward a chattering grimacing group from 
 Naples. Pulcinella leads the way, for he must still 
 keep Colombina in sight. In him, far more than 
 in Arlecchino, the genius of a nation lives incarnate ; 
 and this he partly owes to a poor artisan of Naples, 
 Francesco Cerlone, who fixed the type with inimitable 
 humour in the last century. 1 Pulcinella has had 
 whole volumes written on his pedigree. Some authors 
 find him depicted on the walls of Pompeii ; others 
 trace him in statuettes and masks of antiquity. The 
 one point which seems to be certain is, that he made 
 his appearance on the public stage toward the end 
 of the sixteenth century, wearing the white shirt and 
 breeches of a rustic from Acerra. His black mask, 
 long nose, humpback, protruding stomach, dagger 
 and truncheon, were later additions. Whatever 
 connection there may be between Pulcinella and the 
 masks of classical antiquity — and I have already 
 attempted to show how I think that connection ought 
 to be conceived 2 — he was, at his debut, regarded 
 as the type of a Campanian villager, established at 
 Naples in the quality of servant. Pulcinella is thus 
 the Southern analogue of Bergamasque Brighella and 
 Arlecchino. Gradually he absorbed the humours of 
 the Neapolitan proletariate, and became the burlesque 
 
 1 Scherillo, in his Commedia deW Arte, has resuscitated Cerlone's 
 fame, as Maurice Sand made us acquainted with Beolco. 
 
 2 See above, p. 38. 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
50 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 mirror of their manners and ways of thinking. Time's 
 whirligig has made him the hero of our puppet- 
 shows, and he enjoys cosmopolitan celebrity under 
 the name of Punch. 
 
 Coviello goes along with him, a Calabrian mask, 
 which was sustained with applause by Salvator Rosa 
 at Rome. He belongs to the buffoon class, and is 
 distinguished by his mandoline and ballad-singing. 
 After him walks Tartaglia, afflicted with an incur- 
 able stammer, which renders his magisterial airs and 
 graces ludicrous. Tartaglia has something in him of 
 the Doctor ; but this part lent itself to great varieties 
 of treatment. We shall see what play Gozzi made 
 with it. 
 
 But now our ears are deafened with a clash of 
 arms, rumbling of drums, pistol-shots, and shouted 
 execrations. A fantastic extravagant troop of sol- 
 diers march upon the stage. At their head goes the 
 swaggering Capitano. He is a Spaniard, armed to 
 the teeth, loaded with outlandish weapons, twirling 
 huge moustachios, frowning, swearing, boasting, 
 quarrelling, thieving, wenching, and shrinking into 
 corners when he meets a man of courage. Some- 
 times he affects the melancholy grandeur of Don 
 Quixote. Sometimes he leans to the garrulity of 
 Bobadil. Sometimes he assumes the serious ferocity 
 of a brigand chief or the haughty punctiliousness of 
 a hidalgo. Still he remains at bottom the caricature 
 of professional soldiers, as they plagued and infested 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 51 
 
 Italy under the Spanish domination. His language 
 soars into the wildest hyperboles and euphuisms. 
 He cannot speak without new-coined oaths and 
 frothy metaphors and vaunts that shake heaven, 
 earth, and sea. But the slightest trial of his valour 
 breaks the bubble, and he cringes like a whipped 
 hound. 
 
 The Capitano talked a mixture of Neapolitan and 
 Spanish. His part, which required to be sustained 
 at a high pitch of burlesque upon a single note of 
 bragging insolence, was not unfrequently written, 
 and none of these fixed characters assumed more 
 stereotyped outlines. The Miles Gloriosus of Latin 
 comedy reappeared in him, and helped to mould the 
 modern type. The ramifications of this character 
 were innumerable. A celebrated actor, Francesco 
 Andreini (born at Pistoja in 1 548), helped to create its 
 form. He called himself " Capitan Spavento da Valle 
 Inferna." Then followed Ariararche, Diacatolicon, 
 Leucopigo and Melampigo (white and black but- 
 tocks), Coccodrillo, Matamoros, Scaramuccia (created 
 by Tiberio Fiorelli of Naples), Fracassa, Rinoceronte, 
 Giangiurgolo, Bombardon, Meo Squaquara, Spezza- 
 ferro, Terremoto. The list might be prolonged until 
 the page was filled. Every variety of the burlesque 
 son of Mars, from a delicate Adonis to a fire-eater, 
 obtained impersonation from one or other able sus- 
 tainer of the part. And a host of minor bastard 
 braggarts, like the Trasteverine Meo Patacco, per- 
 
52 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 petuated the fun long after the great Capitano had 
 quitted the public stage. Some of these types sur- 
 vive in literature. Scaramouche is known to us, and 
 Gautier has immortalised Fracasse. 
 
 In the rabble which follows this noisy band of war- 
 riors we discern several buffoons of the long-robed 
 tribe — Neapolitan Pancrazio, Biscegliese, and Cucuz- 
 zietto, Sienese Cassandro and Roman Cassandrino — 
 who have more or less affinity with the Dottore. II 
 Pedante walks apart, and attracts attention by his 
 Maccaronic Latin and eccentric morals. He has the 
 'poems of Fidenzio Glottogrysio in his hands, which he 
 presses on the attention of a smooth-chinned pupil. 1 
 Don Fastidio distinguishes himself from the vulgar 
 herd by his enormous nose, and lantern jaws, and 
 long lean figure, and preposterous citations from the 
 law reports of Naples. Cavicchio tells silly tales and 
 sings his Norcian songs. II Desavedo burlesques 
 the " dude " of Parma, and Narcisino plays the 
 " masher " of Bologna to the life. Burattino comes 
 upon the stage in a score of disguises, now gardener, 
 now shopkeeper, now valet, always the fool and knave 
 combined, impostor and imposed on. 2 The Notajo, 
 
 1 For a short notice of these curious Maccaronic poems, I Cantici di 
 Fidentio Glottogrysio Ludimagistro, see my Renaissance in Italy, vol. 
 v. p. 328. The obscurity of their jargon veiled considerable indecency. 
 It is noticeable that this book, now exceedingly rare, should have be- 
 come the text-book of the Pedante. But see Bartoli, op. cit., pp. lii., lvii. 
 
 2 Burattino is so kaleidoscopic that at last he becomes the patronymic 
 hero of marionettes in Italy. / Burattini are the acting dolls. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 53 
 
 with huge spectacles upon his nose and swan's quill 
 stuck behind his spreading ears, murmuring a nasal 
 drawl, and tripping himself up at every step in his 
 long skirts, leads up the rear. Eope-dancers, ballerini, 
 Pasquarielli, Pierrots, conclude the show, dancing and 
 pirouetting after their more vocal comrades. 
 
 It is impossible, in a sketch like this, to do justice 
 to the manifold and motley crowd of the Italian 
 masks. Even Callot, whose burin has bequeathed 
 to us so many salient portraits of the types he saw 
 in action, leaves the imagination cold. As I have 
 remarked above, the Commedia delV Arte combined 
 fixity of outline in the masks with illimitable plas- 
 ticity in the details communicated by the genius and 
 personality of their sustainers. The mask, the tradi- 
 tional character, was something which a comedian as- 
 sumed ; but he dealt with it as he found it suited to his 
 physical and mental qualities. Each distinguished 
 actor re-created the part he represented. The im- 
 provised extempore rule of the game allowed him 
 boundless license. Therefore, while the masks per- 
 sisted, they varied with the men who wore them. 
 Arlecchino became Truffaldino in the hands of An- 
 tonio Sacchi. The Capitano appeared as Scaramuccia 
 in the person of Tiberio Fiorelli. Parts crossed 
 and intercrossed. Pulcinella borrowed something 
 from Arlecchino ; Brighella patched himself with 
 rags from Coviello's wardrobe. The dialect and local 
 humours of South Italy were engrafted on types 
 
54 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 conventionalised in Lombard provinces. Tuscany 
 took them up, and added her own biting wit. As 
 in a kaleidoscope, the constituent fragments of the 
 changeful whole assumed shapes and forms of infinite 
 variety by clever shifting of each particle. Each 
 company established for the performance of this 
 comedy gave a fresh nuance to the combinations 
 which the show permitted. J In each district it 
 adopted a new local colour. The mask was recog- 
 nised ; the man who wore it was expected to re- 
 model it upon himself. Folk came to the theatres, 
 less to see the masks, than to see how an Andreini 
 or a D'Arbes or a Costantini or a Biccoboni would 
 sustain them. We who have lost the men, and lost 
 well-nigh the memory of their performance, cannot 
 hope to reconstruct the comedy in its entirety. His- 
 trionic art always and everywhere suffers from the 
 ephemeral conditions under which it has to be exter- 
 nalised. But this disadvantage is crushing in the 
 case of an art which was left to the spontaneous 
 creativeness of its great representatives. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Intrigue of a simple kind formed the staple of 
 these improvised comedies. Anything like refined 
 studies of character or the development of calculated 
 motives was rendered impossible by the conditions 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 55 
 
 under which they were presented to the public. An 
 artist pleased or displeased by the exhibition of his 
 personality in masquerade, and his creation of a 
 shade of difference for some known type. The plot, 
 whether borrowed from the written drama, from 
 Latin plays, or from the gossip of the market-place, 
 was always of an amorous complexion. Fathers. 
 lovers, guardians, varlets, priests, and panders played 
 their parts in it. The action proceeded by means 
 of disguises, sleeping-potions, changelings, pirates, 
 sudden recognitions of lost relatives, phantoms, demo- 
 niacal possessions, burlesque exorcisms, shipwrecks, 
 sacks of cities, bandits, kidnapped children. It is 
 singular in what a narrow circle the machinery re- 
 volves. Unlike our own Romantic drama, the Corn- 
 media delV Arte made but few excursions into the 
 regions of history, fable, mythology, and fancy. Its 
 scene was an Italian piazza ; and though we hear of 
 thrilling adventures by land and sea, in forest and 
 on fell, these are only used to loose a knot or to 
 elucidate the transformation of some personage. We 
 ought not to marvel at the limitations of this drama. 
 They are explained by that close connection, on which 
 I have already insisted, between the Com/media delV 
 Arte and the Commedia Erudita. The new comedy 
 supplied little but its masks ; and these masks, as we 
 have seen, were types of bourgeois and rustic charac- 
 ters, capable of infinite modification within prescribed 
 boundaries. The end in view was not the delectation 
 
56 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 of the audience by a scenic drama, but the caricature 
 and travesty of life as it appeared to every one. 
 That caricature, executed with inexhaustible finesse 
 and piquant sallies of fresh personality, accommo- 
 dated itself to the antiquated framework of plots as 
 old as Plautus. 
 
 If the Com/media delV Arte lacked fancy and in- 
 vention in its ground-themes, this defect was compen- 
 sated by audacious realism and Gargantuan humour. 
 The indecency of these plays cannot be described. 
 Men and women appeared naked on the stage. Un- 
 mentionable vices were boldly paraded. Buffoonery 
 of the vilest description enhanced the finest strokes 
 of burlesque sarcasm. Actors who created types 
 which made the spirit of a nation live in effigy, con- 
 descended to tricks unworthy of a Yahoo. We have 
 to accept the species, not as a branch of the legiti- 
 mate drama, but as a carnival masquerade, in which 
 humanity ran riot, jeering at its own indignities and 
 foibles. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The stock in trade of an acting company consisted 
 of some scores of plots in outline. Gozzi, writing in 
 the eighteenth century, calculates that there may 
 have been from three hundred to four hundred 
 dramatic situations. 1 We possess a certain number 
 
 1 In the Rar/ionamento Ingenuu and Apvendice, Op., 1772, vols i. and iv. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 57 
 
 of these scenari, as they were technically called 
 Flaminio Scala published a collection of fifty in his 
 Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative (Venetia, 161 1). 
 The titles of about one hundred others survive from 
 the archives of Basilio Locatelli and Domenico Bian- 
 colelli, incorporated in eighteenth-century histories 
 of the Italian stage. The records of the theatres 
 where Italians played at Paris supply titles of another 
 set, and a few have been disinterred from miscel- 
 laneous sources. Quite recently a complete collec- 
 tion of well-formed scenari was given to the press by 
 Signor Adolfo Bartoli from a Magliabecchian MS. of 
 the last century. 1 It contains twenty-two pieces. 
 
 Comparative study of these scenari shows that the 
 whole comedy was planned out, divided into acts and 
 scenes, the parts of the several personages described 
 in prose, their entrances and exits indicated, and 
 what they had to do laid down in detail. The execu- 
 tion was left to the actors ; and it is difficult to form 
 a correct conception of the acted play from the dry 
 bones of its ossatura. " Only one thing afflicts me," 
 said our Marston in the preface to his Malcontent : 
 " to think that scenes invented merely to be spoken, 
 should be inforcively published to be read." And 
 again, in his preface to the Fawne, " Comedies are 
 writ to be spoken, not read ; remember the life of 
 these things consists in action." If that was true of 
 pieces composed in dialogue by an English play- 
 
 1 Scenari Inediti, Firenze, Sansoni, 1880. 
 
58 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 wright of the Elizabethan age, how far more true is 
 it of the skeletons of comedies, which avowedly owed 
 their force and spirit to extemporaneous talent ! 
 Reading them, we feel that we are viewing the 
 machine of stakes and irons which a sculptor sets 
 up before he begins to mould the figure of an athlete 
 or a goddess in plastic clay. 1 
 
 The scenario, like the plat described for us by 
 Malone and Collier, was hung up behind the stage. 
 Every actor referred to it while the play went for- 
 ward, refreshing his memory with what he had to 
 represent, and attending to his entrances. But be- 
 fore the curtain lifted a previous process had been 
 gone through. This was called Concertare il soggetto. 
 The company met in their green-room. What fol- 
 lowed may be told in the words of a seventeenth-cen- 
 tury writer on the technique of the Commedia delV 
 Arte: " The Choregus, who rules and guides the 
 troupe by his ability and experience, has to plan the 
 subject, to show how the action shall be conducted, 
 the dialogues concluded, and new sallies of wit or 
 humour introduced. It is not merely his business 
 to read the plot aloud, but also to set forth the per- 
 sonages with their names and qualities, to explain 
 
 1 It has to be mentioned that in plays of a more serious description, 
 the parts of character were frequently written out, and only the parts 
 of the masks left to improvisation. This was the method pursued by 
 Gozzi in his Fiabe. 
 
 2 Andrea Perrucci, Dell' Arte Rappresentativa premeditata ed all' 
 improvviso, Napoli, 1699, quoted by Bartoli, op. cit., p. lxxi. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 59 
 
 the drama, describe localities, and suggest extem- 
 poraneous additions. For instance, he shall begin 
 by saying : ' The comedy we have to represent is 
 so-and-so; the personages such-and-such; the 
 houses are on this side and on that.' Then he will 
 unfold the argument. He Avill impress upon his 
 comrades the necessity of bearing well in mind the 
 place where they are supposed to be, the names of 
 people and the business they are engaged in, so that 
 they shall not confound Rome with Naples, or say 
 that they have come from Spain when they are bound 
 from Germany. A father must not forget his son's 
 name, nor a lover his lady's. It is also most impor- 
 tant that the houses in which the action has to take 
 place should be accurately known. To knock at the 
 wrong door, or to take refuge in the home of your 
 enemy, would spoil all. Afterwards, the planner of 
 the subject must indicate occasions suited to the 
 sallies of the several characters. ' Here a piece of 
 buffoonery is right. A metaphor, or sarcasm, or 
 hyperbole, or innuendo, would make a good effect 
 there.' In fact, he has to show each actor how to play 
 his part to best advantage in the circumstances of 
 the piece. Then he must look to preventing incon- 
 venient entrances and exits, providing that the stage 
 be not left empty, and indicating proper ways of 
 bringing scenes to their conclusion. After the 
 Choregus has read this lecture to the troupe, they 
 will meet and sketch the comedy in outline. Then 
 
60 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 they have the opportunity of bringing their own 
 talents forward, and combining new effects. Yet, 
 at such rehearsals, they must all be mindful to 
 maintain the outlines of the subject, not to exceed 
 their roles, nor yet to trust their recollection of 
 similar plays performed under different conditions. 
 The piece has each time to be produced afresh by 
 the concerted action of the players who will bring 
 it on the boards." 
 
 The Choregus was usually the Capocomico or the 
 first actor and manager of the company. He im- 
 pressed his comrades with a certain unity of tone, 
 brought out the talents of promising comedians, 
 enlarged one part, curtailed another, and squared 
 the piece to be performed with the capacities he 
 could control. " When a new play has to be given," 
 says another writer on this subject, 1 "the first actor 
 calls the troupe together in the morning. He reads 
 them out the plot, and explains eveiy detail of the 
 intrigue. In short, he acts the whole piece before 
 them, points out to each player what his special 
 business requires, indicates the customary sallies of 
 wit and traits of humour, and shows how the several 
 parts and talents of the actors can be best combined 
 into a striking work of scenic art." 
 
 1 Histoire Anecdotique du Theatre Italien, Paris, 1769, quoted by 
 Baitoli, of. cit., p. lxxvi. 
 
INTRODUCTION : PART II. 61 
 
 X. 
 
 More than natural cleverness and native humour 
 went to the making of a good comedian. To begin 
 with, he had to be a man of sense, tact, and obliging 
 disposition. " When we speak of a good comedian 
 in the Italian style," says Gherardi, 1 " we mean a 
 man of solid parts, who depends on imagination 
 more than memory in his performance, and com- 
 poses everything he says upon the spot ; he is one 
 who knows how to play up to his companions on 
 the stage, combining his words and gestures so well 
 with theirs that he responds at a touch to their 
 hints, and who is so ready with a repartee or move- 
 ment that the audience believes the scene to have 
 been concerted beforehand." In truth, fertility of 
 fancy, quickness of intelligence, a brain well stocked 
 with varied learning, facility of utterance, command 
 of language, and imperturbable presence of mind, 
 were required in a first-rate improvisatory actor. 
 When he undertook to sustain one of the masks, he 
 had first of all to live himself into the character. If, 
 for instance, he chose the Dottore, nothing might 
 escape his lips upon the stage out of harmony with 
 that character, nothing which could remind the 
 
 1 Le Theatre Italien, quoted by Bartoli, op. cit., p. lxx. 
 
62 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 audience that anybody but a pedant from Bologna 
 was speaking. His every gesture had to contribute 
 to the same effect. The second nature of his part 
 had so to supersede his own instincts, that no 
 sudden accidents, the maladroitness of a comrade, 
 an unexpected turn in the dialogue, or any of the 
 inconveniences to which unpremeditated acting was 
 liable, should throw him off his guard. 
 
 It was further necessary that he should stock his 
 mind with what the actors called the doti of a play, 
 and with a repertory of what they called generici} 
 The doti or doAvry of a comedy consisted of soli- 
 loquies, narratives, dissertations, and studied passages 
 of rhetoric, which were not left to improvisation. 
 These existed in manuscript, or were composed for 
 the occasion. They had to be used at decisive points 
 of the action, and formed fixed pegs on which to 
 hang the dialogue. The generici or common-places 
 were sententious maxims, descriptions, outpourings 
 of emotion, humorous and fanciful diatribes, declara- 
 tions of passion, love-laments, ravings, reproaches, 
 declamatory outbursts, which could be employed ad 
 libitum whenever the situation rendered them appro- 
 priate. Each mask had its own stock of common 
 topics, suited to the personage who used them. A 
 consummate artist displayed his ability by improving 
 
 1 These phrases are used by Gozzi in his Memorie Inutili. Compare 
 what he says in his Afipendice al Ragionamento Ingenuo, Op., 1772, vol. 
 iv. p. 40. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II 63 
 
 on these, introducing fresh points and features, and 
 adapting them to his own conception of the part. 
 They had to become incorporated with the ideal self 
 he represented, and not to betray their origin in 
 study. The tradition of the drama and the daily 
 practice of rehearsing together made each member 
 of a company know when such premeditated pieces 
 were to be expected. They did not therefore break 
 the general style of the performance. Habit en- 
 abled the actors to lead up to them and pass away 
 from them upon the stream of impromptu dialogue. 
 
 Another highly important branch of the art was 
 what were called the lazzi. "We give the name of 
 lazzi," says Riccoboni in his history of the theatre, 
 "to those sallies and bits of by-play with which 
 Harlequin and the other masks interrupt a scene in 
 progress — it may be by demonstrations of astonish- 
 ment or fright, or by humorous extravagances alien 
 to the matter in hand — after which, however, the 
 action has to be renewed upon its previous lines." 
 It was precisely in these lazzi that a comic actor 
 displayed his personal originality to best advantage ; 
 but it required great tact and sense of the dramatic 
 situation to render them natural, appropriate, and 
 to keep them within bound and measure. 
 
 We have now seen what was expected of a first- 
 rate artist, and understand to what extent the Com- 
 inedia delV Arte depended upon study and premedi- 
 tation. Long familiarity with their own repertory 
 
64 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 undoubtedly reduced the improvisatory element to 
 a minimum in the case of troupes who were accus- 
 tomed to play together for years. Yet they strove 
 to gain novelty by inventing fresh situations, giving 
 unexpected turns to dialogue, and varying their 
 action on successive nights. The best companies 
 were those in whose hands a hackneyed comedy 
 was always plastic, and who kept their improvisatory 
 powers in exercise. 
 
 The defect of the art was that it tended to become 
 stereotyped. The Zanni repeated their jokes. The 
 Dottore used the same malapropisms over and over 
 again. The primo amoroso served up the crambe 
 decies repetita of his monologues. The lazzi degene- 
 rated into unmeaning horse-play and buffooneries, 
 which had nothing to do with the action of the 
 piece. Nature was forgotten. Every actor over- 
 played his part, ranted, raged, turned caricature into 
 burlesque, spoke in and out of season, exaggerated 
 his gestures, diction, gait, and declamation, until a 
 pack of madmen seemed to have run wild upon the 
 stage To control these tendencies towards a false 
 and artificial style of presentation, which formed the 
 inherent vice of improvisatory acting, was the duty 
 of an able Capocomico. It could only be done by 
 forcing the members of the troupe to study and 
 reflect on what they had to represent, by compelling 
 them to subordinate their several parts to the general 
 effect, and by raising the tone of their intelligence. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 65 
 
 Thus there was the greatest difference between a 
 well-conducted company, intent on the perfection 
 of their art, and a wandering rabble, satisfied with 
 appealing to the lowest instincts of the proleta- 
 riate. The value of these remarks will be apparent 
 after reading what Gozzi has to say about Antonio 
 Sacchi's company and the causes of its dissolution. 
 
 XI. 
 
 There is no doubt that during their flourishing 
 period the companies of the Commedia delV Arte 
 afforded the rarest amusement, not only to the vulgar, 
 but also to refined and cultivated audiences through- 
 out Europe. They were especially appreciated at 
 Paris. From the year 1572, when the Confidenti and 
 Gelosi made their first appearance, to the close of the 
 eighteenth century, Italian troupes at the Hotel de 
 Bourbon, the Hotel de Bourgogne, the Palais Royal, 
 and the Opera Comique, formed the delight of the 
 French court and the Parisian public. Under 
 various names, Uniti, Fedeli, Barbieri's, BiancMs, 
 and Cardinal Mazarin's men, actors who had learned 
 their trade in Italy continued to seek larger profits 
 and a wider audience in that capital. "The way in 
 which Italian comedians compose, study, and repre- 
 sent their plays," says a French critic in the year 
 
 vol. 1. E 
 
66 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 1716, 1 "is quite beyond the powers of language to 
 describe. I might venture to call it inconceivable ; 
 with such a wealth of new and agreeable sallies 
 and of unpremeditated dialogue do they adorn their 
 scenes." Many anecdotes regarding these Italian 
 players in their French homes have been transmitted 
 to us, with detailed descriptions of their qualities. 
 I will confine myself to two extracts. 2 One is taken 
 from Constantini's Life of Tiberio Fiorelli (1608- 
 1694), the famous Scaramouche. "He was one of 
 the most perfect mimes who have appeared in these 
 last centuries. I call him mime advisedly, because 
 he played his part by action more than speaking. 
 Scaramouche was not satisfied with making what 
 he represented intelligible by speech ; he translated 
 everything into movements of his face and body, 
 adapting his gestures to his words and his words 
 to his gestures with incomparable art. Everything 
 became vocal in this man, his feet, his hands, his 
 head ; the slightest attitude he took had meaning 
 and significance." Gherardi adds that " he could 
 keep an audience in fits of laughter for a long 
 quarter of an hour without uttering a word. A 
 great prince, who saw him act at Home, uttered 
 these words, ' Scaramuccia does not talk, and yet he 
 says everything' and at the end of the performance 
 presented him with his coach and six horses." Of 
 
 1 Quoted by Bartoli, op. cit., p. Ixxi. 
 
 2 I am indebted to Maurice Sand, Masques et Bouffons.. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 67 
 
 Tommaso Vicentini, called II Tommasino, who made 
 his de'but at Paris as Harlequin in 1 7 1 6, we read : 
 " His suppleness, his natural gaiety, his graceful airs 
 of rustic simplicity, made him a first-rate Harlequin. 
 But nature had also made him an excellent actor 
 in the more extended sense of that phrase. True, 
 naive, original, pathetic, amid the laughter he 
 excited by his buffooneries, a single trait, a single 
 reflection which became a sentiment by his manner 
 of expressing it, drew tears from the audience, and 
 surprised the author of the piece no less than the 
 public, and that too in spite of the mask, which 
 seemed intended to inspire as much fear as merri- 
 ment. Often, when one had begun to laugh at his 
 way of simulating grief or pain, one finished by 
 being melted with the tenderness of the emotion 
 which came from the bottom of his heart." 
 
 Italian companies delighted the court of Spain 
 during the reign of Philip II., and were welcomed 
 in Portugal. We find them in Bavaria, at Dresden, 
 and in other parts of Germany. Nor were they 
 entirely unknown in England. Collier, in his " His- 
 tory of the English Drama," speaks of a certain 
 Drousiano, who played with his troupe in London 
 during the winter of 1 57 7— 78. 1 This was probably 
 Drusiano Martelli. The extempore plays of the 
 Italians are mentioned by Whetstone, Kyd, Jonson, 
 and Brome ; and it seems probable that the plat- 
 
 1 Vol. iii. p. 201. 
 
6S MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 comedies, ascribed to the famous fools Tarleton and 
 Wilson, were modelled on Italian Commedie a Sog- 
 getto. Kydj in the Spanish Tragedy, shows that the 
 method of studying an improvised play was well 
 understood. Hieronymo, who wishes to have a 
 certain subject mounted in a hurry, says to his 
 confidant — 
 
 " The Italian tragedians were so sharp of wit, 
 That in one hour's meditation 
 They woxild perform anything in action." 
 
 Lorenzo replies — 
 
 " I have seen the like 
 In Paris, among the French tragedians." 
 
 The full history of Italian companies in foreign lands 
 still remains to be written ; but I have said enough 
 in this place to prove their wide popularity. 
 
 In its native country, the Com/media delV Arte 
 was long regarded as the special glory and the unique 
 product of Italian dramatic genius. Gozzi, though 
 he wrote as its apologist, only expressed common 
 opinion when he said : l "I reckon improvised 
 comedy among the particular distinctions of our 
 nation. I look upon it as quite a different species 
 from the written and premeditated drama ; nor have 
 I the shameless audacity to stigmatise with the title 
 of an ignorant rabble those noble and cultivated per- 
 sons whom I see with my own eyes following and 
 
 1 Ragionamento Ingenuo, Op., 1772, vol. i. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 69 
 
 enjoying a play of this description. I esteem the 
 able comedians who sustain the masks, far higher 
 than those improvisatory poets, who, without utter- 
 ing anything to the purpose, excite astonishment in 
 crowds of gaping listeners." 
 
 XII. 
 
 This essay would be incomplete if I failed to de- 
 scribe the decadence of the Commedia delV Arte, and 
 the various inconveniences which attended its per- 
 formance by incompetent or wilfully scurrilous actors. 
 Without such a sequel to the history of its develop- 
 ment, Goldoni's reform of the theatre, and Gozzi's 
 energetic attempts to sustain the old style by works 
 of a peculiar and hybrid character, will not be intelli- 
 gible. 
 
 In its higher manifestations, this comedy, as we 
 have seen, allied itself to fine art by singularly deli- 
 cate links of connection. More than in other kinds 
 of drama, where actors make themselves the mouth- 
 pieces of poets whose creations they incarnate, the 
 performers of improvised comedy had to be complete 
 and finished works of living art in their own persons. 
 So long as they were conscious of their mission, and 
 earnestly aspired to the highest points within the 
 range and scope of their achievement, they supplied 
 a scenic travesty of actual life unequalled for its 
 
7o MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 freshness and its truth to nature — sparkling with 
 salient traits of character, seasoned with mirthful 
 sarcasm, and pungent by its satire of contemporary 
 manners. But the roots of this unique and singular 
 species of the drama were grounded in a deep sub- 
 soil of vulgar instincts and dishonest proclivities. It 
 clung to the tradition of mountebanks and mimes, 
 acrobats and jongleurs, circus-clowns and rope-dancers. 
 The rare flower of racy humour and refined parody, 
 which fascinated Paris in the age of Louis XIV., 
 sprang from a stock discredited and outcast through 
 fifteen centuries of Christian teaching. The Church in 
 council and in synod had anathematised the ancestors 
 of Andreini and Fiorelli, Sacchi and Darbes. Burial 
 with the sanctities of religion was forbidden them, 
 as it is forbidden to suicides. They were reckoned 
 among the enemies of social order and civil disci- 
 pline. The State, in its sumptuary laws, forbade 
 their entrance into decent houses, relegating them 
 to dark corners of the city, where they lurked with 
 thieves and prostitutes. Saintly pastors of the flock, 
 like Carlo Borrommeo, carried on a crusade against 
 these corruptors of public morals. 1 Even in Venice, 
 the city of their adoption — the sea-Sodom, as Byron 
 called it, of carnival licentiousness, the mart of 
 pleasure for all Europe, the modern Corinth — an 
 Inquisitor of State scourged them with these words 
 
 1 Sclierillo, in his book on La Commedia dell' Arte, ch. vi., has given 
 the history of San Carlo's efforts to suppress the theatre at Milan. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 71 
 
 of stinging reprobation : 1 " Bear in mind, yon actors, 
 that yon are folk beneath the ban of blessed God's 
 almighty hatred, and that the prince allows yon only 
 as pasture for the common people, who take pleasure 
 in your ribaldries." With such a record of con- 
 tempt and disesteem and outlawry, the Commedia 
 delV Arte was always sinking back into the slime 
 from which it rose. Unhappily, the same eyes 
 which delighted in its glory during the years when 
 genius shed brilliant lustre on its noblest representa- 
 tives, had only to look on this side or on that, and a 
 crowd of shameless merry-andrews, the scum and 
 dregs of the histrionic profession, made the evidences 
 of its inherent immorality only too apparent. 
 
 I have already touched upon the scurrilities and 
 obscenities which were common in improvised 
 comedy. To enlarge upon the topic is not neces- 
 sary. Everybody can perceive that a drama relying 
 in great part upon buffoonery, restrained by no 
 obligation to literary precedents, dependent on the 
 favour of mixed audiences, among whom women 
 scarcely showed their faces, and varying at each 
 performance with the whims and humours of masked 
 actors, who were ex hypothesi beyond the pale of 
 social decency, may have allowed itself licenses 
 which were well-nigh intolerable. 
 
 I have already described the tendencies toward 
 
 1 Nicolo Maria Tiepolo, about 1778, quoted by Molraentiin bis Essay 
 on Goldoni, Venezia, Ongania, 1880, p. 68. 
 
72 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 exaggerative emphasis, stilted declamation, ill-con- 
 certed action, impertinent extravaganza, and weari- 
 some repetition of exhausted motives, to which the 
 species was peculiarly liable. There is no need to 
 expand those observations. They justify the severe 
 remarks of Goldoni in the preface to his theatrical 
 works, which, as these have a direct bearing upon 
 the subject of my next essay, I will summarise 
 here : 1 — " The comic theatre of Italy for more than 
 a century past had so degenerated that it became 
 a disgusting object for general abhorrence. You 
 saw nothing on public stages but indecent harle- 
 quinades, dirty and scandalous intrigue, foul jests, 
 immodest loves. Plots were badly constructed, and 
 worse carried out in action, without order, without 
 propriety of manners. If translations of French or 
 Spanish pieces were given, the improvisatory come- 
 dians mutilated and deformed them beyond recogni- 
 tion. The same fate befell the plays of Plautus and 
 Terence, and of our elder Italian dramatists. People 
 of culture, nay, the common folk, cried out against 
 these miserable travesties. Every one was wearied 
 with the insipidities and conventionalities of an 
 art upon the wane. You knew what Harlequin or 
 Pantaloon was going to say before he opened his 
 lips." 
 
 Readers of Gozzi's Memoirs, to which these pages 
 
 1 Pasquali's edition, 1761 ; also, Teatro Comico, act i. sc. 2. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 73 
 
 serve as a prolusion, have means of judging, on the 
 testimony of a very partial critic and avowedly 
 Quixotical defender of the old Commedia delV Arte, 
 to what extent the system of the theatre in Italy 
 was faulty. Students of Casanova's Memoirs will 
 remember the dark picture of the actress whom he 
 met at Ancona, with her epicene brood of children 
 and of changelings exposed to indiscriminate conta- 
 mination. 1 The lighter pages of Goldoni's Memoirs 
 reveal a spectacle less revolting, but far from edify- 
 ing, of a comic troupe in its passage from one 
 Italian capital to another. 2 Leaving these accessible 
 sources of information regarding the social status of 
 the dramatic profession in Italy untouched, I will 
 close this chapter with some extracts from a well- 
 nigh forgotten book — Garzoni's Piazza Universale. 
 One of the most frequent charges brought against 
 the acting companies was that they dressed their 
 women up in men's clothes, and sent them about the 
 public squares of cities to attract the rabble. " No 
 sooner have they made their entrance," says Garzoni, 
 " than the drum beats to let all the world know that 
 the players are arrived. The first lady of the troupe, 
 decked out like a man, with a sword in her right 
 hand, goes round, inviting the folk to a comedy or 
 tragedy or pastoral in the precincts of the Pelle- 
 
 1 Memoires de Jacques Casanova, Bruxelles, Rozez, vol. i. ch. 11. 
 
 2 Memoires de M. Goldoni, Paris, Veuve Duchesne, 1787, vol. i. 
 ch. 5. 
 
74 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 grino. 1 The populace, inquisitive by nature and 
 eager for any new thing, hurries to take places. 
 Paying their pennies down, they crowd into a hall, 
 where a temporary stage has been erected, the scenes 
 scrawled with charcoal as chance and want of sense 
 will have it. An orchestra of tongs and bones, like 
 the braying of asses or the caterwauling of cats in 
 February, performs the overture. Then comes a pro- 
 logue in the manner of a quack-doctor's oration to 
 his gulls. The piece opens ; you behold a Magni- 
 fico, who is not worth the quarter of a farthing ; a 
 Zanni, who straddles like a goose ; a Gratiano, who 
 squirts his words out from a clyster-pipe ; a lover, 
 who acts like a narcotic on the senses of his neigh- 
 bours ; a Spanish captain, with nothing but a couple 
 of musty oaths in his whole repertory ; a stupid and 
 foul-mouthed bawd ; a pedant, who trips up in 
 Tuscan phrases at each turn ; a Burattino, whose 
 whole humour consists in taking off and putting on 
 his greasy cap ; a prima donna, who goes yawning, 
 drawling, twaddling through her mumbled part, with 
 eyes well open to the chance of selling her overblown 
 charms in quite another market than the theatre. 
 The show is seasoned with loathsome buffooneries 
 and interludes which ought to send their performers 
 to the galleys." Enlarging on this theme, Garzoni 
 proceeds as follows : " These profane comedians 
 
 1 A common inn-sign. This reminds us of the earliest performances 
 of plays in the yards of London hostelries. 
 
INTRODUCTION : PART II. 75 
 
 pervert the noble use of their ancient art by present- 
 ing nothing which is not openly disreputable and 
 scandalous. The filth which falls continually from 
 their lips infects themselves and their profession 
 with the foulest infamy. They are less civil than 
 donkeys in their action, no better than pimps and 
 ruffians in their gestures, equal to public prostitutes 
 in their immodesty of speech. Knavery and lewd- 
 ness inspire all their motions, In everything they 
 stink of impudicity and villainy. When occasions 
 offer for veiling grossness under a cloak of decorum, 
 they do not take these, but pique themselves on bring- 
 ing beastliness to sight by barefaced bawdry and un- 
 disguised indecency." 
 
 One of the degradations to which these comedians 
 willingly submitted was that of playing jackals to 
 quack-doctors on the squares of the Italian cities. 
 Goldoni in his Memoirs x speaks of a certain Buona- 
 fede Vitali who " maintained at his own cost a troupe 
 of actors. It was their business to collect the money 
 thrown to them in pocket-handkerchiefs, and to return 
 the handkerchiefs filled with pots of ointment and 
 boxes of pills to the purchasers, after which they per- 
 formed plays in three acts with a certain kind of 
 pomp under the light of wax candles." In order to 
 form a conception of the scenes which were enacted 
 on an Italian piazza crowded with charlatans, 
 mountebanks and players, we must have recourse 
 
 1 Ed. eitj vol. i. p. 228. 
 
76 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 again to Garzoni. It is almost impossible to under- 
 stand or to reproduce his language at the present day. 
 Sarcastic sallies, which were doubtless piquant in 
 their time, but to which the key has now been lost, 
 abundance of ephemeral slang and racy innuendo, 
 allusions to forgotten people and obsolete customs, 
 topical jests, the coarsest Lombard patois seasoned 
 with the salt of euphuistic rhetoric, all combine to 
 render his motley descriptions untranslatable. Gar- 
 zoni and writers of his class still lack the pains which 
 Casaubon bestowed on Athenseus, and perhaps their 
 matter is not worthy of such vast expenditure of 
 industiy. Yet the pith may be seized ; and following 
 our garrulous cicerone, we stroll out on the piazza. 
 " In one corner of it you will see our swaggering 
 Fortunato and his boon companion Fritata spinning 
 yarns, and keeping the whole populace agape into 
 the night with stories, songs, improvisations, dia- 
 logues ; quarrelling, making-up, dying of laughter, 
 coming to blows again, bustling about their stage, 
 settling the dispute by fisticuffs and violent language, 
 and lastly handing round the cap to reap the harvest 
 of the pennies they have earned. In another corner, 
 Burattino sets up his bray of brass. You would 
 think that the hangman had got hold of you, to hear 
 him yell into your ears. He carries a scavenger's 
 bag and a common sailor's cap, and screams until 
 the whole world gathers around him. The people 
 crowd, the groundlings jostle, men of quality press 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 77 
 
 forward to the platform. When the burlesque pro- 
 logue comes to a conclusion, Burattino's master puts 
 in his appearance. It is our old friend the Doctor, 
 with his Bolognese jargon, long-winded citations, 
 insipid tomfooleries, and absurd pretensions to omni- 
 science. The droning of this arrant humbug drives 
 as many of the audience away as the zany's merry 
 pranks and roguish whiskers and apish tricks have 
 drawn together. Meanwhile the curtains of the 
 booth open, and the Tuscan comes forth with his 
 tumbling girl. He begins some silly story in the 
 Florentine tongue, during which the girl draws her 
 circle and puts herself in position, straddling with 
 arms and legs abroad, flinging her body backwards 
 to pick up a piece of money with her mouth from 
 two crossed swords, and tickling the greasy varlets 
 of the market-place by the exhibition of her lascivious 
 graces. Not far away, you may see the Milanese 
 quack, dressed like a noble gentleman, velvet cap on 
 head and white Guelf feathers waving to the wind. 
 He is telling his man Gradello some story of his 
 hapless love. The groom cuts indecent jokes and 
 gibes in the background ; then swaggers forward, 
 twirls his moustachioes, vows to uphold his master's 
 cause against all rivals, and bristles like an enraged 
 bloodhound ; but, on a sudden, feigning to see foe- 
 men near, he drops his arms, knocks his knees to- 
 gether, befouls his breeches on the stage, and lets 
 himself be soundly drubbed. When that interlude 
 
7 8 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 is over, Gradello acts another part. He is a blind man 
 squalling ont a ditty, and thrumming on a puppy in 
 his lap instead of a theorbo. The climax of all 
 this buffoonery is a panegyric of some famous pills, 
 which lasts an hour or two, and leaves the charlatan 
 wrangling over cents and farthings with his swiftly 
 dwindling audience. Toward evening the crowd of 
 quacks and blind musicians and acrobats thicken. 
 Here is Zan della Vigna with his performing monkey; 
 there Catullo and his guitar ; in another corner 
 the Mantuan merry-andrew, dressed up like a zany, 
 Zottino singing an ode to the pox, and the pretty 
 Sicilian rope-dancer. Tamburino spins eggs on 
 a stick ; the Neapolitan capers about with brim- 
 ming bowls of water on his pate ; and Maestro Paolo 
 da Arezzo makes his solemn entry with a waving 
 banner, on which you see St. Paul, holding a huge 
 falchion in one hand, while the rest of the field is 
 painted over with twining hissing serpents. The 
 mountebank clears his throat and relates his fabu- 
 lous pedigree. St. Paul was his great ancestor, and 
 ever since that accident upon the island of Malta, all 
 the family have possessed miraculous powers over the 
 snaky tribe. Hereupon boxes are opened, and horrid 
 vipers, water-snakes, and adders are drawn forth to 
 the terror of the bystanders. 'Do not be afraid,' con- 
 tinues Maestro Paolo ; ' I have delivered your fields 
 and woods from these plagues and their poison.' 
 The trembling country-lads creep up and buy a box 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART II. 79 
 
 of powders from the condescending hands of the 
 impostor. After the sight of all those asps and 
 crocodiles, stuffed basilisks, tarantulas, and Indian 
 armadilloes, there is not one of them would venture 
 out into the country lanes without a prophylactic. 
 Meanwhile, Settecervelli has laid his mantle on the 
 pavement, and is making his little bitch go through 
 her tricks, bark at the worst-dressed fellow in the 
 circle, howl at the name of the Grand Turk, dance 
 for joy in honour of her master's sweetheart, and 
 cany round the cap for pennies in her mouth. The 
 Parmesan is not to be outdone by these performances ; 
 he has his nanny-goat, whose antics are at least as 
 sight-worthy as the puppy's. The Turkish athlete 
 climbs the campanile, lets his brawny chest be ham- 
 mered like an anvil, dislodges a stout pillar by the 
 strength of his huge arms and shoulders, and wins a 
 bag of coppers heavy enough to pay his expenses to 
 the holy town of Mecca. The baptized Jew wails in a 
 lamentable tone of voice, goi, goi, badanai, badanai, 
 till he has attracted a crowd round him ; then he 
 tells the romance of his conversion to the true faith, 
 which leaves a strong impression on our mind that 
 if he has become a sincere Christian, which is more 
 than doubtful, he has certainly not lost the arts of 
 an accomplished cheat. Soon the whole piazza is 
 swarming with folk of this sort ; pills and powders, 
 for all the ills that flesh is heir to, are being hawked 
 about ; men are eating fire, and swallowing tow, and 
 
So MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 pulling yards of twine from their throats, and wash- 
 ing their faces in molten lead, and finding cards in 
 the pockets of their unsuspecting neighbours ; every 
 conceivable article, which ingenuity can force on the 
 attention of simpletons, is flirted in one's face, and 
 vaunted with a deafening din by hoarse and squeak- 
 ing salesmen." 
 
 Garzoni has carried us somewhat astray from the 
 main subject of this essay. Yet it is not amiss to 
 have gained a full conception of the medium out 
 of which the Commedia delV Arte emerged, and into 
 which it always tended to relapse, as well as of the 
 various low and ignoble branches of industry with 
 which the players were associated. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 81 
 
 part EL 
 
 GOZZVS DRAMATIC FABLES, OR FIABE TEATRALI ; 
 TOGETHER WITH A BRIEF HISTORY OF HIS 
 QUARREL WITH GOLDONI AND CHIARI. 
 
 i. Venice in the last century — The Liberals and Conservatives — In- 
 vasion of French theories in politics, philosophy, and social manners 
 — Prevalence of French taste in literature — Conservative resistance 
 to this revolutionary state of things. — 2. Carlo Goldoni and Carlo 
 Gozzi — Popularity of French sentimental dramas — The Academy 
 of the Granelleschi founded in 1747 by literary Conservatives, to 
 restore a taste for pure Italian style, and to promote the study of 
 the Tuscan classics — Carlo Gozzi belongs to this Academy, and 
 becomes one of its chief supporters — Goldoni, and the qualities of 
 his genius — His perception that nature has to be closely followed 
 in the drama. — 3. A sketch of Goldoni's career, and of the steps 
 whereby he became a professional playwright — Settles at Venice 
 in 1747 as poet to Medebac's company — Goldoni's Venetian comedies, 
 comedies in the French manner, melodramas — Goldoni's rivalry 
 with the Abbe Chiari — Chiari's bombastic pseudo-Pindaric style — 
 Martellian verses. — 4. Indignation of the Granelleschi with both 
 Goldoni and Chiari — Carlo Gozzi confounds them in one common 
 hatred as corruptors of the language — His particular dislike for 
 Goldoni, who had declared war against the Commedia delV Arte, of 
 which Gozzi professed himself the champion — Publication of Gozzi's 
 satirical poem La Tartana degli Tnflussi\n 1756 — Return of Sacchi's 
 company of impromptu comedians to Venice in that year — Vigo- 
 rous warfare carried on by the Granelleschi against both Goldoni 
 and Chiari during the next four years — Gozzi first shows his dra- 
 matic faculty in a severe Aristophanic satire upon Goldoni, entitled 
 II Tcatro Comico — Chiari makes up his differences with Goldoni, 
 and both playwrights now join forces against their conservative 
 antagonists — Chiari defies the Granelleschi to produce a comedy — 
 VOL. I. F 
 
82 MEMOIRS OF- COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Gokloni appeals from their criticisms to the public, who idolise him — 
 Gozzi determines to write a satirical play upon a nursery-tale, which 
 shall prove no less popular than Goldoni's comedies — The Amore 
 delle Tre Melarancie appears in January 1761 — The true character 
 of Carlo Gozzi's dramatic fables — It is a mistake to suppose that 
 he was actuated by spontaneous Romantic genius — His affinity 
 with the elder Tuscan burlesque poets — His wish to rehabilitate 
 the Comedy of Masks — His conservative and didactic spirit. — 
 5. A translation of Gozzi's own account of The Love of the Three 
 Oranges, important in the history of the Commedia dell' Arte, and 
 illustrative of the way in which Gozzi handled his fabulous 
 material. — 6. Success of L' Amore delle Tre Melarancie — Produc- 
 tion and dates of the remaining nine dramatic Fiabe. — 7. Gozzi's 
 method of writing, and employment of the Four Masks and the 
 Servetta — Interweaving of the comic element with the fairy-tale — 
 Gozzi does not rise to the height of imaginative poetry. — 8. His 
 satire, humour, feeling for poetic situations — His conservative 
 philosophy of life. — 9. Sources of the Fiabe — The artistic superi- 
 ority of L Amore delle Tre Melarancie. — 10. Analysis of L'Augel- 
 lino Belverde. — 11. Gozzi's temporary success — Gokloni retires to 
 Paris, and Chiari to Brescia — Posterity has reversed the verdict of 
 contemporary Venice — Fate of the Fiabe — Vicissitudes of Gozzi's 
 fame in Italy, Germany, France — Paul de Musset's condensed 
 abstract of the Memoirs, and their distorted picture of Carlo Gozzi. 
 
 About the middle of the eighteenth century, Vene- 
 tian society was divided into two main parties, re- 
 presenting what we should now call Liberal and 
 Conservative principles in politics and thought. 
 The Liberals were imbued with French philoso- 
 phical ideas, French fashions, and French phrases. 
 The boldest of them, men like Angelo Querini, 
 Carlo Contarini, Giorgio Pisani, openly aimed at 
 remodelling the constitution. They aired new- 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 83 
 
 fangled theories of government, based upon the 
 Social Contract and the Rights of Man, within ear- 
 shot of the terrible Inquisition of State. Some of 
 them went in consequence to end their days in 
 the dungeons of Cattaro or Verona. These patri- 
 cians created a body of restless opposition in the 
 Grand Council, agitated the bourgeoisie and prole- 
 tariate with the expectation of impending changes, 
 and succeeded in effecting some salutary but super- 
 ficial reforms. Outside the sphere of politics, that 
 spirit of innovation which in France was silently but 
 surely working toward the Revolution, made itself 
 felt among the educated classes. The University of 
 Padua, while preserving external forms of medie- 
 valism in its discipline and teaching, fermented with 
 the physical hypotheses of modern science. The 
 deism of the Encyclopaedists and Voltaire came into 
 vogue. Sentimentalism, thinly cloaking a desire 
 for liberty and license, ruled in morals. Rousseau's 
 speculations and the humanitarian Utopias of the 
 ■philosophes disturbed the old foundations on which 
 social institutions rested. The word prejudice was 
 upon the lips of everybody, to indicate the restraining 
 influences of public order in the state and of ethics 
 in the family. These new ideas permeated society 
 and saturated literature. In the drawing-rooms 
 of great ladies, the clubs and coffee-houses of 
 the gently, the theatres, concert-rooms, and little 
 houses, where men and women congregated, French 
 
84 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 books were discussed, French fashions were affected, 
 the French language was engrafted on the old Vene- 
 tian dialect. Frivolous butterflies of pleasure in that 
 great mart of the world's amusement assumed fine 
 airs of philosophy and science. Wide-sweeping and 
 far-reaching theories, which called in question the 
 whole groundwork of man's previous beliefs, were 
 freely ventilated by chatterers, who caught their 
 jargon from flippant manuals of science and popular 
 essays, poured forth by thousands from the press of 
 Paris. Unhealthy novels spread subversive moral 
 doctrines flavoured with a spice of philanthropic 
 sentiment. It was considered rococo to admire the 
 old Italian classics. Staunch Liberals paraded their 
 independence of precedent and prejudice by adopt- 
 ing a masquerade style which set the traditions of 
 the language at defiance. 
 
 All this indicated a deep and irresistible fermenta- 
 tion in society. The great catastrophe of the eight- 
 eenth century was preparing. The stage of Europe 
 was being made ready for that transformation-scene 
 which opened a new era. But few could foresee the 
 inevitable future ; few could distinguish what was 
 wholesome progress from the delirious or somnam- 
 bulistic ravings of the moment. Therefore the Con- 
 servatives clung fast to their prejudices and prece- 
 dents; to established forms of government, the national 
 religion, the traditional customs of civil and domestic 
 life. To superficial observers it appeared that these 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 85 
 
 men held the strongest cards. Yet even rigid Con- 
 servatives were bound to admit that there was some- 
 thing ominously rotten in the state of Venice. Her 
 commerce dwindled year by year. Her provinces 
 were ill administered, and yielded less and less to 
 the exchequer. Social demarcations disappeared in 
 the luxury and corruption which invaded all classes. 
 Pauperism assumed appalling dimensions. In the 
 decay of industries and manufactures thousands of 
 workpeople were thrown famished upon public charity. 
 The ranks of the Barnabotti, or impoverished nobles, 
 who claimed state support, swelled, grew clamorous in 
 the Grand Council, gave signs of insubordination, and 
 contaminated the fountain-head of government by 
 their venality. Meanwhile, the old machinery of the 
 constitution had fallen into the hands of a close oli- 
 garchy or commission of a few powerful patricians. 
 These corruptors of the State pulled wires, bought 
 votes, and manipulated the College and the Senate 
 to secure their own ends in the Consiglio Grande. 
 The more far-sighted among the Conservatives felt 
 the necessity of temporising. Influenced by the all- 
 pervasive spirit of the age, but not prepared to join 
 the Liberal forces, they compromised, tampered with 
 institutions, and tried by stopping leaks to keep the 
 deep sea out. This was the attitude of men like 
 Marco Foscarini, Alvise Emo, and Paolo Renier. 
 
 Apart from politics, the Conservatives stood on 
 firmer ground. There is no doubt that the so-called 
 
86 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 philosophy of the eighteenth century, both in its princi- 
 ples and in its consequences, offered points of patent 
 weakness to hostile criticism. It was subversive 
 without being reconstructive. Its foundations were 
 sentimental and fanciful rather than logical and 
 reasoned. Hazy in the minds of its projectors, it 
 was almost universally misunderstood by the multi- 
 tude which it illuded. Immorality was encouraged ; 
 not that any speculative system is inherently immoral, 
 but that the confused postulates regarding personal 
 liberty, the right of private judgment in matters of 
 conduct, the light of Nature, and the tyranny of 
 custom and prejudice, from which this philosophy 
 started, enabled foolish or ill-minded people to hide 
 their vices and caprices beneath the specious mask 
 of systematic thinking. Again, the literature which 
 sprang into existence under the predominance of 
 such theories, was in some respects pernicious, and 
 in many points of view ridiculous. The Conserva- 
 tives had a definite course before them when they 
 determined to vindicate the purity of Italian diction, 
 to maintain the traditions of a glorious past in art, and 
 to expose the foibles of the Liberal school of thinkers 
 and of writers. 
 
 II. 
 
 This brings me to the proper subject of the present 
 chapter, which is the conflict of Liberalism with 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 87 
 
 Conservatism in the theatre at Venice. The two 
 protagonists are Carlo Goldoni and Carlo Gozzi, both 
 Venetians, and both of nearly the same age. Goldoni 
 was bom in 1707, Gozzi in 1720. Gozzi entered 
 the lists against Goldoni in 1756, when the latter 
 had been working for the Venetian stage since 1 748, 
 and when he had already turned the heads of the 
 public by his brilliant dramatic novelties. 
 
 The old Com/media delV Arte, as we have seen, 
 had sunk into decrepitude. It was not merely that 
 the type itself was exhausted, though subsequent 
 circumstances proved this to be the case. What 
 was more important is, that the popular taste 
 veered round against it. Under the prevailing domi- 
 nance of French fashions, a style of drama, hitherto 
 unknown to the Italians, came into vogue. The so- 
 called Comedie Larmoyante, or pathetic comedy (of 
 which Nivelle de la Chaussee, a now-forgotten archi- 
 mage of middle-class sentimentalities and sensibilities, 
 is the reputed inventor), caught the ear of Europe. 
 The Pere la Chaussee, to adopt an epigram of Piron's, 
 preached every evening from his pulpit in a score 
 of theatres through Europe. The titles of his most 
 famous ]A&ys, Melanide, La Gouvernante,Prejuge a la 
 Mode, LEcole des Meres, remind us of the revolution 
 in the drama which converted the public stage from 
 a place of amusement into a platform for the dis- 
 semination of political or social sentiments. Saurin's 
 Beverley, Mercier's Deserteur and L Indigent, De 
 
88 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Falbaire's Honnete Criminel, Voltaire's JEcossaise, 
 Diderot's Pere de Famille, carried on La Chaussee's 
 tradition. Regarding their popularity at Venice, 
 enough is related in the verbose and bilious diatribes 
 prefixed by Gozzi to his dramatic works. Among 
 plays of this description, an adaptation of our 
 George Barnwell — much in the style of Thackeray's 
 parody upon Lord Lytton's novels — attracted great 
 attention by the pathos with which a nephew mur- 
 dering his uncle from the highest motives was 
 exalted to the rank of hero. The Conservatives not 
 unjustly protested against the contamination of 
 public morals by the false sentiment of these tearful 
 dramas. The perversion of taste by low domestic 
 arguments and clumsy realism, which had nothing 
 real but its vulgarity, seemed to them no less a sin. 
 
 They were particularly sensitive, moreover, upon 
 the point of language, diction, style. Translations 
 and adaptations of French plays confirmed the growing 
 carelessness of authors. Gallicisms were so fashion- 
 able that a stage-hack allowed himself all license in 
 that direction. The jargon of science introduced 
 unheard-of phrases, which would have made the 
 fathers of the Della-Cruscan Academy shudder in 
 their tombs. Moreover, the prevalent affectation of 
 independence and the fashionable revolt against 
 prejudice led ignorant scribblers to plume them- 
 selves upon their solecisms and plebeian lapses into 
 dialect. 
 
INTRODUCTION : TART III 89 
 
 With the main object, therefore, of maintaining a 
 standard of propriety in style, and with the secondary 
 object of opposing theatrical innovations, the Vene- 
 tian Conservatives (in literature) founded their 
 Academy de' Granelleschi. It came into existence 
 about 1747; and I need not enlarge upon its con- 
 stitution, except to say that it was an academy of 
 the good old Tory type, like the Gelati, Sonnacchiosi, 
 Storditi, and so many scores of literary clubs with 
 absurd names and trivial customs, whose members 
 wasted their time over pedantic studies, and occa- 
 sionally issued a piece of solid work among their 
 otherwise ephemeral transactions. A sufficient ac- 
 count of this Academy is given in Gozzi's Memoirs. 
 Its importance at the present moment is that out 
 of this little camp Carlo Gozzi marched like David 
 to attack the Goliath of Philistinism, Carlo Goldoni. 
 
 It is difficult to speak adequately and fairly of 
 Goldoni. In making this man, Nature cast her glove 
 down in the face of criticism, and defied analysis. 
 He possessed indubitable genius ; what is more, his 
 genius obeyed generous enthusiasms, unselfish aims, 
 pure-hearted sentiments. He perceived instinctively 
 and correctly that a new age was dawning for the 
 literature of Europe. He devoted his life to creat- 
 ing a comic drama adequate to the intellectual 
 dignity of his nation. Goldoni was a good man, a 
 modest man, a man complete in all the social virtues. 
 But he was not a great man. And his genius, that 
 
90 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 innovatory force of his, that infinite adaptability, 
 that inexhaustible scenic faculty which he possessed, 
 that intuition into the necessity of change, was, after 
 all, a genius of thin and threadbare quality. Can we 
 point to a single masterpiece produced by Goldoni ? 
 After allowing the sediment to settle down of 
 his prolific works and various experiments, can we 
 select any one play which bears the stamp of the 
 supreme master ? I think not. I shrink from placing 
 Goldoni, as a peer, in the company of Shakespeare, 
 Moliere, Calderon, and Schiller. But, while saying 
 this, it is impossible to deny his actual achievement. 
 It is impossible not to recognise the honest motives 
 which prompted him to copy Nature's book. That 
 was his great discovery ; and that keeps the memory 
 of Goldoni ever green among us. He saw that Nature 
 had to be loved and studied and followed by the 
 artist. He discerned this luminous point in a period 
 befogged by prejudice, tradition, pedantry, conven- 
 tionality, subservience to antiquated humours and 
 insurgent eccentricities. It was not Goldoni's fault 
 that birth and fortune denied him those higher capa- 
 cities and favourable openings which might have 
 made his art-work monumental. His genial, shifty, 
 pliable, and yet persistent personality was forced to 
 humour obstacles and to fawn on circumstance. As an 
 inevitable consequence, his productions are mediocre 
 and unsatisfactory. Mediocrity of talent and of 
 character is stamped upon his plays, and self-revealed 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 91 
 
 in his good-humoured Memoirs. But what confounds 
 criticism is that this mediocrity in the man and his 
 equipment was combined with undeniable originality. 
 His genius, though not of the purest water, was 
 genuine. He had a correct perception of the require- 
 ments of his age, a clear intuition into the practical 
 possibilities of the dramatic art he handled, and a 
 vivid consciousness of the ground-principle that no 
 artist can afford to lose sight of reality in practice. 
 What would Goldoni not have been, Ave say, after 
 summing up the survey of his qualities, had he been 
 gifted with a finer fibre, a wider range of know- 
 ledge, a deeper philosophy, a more robust temper, a 
 poetic talent equal to the task of externalising his 
 just perceptions in forms of meditated art? As it is, 
 he presents the curious spectacle of a man born to 
 inaugurate a new epoch, but without the faculty to 
 impose his own ideal successfully upon his contem- 
 poraries. The general public acclaimed him, and 
 understood his aims. But the aristocrats of literature 
 were able to inflict telling blows in their fight against 
 him. We, who stand aloof, when all the dust of 
 that conflict has subsided, see that Goldoni really 
 won the day. It is only to be regretted that a 
 champion of such small dimensions, soft heart, and 
 feeble sinews, was commissioned to effect the revo- 
 lution. 
 
92 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 III. 
 
 Goldoni's instinct led him by an irresistible bias 
 to the stage. He vainly attempted to form himself 
 for the more lucrative profession of the law. During 
 his youth he studied at a college in Pavia, but was 
 expelled for giving free vent to his literary pro- 
 pensities in satire. He practised as an advocate at 
 the Venetian bar, practised at Pisa in the same 
 capacity, acted as Genoese Consul at Venice. Still 
 though he courted Themis, his real predilections 
 drew him toward Thalia. The first piece which 
 revealed his leading talent was a comedy in outline ; 
 II Gondoliere Veneziano, represented at Milan in 
 1733. In the next year he produced a painfully bad 
 tragedy at Verona entitled Bdisario. Several pieces 
 of a mixed character, between comedy and tragedy, 
 followed. Yet he had not taken to the theatre as 
 a profession ; and it was not until the year 1 746, 
 when he joined the comic company of Medebac, at 
 Leghorn, in the capacity of their paid playwright, 
 that he entered definitely upon the career of author 
 for the stage. 
 
 During the years when Goldoni was thus wavering 
 between law and literature, he attempted many kinds 
 of dramatic composition — operettas for music, tra- 
 gedies, tragi-comedies, farces, scenari for improvised 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 93 
 
 comedies, and comedies of which the dialogue was 
 partly written. His facile talent adapted itself to 
 every style in turn. All this while he recognised that 
 his strength lay neither in the direction of poetry nor 
 in that of serious drama. Nature had bestowed on 
 him a genius for comedy ; and he felt born to edu- 
 cate Italian taste in that species. We have already 
 seen how deeply he deplored the degeneration of the 
 Commedia delV Arte; and yet some of his pieces 
 had been performed by the best improvisatory actors 
 then alive, Sacchi the famous Truffaldino, and Darbes 
 the no less celebrated Pantalone. 
 
 While scribbling Harlequinades, Goldoni never 
 lost sight of the reform he had long meditated ; 
 and this was to substitute written comedies of 
 character, in the style of Moliere and the ancients, 
 for the old comedies all 1 improvviso. But he saw 
 the necessity of proceeding cautiously. On the 
 one hand, he had to consider the adherents of the 
 elder style. On the other hand, he was forced 
 to humour the comedians, who were jealous of 
 changes which increased their dependence upon 
 professional playwrights. 1 Accordingly, he advanced 
 with circumspection. In the Momolo Cortesan, 
 which he composed for the Pantalone of Sacchi's 
 company (a certain Golinetti), only the leading 
 part was written. The rest was left to improvisa- 
 
 1 See his Mernoires, part i. cli. 40. 
 
94 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 tion. Nevertheless, this piece was constructed on 
 different principles from those which governed the 
 Commedia delVArte. It aimed at being a comedy of 
 character ; and thus Goldoni hoped by gradual steps 
 to wean his actors from their bad old ways. Copying 
 his mistress Nature, he saw that nothing could be 
 done per saltum. It was necessary to prepare transi- 
 tions, and to pass through the development of im- 
 perfect species to the exhibition of the type he had 
 in view. This seems to have been the principle on 
 which he acted. But Goldoni was so pliable and 
 easy-going, so apt to take the cue from casual sugges- 
 tions offered to his versatile ability, that he frequently 
 lost sight of this leading principle. His Muse wore 
 Harlequin's robe of many colours, and assumed the 
 mask while waiting to effect the meditated revolution. 
 This indecision at the commencement of his career 
 exposed him to Gozzi's piratical attacks, and exer- 
 cised, I think, a prejudicial influence over his subse- 
 quent career as playwright. But it was not in the 
 character of the man to act otherwise. He could 
 not divest himself of ready sympathy, fluency, and 
 genial adaptability to the circumstances in which he 
 was placed from time to time. Some natures are 
 destined to achieve their ends by condescension. 
 Goldoni's was essentially a nature of this kind. And 
 the fact remains that, amid all his excursions into 
 regions alien from his purpose, he kept one aim in 
 view and finally achieved it. "What survives of solid 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 95 
 
 in his work, is the select series of plays produced 
 upon the lines of the reform he calculated. 
 
 It was at Pisa in 1746 that the Capocomico 
 Medebac induced Goldoni to join his troupe. The 
 proposal was that a theatre at Venice should be hired 
 for five or six years, and that Goldoni should dedi- 
 cate his whole talents to the composition of plays. 
 Sufficiently good pecuniary offers were made ; for it 
 seems that each comedy was paid at the rate of thirty 
 sequins, or about ^12 sterling. Goldoni accepted. 
 Then travelling with his new partners by the road 
 through Modena, he reached Venice in July 1747. 
 His first venture, with a play called Tognetto or 
 Tonino bela grazia, was a failure. A couple of 
 pathetic pieces which followed, Avon more favour 
 with the public. Darbes, whom Goldoni learned to 
 appreciate and use with excellent effect, seconded 
 his efforts admirably ; and in 1 748 circumstances 
 seemed propitious for attempting the long-cherished 
 scheme of a revolution in the theatre. Accordingly 
 he wrote the Vedova Scaltra, which is distinctly a 
 comedy of character. It was performed during the 
 carnival season of 1 749, and was received with intel- 
 ligent sympathy by the Venetians. This induced 
 Goldoni to pursue the course he had begun. La 
 Putta Onorata obtained a similar success, and 
 met with emphatic approval from the gondolier 
 class, whose sentiments and manners had been 
 studied in its composition. Goldoni's novelties had 
 
96 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 by this time roused the jealousy of rivals and the op- 
 position of Conservatives. A parody of the Vedova 
 Scaltra appeared at the theatre of S. Samuele. This 
 was clever enough, and scurrilous enough, to attract 
 attention. Goldoni received a check in mid-career, 
 which became serious when the Carnival of 1749 
 closed with the total failure of a new piece from his 
 pen, L'Erede Fortunata. Upon this occasion, stung 
 to the quick, and piqued in his self-esteem, with the 
 sense of his own inexhaustible and facile forces 
 rendering the hazard light, Goldoni publicly de- 
 clared his intention of producing sixteen new come- 
 dies within the next twelve calendar months. 
 
 He kept his promise, but at a considerable cost 
 both to his position as playwright and his health. 
 With the general public, the man's indomitable 
 pluck, his good-humour, and the variety of subjects 
 treated in his famous sixteen plays, created an inde- 
 scribable enthusiasm. The end of the Carnival, 
 1750, brought well-earned laurels to Goldoni, to- 
 gether with the good-will of the fickle multitude. 
 But unforgiving enemies, the supporters of the old 
 drama, the literary purists, and the Conservatives 
 who could not stomach sentimental comedies, were 
 watching him with Argus eyes. In the heat of vol- 
 canic combustion, he had thrown up cinders and 
 rubbish along with several felicitous and brilliant 
 works of art. The worst of his performances were 
 remembered and scored up against him by critics 
 
TARTAGLIA (1620) 
 Illustrating the Italian Commedia dell' Arte, or Impromptu Comedy 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 97 
 
 like Carlo Gozzi. The best were confounded in one 
 plausible condemnation. 
 
 From this point forward for the next six years 
 Goldoni met with no formidable opposition, except 
 from a rival playwright. The man in question was 
 the Abbe Chiari, a relic of the seventeenth century, 
 pompous and bombastic in style, a blatant member 
 of the Arcadian Academy, a bastard brother of Pindar 
 in the matter of mixed metaphors and wild Icarian 
 flights, a prolific scribbler of melodramatic pieces in 
 rhymed Martellian verses, 1 and, after all his qualifi- 
 cations are summed up, a mere pretentious windbag. 
 Chiari caught the public ear. Venice divided itself 
 into factions for Chiari and Goldoni. On a smaller 
 scale, the Bononcini and Handel conflicts of London, 
 the Gluck and Piccini riots of Paris, were repeated. 
 The most damaging feature of this contest for Goldoni, 
 
 1 This is perhaps the pi^oper place to explain the meaning of Mar- 
 tellian verses. They owe their name to Pier Jacopo Martelli (1665- 
 1725), who revived them, and used them for the drama. Metrically 
 speaking, Martellian verses are twelve-syllable lines of the Alexandrine 
 type. These long lines had been commonly employed in Italy during 
 the thirteenth century, before the heroic verse of eleven syllables obtained 
 ascendancy. It is difficult to say why the Alexandrine, which Italy in 
 the thirteenth century shared with France, died out in the former country 
 and became the standard heroic line of the latter. Possibly the reason 
 may be found in the Italian tendency toward double rhymes ; the 
 so-called versi piani of Dante being decasyllabic iambics with a redun- 
 dant syllable rather than hendecasyllabics. Anyhow, the Alexandrine 
 has not nourished south of the Alps. Martelli's revival did not prosper ; 
 and Carducci, in his S«' Carnpi di Marengo {Nuove Poesie, p. 91), is the 
 only recent poet who has attempted them with success. 
 
 VOL. I. G 
 
9 8 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 was that Chiari, less gifted with originality, aped each 
 of his new inventions. Against Goldoni's Pamela 
 Nubile Chiari brought out a Pamela Maritata, against 
 his Avventuriere Onorato an Avventuriere alia Moda, 
 against his Padre per Amove an Inganno Amoroso, 
 against his Moliere a Moliere marito geloso, against 
 his Terenzio a Plauto, against his Sposa Persiana a 
 Schiava Chinese, against his Filosofo Inglese a Filo- 
 sofo Veneziano, against his Scozzese a Bella Pelle- 
 grina. In spite of their mutual hostility, this game of 
 battledore and shuttlecock between Chiari and Gol- 
 doni enabled the literary Conservatives to regard both 
 playwrights as flying under one flag. But before the 
 Granelleschi opened fire in earnest, Venetian society 
 continued for five years to be pretty equally divided 
 in its sympathies. The best judges sided with Gol- 
 doni, while Chiari's glaring faults, which passed for 
 brilliant qualities with the vulgar, won him numerous 
 admirers. Carlo Gozzi has described this state of 
 contention : * 
 
 " I partigiani ogni giorno crescevano, 
 Chi vuole Originate et clii Sacch eggio ; 
 Tutto il paese a romore mettevano, 
 Sicche la cosa non e da motteggio. 
 Nelle case i fratelli contendevano, 
 Le mogli co' mariti facean peggio, 
 In ogni loco acerba e la tenzone, 
 Tutto e scompiglio, tutto e dissensione." 
 
 1 Opere, ed. 1772, torn. viii. p. 27. "The partisans on both sides 
 gathered forces daily. One swears by Original (a name for Goldoni), 
 the other by Plunder (Chiari, because of his plagiarisms). The whole 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 99 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Granelleschi, in their zeal for sound literature, 
 were justly enraged against the ranting, arrogant, 
 bombastic Chiari. Although the more discreet Aca- 
 demicians, men like Gasparo Gozzi, recognised Gol- 
 doni's merits, they resented his slovenly and slipshod 
 style. Carlo Gozzi, less tolerant and far more satiri- 
 cal than his elder brother, confounded both poets in 
 a common loathing. This was obviously unfair to 
 Goldoni, who, whatever his faults of diction may 
 have been, ranked immeasurably higher than the 
 Abbe. But Goldoni was guilty of an unpardonable 
 sin in Gozzi's eyes. He had declared war against the 
 Commedia dell' Arte, for which Gozzi entertained the 
 partiality of one who was himself an excellent im- 
 promptu actor. The other reasons of this bitter 
 hatred are sufficiently explained in those chapters of 
 the Memoirs which describe the beginning of his 
 career as playwright. 
 
 At last Gozzi thought the time had come for strik- 
 ing a decisive blow. 1 The Granelleschi professed 
 
 city was turned upside down, and indeed it is no laughing matter. 
 Brothers fought with brothers, wives did worse with their husbands. 
 Everywhere the wrangling was fierce ; nought but confusion, nought 
 but discord." 
 
 1 The details of the controversy between Gozzi and Goldoni are given 
 at fuller length than I have attempted in Si gnor Ernesto Masi's masterly 
 Introduction to his edition of the Fiabe Teatrali. 
 
ioo MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 sincere admiration for an obscure burlesque Florentine 
 poet of the fifteenth century called Burchiello. Tak- 
 ing some of this man's enigmatical sentences for 
 prophecies, Gozzi compiled a sort of comic almanac, 
 in which the various woes impending over Venice 
 in the year 1756 were described. It was entitled La 
 Tartana degV Influssi per Vanno bisestile 1756, 1 and 
 was modelled upon an almanac for country-folk, pub- 
 lished at Treviso under the name of a certain Schieson. 2 
 For each quarter of the year a capitolo in terza rima 
 was written, and a prophecy in octave stanzas was 
 dedicated to each month. Although the Tartana con- 
 tained satires upon society in general, a considerable 
 part was directed specially against Chiari and 
 Goldoni. The introductory address to the readers 
 strikes the keynote. The month of February deals 
 with comedies, the month of November with Martel- 
 lian verses, and the month of December invokes the 
 speedy return of Sacchi and his company of masks 
 from Portugal. Finally, in the sonnet addressed 
 to the bookseller at the end of the book, the two 
 poets are mentioned by name. Gozzi declared him- 
 self an implacable enemy of the plays in vogue, an 
 
 1 Opere, vol. viii. Tartana is a large merchant vessel. 
 
 2 The editor of this Venetian Zadkiel was originally Giovanni Pozzo- 
 bon. After his death it was continued by Giambattista Bada. Pozzo- 
 bon was nicknamed Schieson. The almanac was adorned with a 
 ridiculous portrait of a doctor in a huge wig. Owing to this fact, 
 Schieson came to signify any one with rumpled hair. See Boerio's 
 JDizionario del Dialetto Veneziano. 
 
INTRODUCTION : PART III. 101 
 
 opponent of rhymed verses imitating the French 
 Alexandrine measure, and a zealous adherent of the 
 old Com/media delV Arte. The prophecy with regard 
 to Sacchi's company was speedily fulfilled ; for the 
 earthquake of Lisbon happening in 1755, they were 
 obliged to quit the scene of that lugubrious disaster. 
 Soon after their return to Venice, Gozzi appears to 
 have courted their friendship. This we gather from 
 the Canto Ditirambico de' Partigiani del Sacchi 
 Trujfaldiiw which he published in 1761. 1 
 
 Irritated by the Tartana degli Injiussi, Goldoni, 
 who usually kept silence under literary attacks, took 
 up the pen and wrote as follows: 2 — 
 
 " Ho veduta stampata una Tartana 
 
 Piena di versi rancidi sciapiti, 
 
 Versi da spaventare una befana, 
 Versi dal saggio imitator conditi 
 
 Con sale acuto della maladicenza, 
 
 Piena di falsi sentimenti arditi ; 
 Ma conceder si pud questa licenza 
 
 A chi in collera va colla fortuna, 
 
 Che per lui non ha molta compiacenza. 
 Chi dice mal senza ragione alcuna, 
 
 Chi non prova gli assunti e gli argomenti, 
 
 Fa come il can che abbaia alia luna." 
 
 1 Opere, vol. viii. p. 164. 
 
 8 The original exists in MS. at the Marcian Library. Goldoni wrote 
 the poem on the occasion of S. E. Bastian Venier's return from the 
 rectorship of Bergamo. When he reprinted it in the edition of his 
 poetical works (Pasquali, Venezia, 1 764), he omitted the passage referring 
 to Gozzi's Tartana. The lines above are given in Magrini's and Masi's 
 essays. I add a translation. " I have seen a certain Tartana in print, 
 full of rancid and insipid verses, verses bad enough to terrify a goblin, 
 verses seasoned by the wise plagiary with acrid salt of evil-speaking, full 
 
io2 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 I have transcribed these verses for several reasons ; 
 first, that my readers may judge for themselves of 
 Goldoni's poetical style ; secondly, because the last 
 six lines profoundly irritated Gozzi ; and thirdly, 
 because they engaged him in the production of his 
 first semi-dramatic pasquinade upon their author. 
 
 "We need not describe the battle of sonnets, squibs, 
 and pamphlets which raged after the appearance of 
 Gozzi' s Tartana. The Granelleschi were now com- 
 mitted to crush their antagonists ; and they spared 
 no pains to do so. Men of birth and parts conde- 
 scended to the filthiest ribaldry and the most savage 
 personalities. On the whole, it must be allowed that 
 the Granelleschi displayed superior wit and style. 
 Gozzi, in particular, showed real powers for burlesque 
 satire in his Marjisa Bizzarra; and some of his 
 occasional pieces are composed with a terseness and 
 directness worthy of the classical age of Florentine 
 literature. Goldoni replied from time to time, but 
 feebly. In a poem entitled La Tavola Rotonda, he 
 described his formidable antagonist as : 1 
 
 " Un Lombardo die affetta esser cruscante 
 Col riso in bocca e col veleno in petto." 
 
 of false arrogant sentiments. One can, however, condone this licence in 
 one who is out of temper with Fortune, she being not greatly well- 
 affected toward him. He who speaks evil without any reason shown, 
 he who does not prove his assumptions and his arguments, acts like the 
 dog who barks against the moon." 
 
 1 It was written fur the marriage of Contarini Venier. "A Lombard 
 who pretends to be a Delia Cruscan, with a smile on his lips and venom 
 in his heart." 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 103 
 
 This seems to me a fair, if somewhat pungent, descrip- 
 tion of Carlo Gozzi, who, in spite of his theoretical 
 purism, rarely succeeded in writing with correctness 
 or distinction, and who veiled a really caustic temper 
 under the mask of Democritean philosophy. Touch- 
 ing upon the charges brought against himself of being 
 neither a scholar nor a poet, Goldoni admits their 
 truth with frankness : l 
 
 " Pur troppo io so che buon scrittor non sono 
 E clie ai fonti miglior non ho bevuto ; 
 Qual mi detta il mio stil scrivo e ragiono, 
 E talor per ibrtuna ho anch' io piaciuto ; 
 Ma guai a me se il fiorentin frullone 
 A sceverare i scritti miei si pone." 
 
 Strong in the unwavering appreciation of the public, 
 and confident in his own powers, Goldoni could afford 
 to make this concession to his antagonist. But it 
 argued a generous and modest mind, different in 
 quality from Gozzi's. 
 
 Meanwhile Gozzi took up the glove of defiance 
 thrown down by Goldoni in his Tavola Rotonda. A 
 sonnet referring to that poem contains these lines : 2 
 
 " Ma accio s'abbia a decidere 
 S'io dissi il ver, sto facendo un comento, 
 Che provera l'assunto e l'argomento." 
 
 1 " Only too well I know that I am not a good writer, and that I 
 never drank at the best fountains. I write and reason as my style 
 dictates, and sometimes by good chance I also have afforded pleasure. 
 But woe to me if the Florentine sieve should be applied to sifting my 
 productions." 
 
 2 Opere, vol. viii. p. 183. " I am engaged in preparing a commentary 
 which shall prove both the assumption and the argument." 
 
io 4 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 This Comento led Gozzi eventually to the production 
 of his Fiabe. But a step or two remained to be 
 taken before Gozzi resolved to meet Goldoni on his 
 own ground, the theatre. 
 
 He began by circulating a satirical piece entitled 
 77 Teatro Comico all' Osteria del Pellegrino tra le 
 niani degli Aecademici Granelleschi, or "The Comic 
 Theatre at the Inn of the Pilgrim, rough-handled by 
 the Granelleschi." Gozzi' s Memoirs contain a suf- 
 ficient description of this satire, which still exists in 
 MS. at the Marcian Library. They also explain why 
 he withdrew it from publication at the request of his 
 friend Farsetti and Goldoni's patron Count Widman. 
 Therefore it is not necessary to discuss it here in 
 detail : yet the meaning of the title may be pointed 
 out. Goldoni had already produced a comedy, called 
 H Teatro Comieo, setting forth his views regarding 
 the reform of the drama. 1 Gozzi, alluding to this 
 play, undertakes to expose the faults of Goldoni's own 
 theatrical writings. The satire is conceived in the 
 broad spirit of Aristophanic or Eabelaisian humour, 
 and is really a masterpiece in its kind. We feel for 
 the first time that Gozzi has found his proper sphere 
 by the breadth of handling, the free play of humour, 
 and the precision of touch, which reveal an inborn 
 dramatic faculty. The unmasking of the vociferous 
 
 1 11 Teatro Comico was the first of the famous sixteen comedies of 
 I 749-5°- The list of the pieces to be expected was announced in it. 
 See Goldoni's Memoirs, part i. ch. 7. 
 
INTRODUCTION : PART III. 105 
 
 four-faced monster which caricatured Goldoni, is 
 eminently fit for scenical effect. While reading, we 
 seem to be present at a new act in Jonson's Poet- 
 aster. The four mouths of the four- faced mask 
 represent the four kinds of dramas written by 
 Goldoni — his early harlequinades and scenari, his 
 domestic comedy of the pathetic species, his heroic 
 and Oriental melodramas, and his transcripts from 
 Venetian life. A fifth mouth, the mouth in the 
 belly, la veridica bocca dell' epa, as Gozzi terms it, 
 utters Goldoni' s personal aims and views, as Gozzi 
 chose brutally to interpret them. This truthful 
 witness confesses that all the four mouths of the 
 masked head were subservient to its carnal needs. 
 Quis expedivit psittaco suum x ai P € * • • ■ Magi 
 artis ing largitor, T - egatas art if ex seqvi 
 
 • " Who taught the parrot his word of wel- 
 come ? That master of art and liberal dispenser of 
 genius, the belly." That motto from the prologue to 
 Persius' book of satires might be inscribed on the 
 title-page of Gozzi's pasquinade. The blow inflicted, 
 in a literal and metaphorical sense, below the belt, 
 was unworthy of a gentleman. It betrayed Gozzi's 
 critical insensibility to Goldoni's actual merits. It 
 exhibited his aristocratic contempt for professional 
 literature, combined with his comedian's readiness 
 to take advantage of a powerful opponent. But it also 
 revealed a literary athlete capable of striking home, and 
 whose method of attack was certain to be formidable. 
 
106 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Goldoni bowed beneath the storm, and used his 
 influence to withhold the sanguinary satire from 
 further publicity. At this point Gozzi showed the 
 courtesy which might have been expected from a 
 man of his quality. He dropped the point of his 
 weapon at his antagonist's request, and prepared 
 himself to meet the playwright on his own ground. 
 In fairness to Gozzi, it is necessary to observe that 
 this resolution indicated no small amount of chivalry 
 and courage. Goldoni was the idol of the public. 
 He kept continually pointing to the concourse which 
 crowded the Venetian theatres when a new piece 
 from his pen was advertised. Gozzi was unpractised 
 in play-writing, a man in his fortieth year, and the 
 dramatic card on which he staked his luck might 
 well be considered hazardous. What that card was 
 we shall presently discover. 
 
 Chiari, involved in the same warfare with the 
 Granelleschi, had hitherto preserved a discreet 
 silence. Now he defied them to produce a play. 
 Gasparo Gozzi answered with a sonnet, which be- 
 trays his personal leaning toward Goldoni. Then 
 Chiari resolved to make common cause with his old 
 rival on the stage. This shows how the dropping 
 fire of the Academicians had told upon their oppo- 
 nents. The Abbe addressed Goldoni as degnissimo 
 comico vate, poeta amico, most worthy master of 
 comedy, my good poet friend. Goldoni reciprocated 
 the compliment with vate sublime, vate immortale, 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 107 
 
 sublime, immortal bard. Not without a touch of 
 concealed irony, he compared himself to Chiari in 
 this lyric flight : 1 
 
 " Si, tu sei l'aquila, 
 Io la formica ; 
 Tu voli all 1 apice 
 Senza fatica, 
 Mia Musa ai cardini 
 Salir non sa." 
 
 We trace in these verses Goldoni's perfect clarity 
 of vision regarding his own powers, and his good- 
 humoured indulgence of other people's foibles. He 
 recognised the practical advantage of an alliance 
 with Chiari. At the same time he disclaimed all 
 honours for himself, and gently ridiculed his new 
 ally's pretensions. 
 
 Chiari had defied the Granelleschi to produce a 
 comedy. Goldoni had taken up his stand upon the 
 popularity of his own plays. Carlo Gozzi conceived 
 the bold idea of writing a fantastic drama upon 
 the old lines of the Commedia delV Arte, which 
 should fill the theatre of his adoption and restore 
 Sacchi's company to favour. If he succeeded, both 
 Chiari and Goldoni would be hit with the same 
 stone. This was the real origin of the celebrated 
 Fiabe Teatrcdi. But before engaging in the attempt, 
 
 1 "Yes, thou art the eagle, I am the ant. Thou soarest to the 
 zenith without exertion ; my Muse cannot rise to the poles of the 
 universe." 
 
io8 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Gozzi looked about for a suitable subject. Nothing, 
 he calculated, would floor his antagonists more 
 thoroughly than the exhibition of a dramatised nur- 
 sery tale by impromptu actors. Therefore, in the 
 spirit of a burlesque duellist, in the true spirit of 
 Don Quixote, he composed his Amove delle Tre 
 Melarancie. 
 
 These facts about the genesis of Gozzi's Fiabe 
 need to be insisted on, since French and German 
 critics have distorted the truth. They regard Gozzi 
 as a romantic playwright, gifted with innate genius 
 for a peculiar species of dramatic art. According to 
 this theory, the Fiabe were produced in order to 
 manifest an ideal existing in their author's brain. 
 Minute attention to Gozzi's Memoirs, his explanatory 
 Essays (Opere, vols. i. and iv.), and the preface ap- 
 pended to each Fiaba, shows, on the contrary, that he 
 began to write the Fiabe with the simple object of 
 answering a certain challenge in the most humorous 
 way he could devise. He continued them with a 
 didactic purpose. His keen sagacity and profound 
 knowledge of the Venetian public led him possibly 
 to anticipate success. Yet he knew that the attempt 
 was perilous ; and he made it, without obeying precon- 
 ceived principles, without yielding to any imperative 
 instinct, but solely with the view of giving Chiari 
 and Goldoni a sound thrashing. 
 
 If it is worth while studying Gozzi and the 
 Fiabe at all, this point has so much importance that 
 
INTRODUCTION : PART III. 109 
 
 I may be permitted to resume the history of his lite- 
 rary conflict with the two poets. Gozzi opened fire 
 with the Tartana in 1 756. Goldoni retorted that he 
 had only made himself ridiculous ; unless he proved 
 both his assumption and his argument, he was no- 
 thing better than a dog barking at the moon. Gozzi 
 then declared that he was already engaged in the 
 production of a commentary. This circulated in MS. 
 under the form of a satire called the Teatro Comico. 
 Meanwhile Goldoni parried all attacks by pointing to 
 his popularity, and Chiari openly defied the Granel- 
 leschi to write a comedy, instead of condemning the 
 plays in vogue. Finally Gozzi, who had become 
 intimately acquainted with the actors in Sacchi's 
 company, resolved to write a scenario, which should 
 rehabilitate the Commedia delV Arte, parody both 
 Chiari and Goldoni, attract the public in crowds, and 
 prove that a mere fairy tale, treated with romantic 
 gusto, was capable of arousing no less interest than 
 the works of professional playwrights following new- 
 fangled models. The Amove delle Tre Melarancie, 
 produced at the end of January in 1 761, rather more 
 than four years after the appearance of the Tartana, 
 was the result. 
 
 It is mistaken to suppose that Gozzi Avas animated 
 by the enthusiasm of a literary innovator. The Fiabe, 
 in spite of their fantastic form, were the work of an 
 aristocratical Conservative, bent on striking a shrewd 
 blow for the Commedia dell' Arte, which he con- 
 
no MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 sidered to be the special glory of the Italian race 
 In this respect, we might call Gozzi the Venetian 
 Aristophanes. 1 The Fiabe were his " Clouds," and 
 "Birds," and "Wasps." Goldoni and Chiari were 
 his Euripides and Agathon ; perverters of the good 
 old comedy by vulgar realism, false pathos, and mere- 
 tricious rhetoric. Rousseau, Voltaire, Helvetius, the 
 French philosophes, were his Socrates and Sophists. 
 His art was the expression, not of creative instinct 
 evoking a new type of drama merely for its beauty 
 and romance, but of a militant, sarcastic mind, im- 
 bued with the ironical literature of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. Gozzi had little in common with Shakespeare. 
 Truffaldino is no twin-brother of King Lear's fool, nor 
 is Brighella cousin to the grave-digger in Hamlet. 
 These personages belong to the family of masks, 
 whose pedigree dates from immemorial antiquity in 
 Italy. The element of fable, as Gozzi repeatedly 
 informs us, was first adopted by him out of sheer 
 bravado to maintain a certain thesis, viz., that whole 
 nations could be made to laugh and cry over puerili- 
 ties, when handled with the judgment of a master. 
 Gozzi's true ancestors in art were the Florentine 
 burlesque poets, notably Luigi Pulci. The blending 
 of magic, phantasy, broad comedy and serious tragic 
 interest in the Fiabe allies them to the Morgante 
 Maggiore far more closely than to Marlowe's Doctor 
 
 1 Only in this respect, however ; otherwise, as artist, Gozzi differs 
 widely from Aristophanes. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. in 
 
 Faustus. In them, therefore, we observe the curious 
 literary phenomenon of what at first sight appears to 
 be spontaneous romantic art, but what is really the 
 result of satirical and didactic intention. The pre- 
 face to L'Augellino Beherde, in which Gozzi takes 
 leave of the Fiabe, clearly explains the case. 1 " I 
 addressed myself to the task of arousing great popular 
 enthusiasm by a tour deforce of fancy; and at the 
 same time I wished to cut short the series of my 
 dramatic pieces, from which I derived no profit, and 
 the burden of producing which was beginning to 
 weigh heavily upon me. Besides, it seemed to me 
 that I had fully achieved the end I had proposed to 
 myself from the outset, in the indulgence of the 
 purest capricious and poetical punctilio." Punc- 
 tilio was the parent of the Fiabe. 
 
 At this point I shall introduce a translation of 
 LAmore delle Tre Melarancie. There are several 
 reasons for doing so. First, although it only exists 
 for us in the compte rendu of the author, and is there- 
 fore a description rather than a literal scenario, a 
 very good idea can be gained from it of the directions 
 given by a poet to extempore actors. Secondly, it 
 shows the four Venetian masks, Pantalone, Tartaglia, 
 Truffaldino, and Brighella, in action, together with 
 the servetta Smeraldina. Thirdly, it is interesting 
 for the light thrown upon Gozzi's controversy with 
 the two poets in the critical observations he has inter- 
 
 1 Opere, vol. iii. p. 9. 
 
ii2 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 spersed. These I shall enclose in brackets, so that 
 the scenario of the play may be distinguished from 
 extraneous matter. 
 
 V. 
 
 A REFLECTIVE ANALYSIS 
 
 OF THE FABLE ENTITLED 
 
 THE LOVE OF THE THREE ORANGES. 
 
 A Dramatic Representation divided into Three Acts. 1 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 (A bojj comes forward and makes this announcement.) 
 
 Your faithful servants, the old company 
 Of players, feel sore shent and full of shame ; 
 Behind the scenes they stand with downcast eye 
 And hang-dog faces, dreading words of hlame ; 
 They blush to hear the folk say : " We are dry ! 
 Each year those fellows feed us with the same 
 Musty old comedies that stink of mould ! 
 "We will not be insulted, laughed at, sold ! " 
 
 I swear by all the elements to you, 
 Kind public, that to win your love once more, 
 They'd let their teeth be drawn, and eyeballs too ! 
 They sent me to say this — nay, do not roar, 
 
 1 The actors in Sacchi's company were : Antonio Sacchi, Truffaldino ; 
 Atanagio Zanoni, Brighella ; Agostino Fiorelli, Tartaglia ; Cesare Darbes, 
 Pantalone; Adriana Sacchi Zanoni, Smeraldina ; Antonia Sacchi, Beatrice; 
 together with Ignazio Casanova and Gaetano Casali. How the parts of 
 Leandro, Clarice, Re di Coppe, Celio, Morgana, Creonta, Ninetta were 
 distributed, we do not know. Antonia Sacchi (the Beatrice of the 
 troupe) probably played Clarice. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 
 
 Restrain your wrath, sweet gentle audience, do ; 
 Lend me your ears three minutes, I implore ; 
 When I have spoken what I'm sent to say, 
 Deal with me as you list, I won't cry nay ! 
 
 We've lost all sense and knowledge how to please 
 The public on our scenes, in this mad age. 
 The plays that took last year now seem to freeze ; 
 And something quite brand-new is all the rage. 
 The wheel of taste and fashion, as one sees, 
 Moves with a wind no prophet can presage ; 
 We only know that when the world's agog, 
 Our throats are moist and stomachs filled with prog. 
 
 Taste rules this year that all the modern plays 
 Should be crammed full with intrigue, strange events, 
 Fresh characters, adventures that amaze, 
 Wild, thrilling, unexpected incidents ; — 
 Dumbfounded by these laws, we stand at gaze, 
 Huddling together timorous in our tents ; 
 And yet because we must have bread to eat, 
 We've come with our old w r ares your wrath to meet. 
 
 I know not. gentle listener, who it is 
 Hath rendered us unfit to charm your ear : 
 To us who once enjoyed your courtesies, 
 So many and so sweet, it seems most queer. 
 Is Poetry perchance to blame for this ? 
 Well, well ; all things are doomed to disappear ; 
 Mortals must learn to bear and bide their fate ; 
 Yet, ah ! your hatred is a scourge too great ! 
 
 For our part, we'll leave nothing new untried ; 
 We'll don the poet's singing-robes and bays, 
 If this may give us back your grace denied ; 
 Nay, we are poets in these latter days ! 
 Our breeches shall be sold and ink supplied, 
 Our coats we'll change for paper to write plays ; 
 And if we've got no genius, well, what's that ? 
 So long as you are pleased, all's right, that's flat. 
 
 Our purpose 'tis with new-pranked comedies, 
 Fine things, ne'er seen before, to fill our stage. 
 Don't ask when, where, and how we met with these, 
 Or who inscribed the pure Phcebean page ; 
 After fine weather when the deluges 
 VOL. I. H 
 
ii 4 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Of rain descend, Lo, new rain ! cries the sage ; 
 Yet though he thinks it new rain, 'tis quite plain 
 That rain is nought but water, water rain. 
 
 Not all things keep one course through endless time. 
 What's up to-day, to-morrow shall be down. 
 Your great-great-grandsire's garment Mode, the mime, 
 Steals from his picture-frame to deck the town. 
 'Tis taste, opinion, gusto make sublime, 
 Make beautiful, what tickles prince and clown ; 
 And we can swear upon the book our plays 
 Have ne'er appeared in these or other days. 
 
 We've plots and arguments to turn old folk 
 Back to their infancy and nurse's arms ; 
 Parents who kindly bear their children's yoke 
 Will bring the babes to listen to our charms ; 
 High solemn geniuses we daren't invoke, 
 Nor will their absence cause us great alarms ; 
 Why should we snuff at pence 1 Whether they scent 
 Of ignorance or learning, we're content. 
 
 On strange and unexpected circumstance 
 You shall sup full to-night ; on wonders wild, 
 Whereof you may have heard or read perchance, 
 Yet never seen by woman, man, or child ; 
 Beasts, birds, and house-doors shall your ears entrance 
 With verses by crowned poet's labour filed ; 
 And if Martellian verses they shall prove, 
 These must compel your plaudits and your love ! 
 
 Your servants wait, impatient to begin ; 
 But first I'd like the story to rehearse ; 
 Ah me ! 1 quake and tremble in my skin — 
 You're sure to hiss me or do something worse ! 
 The Love of the Three Oranges / — I'm in, 
 And don't repent the plunge, although you curse. 
 Imagine then, my darlings, heart's desires, 
 You're sitting with your granddams round your fires. 
 
 [The touch of satire in this prologue, directed 
 against poets who were trying to trample down 
 Sacchi's company of improvisatory players, is too 
 
INTRODUCTION : PART III. 115 
 
 obvious, and my intention of supporting the latter by 
 introducing the series of my dramatised nursery-tales 
 upon the theatre is too evident, to call for detailed 
 commentary. In the choice of my first fable, which 
 I took from the commonest among the stories told 
 to children, and in the base alloy of the dialogues, 
 the action, and the characters, which are obviously 
 degraded of set purpose, I wanted to ridicule II 
 Campiello, Le Massere, Le Barujfe Chiozzotte, and 
 many other plebeian and very trivial pieces by Signor 
 Goldoni.] 
 
 FIRST ACT. 
 
 Silvio, King of Diamonds, 1 the monarch of an imagi- 
 nary realm, whose habit exactly imitated that of his 
 majesty upon the playing cards, confided to Pantalone 
 the deep distress caused to his royal mind by the 
 misfortune of his sole son and heir, Tartaglia. The 
 Crown-Prince had been subject, for the last ten years, 
 to an incurable malady. The first physicians diag- 
 nosed the case as hopeless hypochondria, and gave 
 their patient up. The King wept bitterly. Panta- 
 lone, sending doctors to the devil with his sarcasms, 
 suggested that the admirable secrets of certain char- 
 latans, at that time famous, might be tried. The 
 King protested that all such means had been em- 
 ployed with no result. Pantalone, letting his fancy 
 
 1 In Italian, Re di Coppe. The Italian suits are Coppe or cups, Danari 
 or coins, Spade or swords (whence our Spades), Bastoni or clubs. 
 
u6 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 play upon the hidden causes of the malady, asked 
 his liege in secret, so as not to be overheard by the 
 royal bodyguard, whether his Majesty had perhaps 
 contracted something in his younger days, which, 
 being communicated to the constitution of the Prince, 
 might still be extirpated by the exhibition of mercury. 
 The King, assuming an air of stately seriousness, 
 replied that he had been invariably faithful to his 
 consort's bed. Pantalone then submitted that the 
 Prince might be concealing, out of a befitting sense 
 of shame, the consequence of boyish peccadilloes. 
 His Majesty assured him seriously that his own 
 paternal inspection of the patient excluded that hypo- 
 thesis ; the young man's illness was solely due to 
 hypochondria of a grave and malignant nature ; the 
 physicians declared that, unless he could be made to 
 laugh, he must sink slowly into his grave ; a smile 
 upon his face would be the favourable sign of con- 
 valescence. That was too good to be expected. To 
 this he added that the prospect of his own decrepi- 
 tude, the sight of his son and heir upon a death-bed, 
 the inevitable succession to the crown of his niece 
 Clarice, a young woman of strange temper, bizarre 
 fancies, and cruel passions, caused him the deepest 
 affliction. Thereupon he began to bewail the future 
 misery of his subjects, broke down into a flood of 
 tears, and quite forgot the dignity of his high station. 
 Pantalone consoled him, urged on his attention the 
 propriety of restoring the court to merriment and 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 117 
 
 gladness, if all depended on Prince Tartaglia's re- 
 covering the power of laughter. Let festivities, 
 games, masquerades, and spectacles be set on foot. 
 Let TrurTaldino, well approved for making people 
 laugh and chasing the blue-devils from their brains, 
 be summoned to the Prince's service. The Prince 
 had shown some inclination for Truffaldino's society. 
 He might succeed in bringing smiles again upon 
 the royal features. The remedy could but be tried, 
 and possibly a cure might ensue. The King allowed 
 himself to be convinced, and began to plan arrange- 
 ments. 
 
 To these persons entered Leandro, Knave of Dia- 
 monds, 1 and first Minister of the realm. He too 
 was dressed like his figure on a pack of cards. Panta- 
 lone, aside, expressed his suspicion of some treachery 
 on the part of Leandro. The King commanded fes- 
 tivities, games, and Bacchic entertainments, adding 
 that whoever made the Prince laugh should receive 
 a noble prize. Leandro tried to dissuade his Majesty, 
 and urged that such remedies were likely to prejudice 
 the sick man's health. The King repeated his orders 
 and retired. Pantalone rejoiced. Aside, to the audi- 
 ence, he explained that Leandro was certainly plan- 
 ning the Prince's death. Then he followed the King. 
 Leandro remained stubborn, muttered that he detected 
 some opposition to his wishes, but from what quarter 
 he could not guess. 
 
 1 In Italian, Cavaliere di Coppe. 
 
nS MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 To him appeared the Princess Clarice, niece of 
 the King. There was never seen upon the stage a 
 princess of so wild, irascible, and determined a char- 
 acter as this Clarice. [I have to thank Signor Chiari 
 for furnishing me with abundant models for such 
 caricatures in his dramatic works.] She had settled 
 with Leandro to marry him, and raise him to the 
 throne, upon the death of her cousin. Accordingly 
 she burst into reproaches against her lover for his 
 coldness. Were they to wait until Tartaglia died of 
 a disease so slow as hypochondria ? Leandro excused 
 himself with circumspection. Fata Morgana, he said, 
 his powerful protectress, had given him certain charms 
 in Martellian verses, which were to be administered 
 to Tartaglia in wafers. These would certainly work 
 his destruction by sure if tardy means. [This was 
 introduced to criticise the plays of Chiari and Goldoni, 
 whose Martellian verses bored every one to death by 
 their monotony of rhyme.] Now Fata Morgana was 
 hostile to the King of Diamonds, having lost much 
 of her treasure on his card. She loved the Knave of 
 Diamonds, because he had brought her luck in play. 
 She dwelt in a lake, not far from the city. Smeral- 
 dina, a Moorish woman, who performed the servetta 
 in this scenic parody, acted as intermediary between 
 Leandro and Morgana. Clarice fumed with fury at 
 hearing the slow means appointed for Tartaglia' s 
 death. Leandro confessed that he entertained some 
 doubts about the efficacy of Martellian verses to 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 119 
 
 secure a happy dispatch. He was uneasy, too, at 
 the unexplained appearance of Truffaldino at court, 
 a very facetious fellow ; and if Tartaglia laughed, his 
 cure was certain. Clarice's rage boiled over ; she 
 had seen TrufFalclino, and the mere sight of him was 
 certain to make anybody laugh. [In this dialogue my 
 readers will detect a defence of the mirth-making 
 comedy of the masks as against the melancholy 
 drama in verse of the poets in vogue.] Meanwhile, 
 Leandro had sent Brighella, his servant, to Smeral- 
 dina, to leam the explanation of Truffaldino' s appear- 
 ance, and to demand assistance from Morgana. 
 
 Brighella entered ; and with much show of secrecy 
 related that Truffaldino had been sent to court by a 
 certain wizard Celio, Morgana's enemy, and the King 
 of Diamonds' friend, for reasons exactly opposite 
 to those which had incensed Morgana against him. 
 Truffaldino, he continued, was an antidote to the 
 morbific influences of Martellian verses ; he had 
 come to protect the King, the Prince, and all the 
 people from the infection of those melancholic 
 charms. 
 
 [It may be pointed out that the hostility between 
 Fata Morgana and Celio the wizard symbolised the 
 warfare carried on between Goldoni and Chiari. 
 Fata Morgana was a caricature of Chiari, and Celio 
 of Goldoni.] 
 
 Brighella's news threw Clarice and Leandro into 
 consternation. They laid their heads together how 
 
120 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 to kill Truffaldino by some secret device. Clarice 
 suggested arsenic or a blunderbuss. Leandro was 
 for trying Martellian verses in wafers, or opium. 
 Clarice objected that there was not much to choose 
 between Martellian verses and opium, and that 
 Truffaldino had the stomach to digest such trifles. 
 Brighella added that Morgana, informed of the festi- 
 vities designed for the Prince's recovery, meant to 
 appear and neutralise the action of his salutiferous 
 laughter by a curse which should quickly send him 
 to the tomb. Clarice retired. Leandro and Brighella 
 went to superintend the preparation of the shows. 
 
 The next scene disclosed the chamber of the sick 
 Prince. He was attired in the most laughable cari- 
 cature of an invalid's costume. Reclining in an 
 ample lounging-chair, Tartaglia leaned against a 
 table, piled with medicine-bottles, ointments, spit- 
 toons, and other furniture appropriate to his melan- 
 choly condition. With a weak and quavering voice 
 he lamented his misfortunes, the various treatments 
 he had tried with no success, and the extraordinary 
 symptoms of his incurable malady. The eminent actor, 
 who sustained this scene alone, kept the audience in 
 one roar of laughter by his exquisite burlesque and 
 natural drollery. Then Truffaldino entered, and 
 tried to make the patient laugh. The extempore 
 performance of this duet by two of the best comic 
 players of our day afforded excellent mirth. The 
 Prince looked on approvingly while Truffaldino 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 121 
 
 exhibited his pranks. But nothing could bring a 
 smile upon his lips. He insisted upon returning to 
 his illness, and asking Truffalclino's advice. Truffal- 
 dino entered into a labyrinth of physiological and 
 medical arguments, highly humorous and spiced 
 with satire. He smelt the Prince's breath, and 
 swore that it stank of a surfeit of undigested Mar- 
 tellian verses. The Prince coughed, and asked to 
 spit. TrufFaldino brought him the vessel, examined 
 the expectoration, and found in it a mass of rancid 
 rotten rhymes. This scene lasted above a quarter 
 of an hour, to the continual amusement of the 
 audience. Instruments of music were then heard, 
 announcing the festivities in the great court of the 
 palace. Truffaldino wanted to conduct the Prince 
 to a balcony from which he could survey them. 
 Tartaglia protested that this was impossible. Truffal- 
 dino, in a rage, threw all the medicines, cups, and 
 ointments out of window, while the Prince squealed 
 and wept like a baby. At last Truffaldino carried 
 him off by main force, howling as though he was 
 being massacred, and bore him on his shoulders to 
 enjoy the show. 
 
 The third scene was laid in the courtyard of the 
 palace. Leanclro entered, and declared that he had 
 earned out the King's commands; the people, plunged 
 in grief, but eager to refresh their spirits, were all 
 masked ; he had taken precautions to make many 
 persons assume lugubrious disguises, in order to aug- 
 
122 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 merit the Prince's melancholy ; the hour had sounded 
 for unbarring the court-gates to the populace. 
 
 Morgana then entered, in the travesty of a ridicu- 
 lous old woman. Leandro expressed his astonishment 
 that such an object should have obtained entrance 
 before the gates were opened. Morgana discovered 
 herself, and said she had come in that disguise to 
 work the Prince's swift destruction. Leandro thanked 
 her, and styled her the Queen of Hypochondria. 
 Morgana drew to one side, and the gates were thrown 
 wide. 
 
 On a terraced balcony, in front of the spectators, 
 sat the King, and Prince Tartaglia, muffled in furred 
 pelisse, Clarice, Pantalone, the guards, and after- 
 wards Leandro. The spectacles and games were pre- 
 cisely such as are related in the fairy story. The 
 people flocked in. There was a tournament, directed 
 by Truffaldino, who arranged burlesque encounters 
 for the knights. At every turn, he addressed himself 
 to the balcony, inquiring of his majesty if the Prince 
 had laughed. The Prince only shed tears, complain- 
 ing that the air hurt him, and the noise made his 
 head ache. He entreated his royal sire to send him 
 back to his warm bed. 
 
 There were two fountains, one of which ran with 
 oil, the other with wine. Round these the rabble 
 hustled, disputing with vulgar and plebeian violence. 
 But nothing moved the Prince to laughter. Then 
 Morgana hobbled out to fill her cruse with oil. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 123 
 
 Truffaldino assailed the hag with a variety of insults, 
 and finally sent her sprawling with her legs in air. 
 [These trivialities, taken from the trivial story-book, 
 amused the audience by their novelty quite as much 
 as the Massere, Campielli, Barvffe Chiozzotte, and 
 all the other trivial pieces of Goldoni.] On seeing 
 the old woman's fall, Tartaglia burst into a long 
 sonorous peal of laughter. Truffaldino gained the 
 prize. The people, relieved of their anxiety about 
 the Prince's health, laughed uncontrollably. All the 
 court was glad. Only Leandro and Clarice showed 
 wry faces. 
 
 Morgana, raising herself from the ground in a 
 spasm of fury, abused the Prince, and hurled the 
 following awful malediction in the true style of 
 Chiari at his devoted head : l 
 
 " Open thine ears, barbarian ! let my voice assail thy heart ! 
 Nor wall nor mountain stay the sound my words of doom impart. 
 As riving thunderbolts descend and split the solid rock, 
 So may my curses split thy breast with their tremendous shock. 
 As boats against a running tide the tug triumphant tows, 
 So let my malediction strong still lead thee by the nose. 
 Oh awful curse ! oh direful doom ! To hear it is to die, 
 Like quadrupeds within the sea, or fish on flowers that lie ! 
 I call on Pluto, gloomy god, to Pindar winged I pray, 
 That thou with the Three Oranges may'st fall in love to-day. 
 Threats, tears, entreaties now are nought, leaves shaken by the breeze ; 
 Haste to the horrible acquist of the Three Oranges !" 
 
 1 I have adopted the old English fourteen-syllable line for the trans- 
 lation of Gozzi's Martellian verses. It seemed to me that the lumbering 
 effect of this metre lent itself to the spirit of his parody. What Mar- 
 tellian verses were has been explained at p. 97. 
 
i2 4 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Morgana disappeared. The Prince suddenly con- 
 ceived a firm and resolute enthusiasm for the love of 
 the Three Oranges. He was led away amid the con- 
 fusion and consternation of the court. 
 
 What nonsense ! What a mortification for the 
 two poets ! The first act of the fable ended at this 
 point with a loud and universal clapping of hands. 
 
 ACT THE SECOND. 
 
 In one of the Prince's apartments, Pantalone, 
 beside himself with despair, describes the terrible 
 effect of the hag's malediction on Tartaglia. Nothing 
 could be done to calm him down. He had asked 
 his father for a pair of iron shoes, to walk the world 
 over, and discover the fatal Oranges. The King had 
 commanded Pantalone, under pain of the Prince's 
 displeasure, to find him such a pair. The matter 
 was one of the most pressing urgency. [This motive 
 suited the theatre, and conveyed a sprightly satire on 
 the dramatic motives then in vogue.] 
 
 Pantalone retired, and the Prince entered with 
 Truffaldino. Tartaglia expressed impatience at this 
 long delay in bringing him the iron shoes. Truffal- 
 dino asked a number of absurd questions. Tartaglia 
 declared his intention of going to find the Three 
 Oranges, which, as he heard from his grandmother, 
 were two thousand miles away, in the power of 
 
INTRODUCTION : PART III. 125 
 
 Creonta, a gigantic witch. Then he called for his 
 armour, and bade Truffaldino array himself in mail, 
 for he meant him to be his squire. A scene of ex- 
 cellent buffoonery followed between these highly 
 comical personages, both of them fitting on corslets, 
 helmets, and huge long swords, with burlesque mili- 
 tary ardour. 
 
 Enter the King, Pantalone, and guards. One of 
 the latter carries a pair of iron shoes upon a salver. 
 This scene was executed by the four principal per- 
 formers with a gravity which made it doubly ridi- 
 culous. In a tone of high tragedy and theatrical 
 majesty the father dissuaded his son from this perilous 
 adventure. He entreated, threatened, relapsed into 
 pathos. The Prince, like a man possessed, insisted. 
 His hypochondria was sure to return, unless he was 
 allowed to set forth. At last he burst into coarse 
 threats against his father. The King stood rooted to 
 the ground with amazement and grief. Then he 
 reflected that this want of filial respect in Tartaglia 
 arose from the bad example of the new comedies. 
 [In one of Chiari's comedies a son had drawn his 
 sword to kill his father. Instances of the same de- 
 scription abounded in the dramas of that day, which 
 I wished to censure.] Nothing would silence the 
 Prince, till Truffaldino shod him with the iron 
 shoes. The scene ended with a quartet in dramatic 
 verse, of blubberings, farewells, sighs and sobs. 
 Tartaglia and Truffaldino took their leave. The 
 
i26 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 King fell fainting on a sofa, and Pantalone called 
 aloud for aromatic vinegar. 
 
 Clarice, Leandro, and Brighella came hurrying 
 upon the stage, rebuking Pantalone for the clamour 
 he was raising. Pantalone replied that, with a King 
 in a fainting fit, a Prince gone off on the dangerous 
 adventure of the Oranges, it was only natural to kick 
 up a row. Brighella answered that such matters were 
 mere twaddle, like the new comedies, which turned 
 everything topsy-turvy without reason. The King 
 meanwhile recovered his senses, and fell to raving 
 in true tragic style. He bewept his son for dead ; 
 ordered the whole court to wear mourning ; and shut 
 himself up in a little cabinet, to end his days under 
 the weight of this crushing affliction. Pantalone, 
 vowing that he would share the King's lamentations, 
 collect their mingled tears in one pocket-handker- 
 chief, and bequeath to coming bards the argument 
 for interminable episodes in Martellian verse, with- 
 drew in the train of his liege. 
 
 Clarice, Leandro, Brighella gave way to their glad- 
 ness, and extolled Morgana to the skies. Whimsical 
 Clarice then insisted on coming to conditions before 
 she raised Leandro to the throne. In time of war 
 she was to command the armies. Even if she suffered 
 a defeat, she was sure to subdue the victor by her 
 charms ; when he was drowned in love, and lulled by 
 her blandishments, she meant to stick a knife into 
 his paunch. [This was a side hit at Chiari's Attila7\ 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 127 
 
 Clarice further reserved to herself the right of dis- 
 tributing court-offices. Brighella, as the reward of 
 his services, begged to be appointed Master of the 
 King's Revels. The three personages now disputed 
 upon the choice of different theatrical diversions. 
 Clarice voted for tragic dramas, with personages who 
 should throw themselves out of windows and off 
 towers, without breaking their necks, and such-like 
 miraculous accidents {id est, the plays of Chiari). 
 Leandro preferred comedies of character {id est, 
 Goldoni's plays). Brighella recommended the Corn- 
 media delV Arte, as very fit to yield the public inno- 
 cent amusement. Clarice and Leandro flew into a 
 rage. What did they want with stupid buffooneries, 
 rancid relics of antiquity, unseemly in this enlightened 
 age ? Brighella then began a pathetic speech, com- 
 miserating Sacchi's company, without mentioning it 
 by name, but making his meaning plain enough. He 
 deplored the misfortunes of an honourable troupe, who 
 had done good service in their day, but were now 
 downtrodden, and forced to behold the affections of 
 the public they adored, and whom they had for many 
 years amused, withdrawn from them. He retired 
 with the applause of that public, who thoroughly 
 understood the real drift of his discourse. 
 
 The next scene opened in a wilderness. Celio 
 the wizard was discovered drawing circles. As the 
 protector of Prince Tartaglia, he summoned Far- 
 farello, a devil, to his aid. Farfarello appeared, and 
 
128 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 with a formidable voice uttered these Martellian 
 lines : 
 
 " Hullo ! who calls? who drags me forth from earth's drear centre dark? 
 A wizard real art thou, or wizard of the stage, thou sp .k ? 
 If only of the stage thou art, I need not tell thee then 
 That devils, wizards, sprites, are out of fashion among men." 
 
 [Allusion was here made to the two poets, who 
 wanted to abolish the masks, magicians, and fiends 
 in writings for the stage.] Celio answered in prose 
 that he was a real wizard. Farfarello continued : 
 
 " Well, he thou what thou wilt ; yet if thou of the stage may be, 
 At least thou might'st respond in verse Martellian to me." 
 
 Celio swore at the devil, and told him that he 
 meant to go on talking prose. Then he inquired 
 Avhether Truffaldino, whom he had sent to the court 
 of the King of Diamonds, had done any good, and 
 whether Tartaglia had been obliged to laugh, and 
 had lost his hypochondria. The devil answered : 
 
 " He laughed ; recovered health ; but then, Morgana, thy great foe, 
 With malediction spoiled thy pains, and wrought a double woe. 
 With fury winged and breathless he, both burning cheeks on fire, 
 Is after the Three Oranges, inflamed with fierce desire. 
 With Truffaldin the Prince is sped ; Morgana sends a sprite 
 To wait upon the pair and blow them forward in their flight. 
 A thousand miles the men have gone, and soon they will descend, 
 Here by Creonta's fort, half-dead, at their long journey's end." 
 
 The devil disappeared. Celio monologised against 
 his mortal foe Morgana, explaining the great perils 
 of Tartaglia and Truffaldino when they should arrive 
 at the castle of Creonta on the quest of the fatal 
 
BRIGHELLA (1570) 
 Illustrating the Italian Commedia delF Arte, or Impromptu Comedy 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 129 
 
 Oranges. Then he retired to make the necessary 
 preparations for saving two persons of high merit 
 and great social utility. 
 
 [Celio, who stood for Goldoni in this piece of 
 nonsense, ought not to have protected Tartaglia and 
 TrufFaldino. I admit the error, which deserves to 
 be condemned, if a mere dramatic sketch of such a 
 trivial kind comes within the scope of criticism. At 
 that time Chiari and Goldoni were enemies and 
 rivals. I wanted Morgana and Celio to caricature 
 their opposite dramatic styles ; and I did not care to 
 protect myself against censure by multiplying per- 
 sonages more than needful.] 
 
 Tartaglia and TrufFaldino entered armed, and pro- 
 ceeding at a tremendous pace. They had a devil 
 with a pair of bellows following behind, and blowing 
 their backsides to make them skim along the ground. 
 The devil ceased to blow and disappeared. They 
 sprawled on the grass at the sudden cessation of the 
 favouring gale. 
 
 [I am under infinite obligations to Signor Chiari 
 for this burlesque conception, which produced a very 
 excellent effect upon the stage. In his dramas, drawn 
 from the iEneid, Chiari made the Trojans perform 
 long journeys within the space of a single action, and 
 without the assistance of my devil and his bellows. 
 This writer, though he pedantically insulted every- 
 body else who broke the rules, allowed himself 
 singular privileges. In his tragedy of Ezelino, after 
 
 vol. 1. 1 
 
i 3 o MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 the tyrant's downfall, a captain is sent to beleaguer 
 Treviso, and reduce Ezelino's garrison. This takes 
 place in one scene. In the next scene the same 
 captain returns victorious, having ridden more than 
 thirty miles, captured the town, and butchered the 
 tyrant's troops. He delivers a rhetorical oration, 
 ascribing this miracle to the matchless spirit of his 
 horse ! Tartaglia and TrufFaldino had to perform a 
 journey of two thousand miles, and my device of the 
 devil with the bellows explained their exploit better 
 than Chiari's charger.] 
 
 The two comedians rose from the ground, half- 
 stunned and astonished at the mighty wind which 
 wafted them. Their geographical description of the 
 countries, mountains, rivers, and oceans they had 
 passed, was crammed with burlesque absurdities. 
 Tartaglia concluded that the Three Oranges must be 
 nigh at hand. Truffaldino, feeling tired and hungry, 
 asked the Prince whether he had brought a good 
 stock of cash or bills. Tartaglia spurned such low 
 considerations and idle questions. Spying a castle 
 on a hill, and judging it to be Creonta's, he set 
 manfully forward, while Truffaldino trudged behind 
 in the hope of finding food. 
 
 Meanwhile Celio entered, and sought in vain to 
 dissuade the Prince from his perilous adventure. He 
 described insuperable obstacles fraught with danger 
 on the way. They were exactly the same as are told 
 to children in the story-book ; but Celio enlarged 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 131 
 
 upon them with wide rolling eyes, and magnified the 
 molehills into mountains. There was an iron gate 
 rusted with time, a famished dog, a well-rope rotten 
 with damp, a baker's wife, who, having no broom, 
 was forced to sweep the oven out with her own dugs. 
 The Prince, unterrifled by these appalling objects, 
 determined to assail the castle. Celio, seeing his 
 mind made up, gave him a magic ointment to smear 
 the bolt of the gate, a loaf to throw the dog, and a 
 bundle of brooms to give the baker's wife. The rope 
 he bade them hang out in the sun to dry. Then he 
 added that, if by lucky chance they should acquire 
 the Oranges, they were to leave the castle at once, 
 and be mindful to open none of the Oranges except 
 in the immediate neighbourhood of some fountain. 
 Finally, he promised, if they escaped the perils of 
 their theft, to send the same devil with the bellows, 
 to blow them home again. Then he recommended 
 them to Heaven and left them. Tartaglia and 
 TrurTaldino, carrying the articles provided by Celio, 
 went forward on their journey. 
 
 Here a tent was lowered, which represented the 
 pavilion of the King of Diamonds. — What an irregu- 
 larity ! — Nay, what misapplied criticism ! — Two short 
 scenes followed, one between Smeraldina and Bri- 
 ghella, rejoicing over the loss of Tartaglia; the other 
 with Morgana, who bade Brighella inform Clarice 
 and Leandro that Celio was assisting the Prince. 
 This she had learned from the devil Draghinazzo. 
 
132 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Then she bade Srneraldina follow her to the lake, 
 where Tartaglia and Truffaldino would certainly 
 arrive if they escaped Creonta's clutches. Some new 
 snare might then be devised to entrap them. The 
 parley broke up in confusion. 
 
 The next scene disclosed a courtyard in Creonta's 
 castle. [I was able to observe, upon the opening 
 of this scene, with the grossly absurd objects it 
 contained, what an immense power the marvellous 
 exerts over the human mind. A sate constructed 
 with an iron grating, a famished dog which howled 
 and roamed around, a well with a coil of rope beside 
 it, a baker's wife who swept her oven with two 
 enormously long breasts, kept the whole theatre in 
 silent wonder and attention quite as effectually as 
 the most thrilling scenes in the works of our two 
 poets.] Outside the grating appeared Tartaglia and 
 Truffaldino, engaged in smearing the bolt ; and lo ! 
 the portal swung upon its hinges. Great miracle ! 
 They passed in. The dog barked and leapt upon 
 them. They threw him the bread and he was still. 
 Great portent ! Truffaldino, trembling with fright, 
 then hung the cord up to dry, and gave the baker's 
 wife her brooms, while the Prince entered the castle 
 and came out again, capering for joy and holding the 
 three enormous Oranges he had seized. 
 
 The moving accidents of this scene did not end so 
 suddenly. The sky darkened, the earth quaked, and 
 loud claps of thunder were heard. Tartaglia handed 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 133 
 
 the Oranges to Truffaldino, who kept trembling like 
 an aspen leaf. Then there issued from the castle an 
 awful voice, which was Creonta's own. She spoke 
 as the story-book dictates : 
 
 " O baker's wife, O baker's -wife, abide not my just ire ! 
 Take those two fellows by the feet, and cast them in the fire." 
 
 The baker's wife, following the fable with equal 
 fidelity, replied thus : 
 
 t; Not I ! How many months have passed, bow many months and 
 
 years, 
 While with my milk-white breasts I sweep, and waste my life in 
 
 tears ! 
 Thou, cruel dame, a single broom ne'er gav'st me at my need ; 
 These brought a bundle ; let them go in peace ; I will not heed." 
 
 Creonta cried : 
 
 " rope, rope ! hang up the knaves ! " 
 
 And the rope, still observing the text, answered : 
 
 " Hard heart ! hast thou forgot 
 Those many years, those many months, thou left'st me here to 
 
 rot? 
 By thee was I abandoned long in damp to waste away ; 
 These stretched me to the sun ; let them go forth in peace, I say." 
 
 Creonta howled aloud : 
 
 ' : Dog, faithful watch-dog ! rend and tear those wretches limb from 
 limb. 1 ' 
 
 The dog retorted : 
 
 " Nay, why, Creonta, should I rend poor fellows at thy whim ? 
 So many years, so many months, I've served thee without food ; 
 These filled my belly full ; thy cries shall not control my mood." 
 
i 3 4 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Creonta, again : 
 
 " Portal of iron, close ! Grind yon base knaves and thieves to dust ! " 
 
 And the gate : 
 
 " Cruel Creonta ! vainly now your threats on me are thrust ! 
 So many years, so many months, in rust and woe to pine, 
 You left me here ; they oiled my bolts ; no ingrate's heart is mine." 
 
 It was very funny to see Tartaglia's and Truffal- 
 dino's mock astonishment at the fine flow of the 
 poet's eloquence. They stood dumbfounded to hear 
 bakers' wives, and ropes, and dogs, and gates talking 
 in Martellian verse. Then they thanked those cour- 
 teous objects for the kindness shown them. 
 
 The audience were hugely delighted with these 
 puerilities, and I confess that I joined heartily in 
 their laughter, half-ashamed the while at being forced 
 to relish a pack of infantile absurdities, which took 
 me back to the days of my babyhood. 
 
 The giantess Creonta now appeared upon the stage. 
 She was of towering stature, and attired in a vast 
 sweeping andrienne. Tartaglia and TrufFaldino fled 
 before her horrible aspect. Then she gave vent to 
 her despair in Martellian verses, not forgetting to 
 invoke Pindar, whom Signor Chiari treated compla- 
 cently as his own twin-brother : 
 
 " Woe to you, faithless servants ! Woe, false rope and dog and gate ! 
 Base baker's wife, I curse thee too ! Ye traitors found too late ! 
 Alas ! Sweet Oranges ! Ah me ! Who stole you unaware ? 
 Dear Oranges, my hope, my soul, my love, my life, my care ! 
 Woe's me ! I burst with bitter rage ; there's boiling in my breast 
 Chaos, the Elements, the Sun, the Rainbow, and the rest ! 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 135 
 
 I scarce can stand against it all : Jove, the Thunderer, send 
 Thy lightnings on my pate, and me down to the slippers rend ! 
 Help to me ! Ho ! "Who helps me 1 Fiends ! Who lifts me from 
 
 this world ? — 
 A friendly thunderbolt descends ! I burn, I'm soothed, I'm hurled." 
 
 [These last verses were no bad parody of both Chiari's 
 sentiments and style of writing.] A thunderbolt 
 fell and reduced the giantess to ashes. Here ended 
 the second act, which had been followed with more 
 marked applause than the first. My bold experiment 
 began to seem less culpable than it had done at the 
 commencement. 
 
 ACT THE THIRD. 
 
 The first scene opened near Fata Morgana' s lake. 
 There was a great tree visible and underneath it a 
 large stone seat. Several rocks and boulders were 
 strewn about the meadow. Smeraldina, who talked 
 the jargon of an Italiauised Turk, was standing at the 
 brink of the lake impatiently awaiting the fairy's 
 orders, and calling out. Morgana rose from the sur- 
 face, and began to relate a journey she had made 
 to hell, where she learned that Tartaglia and Truffal- 
 dino, victorious in their achievement of the Three 
 Oranges, were coming by the help of Celio and the 
 devil with the bellows. Smeraldina soundly abused 
 the fairy for her want of skill in magic. Morgana 
 bade her spare her breath. Owing to precautions 
 she had taken, TrufFaldino would reach the spot where 
 
i 3 6 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 tin y were standing, separately from the Prince. Thirst 
 and hunger, sent by wizard's arts, should annoy him ; 
 and since the Oranges were in his custody, great 
 catastrophes would take place. Then she consigned 
 two bedevilled pins to Smeraldina, adding that she 
 would see a fair girl sitting on the stone beneath 
 the tree. She was to contrive to fix one of these 
 needles in the girl's hair, whereupon the latter would 
 become a dove, and Smeraldina was to take her place 
 upon the stone. Tartaglia should marry her and 
 make her Queen. During the night, while sleeping 
 with her husband, she was to fix the other needle in 
 his hair, whereupon he would become a beast, and 
 the throne would be left vacant for Clarice and 
 Leandro. The Moorish woman raised some difficulties, 
 which Morgana easily disposed of. Then, observing 
 Truffaldino approaching with the infernal blast behind 
 him, they withdrew to mature their plans. 
 
 Truffaldino entered, carrying the Three Oranges in 
 a wallet. The devil with the bellows disappeared, 
 and Truffaldino related how the Prince had tripped 
 up a little while back, and that he must wait for him. 
 He seated himself. Intolerable thirst and hunger 
 tormented him. At last he resolved to eat one of 
 the Oranges. But conscience stung him ; he de- 
 claimed in tragic style ; then, driven mad by thirst, 
 made up his mind to risk the sacrifice. After all, 
 he reflected, the damage could be made good with 
 two farthings. So he proceeded to cut open an 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 137 
 
 Orange. Oh, what a surprise ! There issued from 
 its rind a girl clothed in white, who, following the 
 text of the story-book, spoke immediately : 
 
 " Give me to drink ! I'm fainting! Ah ! I'm dying ! Quick, my dear ! 
 Of thirst I'm dying ! Oh, poor me ! Quick, cruel man ! Death's 
 here !" 
 
 She fell upon the earth oppressed with mortal 
 languor. TrufTaldino, who had forgotten Celio's 
 directions about opening the Oranges within reach 
 of water, being besides a fool by nature, and not 
 noticing the lake in his distraction, thought he could 
 not do better than to slice another of the Oranges 
 and quench the dying girl's thirst with the juice of 
 that. Accordingly, he went, like a donkey, and 
 sliced another Orange, out of which there appeared 
 a second lovely female, exclaiming : 
 
 " Woe's me ! Of thirst I'm dying ! Ho ! Give me to drink ! I rave ! 
 Cruel ! I die of thirst ! Ah God ! 'Twill kill me ! Lord ! oh save ! " 
 
 She sank down exhausted like the other. TrufTaldino 
 flung himself about in fits of desperation. He roared, 
 screamed, leapt like a maniac, while one of the girls 
 spoke as follows, in an expiring voice : 
 
 " Hard destiny ! Of thirst to die ! I'm dying ! I am dead !" 
 
 Then she breathed her last, and the other continued : 
 
 " I'm dying ! Barbarous stars ! Ah me ! Who'll soothe my burn- 
 ing head V 
 
 Then she too breathed her last. TrufTaldino wept 
 abundantly, and murmured over them words of im- 
 
13S MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 passioned tenderness. He decided to cut the third 
 Orange in the hope of saving both girls alive. While 
 he was upon the point of doing this, Tartaglia entered 
 in a rage and stopped him. TrufTalclino took to his 
 heels and left the Orange lying on the grass. 
 
 The stupor of this grotesque Prince, the inimitable 
 reflections he poured forth over the rinds of the two 
 Oranges and the dead bodies of the girls, soar beyond 
 the powers of language. The masked actors of our 
 Commedia dell' Arte, in situations like this, invent 
 scenes so droll and yet of such exquisite grace, with 
 gestures, movements, and lazzi so delightful, that no 
 pen can reproduce their effect, and no poet could 
 surpass them. 
 
 After a long and ridiculous soliloquy, Tartaglia 
 caught sight of two country bumpkins passing by, 
 ordered the corpses to be decently buried, and bade 
 the fellows cany them away. Then the Prince turned 
 to gaze upon the third Orange. To his utter amaze- 
 ment it had swelled to a portentous size, and was as 
 large now as the biggest pumpkin. Seeing the lake 
 at hand, and bearing Celio's injunctions in mind, he 
 thought the place convenient for cutting the fruit 
 open. This he did with his long sword ; and there 
 stepped forth a tall and lovely damsel, attired in 
 robes of white, who fulfilled the conditions of her 
 part in the story-book by speaking as follows : 
 
 " Who drew me from my living core ? Ah God ! Of thirst I die ! 
 Give me to drink at once, or else vain tears you'll shed for aye !" 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 139 
 
 The Prince understood upon the spot the meaning 
 of Celio's precepts. But he was embarrassed to find 
 any vessel capable of holding water. The case did 
 not admit of ceremony. So he unbuckled one of his 
 iron shoes, ran to the lake, filled it with water, and 
 making a thousand excuses for the improvised cup, 
 presented it to the fair damsel, who slaked her thirst, 
 and stood up in full vigour, thanking him for his 
 timely assistance. 
 
 She said that she was the daughter of Concul, king 
 of the Antipodes ; Creonta, by enchantment, had en- 
 closed her, together with her two sisters, in the rinds 
 of three Oranges, for reasons which were as probable 
 as the circumstance itself. A scene of comical love- 
 making followed, at the close of which Tartaglia pro- 
 mised to make her his wife. The capital Avas close 
 at hand. The Princess had no decent clothes to 
 wear. The Prince bade her take a seat upon the 
 stone beneath the tree, while he went off to fetch 
 costly raiment and summon the whole Court to attend 
 her. That settled, they parted with sighs. 
 
 Smeraldina, astounded by what she had been wit- 
 ness to, now entered. She saw the form of the fair 
 maid reflected in the lake. Of course she proceeded 
 to do everything dictated for the Moorish woman in 
 the story-tale. She dropped her Italianate Turkish. 
 Morgaua had put a Tuscan devil into her tongue. 
 Thus armed, she defied all the poets to speak with 
 more complete correctness. Advancing to the young 
 
Mo MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Princess, whose name was Ninetta, she began to coax 
 and flatter, offered to arrange her hair, came to close 
 quarters and betrayed her. One of the magic pins 
 was promptly stuck in the girl's head. Ninetta took 
 the form of a dove and flew away. Smeraldina 
 seated herself upon the stone and waited for the 
 Court. 
 
 These miraculous occurrences, together with the 
 childish simplicity of the successive scenes, and the 
 burlesque humour of the action, kept the audience, 
 instructed as they had been by their grandmothers and 
 nurses in the days of babyhood, upon the tenter-hooks 
 of curiosity. They followed the plot with serious 
 attention, and took the profoundest interest in watch- 
 ing each step in the development upon the stage of 
 such a trifle. 
 
 Then, to the music of a march, the King of 
 Diamonds entered, with the Prince, Leandro, Clarice, 
 Pantalone, Brighella, and the Court. On beholding 
 Smeraldina in the place of the bride whom he had 
 come to fetch away, Tartaglia flew into the wildest 
 astonishment and fury. Smeraldina, so altered by 
 Morgana' s artifice that no one recognised her, swore 
 she was the Princess Ninetta. Tartaglia continued to 
 make a burlesque exhibition of his misery. Leandro, 
 Clarice, and Brighella, suspecting the real source of 
 the mystery, rejoiced among themselves. The King 
 of Diamonds gravely and majestically enjoined upon 
 his son the duty of keeping his princely word and 
 
INTRODUCTION : PART III. 141 
 
 marrying the Moor. The Prince submitted with a 
 wry face and new demonstrations of comical grief. 
 Then the band struck up, and the procession filed 
 away to celebrate the marriage in the palace. 
 
 Truffaldino meanwhile remained behind in the 
 royal kitchen, to the charge of which Tartaglia had 
 appointed him, after condoning his mistakes about 
 the Oranges, fie was preparing the nuptial banquet, 
 when a new scene opened, which is perhaps the 
 boldest in this jocose parody. 
 
 [The rival partisans of Chiari and Goldoni, who 
 were present in the theatre, and saw that a strong 
 stroke of satire was about to fall, did their best to 
 excite the indignation of the audience, and to stir up 
 a commotion. They did not succeed, however. I 
 have already said that Celio represented Goldoni, 
 and Morgana Chiari. The former of these gentle- 
 men had served his apprenticeship at the Venetian 
 bar, and his style smacked of forensic idioms. Chiari 
 plumed himself upon his sublime pindaric flights of 
 poetry ; but I may submit, with all respect, that there 
 never was a tumid and irrational author of the seven- 
 teenth century who surpassed him in extravagant 
 conceits and bombast. 
 
 Well, Celio and Morgana, animated by mutual 
 hostility, met together in this scene, which I will 
 transcribe literally, just as the dialogue was spoken. 
 I must first remind my readers that parodies miss 
 their mark unless they are surcharged ; and, keeping 
 
142 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 this in view, I beg them to look with indulgence 
 upon a caprice, which was begotten by jesting 
 humour, without any animosity against two worthy 
 individuals.] 
 
 Celio {entering with vehemence, to Morgana). " Wicked enchantress ! 
 I have discovered all your base deceits. But Pluto will assist me. In- 
 famous beldame, accursed witch I" 
 
 Morgana. " What do you mean, you charlatan of a wizard ? Do not 
 provoke me. I will give you a rebuff in Martellian verses, which shall 
 make you die foaming." 
 
 C. " To me, rash witch ? You shall get tit for tat from me. I defy 
 you in Martellian verse. Here's at you ! x 
 
 " It shall be always held a vain injurious assault, 
 Fraudulent, without proper grounds, in justice real at fault ; 
 To wit these, and whatever else, malignant, fury-fraught 
 Spells by Morgana cast, with all etceteras basely wrought : 
 And as these premises declare, what bane may hence ensue 
 Is cancelled, quashed, estopped, made void, condemned by order 
 due." 
 
 M. " Oh, the bad verses ! Come on, you twopenny-halfpenny magician ! 
 
 " First shall the glorious rays of gold which beam from Phoebus' breast 
 Be turned to lumps of vulgar lead, and East become the West ; 
 First shall the darkling moon on high, her silver beams so bright 
 Change with the glimmering stars, and lose the empire of the night ; 
 The murmuring streams that purling roll along their crystal bed, 
 With Pegasus aloft shall fly, and on the clouds be spread ; 
 But thou, base slave of Pluto's power, shalt never have the force 
 To scorn the sails and rudder of my pinnace in her course." 
 
 C. " fustian fairy, blown out like a bladder ! 
 
 " On the main paragraph I'll win the verdict in this suit, 
 Which by the first preamble shall be made to bear its fruit : 
 Princess Ninetta, changed by you into a dove, shall be 
 Beconstituted in her rights and due estate by me : 
 
 1 I cannot pretend to give a literal translation of these gross parodies 
 of Golcloni's forensic verbiage. The most I can do is to stuff the verse 
 with more or less of legal phraseology. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 143 
 
 And through the second paragraph, which follows from the first, 
 Clarice and Leandro shall sink into want accursed ; 
 While Smeraldina, who can claim no hearing from the court, 
 By mere endorsement shall be burned, to give the people sport." 
 
 M. "Oh, the stupid, stupid versifier ! Listen to me, now. See if I 
 don't terrify you. 
 
 " On flying plumes soars learns, and climbs the heaven with pride, 
 Treads on the clouds, then stoops, rash youth, and skims along the 
 
 tide. 
 O'er Pelion piled, see Ossa frown, Olympus on her back ; 
 This wrought the Titans, impious brood, to work high heaven 
 
 wrack. 
 But Icarus erelong must sink, and drown in salt sea-spume ; 
 Jove's bolt will hurl the Titans bold in ashes to their tomb. 
 Clarice shall ascend the throne, false Mage, in thy despite ; 
 Tartaglia, like Actseon, mock the antlered deer in flight." 
 
 C. (aside). " She is trying to beat me down with poetical bombast. 
 If she thinks to shut me up in that way she is quite mistaken. 
 
 " I will not leave one plea unturned without demurrers sound, 
 And 'gainst your swelling lies will file a protest firm and round." 
 
 M. "The realm of Diamonds avoid ! Let lawful monarchs reign !" 
 
 (Taking her deparhire.) 
 
 C. (crying after her). "And I'll claim costs, stay execution, file my 
 bills again." (Here Celio went in.) 
 
 The last scene was laid in the royal kitchen. 
 Never did mortal eyes behold a more miserable king's 
 kitchen than this. The remainder of the performance 
 followed the old story-book precisely ; nevertheless, 
 the spectators watched it with sustained attention. 
 The parody turned upon some trivialities of detail 
 and some basenesses of character in dramas written 
 by the two poets. Excessive poverty, dramatic im- 
 propriety, and meanness gave the satire point. 
 
i44 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Truffaldino appeared spitting a joint. He related 
 how, there being no turnjack in the kitchen, he was 
 obliged to watch the revolutions of the spit himself. 
 "While thus engaged, a dove alighted on the win- 
 dow-sill, and a conversation took place between him 
 and the bird. The dove had said : '' Good morning, 
 cook of the kitchen." He had replied : " Good 
 morning, white dove." She continued : " I pray to 
 Heaven that you may fall asleep, that the roast may 
 burn, so that the Moor, that ugly mug, may not be 
 able to eat." A mighty slumber overcame him ; he 
 fell asleep, and the roast was burned to cinders. This 
 accident happened twice. In a precious hurry he set 
 the third joint before the fire. Then the dove re- 
 appeared, and the conversation was repeated. Again 
 the mighty slumber overcame his senses. Truffaldino, 
 honest fellow, did all he could to keep awake. His 
 lazzi were in the highest degree facetious. But he 
 could not resist the spell, began to nod, and the flames 
 reduced the third roast to ashes. 
 
 You must ask the audience why and wherefore 
 this scene afforded exquisite amusement. 
 
 Pantalone entered scolding, woke up Truffaldino ; 
 said that the King was in a fury ; soup, boiled meat, 
 and liver had been eaten, but the roast had not 
 appeared at table. [All honour to a poet's daring ! 
 This outdid the lowness of Goldoni's squabbles about 
 a brace of pumpkins in his Chiozzotte.'] Truffaldino 
 told the strange occurrence with the dove. Pantalone 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 145 
 
 dismissed it as an idle stoiy. But the dove at this 
 point reappeared and repeated her ominous speech. 
 Truffaldino was on the point of going off into a doze 
 when Pantalone roused him, and they both gave chase 
 to the dove, which flew fluttering about the kitchen. 
 
 The attempts to catch the dove, made by these 
 facetious personages, amused the audience above 
 measure. At last they caught it, placed it on a table, 
 and began to stroke its feathers. Then they detected 
 the enchanted pin stuck into a knot upon its head. 
 Truffaldino drew the pin forth, and behold the bird 
 was transformed into the Princess Ninetta ! 
 
 A scene of stupors and astonishments. His Majesty 
 the King of Diamonds arrived ; pompously, with 
 sceptre in hand, he rebuked Truffaldino for the non- 
 appearance of the roast-meat at his royal table, 
 whereby he had been put to shame before illustrious 
 guests. The Prince followed, and recognised his lost 
 Ninetta. Joy bereft him of his wits. Ninetta re- 
 lated what had befallen her ; the King remained lost 
 in amazement. Then the Moor and the rest of the 
 Court came crowding into the kitchen, to find their 
 monarch. He, with an air of haughty dignity, bade 
 the princely couple retire into the scullery. He chose 
 the hearth for his throne, and took his seat there with 
 majestic sternness. The courtiers assembled round 
 him ; and as it happens in the story-book, the King 
 now performed his part of ultimate adjudicator. 
 AYhat, he inquired, would be proper punishments for 
 
 vol. 1. K 
 
146 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 the several parties incriminated in these occurrences ? 
 Various opinions were offered. Then the King in 
 his fury condemned Smeraldina to the flames. Celio 
 appeared. He unmasked the hidden culpability of 
 Clarice, Leandro, and Brighella. They were sentenced 
 to cruel banishment. The two Princes were finally 
 summoned from the scullery, and universal gladness 
 crowned the termination of this high act of justice. 
 
 Celio warned Truflaldino that it was his most 
 solemn duty to keep Martellian verses, those inven- 
 tions of the devil, out of all dishes served up at the 
 royal table. His function was to make his sovereigns 
 laugh. 
 
 The play wound up with that marriage festival 
 which all children know by heart — the banquet of 
 preserved radishes, skinned mice, stewed cats, and 
 so forth. And inasmuch as the journalists were 
 wont in those days to blow their trumpets of ap- 
 plause over every new work which appeared from 
 Signor Goldoni's pen, we concluded with an epilogue, 
 in which the spectators were besought to use all 
 their influence with these journalists, in order that 
 a crumb of eulogy might be bestowed upon our rig- 
 marole of mystical absurdities. 
 
 It was not my fault that a courteous public called 
 for the repetition of this fantastic parody on many 
 successive evenings. The theatre was crowded, and 
 Sacchi's company began to breathe again after their 
 long discouragement. 
 
INTRODUCTION : PART III. 147 
 
 VI. 
 
 Such is Gozzi's own account of his first acted 
 fable. 
 
 The public had been invited to sit as umpires in 
 the controversy between him and their two favourite 
 playwrights. They had been requested to suspend 
 their judgment before finally pronouncing sentence 
 against the Commedia delV Arte. The result of the 
 experiment was a decided triumph for the author of 
 the Three Oranges, for Sacchi's company, and for 
 the Granelleschi. But, what was more important, 
 Gozzi, at the commencement of his forty-first year, 
 now discovered himself to be possessed of dramatic 
 ability in no common degree, and of a peculiar kind. 
 The success of the Three Oranges suggested the 
 notion that use might be made of fairy tales, not 
 only for maintaining the impromptu style of Italian 
 Comedy, and amusing the public with piquant novel- 
 ties, but also for conveying moral lessons under the 
 form of allegory, and mingling tragic pathos with the 
 humours of the masks. Accordingly Gozzi composed 
 a succession of similar pieces, gradually suppressing 
 the burlesque elements, enlarging the sphere of 
 didactic satire, pathos, and dramatic action, relying 
 less upon the mechanical attractions of transforma- 
 tion scenes and lazzi, writing the principal parts in 
 
i43 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 full, and versifying a considerable portion of the 
 dialogue. 
 
 II Corvo was produced at Milan in the summer of 
 1 76 1, and at Venice in October 1 761 . II Re Cevvo 
 appeared in January 1762 ; Turandot perhaps in the 
 same month; La Donna Sevpente in October 1762 ; 
 Zobeide in November 1 763 ; / Pitocchi Fovtunati 
 in November 1 764 ; H Mostro Turcliino in December 
 of the same year ; L 'Augellino Belvevde in January 
 1 765 ; Zeim, Re de' Geni in November 1 765. These, 
 with U Amove delle Tve Melavancie, form the ten 
 Fiabe. After the production of Zeim, Gozzi judged 
 that the vein had been worked out, and turned his 
 attention to adaptations of Spanish dramas for the 
 stage. 
 
 The occasional origin of the Fiabe, on which I 
 have already insisted, accounts for their want of 
 plastic unity, their jumble of oddly contrasted in- 
 gredients. They were not the spontaneous outgrowth 
 of artistic genius seeking to fuse the real and the 
 fantastic in an ideal world of the imagination ; but 
 monsters begotten by an accident, which the creative 
 originality of a highly-gifted intellect turned to ex- 
 cellent account. Gozzi' s predilection for burlesque, 
 his satirical propensity and fondness for moralising 
 on the foibles of his age, found easy vent in the 
 peculiar form he had discovered by a lucky chance. 
 But these motives were not subordinated to the higher 
 coherence of imaginative poetry. His fancy, com- 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 149 
 
 inand of dramatic situations, intuition into character, 
 rhetorical eloquence, and inexhaustible inventiveness 
 expatiated in the region of caprice and wonder. Yet 
 we do not feel that he has succeeded in harmonising 
 these divers elements with the spiritual instinct of 
 an Aristophanes or a Shakespeare. Probably he did 
 not seek to do so. The numerous reflections on the 
 Fiahe, which are scattered up and down his works, 
 prove that art for art's sake was far from being the 
 leading consideration in their production. They re- 
 mained with him pastimes, which had partly a practi- 
 cal, partly a didactic purpose — convenient vehicles 
 for indulging his literary bias and airing his ethical 
 opinions — serviceable ammunition in the battle 
 against men whom he regarded as impostors and pre- 
 tenders — excellent means of putting money into the 
 purses of his proteges, the actors, and of keeping 
 himself in favour with his friends, the actresses. To 
 the last they retained something of the punctilio, 
 which, as he says, inspired him at the outset. 
 
 VII. 
 
 In all his Fiahe Gozzi employed the four Masks 
 and the Servetta, Smeraldina. 1 He not unfrequently 
 wrote the whole part of a mask, so that nothing re- 
 
 1 See above, p. 112, for the names of the five actors who sustained 
 these parts in Sacchi's company. 
 
ISO MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 maincd for impromptu acting but " gag " and lazzi. 
 Truffaldino's role, however, was invariably left to 
 improvisation ; perhaps in compliment to Sacchi's 
 talents and his prominent position. The other masks 
 were dealt with as Gozzi thought best. When the 
 dialogue acquired dramatic or satirical importance, 
 he wrote it out for them. On ordinary occasions he 
 intrusted the whole or a considerable portion of each 
 scene to their extempore ability, only indicating the 
 movement of the plot in a scenario. The parts of the 
 masks were treated in dialect and prose. The serious 
 actors, who had to sustain the scheme of the fable, 
 as lovers, magicians, queens, fairies, good and evil 
 spirits, spoke in Tuscan blank verse, occasionally 
 heightened by the use of Martellian rhymed couplets 
 at thrilling moments of the action. Thus it will be 
 seen that the text of Gozzi' s plays offers every con- 
 dition of dramatic utterance, from mere stage-direc- 
 tions, through carefully dictated prose, up to rhetorical 
 soliloquies and dialogues in verse of several descrip- 
 tions. His dexterity as a playwright is shown in 
 the tact with which he employed these various re- 
 sources. 
 
 The handling of the five fixed characters is masterly 
 throughout. Whether Gozzi writes their lines or 
 only indicates a theme for their impromptu declama- 
 tion, he shows himself in perfect sympathy with an 
 intelligent and practised group of actors. The humour 
 of the man comes out to best advantage in this de- 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 151 
 
 partment. His language is most idiomatic and spon- 
 taneous here. Here too we find his raciest charac- 
 ters. Powerfully conceived and boldly projected, 
 each comic personage breathes and moves with 
 vivid realism. Study of the Masks, as Gozzi treated 
 them, makes us feel what a Avonderful thing of 
 plastic beauty the Commedia delV Arte must have 
 been. Here, in a work of carefully considered lite- 
 rary art, we have its long tradition and its manifold 
 capacities preserved for us. Reading a Fiaba is like 
 opening a bottle of rare old wine. The bouquet of 
 the fragrant vintage exhales into the chamber, and 
 we taste the bloom of bygone summers. But the 
 very conditions under which Gozzi exhibited this side 
 of his dramatic mastery render translation impossible. 
 In a translation the colours of the dialects are lost. 
 The gradations of style, passing from a laconically 
 worded scenario through half-dialogue into elaborated 
 scenes, are bound to disappear. Tuned to a foreign 
 language, our inward eye and ear fail to reconstruct 
 the lazzi, which rendered this part of the drama 
 humorous. That is why Schiller's Turandot is 
 inferior to Gozzi's ; and yet, when Schiller selected 
 this piece for the German stage, he showed a right 
 artistic instinct. It is the one in which the fable 
 predominates, and can best be separated from the 
 humours of the Masks. 
 
 I dare not enlarge here upon the variety of shades 
 and complexions given to the five fixed types of 
 
152 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 character, according as the plot demanded more or 
 less of serious action from the several personages. 
 This inquiry would be interesting, since it reveals their 
 singular elasticity beneath a master's touch. It must, 
 however, be left to amateurs of curiosities in art. 
 The development of the subject in detail implies pre- 
 vious acquaintance with the ten Fiabe, and would 
 involve a lengthy dissertation. Some general points 
 may, nevertheless, be indicated. 
 
 Pantalone retains marked psychological outlines 
 under all his transformations. He is the good- 
 humoured, honourable, simple-hearted Venetian of 
 the middle class, advanced in years, Polonius-like, 
 with stores of worldly wisdom, strong natural affec- 
 tions, and healthy moral impulses. Gozzi has drawn 
 the character in a favourable light, purging away those 
 baser associations which gathered round it during two 
 centuries of the Commedia delV Arte. His Pantalone 
 recalls the Cortesani, described in a chapter of the 
 Memoirs ; but a touch of senility has been added, 
 which lends comic weakness to the type. 
 
 Tartaglia stammers, and preserves something of the 
 knave in his composition, burnished with Neapoli- 
 tan abandonment to appetite and brazen disregard 
 for moral rectitude. This general conception of the 
 character explains the transformation of Tartaglia, in 
 the Three Oranges, into the Tartaglia of the Augel- 
 lino Belverde. 
 
 Brighella is an intriguing, self-interested individu- 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 153 
 
 ality, trying to turn the world round his fingers, and 
 not succeeding, or succeeding only by some lucky 
 accident. Pie frequently assumes the form of a 
 simpleton befooled by his short-sighted cunning. 
 
 Truffaldino blossoms before us as an ubiquitous 
 and chameleon-like creature of caprice and humour ; 
 the liberal, carnal, careless boon-companion ; the 
 genial rogue and witty fool ; bred in the kitchen ; 
 uttering words of wisdom from his belly rather than 
 his brains ; pliable, fit for all occasions ; a prodi- 
 gious coward ; trusty in his own degree ; taking the 
 mould of fate and circumstance, adapting himself to 
 external conditions ; understanding nothing of the 
 higher sentiments and awful destinies which rule the 
 drama ; but turning up at its conclusion with a rogue's 
 own luck in the place he started from, and on which 
 his heart is set, the larder. He runs like an inex- 
 pressibly comic thread of staring scarlet through the 
 warp and woof of Gozzi's many-coloured loom. The 
 most serious use made of him is when, in the Augel- 
 lino Belvevde, for purposes of pungent parody, Gozzi 
 invests him with the vizard of a Machiavellian egotist. 
 At the close of that supremely caustic scene, Trurlal- 
 dino drops his disguise, and willingly assumes the 
 role of a domestic buffoon. Our author's trenchant 
 irony, that " smile on the lips with venom in the 
 heart," of which Goldoni wrote so lucidly, that touch 
 of bitterness which renders him akin to Swift, was 
 displayed by a stroke of genius here. Truffaldino, 
 
i54 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 the whelp whose antics dispelled melancholy, becomes 
 for once in Gozzi's hands a stick wherewith to beat 
 the dog of modern science. 
 
 Smeraldina, under her numerous manifestations, 
 maintains the lineaments of vulgar womanhood. 
 Sometimes a good mother or nurse, sometimes a 
 shifty waiting-woman, sometimes a blustering ama- 
 zon, sometimes a bad wife or would-be virgin, she 
 never soars into the regions of ideality, and mates 
 eventually with Truffaldino, if she escapes from being 
 burned for blundering atrocities upon the road to 
 commonplace felicity. 
 
 With these fixed characters, which form the most 
 delightful ingredients of the Fiabe, Gozzi interweaves 
 a fairy-tale, abounding in magic, flights of capricious 
 fancy, marvels, transformations, perilous adventures. 
 There is always a conflict of beneficent and malig- 
 nant supernatural powers, ending in the triumph of 
 good over evil, the reward of innocence, and the 
 punishment of crime. There is a fate to which the 
 heroes and heroines are subject, and which can only 
 be overcome by protracted trials, by patience through 
 dark years, by sustained endurance, terrible struggles, 
 and faith in supernatural protectors. Thus the texture 
 of the Fiabe is similar to that of our pantomimes, 
 except that in the former the fairy-tale and the har- 
 lequinade are interwoven instead of being discon- 
 nected. 
 
 The fairy-tale is always treated in a serious spirit. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 155 
 
 The didactic allegory, on which the author set such 
 store, and which he regarded as the main purpose 
 of his art, finds expression here. The fairy-tale is 
 romantic, pathetic, heroic, sometimes acutely tragic. 
 Gozzi interests himself in the creatures of fantastic 
 fiction, and forces them to utter tones which vibrate 
 in our entrails. Some scenes, written under the high 
 pressure of dramatic oestrum, stir tears by their poign- 
 ancy, by the accents of grief and anguish on the lips 
 of fantoccini. It is a singular species of art, soaring 
 by spasms and short gasps to dramatic sublimity, 
 casting flashes of electric light on human nature 
 in the garb of puppets, then passing away by 
 abrupt transitions into mechanical improbabilities 
 and burlesque absurdities — an art for marionettes 
 rather than living actors, yet withal so vivid that 
 able representation on the stage might translate it 
 to our senses as an allegory of the masquerade 
 world in which man lives : — 
 
 " We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made of, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep." 
 
 The Masks take part in the action, generally as 
 subordinate personages, sometimes as persons of the 
 first rank, never as mere accessories to move laughter, 
 nor as a stationary chorus. In this way the comic 
 element is ingeniously connected with the tragic and 
 didactic. This sounds like a contradiction of what 
 I have said above, about the want of plastic unity in 
 
156 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Gozzi's work. Yet the two apparently contradictory 
 statements are true together. Gozzi interweaves the 
 wires of humour and romance with remarkable skill. 
 But he does not fuse them into one poetic substance. 
 He fails to create an ideal world in which both tragedy 
 and comedy are necessary to the spiritual order, as are 
 the systole and diastole of the heart to an organised 
 being. Though interlaced, they stand apart, each 
 upon its own clearly defined basis. You pass from 
 the one sphere to the other, and have sudden shocks 
 communicated to your sensibility. There is a lack of 
 atmosphere in the wonderfully brilliant and exciting 
 picture, an absence of spontaneous transition from 
 this mood to that, a suggestion that the playwright's 
 sympathies have been touched to diverse issues by 
 divers portions of his task. Very probably, the 
 atmosphere, which I have indicated as wanting in 
 the Fiabe, may have been communicated by the 
 interaction of the members of Sacchi's troupe upon 
 the stage at Venice. But this is only tantamount 
 to admitting that Gozzi understood the theatre. It 
 does not prove that he was a dramatic poet in the 
 highest sense of that term. Had he been this, we 
 should have submitted to his magic wand while read- 
 ing him. That is precisely what we wish to do, and 
 cannot always actually do. His Fiabe remain stupen- 
 dous sketches in a style of audacious and suggestive 
 originality. They are not the inevitable products of 
 creative genius, fusing and informing — the children 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 157 
 
 of imagination, " dead things with inbreathed sense 
 able to pierce." 
 
 Had Gozzi been a great spontaneous poet, or a 
 consummate artist, this invention of the dramatised 
 Fiaba might have become one of the rarest triumphs 
 of artistic fancy. It is difficult to state precisely what 
 his work misses for the achievement of complete 
 success. Perhaps we shall arrive at a conclusion 
 best by inquiry into points of style and details of 
 execution. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 By singular irony of accident, the author of the 
 Fiabe, though he dealt so much in the fantastic, the 
 marvellous, and the pathetic, was far more a humo- 
 rist and satirist than a poet in the truer sense. Of 
 sublime imagery, lyrical sweetness or intensity, ver- 
 bal melody and felicity of phrase, there is next to 
 nothing in his plays. The style, except in the parts 
 written for the Masks, is coarse and slovenly, the 
 versification hasty, the language diffuse, common- 
 place, and often incorrect. Yet we everywhere dis- 
 cern a lively sense of poetical situations and the 
 power of rendering them dramatically. The resources 
 of Gozzi's inventive faculty seem inexhaustible ; and 
 our imagination is excited by the energy with which 
 he forces the creations of his capricious fancy on our 
 intelligence. The passionate volcanic talent of the 
 
158 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 man almost compensates for his lack of the finer 
 qualities of genius. 
 
 What he wants is not the power of poetical con- 
 ception, but the power of poetical projection; and 
 the defects of his work seem due to the partly 
 contemptuous, partly didactic, mood in which he 
 undertook them. It would be difficult to surpass 
 the pathos of Jennaro's devotion to his brother in II 
 Corvo, or the dramatic intensity of Armilla's self- 
 sacrifice at the conclusion of that play. Turandot 
 is conceived throughout poetically. The melancholy 
 high-strung passion of Prince Calaf passes through 
 it like a thread of silver. In the Re Oervo, Angela 
 has equal beauty. Her love of the man in the king, 
 and her discernment of her real husband under his 
 transformation into the person of a decrepit beggar, 
 are humanly and allegorically touching. Cherestani, 
 the Persian fairy, who loves a mortal in spite of the 
 doom attending her devotion, is admirably presented 
 at the opening of La Donna Serpente. The subter- 
 ranean labyrinth of lost women, degraded to mon- 
 strous shapes by their tyrannical seducer, in Zobeide, 
 merits comparison with one of the bolge in Dante's 
 Hell. Its horror is almost appalling. The love of 
 Barbarina for her brother in V Augellino Belverde, 
 which melts the stony hardness of the girl's heart, 
 and changes her from a vain worldling to a woman 
 capable of facing any danger, is no less romantic 
 than Jennaro's love in II Corvo. The picture of 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 159 
 
 Pantalone and his daughter Sarche, in Zeim Re de' 
 Genj, passing their quiet life aloof from cities on the 
 borders of an enchanted forest, touches our imagina- 
 tion with something of the charm we find in Cyrnbe- 
 line. II Mostro Turchino is romantically passionate 
 and highly-wrought. It seems to call for music, 
 such music as Mozart invented for the Zaiiberflote. 
 Or, since Gozzi had little in common with the gra- 
 cious spirit of Mozart, we might wish that this wild 
 fable had fallen into the hands of Verdi. The com- 
 poser of Aid a would have given it the wings of im- 
 mortality. Gulindi, by the way, in this last fable, 
 is a terrible portrait of the Messalina-Potiphar's- 
 wife. 
 
 In selecting these passages for emphatic praise, I 
 wish to call attention to the power and beauty of 
 Gozzi' s conception. Not as finished literature, but 
 as the raw material of dramatic presentation, are they 
 admirable. They need the life of action, the adjuncts 
 of scenery, the illusion of the stage. And for this 
 reason it seems to me that, by means of prudent 
 adaptation, the Fiabe might furnish excellent libretti 
 to composers of opera. This is a hint to musicians 
 of the school of Wagner — to that rare dramatic 
 genius, Boito ! Could the Masks be revived, and 
 their burlesque parts be spoken on the stage, while 
 orchestra and song were reserved for the serious 
 elements of the fable, I feel convinced that a new 
 and fascinating work of art might still be evolved 
 
160 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 from such pieces as La Donna Serpente and II Mostro 
 Turchino. 1 
 
 But this is a digression, which has for its object 
 to indicate the region in which Gozzi's chief merit 
 as a playwright seems to me to lie. The satire, 
 which forms so prominent a feature in the Fiabe, 
 impairs their artistic harmony. So far as this is 
 literary (in the Tre Melarancie, II Corvo, and else- 
 where), it has lost its interest at the present day. So 
 far as it is philosophical and didactic (as in L'Augel- 
 lino Belverde and Zeim), it tends to break the unity 
 of effect by the author's over-earnestness. So far as 
 it is purely ethical, as in Zobeide, Gozzi loads his 
 palette with colours too sinister and sombre. Per- 
 haps, the political touches of satire in / Pitocchi 
 Fortunati are the lightest and most genially used. 
 Gozzi, as we have seen already, was a confirmed con- 
 servative. An optimist as regarded the institutions, 
 religion, and social manners of the past, he was a 
 bitter pessimist in all that concerned the changes 
 going on around him. The new literature, the new 
 philosophy, the new luxury, the new libertinism, 
 which seemed to be flooding Italy from France, were 
 the objects of his hatred and abhorrence. Calmon, 
 in the Augellino Belverde, expresses Gozzi's personal 
 convictions and beliefs in their fullest extent. But 
 
 1 I wrote this in the spring of 1888, before I was aware that Wagner 
 had set the Donna Serpente to music. His early piece, The Fairies, was 
 composed in 1833, and first performed this year in June at Munich. 
 
IL DOTTORE (1653) 
 Illustrating the Italian Commedia dell' Arte, or Impromptu Comedy 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 161 
 
 the following speech may be extracted from Zeim 
 Re cle Genj as a fair summary of his social stoicism. 1 
 A Princess of Balsora, who has been brought up by 
 one of the capricious tricks of fortune as a slave, is 
 speaking : 
 
 " Who am I ? That I know not. An old man, 
 With snows upon his beard, in snow-white robes 
 Attired, of serious and austere aspect, 
 Reared me beneath a humble cottage roof. 
 He told me that one day upon the bank 
 Of foaming Tigris, wrapped in swaddling-clothes, 
 He found me ; peradventure by my kin 
 Abandoned, the cast fruit of shame and scorn. 
 This good man taught me I was born to serve, 
 To suffer, to endure ; and that I ought 
 To bow beneath the will of supreme Heaven. 
 ' Providence, holy, in her ways unknown,' 
 He said, ' rules all things : in the scale ordained 
 Of human beings great folk have their seat ; 
 And so, by steps descending through all ranks, 
 Down to the lowest folk, men live and work 
 Subordinate. Ah ! do not be seduced, 
 (He often warned me) by sophistic sages, 
 Who bent on malice paint of liberty 
 False lures for mortals, your own place to quit, 
 The order clue designed by Heaven for man ! 
 These sophists breed confusion, anarchy, 
 Duty neglected at the cost of peace ; 
 They stir up murders, thefts, impieties, 
 And glut with blood the shambles of the state. 
 Daughter, respect the great, love them, endure 
 What in thy lot seems bitter, woo content, 
 
 1 Act ii. sc. 5. In Masi's edition, vol. ii. p. 458. Headers who care 
 for further diatribes a la Gozzi on these topics, may be referred to the 
 Astrazione which serves as introduction to his translation of Boileau, 
 Op., vol. vii. p. 53. 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
1 62 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 And stifle that snake envy in thy breast ! 
 In the just eyes of Heaven a great man's acts, 
 Rightly performed, have no superior merit 
 To those of servants rightly done ; the road 
 Toward immortality lies open unto kings 
 And children of the people ; 'tis all one. 
 Only the soul that suffers and is strong, 
 Finds happiness.' So spake the firm old man ; 
 And firmly, in his strength of soul unshaken, 
 He sold me slave ; so I account me blessed, 
 As you shall trust me for a faithful slave." 
 
 IX. 
 
 Gozzi drew the subjects of his Fiabe from divers 
 sources. The chief of these was a book of Neapolitan 
 fairy-tales called H Pentamerone del Cavalier Giovan 
 Battista Basile, ovvero lo Cunto de li Cunti. This 
 collection enjoyed great vogue in Italy during the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and is still 
 worthy of attentive study by lovers of comparative 
 folklore. Some of the motives of the Fiabe have 
 been traced to the Posilipeata di Massillo Repone, 
 the Biblioteca dei Genj, the Gabinetto delle Fate, 
 the Arabian Nights, and those Persian and Chinese 
 stories which were fashionable a hundred and fifty 
 years ago. It was Gozzi' s habit to interweave several 
 tales in one action ; and this renders researches into 
 the texture of his dramatic fables difficult. But the 
 inquiry is not one of great importance, and may well 
 be dismissed until the star of Gozzi shall reascend 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 163 
 
 the heavens, if time's whirligig should ever bring- 
 about this revenge. 
 
 L' Amove delle Tre Melarancie is both the simplest 
 in construction and also the most artistically per- 
 fect of the ten Fidbe. In it alone the fairy-tale and 
 the Masks are brought into complete harmony. No 
 serious note breaks the burlesque style of the piece, 
 while a sustained parody of Chiari's and Goldoni's 
 mannerisms lends it the interest of satire. As he 
 advanced, Gozzi gradually changed the form of his 
 original invention. That fusion of fairy-tale and im- 
 promptu comedy in subordination to literary satire, 
 which distinguishes the Tre Melarancie, was never 
 repeated in his subsequent performances. The fable, 
 with its romance, pathos, passion, adventure, magic 
 marvels, and fantastic transformations, began to de- 
 tach itself against the comedy. Both formed essential 
 factors in Gozzi's later work ; but the links between 
 them became more and more mechanical. Satire, in 
 like manner, did not disappear ; but this was either 
 used occasionally and by accident, or else it absorbed 
 the whole allegory. The three ingredients, which had 
 been so genially combined in the first piece, were 
 now disengaged and treated separately. The sunny 
 light of sportive humour, which bathed that wonder- 
 world of fabulous absurdity, darkened as the clouds of 
 didactic purpose gathered. The fairy-tale acquired 
 an inappropriate gravity. Becoming aware of his 
 dramatic talent, Gozzi assumed the tone of tragedy. 
 
1 64 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 He treated the loves and hatreds, the trials and 
 triumphs, the vices and virtues, the heroism and the 
 baseness, of his puppets seriously. Nevertheless, he 
 preserved the preposterous accidents of the fable. 
 On those enchantments, whimsical oracles of fate, 
 metamorphoses, talking statues, monsters, good and 
 wicked genii, he was of course unable to bestow the 
 same reality as on his human characters. Yet, having 
 carried the latter out of the sphere of burlesque, he 
 had to maintain a tone of realism with the former. 
 But he could not wield the Prospero's wand of ima- 
 ginative insight which brings the supernatural and 
 the incredible within the range of actualities. Thus 
 the marvellous elements of the fable remained stiff 
 and artificial beside the natural pathos and passion 
 of humanity. 
 
 Having recapitulated the chief features of the Fiabe 
 in their later form, I will now analyse L'Augellino 
 Belverde. 
 
 X. 
 
 Many years have elasped since Tartaglia married 
 Ninetta. His father is dead, and he has fallen under 
 the malignant influence of the Queen-Mother, Tar- 
 tagliona. She persuades him that Ninetta has given 
 birth to a pair of puppies, male and female, whereas 
 the twins are really a fine boy and girl, called Renzo 
 and Barbarina. Ninetta is condemned to be buried 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 165 
 
 alive ; and Pantalone, Tartaglia's minister, receives 
 commission to drown the supposed puppies. Instead 
 of executing these orders, Pantalone sews the chil- 
 dren up in oil-cloth, and sets them floating down 
 a river. They are found and rescued by Smeraldina, 
 a woman of good heart, who is married to the disso- 
 lute and worthless Truffaldino, a pork-butcher. When 
 the play opens, eighteen years are supposed to have 
 elapsed since the burial of Ninetta. All this while 
 she has been kept alive by the Beautiful Green Bird, 
 who is the King of Terradombra, condemned to take 
 this form by magic arts. The Green Bird also has 
 become the lover of Barbarina. Meanwhile Tartag- 
 liona is being courted by Brighella, who now appears 
 in the character of a burlesque poet and seer. His 
 pindaric prophecies and exaggerated flights of passion, 
 alternating with the lowest language of the prole- 
 tariate, afford excellent opportunities for caricature. 
 
 Eenzo and Barbarina, growing up in the house 
 of the pork-butcher, have improved their minds by 
 assiduous reading of French philosophical treatises 
 sold for waste paper. This education has persuaded 
 them that all human actions and affections proceed 
 from self-love, and that it is the duty of rational 
 beings to preserve a cold impartiality, indifferent to 
 emotions, regardless of comfort and vain pleasures, 
 governed only by the dictates of the reason. Accident 
 reveals to them that Smeraldina is not their mother, 
 and that they are nameless foundlings. They deter- 
 
166 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 mine to go forth alone, and seek their fortunes in 
 the world. The scene in which they take leave of 
 their kindly warm-hearted foster-mother is excellent. 
 Gozzi has painted a pair of consummate prigs, whose 
 natural instincts have been perverted by a false theoiy 
 of life, and who have learned to call that reason 
 which is really inhumanity. They tell Smeraldina 
 that her unselfish charity to the foundling infants 
 was a form of self-love, and that her continued 
 attention to them for the last eighteen years had no 
 higher motive. 
 
 Having quitted Smeraldina, with the loftiest airs 
 of condescension, they set forth upon their travels. 
 Getting lost in the wilderness, it begins to dawn 
 upon them that self-love is one of the cardinal facts 
 of human nature, to which even the most philo- 
 sophical characters, when threatened with death by 
 cold and famine, are subject. In the midst of these 
 reflections, they are terrified with an earthquake 
 and sudden darkness. A statue appears walking 
 toward them, who informs them that he too was 
 once a miserable philosopher, who petrified his 
 own humanity and that of others by perverse prin- 
 ciples analogous to those which have infected them. 
 Consequently, he was doomed to be a statue, lying 
 lifeless and inert among the rubbish of neglected 
 things, until one of Renzo's and Barbarina's ances- 
 tors rescued him from filth and set him up in a 
 garden of the city. This benefit he now means to 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 167 
 
 repay by watching over the twins. First of all, he 
 ardently desires to save them from the petrifaction 
 which awaits all souls made frigid by a false philo- 
 sophy. Next, he tells them that, though he knows 
 the secret of their parentage, he may not reveal it. 
 They have a dreadful doom impending over them ; 
 and their eventual happiness can only be secured by 
 the assistance of the Green Bird. His own name in 
 the world was Calmon ; and he has now become the 
 King of Images : 1 — 
 
 " Molti viventi 
 Sono forse piu statue, ch'io non sono. 
 Tu proverai qual forza abbia una statua, 
 E come simulacro un uom diventi." 
 
 Then Calmon gives the twins a stone. They are 
 to return to the city, and Barbarina is to throw the 
 stone down before the royal palace. They will 
 immediately become rich. In any great disaster, let 
 them call on Calmon. 
 
 In this way Gozzi allegorises his own prejudice 
 against the cold and shallow theories of society, 
 which were infiltrating Italy from France. 
 
 The second act reveals Tartaglia. He is the 
 victim of remorse, haunted by the memory of 
 Xinetta, whom he buried alive in a hole beneath 
 the scullery-sink. There is the floor on which she 
 
 1 '• Many are now alive, 
 Who haply are more statues than I am. 
 Thou shalt experience what power hath a statue, 
 And how a live man mav become an imas;e." 
 
1 68 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 used to walk. There is the kitchen where she 
 fluttered in the form of a dove. " O spirit of Nin- 
 etta, where art thou ? " Tartaglia preserves the bur- 
 lesque note of his Mask. Only one friend remains 
 to him, his old henchman TrufFalclino ; but Truffal- 
 dino has become a pork-butcher, and forgotten him. 
 TrufFaldino at this juncture appears. He too gives 
 himself philosophical airs, without concealing his 
 gross appetites and greedy love of self. Tartaglia 
 kicks him out of doors, and then passes to a scene 
 of vituperation against his wicked mother, Tartag- 
 liona, the Queen of Tarocchi, 1 who has been the 
 cause of all his misery. Tartagliona shows the worst 
 side of her coarse malignant nature in the ensuing 
 altercation, and departs vowing vengeance. 
 
 Her only consolation is that she is beloved by 
 Brighella, the most famous poet of the age : 2 — 
 
 " Non mancano 
 In me vezzi, e lusinghe, ond' al mio fianco 
 Fedel sia sempre. Ah, non vorrei, che alfine 
 Le raie finezze a lui, negli altri amanti 
 Destasser gelosia.'' 
 
 1 Tarocchi is the name for the cards, seventy-eight in number, used 
 in a now well-nigh forgotten game. Fifty-six cards of the whole series 
 consist of the four Italian suits : Coppe, Spade, Bastoni, and Danari. 
 The remaining twenty-two are properly called Tarocchi, and in the 
 game of Taroc take precedence of any cards of the four ordinary suits. 
 
 2 " I too have charms, 
 Sweet flatteries, dulcet wiles ; and to my side 
 He shall be faithful ever. Yet I would not 
 That, loving him, my kindness should arouse 
 In hearts of others jealousy." 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 169 
 
 A new scene introduces Renzo and Barbarina. 
 They have returned to the city, and are standing in 
 front of the palace. Renzo begs his sister to throw 
 the magic stone. Barbarina reminds him that if 
 they become rich, all will be over with their philo- 
 sophy. At last he persuades her to throw it, and 
 she does so, bidding herself be mindful that a 
 wretched pebble is the source of her future magni- 
 ficence. In a moment a gorgeous palace rises, front- 
 ing the royal dwelling. Renzo's and Barbarina's 
 rags are exchanged for splendid raiment. Moorish 
 servants issue from the great gates with torches, and 
 welcome their princely masters. 
 
 No sooner have the twins taken up their abode in 
 this magic palace, than they begin to act like par- 
 venus and nouveaux riches. Every folly, vanity, and 
 false desire enters their heads. Their philosophy is 
 forgotten. Brighella, in his character of seer, divines, 
 meanwhile, that their presence threatens danger to 
 the person of Tartagliona. He therefore endeavours 
 to persuade the Queen to make her will in his favour. 
 She very sensibly refuses, and bids him do all in his 
 power to prolong the life of one whom he adores. 
 He is obliged to meet her wishes, and divulges a 
 plan whereby the twins shall be destroyed. The 
 fairy Serpentina, he reminds her, owns apples which 
 sing, and golden water which plays and dances. The 
 adventure of stealing these magical objects involves 
 the greatest peril. Certainly Barbarina will be 
 
170 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 ruined if she longs to have them. Accordingly, 
 when she appears at the window of her palace, Tar- 
 tagliona from the opposite balcony is to repeat these 
 rhymes : l — 
 
 " Voi siete bella assai ; ma piu bella sareste, 
 S'un de' pomi, che cantano, in una mano areste. 
 
 Figlia voi siete bella ; ma piu bella sareste, 
 S'acqua, che suona e balla, nell' altra mano areste." 
 
 The scene now changes to the interior of the 
 palace of the twins. Barbarina is contemplating her 
 charms in the looking-glass, when Smeraldina sud- 
 denly enters, full of affection. She has heard of the 
 good fortune of her foundlings, and forgetting their 
 recent ill-treatment of her, has come to congratulate 
 them. Barbarina exclaims against her rudeness, 
 calls the servants, throws a purse of gold at her 
 foster-mother, and bids her depart. Smeraldina, who 
 cannot stifle her affection for the ungrateful girl, 
 changes tone, and humbly asks to be allowed to 
 stay and serve her. Barbarina, much to her own 
 surprise, feels touched by this display of feeling, and 
 magnanimously allows the good woman to remain 
 as a menial. Smeraldina' s soliloquy at the end of 
 
 1 " Fair, yea, most fair thou art in sooth ; yet still more fair wouldst be 
 Didst thou an apple hold which sings, plucked from the magic tree. 
 
 Daughter, I trow that thou art fair ; yet still more fair wouldst be 
 Didst thou that water hold which plays and dances merrily." 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 171 
 
 the scene reveals her sound sense no less than her 
 warm heart : x 
 
 " Questa e quella filosofa, che andava 
 Ieri per legna al bosco, ed oggi ! . . . basta . . . 
 Seco volea restar, perche l'adoro, 
 E seco resto altin ; del tacer poi 
 Ci proveremo ; ma non sara nulla. 
 Non la conosco piu. Quanta superbia ! 
 Cbe diavol l'ha arricbita in questa forma 1 
 Io non vorrei, cbe questa frasconcella . . . 
 Forse qualcbe milord . . . ma sapid tutto." 
 
 [Entra. 
 
 Next we have Kenzo. He has fallen desperately 
 in love with a beautiful statue which he found in 
 the garden of the palace. Truffaldino enters, frankly 
 confesses that he has come to live at ease with his 
 quondam foster-child, professes himself a true sage, 
 and expounds the cynical philosophy of interested 
 motives. Kenzo cannot resist laughing at the 
 knave's candour, but is not yet disposed to bear 
 his insolence. Truffaldino sees that he must alter 
 his tone. So he begins to whine and flatter. Renzo 
 is softened, and consents to keep him as a buffoon. 
 
 1 " So ! tbis is my philosopher, who went 
 
 Yesterday picking sticks, and now ! . . . But patience ! . . . 
 I wished to stay with her, for I adore her ; 
 And stay with her I shall. We must contrive 
 To hold our tongue ; and yet this may not be. 
 I vow I scarcely knew her ! What grand airs ! 
 Some devil must have daubed her o'er with gold. 
 'Twould vex me sorely if the little hussy . . . 
 Some rich milord perhaps. . . . Well, I'll know all." 
 
 [Exit. 
 
172 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 His cynicism and his hyperbolical adulation will 
 serve to make the hours pass pleasantly. 
 
 Tartaglia and Pantalone appear upon the royal 
 balcony. Barbarina enters on the other side, and 
 Tartaglia falls head over ears in love with her at first 
 sight. The scene is carried out with much burlesque 
 humour, until Tartagliona and Brighella join the 
 group below. Tartagliona utters the magic verses, 
 and Barbarina becomes madly bent upon the apples 
 which sing and the water which plays and dances. 
 Renzo, touched by his sister's despair, agrees to 
 attempt the adventure ; but before he goes, he gives 
 her a dagger. So long as this is bright, he will be 
 alive. If it drops blood, that is a sign that her 
 brother has died in the attempt. 
 
 A scene between Ninetta in her living tomb and 
 the Green Bird who brings her food, is here inter- 
 polated, in order to prepare the audience for what 
 ensues. 
 
 Renzo and Truffaldino arrive at Serpentina's gar- 
 den, and fail in their adventure. Then Renzo calls 
 on Calmon, who appears, and summons a band of 
 statues — the female figure on the fountain at Treviso 
 and the Moors of the Campo de' Mori at Venice 1 — to 
 his aid. By their assistance a. singing apple is pro- 
 
 1 There are five of these old statues, painted, in Moorish costumes. 
 One of them has the name Rioba carved above his head. Everybody 
 in Venice, of course, knew them ; and their appearance on the stage 
 must have been mirth-promoting. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 173 
 
 cured, and some of the dancing water is bottled in a 
 phial. But Calmon and his band of statues remind 
 Renzo that he is in duty bound to be grateful. 
 Calmon lacks his nose ; the fountain of Treviso's 
 breasts are injured ; the Moors have, each of them, 
 some broken limb. Renzo must undertake to restore 
 them properly, and all will go well with him. 
 
 Renzo promises ; but he very soon forgets the 
 shattered statues. Lost in admiration before the 
 image of beautiful Pompea, he spends his days in 
 wooing her. At length Pompea finds her voice, and 
 confides to him her previous experience. She was 
 the daughter of a great Italian prince, the prince of 
 a corrupt but mighty city ; and she has now become 
 an idol through her self-idolatry. 
 
 At this juncture enters Truffaldino with exciting 
 news. Tartaglia has made a declaration of his love 
 through Pantalone to Barbarina. She wavers between 
 the splendid prospects of a royal match and the 
 affection which she feels for the Green Bird, her 
 lover and consoler in their days of poverty. Mean- 
 while Tartagliona breaks negotiations off by declaring 
 that Barbarina must bring the Green Bird as dower ; 
 else she can never be Tartaglia' s bride. At this 
 announcement Barbarina falls into hysterics, kick- 
 ing Pantalone downstairs, and screaming out that 
 nothing but the Green Bird will satisfy her. Truf- 
 faldino, partly out of compassion for Barbarina's state, 
 partly from a sense of modesty, leaves her presence. 
 
174 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 He arrives to rouse his master to a sense of the 
 situation. This is no time to make platonic love to 
 statues, &c. 
 
 Renzo replies that he is quite ready to attempt the 
 adventure of the Green Bird. He knows from Cal- 
 mon that the bird alone is capable of solving the 
 problem of his own parentage, and also of evoking 
 Pompea from her marble immobility. Consequently 
 he has a strong personal interest in the capture of 
 the bird ; and his sister's troubles are an additional 
 reason why he should no longer delay. With 
 TrufFaldino for his squire, he will ride forth into 
 the forest of the Goblin, who holds the bird in meshes 
 of diabolical enchantments. Let Smeraldina remind 
 his sister that the dagger which he gave her will 
 assure her of his good or evil fortune in the perilous 
 essay. 
 
 While Renzo is on his journey, Barbarina keeps 
 continually gazing on the dagger. It does not cease 
 to shine. But Smeraldina and the speaking statue 
 of Pompea work upon her feelings by suggesting the 
 perils her brother is undergoing, to which her own 
 vanity has exposed him. Moved at last by simple 
 human sympathy, she finds the situation intolerable, 
 and resolves to follow Renzo to the place of danger. 
 It is this return to nature which saves her, and 
 brings about a happy catastrophe. Barbarina re- 
 nounces her wish to wed Tartaglia, and thinks only 
 of arresting Renzo in his dangerous course. She sets 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 175 
 
 off with Smeraldina ; and the magic palace is left 
 desolate, in mourning, all its splendour gone. 
 
 Benzo and Truffaldino have now reached the 
 Goblin's hill, where the Green Bird is seen upon a 
 perch, chained by the leg. Trying to capture him, 
 Benzo turns into a statue ; and there is a whole 
 gathering of similar statues in the place — men who 
 essayed the same adventure, and failed. 
 
 Barbarina and Smeraldina arrive at the scene of 
 action. The dagger drops blood. Barbarina's mask 
 of false philosophy and selfish vanity drops off. She 
 becomes a simple woman, filled with repentance and 
 anguish for her brother who is dead. She flings her- 
 self upon the bosom of poor Smeraldina, whom she 
 had so villainously treated. At this juncture, when 
 all seems lost, Calmon appears, and reads her a 
 sound moral lecture. Then he points to a scroll 
 before her feet, and instructs her what she has to do. 
 She must walk up to within a hairs-breadth — no 
 more and no less — of the bird, and take good heed 
 that he does not utter a sound before she has read 
 aloud the words inscribed upon the scroll. If she 
 succeeds in this feat, all may yet come right. There 
 is a breathless moment, during which Barbarina 
 executes what Calmon told her. The bird is captured, 
 and begins to talk. Let her take a feather from his 
 tail. That will restore the statues to life. 
 
 The drama is quickly wound up. By means of 
 the bird's tail-feather, Benzo and Pompea are made 
 
i/6 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 happy lovers. Ninetta returns from her hole. Tar- 
 tagliona is changed into a tortoise, and Brighella into 
 a donkey. The Green Bird resumes his form as 
 King of Terradombra and plights his faith to Barba- 
 rina. Tartaglia recognises his lost son and daughter, 
 and is fain to be contented with the resuscitated wife 
 whom he had so wantonly condemned to a lingering 
 death. 
 
 This analysis, if any one takes the trouble to read 
 it, will suffice to show the sprightliness of Gozzi's in- 
 vention, and also the essential weakness of his artistic 
 method. The magic and the transformations at the 
 close are mechanical. The fate of the Green Bird is 
 connected by no proper motive with the fate of Tar- 
 taglia and the twins. Calmon and the statues, alle- 
 gorically useful, are in like manner independent of 
 the main dramatic action. Ninetta's doom is atro- 
 cious. Tartaglia is only saved from being disgusting 
 by his burlesque absurdity. 
 
 XL 
 
 In the spring of 1762, having exhibited Le Tre 
 Melarancie, II Corvo, H Re Cervo, and Turandot, 
 Gozzi proved that he had won the game against 
 Chiari and Goldoni. Sacchi's company removed 
 from the theatre at S. Samuele to a more commodi- 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 177 
 
 cms house at S. Angelo. Chiari retired to his native 
 city, Brescia, and left off writing for the stage. 
 Goldoni departed for Paris. None of Goldoni's bio- 
 graphers deny that he took this step in consequence 
 of Gozzi's triumph. In his own Memoirs he omitted 
 all references to the literary quarrels of the years 
 1756-62 ; and he gives excellent reasons, quite inde- 
 pendent of Gozzi, for his setting off to seek fortune in 
 the French capital. Certainly, the last piece he pre- 
 sented to the Venetian public, Una delle ultime sere 
 di Carnovale, was received with enthusiasm. " It 
 closed the theatrical year of 1 761," he says ; x "and the 
 evening of Shrove Tuesday brought me an ovation. 
 The theatre rang with thunders of applause, among 
 which could be distinguished these farewells: A happy 
 journey ! Come back to us ! Be sure you do not 
 fail to do so ! I confess that I was touched to tears." 
 Yet the simultaneous retirement of both Chiari and 
 Goldoni at this critical moment justifies our believ- 
 ing that the latter judged it expedient to leave Venice 
 after the revolution effected by Gozzi. He did so 
 without ill-will on either side. Count Gasparo Gozzi, 
 Carlo's brother, and a distinguished member of the 
 Granelleschi, undertook the charge of seeing a new 
 edition of Goldoni's plays through the press in his 
 absence. 
 
 For some years after this event, Carlo Gozzi and 
 Sacchi's company had the theatres of Venice pretty 
 
 1 Memoires, part ii. cap. 45. 
 VOL. I. M 
 
178 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 much at their own disposal. But the success of the 
 Fiabe was ephemeral. Before their author's death, 
 he saw his own dramatic novelties cast into the shade 
 and Goldoni's realistic comedies restored to favour. 
 A poet of such eminence as Goethe, surveying all 
 things Italian with curiosity in 1786, paid a well- 
 considered tribute to Gozzi's sympathy with the 
 Venetian public, praised the energy and nature of 
 the Commedia clelV Arte, but reserved his highest 
 panegyric for a representation of Goldoni's Baruffe 
 Chiozzote at the theatre of S. Luca. 1 " At last I am 
 able to say that I have seen a comedy," are the 
 emphatic words with which Goethe opens a detailed 
 description of this piece. 
 
 In the course of the last hundred years, Goldoni 
 has secured a signal and irreversible victory over his 
 rival. One of the best theatres at Venice is called 
 by his name. His house is pointed out by gon- 
 doliers to tourists. His statue stands almost within 
 sight of the Kialto on the Campo S. Bartolommeo, 
 where people most do congregate. His comedies 
 are repeatedly given by companies of celebrated 
 actors. Gozzi's Fiabe have been relegated to the 
 marionette stages, where some of their scenari in a 
 mutilated form may still be seen. There exist no 
 memorials to his fame in Venice. Not even a tablet 
 with the words Qui nacque Carlo Gozzi is to be 
 
 1 Letters from Italy, dated October 4, October 6, and October io, 1786. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 179 
 
 found upon the ancient palace at S. Cassiano. The 
 sacristan of the church, where his dust is gathered 
 to his fathers, cannot point to the Gozzi vault. 
 
 The vicissitudes of Gozzi's reputation turn upon 
 the different views which have been taken of his 
 merits in relation to Goldoni. In Italy the balance of 
 opinion tends to sink against him. Baretti, that fiery 
 member of Sam Johnson's club, the fierce opponent 
 of Goldoni, pronounced at first in Gozzi's favour, 
 lamented that he could not bring Garrick to one 
 of his plays, proposed to translate the Fiahe into 
 English, and swore that Gozzi stood next to Shake- 
 speare in dramatic genius. But when Baretti read 
 the Fiabe in print, he declaimed against the buf- 
 fooneries of the Masks, and dropped his enthusiasm. 
 Tommasei found no words too strong to express 
 his contempt for a writer whose genius he denied, 
 and whose character inspired him with repugnance. 
 Tommasei was a champion of Goldoni. Omitting 
 further details, it is enough to say that Italy has 
 elected to ignore Gozzi and to deify Goldoni. The 
 causes are not far to seek. Gozzi's vogue depended 
 partly upon controversy and satire. It was confined 
 to the locality of Venice. His plays required the co- 
 operation of the Masks ; and these expired in his own 
 lifetime. Moreover, they appealed to a rare combina- 
 tion of sensibilities, romantic and humorous, which 
 is not common in Italy. Lastly, for their proper 
 mounting on the stage, they demanded an expendi- 
 
180 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 hire of ingenuity and money, which their fading 
 popularity prohibited. Goldoni, on the other hand, 
 suited the temper of the growing age by his sim- 
 plicity, his truth to nature, his realism, and the 
 freshness of eternal youth which lends charm to the 
 facile productions of his amiable genius. His come- 
 dies can be put upon the stage without the least 
 difficulty ; and they afford scope for the display of 
 varied talents in actors of several descriptions. 
 
 In Germany Gozzi enjoyed wide posthumous 
 reputation, not as a playwright with the public, but 
 as a poet among men of letters. He was early 
 chosen, during the Sturm und Drang period, to 
 perform the part of champion of Romantic against 
 Classical forms of art. How mistaken this view of 
 Gozzi really is, I have attempted to prove. Yet if 
 critics ignore what Gozzi wrote about the origin of 
 his Fiabe, and keep out of sight his intentions while 
 composing them — if they only regard the printed 
 plays — it is not difficult to make him assume this 
 false position. Franz A. C. Werthes translated the 
 Fiabe into German so early as 1 777-79, and published 
 them at Bern. No less than twelve separate versions 
 of selected plays have since appeared, up to the date 
 1877. 1 Among these may be mentioned Schiller's 
 Turandot, which was executed from the translation 
 of Werthes, and a reproduction of I Pitocchi Fortu- 
 nati by Paul Heyse. Schlegel introduced the Fiabe 
 
 1 See Masi's Essay, p. cxxxii. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 181 
 
 to public notice, emphasising their value as speci- 
 mens of the Romantic style, and connecting them with 
 the indigenous art of Italy. Hoffmann declared his 
 enthusiasm for Gozzi ; and if he did not borrow 
 motives from the Fiabe and the Memoirs for his 
 own fantastic productions, he undoubtedly regarded 
 their author as a genius of the same species as him- 
 self. Wagner, I may parenthetically observe, based 
 one of his earliest operatic productions on La Donna 
 Serpente. It was composed in 1833, and was first 
 exhibited at Munich in 1888. To follow the several 
 steps by which Gozzi came to be regarded in Germany 
 as a Romanticist, snuffed out by the Revolution, would 
 lead me beyond the limits of this introduction. I 
 suspect that he was known there mainly in the trans- 
 lation of Werthes, and that his works were quarried 
 as a mine of motives by writers of romantic tendencies, 
 who lacked invention. There is a pocket edition of the 
 Fiabe in Italian, 3 vols., published by Hitzig, 1808. 
 
 The German conception of Gozzi as a Romantic 
 poet of the purest water spread to France. It took 
 the French imagination just when the Romantic 
 movement was at its height. Philarete Chasles 
 treated his works from the point of view of Spanish 
 dramatic literature. Paul de Musset pounced upon 
 the Memoirs, condensed them into a small volume 
 with considerable literary ability, and so ingeniously 
 manipulated their text in the process as to create the 
 illusion that Gozzi had pronounced himself to be 
 
1 82 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 in fact what his German admirers found in him. 
 This clever travesty of Gozzi's autobiography pre- 
 sented him to the world as the victim of sprites, 
 the creature of his own inventions, the plaything of 
 superstition, instead of the caustic, practical, some- 
 times dissembling, and often sinister, man of thwarted 
 passion, violent caprice, hard head, and conservative 
 heart, who will presently be revealed in my version 
 of the Memoirs. I do not blame Paul de Musset 
 for his literary escapade. I understand his motive, 
 and appreciate the joke. He wanted, at one and the 
 same time, to place Gozzi, as the Germans had already 
 placed him, among the fathers of Romanticism, and 
 also to construct a telling novel of adventure out 
 of the copious materials furnished by the Memoirs. 
 But, by so doing, Paul de Musset misled writers who 
 had no access to the sole edition of Gozzi's Memorie, 
 or who were perhaps too careless to seek this document 
 out. Among these I may mention M. Paul Royer, 
 the translator of five of Gozzi's Fiabe into French, 1 
 and Vernon Lee, the talented authoress of a deserv- 
 edly popular book entitled Studies of the Eighteenth 
 Century in Italy? Both of these distinguished 
 writers have fallen into the trap laid for them by 
 Paul de Musset, and have accepted a false conception 
 of the man who forms the subject of these volumes. 
 
 1 Carlo Gozzi, Theatre Fiabesque, Alphonse Royer. Paris, Michel Levy, 
 1865. 
 
 2 London, W. Satchell & Co. 1880. 
 
INTRODUCTION: PART III. 183 
 
 Gozzi, who plumed himself upon his Democritean 
 philosophy of laughter, his Stoic-Epicurean accept- 
 ance of every wayward stroke of fortune, would have 
 been the first to smile sardonically, yet not without 
 a touch of benignant humour, upon the mask he has 
 been made to wear by Germans and by Frenchmen. 
 English critics, with the exception of Vernon Lee, 
 have had little or nothing to do with him up to this 
 date. 1 Let the man speak for himself in the account 
 of his own life, which I now for the first time present 
 to the multitude of English readers. 
 
 August 8, 1888. 
 
 1 Through the courtesy of Mr. John P. Anderson of the British 
 Museum I am able to state that, besides a short article in the Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica, he can only discover an essay in Lipjrincott's Magazine (vol. 
 xx. p. 347, &c), entitled "A Venetian of the Eighteenth Century," 
 which deals with Carlo Gozzi. 
 
CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 My Pedigree and Birth. 
 
 There are people foolish enough to make every 
 family history the object of their ridicule and satire. 
 For the sake of wits of this sort I shall give a short 
 but truthful account of my ancestry, in order that 
 they may have something to quiz. 
 
 Our stock springs in the fourteenth century from 
 a certain Pezolo de' Gozzi. . This is proved by an 
 authentic genealogy, which we possess ; the authority 
 of which has never been disputed, and which has 
 been accepted as evidence in law-courts, although it 
 is but a dusty document, worm-eaten and be-cob- 
 webbed, not framed in gold or hung against the wall. 
 Since I am no Spaniard, I never applied to any 
 genealogist to discover a more ancient origin for our 
 race. There are historical works, however, which 
 derive us from the family de' Gozze, extant at the 
 present epoch in Ragusa, and original settlers of that 
 
1 86 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 venerable republic. The chronicles of Bergamo re- 
 late that the aforesaid Pezolo de' Gozzi was a man 
 of weight and substance in the district of Alzano, 
 and that he won the gratitude of the most serene 
 Republic of Venice for having imperilled his property 
 and person against the Milanese in order to preserve 
 that district for her invincible and clement rule. 
 His descendants held office as ambassadors and 
 podestas for the city of Bergamo, Avhich proves that 
 they were members of its Council ; while two privi- 
 leges of the sixteenth century show that two separate 
 branches of the family obtained admission to the 
 citizenship of Venice. 1 They erected houses for the 
 
 1 The Gozzi family were thus Cittadini Originari of Venice. These 
 Cittadini had to prove legitimate birth in the city ; three generations 
 during which the family had exercised no mechanical arts ; freedom from 
 any criminal stain, debts to the state, or factious behaviour. Citizen- 
 ship, as in the case of the Gozzi, was also granted by privilege. The 
 Cittadini formed a class of burgher aristocracy, ranking below the 
 patricians and taking no part in the actual government of the State, 
 since they did not vote in the Consiglio Grande. Their names, pedi- 
 grees, and arms were enrolled in a book, of which many copies exist, 
 and which was commonly called the Libro d'Argento, to distinguish it 
 from the Libro d'Oro of the patricians. In a MS. of the seventeenth 
 century, which belonged to Cicogna, now at the Museo Civico, entitled 
 Le Due Gorone della Nobilta Veneziana, Corona Seconda, the Gozzi arms 
 are blazoned thus : " Or, on the topmost branches of an olive-tree vert 
 a dove ppr., and round the stem of the tree a scroll argent inscribed 
 Signum Pacis." The family is described as wealthy ; but no pedigree 
 is given : Non vi e albero. Carlo Gozzi, in his Lettera Confutatoria, 
 Memorie, vol. iii. p. 31, asserts that the privilege of citizenship was 
 given to his ancestors by the Doge Cicogna (1585-95). It is neither 
 impossible nor improbable that the Gozzi of Bergamo were derived from 
 the same stock as the Gozze or Gozzi of Ragusa. These latter drew 
 
PEDIGREE AND BIRTH. 187 
 
 living and provided tombs for their dead in the quarter 
 and the Church of San Cassiano, as may be seen at 
 the present day. 1 One of these branches was honoured 
 with adoption into the patrician families of Venice 
 in the seventeenth century, 2 and afterwards expired. 
 The branch from which I am descended remained 
 in the class of Cittadini Originari, on which they 
 certainly brought no discredit whatsoever. 
 
 None of my ancestors aspired to the honourable 
 and lucrative posts which are open to Venetian 
 citizens. 3 They were for the most part men of peace- 
 ful unambitious temper, contented with their lot in 
 life, or perhaps averse from the disturbances of com- 
 petition. Had they entered upon a political career, 
 I am quite sure that they would have served their 
 Prince faithfully, without pride and without vain 
 ostentation. 
 
 their pedigree from Herzegovina, and were therefore Slavs. We know 
 that the patrician families of Polo and Sagredo came originally from 
 Sebenico. 
 
 1 Their palace is still inhabited by a Conte Gozzi. The area, or family 
 sepulture, can no longer be traced in the church. It was at the foot of 
 the altar in the Chapel of the Madonna. Here Carlo Gozzi was buried. 
 
 2 In a voluminous MS. written by Cicogna, embodying all he could 
 collect about the Famiglie Cittadine (now at the Museo Civico), we find 
 that Alberto Gozi detto delle Sede was inscribed among the patricians in 
 1646. I may mention that Cicogna tricks the arms of Gozzi without 
 the dove. 
 
 3 The Grand Chancellor, the Ducal Notaries, and the Secretaries of 
 many Magistracies, were chosen from the Cittadini, who were also sent, 
 after holding such posts, as ambassadors of the second class, or Residents, 
 to foreign Courts. 
 
iSS MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 About two centuries ago, my great-great-grand- 
 father purchased some six hundred acres of land, 1 
 together with buildings, in Friuli, at the distance 
 of five miles from Pordenone. A large portion of 
 these estates consists of meadow-land, and is held 
 by feudal tenure. All the heirs-male are bound to 
 renew the investiture, which costs some ducats. 
 Upon this point the officials of the Camera de' 
 Feudi at Udine are extremely vigilant. If the fine 
 is not paid immediately after the death of the last 
 feudatory, they confiscate the crops derived from 
 the meadows subject to this tenure. That happened 
 to me after my father's decease. A few months' 
 negligence cost me a considerable sum in excess of 
 the customary fine. It is probably by right of some 
 old parchment that we own the title of Count, con- 
 ceded to our family in public acts and in the ad- 
 dresses of letters. 2 I should feel no resentment, if 
 this title were refused me ; but it would anger me 
 extremely, if my hay were withheld. 
 
 My father was Jacopo Antonio Gozzi ; a man of 
 fine and penetrative intellect, of sensitive and delicate 
 honour, of susceptible temper, resolute, and some- 
 
 1 The word, which I have translated acre, is campo. Xow the campo 
 differed in different provinces of Lombardy. But the Campo Padovano 
 corresponded pretty nearly to an English acre ; and from another 
 passage in Gozzi (Memorie, vol. iii. p. 226) it appears that he was in the 
 habit of using the Paduan standard. 
 
 2 The Gozzi were what are called in Venice Conti di Terra Ferma, 
 and their title seems to have been dependent upon these feudal tenures. 
 
PEDIGREE AND BIRTH. 189 
 
 times even formidable. His father Gaspare, died 
 while he was yet a child, leaving this only son to the 
 guardianship of his mother, the Contessa Emilia 
 Grampo, a noble woman of Padua. The estate was 
 sufficient to sustain his dignity with credit ; but he 
 indulged dreams of magnificence. Sole heir, and 
 educated by a tender mother, who humoured every 
 fancy of her son. he early acquired the habit of 
 following his own inclinations. These led him into 
 lordly extravagances — stables full of horses ; kennels 
 of hounds ; hunting-parties ; splendid banquets — nor 
 did he reflect upon the consequences of a marriage, 
 which he made without deliberation in his early man- 
 hood, to indulge a whim of the heart. My mother 
 was Angela Tiepolo, the daughter of one branch of 
 that patrician house, which expired in her brother 
 Almoro Cesare. 1 He died, a Senator of the Eepublic, 
 about the year 1749. 
 
 1 At the time when Gozzi wrote, this was the eldest branch, called 
 Di San Fantin. Two remote branches, of S. Apollinare and San Polo, 
 survived. They descended from a collateral ancestor, Girolamo Tiepolo, 
 who died in 15 16. The branch of S. Polo expired in 1820. See Litta, 
 Famiglie Cchbri. The Tiepolo family was one of the oldest and most 
 illustrious among the patrician houses. It ranked with the Cast Deceits, 
 as distinguished from the Cast These 1 , .v ere also 
 
 trihunkie, from having exercised the highest offices of State at the time 
 when Venice was still governed by tribunes, and before the foundation 
 of the Dogeshin. 0;' these oldest and purest noble houses there Mere 
 twenty-four. Tne closing of the Grand Council in 1297, which deter- 
 mined the oligarchical character of the Venetian government, led to an 
 attempted revolution in : S by Baiamoute Tiepolo. Tiepolo'a 
 
 conspiracy was really an effort in the interests of the old aristocrat | 
 
i9o MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 I shall perhaps have wearied my readers with 
 these facts about my pedigree and birth. Satirists 
 will not, however, find in them anything to excite 
 ambition in myself or to wing their pen with ridi- 
 cule. Social ranks have always been regarded by me 
 as accidental, though necessary for the proper sub- 
 ordination on which our institutions depend. As 
 for my birth, I think less of whence I came than of 
 whither I am going. Conduct unworthy of a decent 
 origin might cause sorrow to my deceased parents, 
 whose memory I hold in honour, and might cover 
 myself and all my posterity with shame. 
 
 My name is Carlo. I was the sixth child born by 
 my mother into the light, or shall I say the shadows 
 of this world. I am writing on the last day of April 
 in the year 1 780. I have passed fifty, and not yet 
 reached the age of sixty. 1 I shall not put the sac- 
 ristan to trouble in order to view the register of my 
 baptism, being quite sure that I was christened, and not 
 
 throw off the yoke which novi homines were fixing on the common- 
 wealth. An excellent essay on Baiamonte Tiepolo will be found in H. 
 F. Brown's Venetian Studies. I may add to this note that the Gozzi 
 had previously intermarried with the Corner, Zuccato, Dona, and 
 Morosini, patrician houses of high respectability. 
 
 1 Carlo Gozzi was born December 13, 1720. He probably knew that 
 he was in his sixtieth year ; and this passage enables us to measure the 
 exact amount of duplicity which he thought venial in composing his 
 Memoirs. It was Gozzi's object to extenuate the fact that his liaison 
 with Teodora Ricci had been carried on when he was past the age of 
 fifty. When he asserts that he had "not yet reached the age of sixty," 
 he was just within the bounds of veracity ; for he wanted more than 
 seven months to complete his sixtieth year. 
 
EDUCATION. 191 
 
 having the stupid vanity to pass for a curled dandy. 
 That is obvious, and has been always obvious, from 
 the fashion of my clothes and the "way I dress my 
 hair. Besides, I set no value on the age of men. 
 Human beings die at all ages ; and I have seen boys 
 who are adult, while grown-up men or grey-beards 
 are often nothing better than peevish and ridiculous 
 children. 
 
 II. 
 
 My Education and Circumstances down to the Age of Sixteen — 
 Concerning the Art of Improvisation, and my Literary 
 Studies. 
 
 Our family consisted of eleven children, male and 
 female. I could record nothing but what is credit- 
 able of my brothers and sisters, had I proposed to write 
 their memoirs. But this is not my thought ; and they 
 are capable of writing their own, if the whim should 
 take them ; for the epidemic of literature was always 
 chronic in our household. 
 
 A succession of priests with little learning were 
 our domestic pedagogues up to a certain age. I say 
 a succession advisedly ; each in turn having earned 
 his dismissal by impertinent behaviour and intrigues 
 with the serving-maids. 
 
 From early childhood I was always a silent observer 
 of men and things, by no means insolent, of imper- 
 
1 92 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 turbable serenity, and extremely attentive to rny les- 
 sons. My brothers used my taciturn and peaceable 
 temper to their own advantage. They accused me to 
 our common tutor of all the naughtinesses of which 
 they had been guilty. I did not condescend to excuse 
 myself or to accuse them, but bore my unjust punish- 
 ments with stoicism. I venture to affirm that no boy 
 was ever more supremely indifferent than I was to the 
 terrible penalty of being sent away from table just as 
 we were sitting down to dinner. Smiling obedience 
 was my only self-defence. Enemies may conclude from 
 these traits of character that I was a stupid lout, and 
 friends that I was a philosopher in embryo. Nothing 
 is rarer than the eye of equal justice. Yet any one 
 who takes the trouble to inquire of my acquaintances 
 and servants, will learn that my taciturnity, my toler- 
 ance, my stoical endurance, have not changed with 
 years — that I continue to view the events of this life 
 with a smile, and that only those have nettled me 
 which touched my honour. 
 
 The growing disorder in our family affairs did not 
 at first deprive us boys of a sound education. My 
 two elder brothers, Gasparo and Francesco, went to 
 public schools, 1 and were in time to drink at all the 
 fountains of the regular curriculum. Extravagant 
 expenditure, however, combined with the needs of 
 a numerous progeny, soon rendered anything like 
 
 1 Collegi. Gasparo was educated in the Somasclian establishment at 
 S. Cipriano on the island of Murano. 
 
SCARAMOUCH (1645) 
 Illustrating the Italian Comtnedia delV Arte, cr Impromptu Comedy 
 
EDUCATION. 193 
 
 an adequate course of studies impossible for the 
 younger children. I was intrusted for some years 
 to a learned country-parson, and then to a priest 
 in Venice, of decent acquirements and excellent 
 morality. After this I entered the academy of two 
 Genoese priests, who supplied instruction to some 
 youths of noble birth, and to some of no nobility 
 whatever. There were about twenty-five pupils in 
 this academy. We pursued the same studies, with 
 some difference according to our classes. Here I 
 had the opportunity of observing that teachers are 
 very valuable guides to youths who love learning, 
 and mere images of ineffectual deities to such as 
 hate it. For my part, being fond of books and eager 
 for information, I imbibed my fill of such instruction 
 as a boy can acquire before the age of fourteen. 
 But sloth and vicious habits extirpate the seeds of 
 learning planted by preceptors in the minds of ill- 
 conditioned lads. Therefore I saw, and still see, 
 more than two-thirds of my fellow-pupils sunk in a 
 slough of baseness. Grammar, the classics, and 
 rhetoric only taught them to get drunk in taverns, 
 to carry sacks for hire upon their shoulders, and to 
 cry "Baked apjiles, plums, and chestnuts!" about 
 the streets, with a basket on their heads and a pair 
 of scales slung round their waists. Wretched fate 
 to be a father ! 
 
 When I became aware that our domestic diffi- 
 culties would prove an obstacle to my remaining 
 
 vol. 1. N 
 
i94 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 long at school, I determined to utilise the little I 
 had already learned, and to carry on my education 
 by myself. My elder brother Gasparo's example, 
 whose passion for study had won public recognition, 
 and my own good-will, kept me nailed to books of 
 all sorts ; nor could I imagine any pleasure worth a 
 thought, beyond reading, meditating, and writing. 
 
 Poetry, choice Italian, and correct style w T ere then 
 in vogue. The young men of Venice met to discuss 
 these three topics, which have now been utterly 
 forgotten — possibly for the greater advantage and 
 convenience of our citizens. I see crowds of young 
 people, hair-brained, conceited, idle, frivolous, pre- 
 sumptuous, and harmful to society. Heaven knows 
 what their studies are ! Not poetry, not the nice- 
 ties of the Italian language, not correction of style. 
 And then, forsooth, I am to admire a hurly-burly 
 of well-born persons, who claim in their foolhardi- 
 ness to be omniscient, who produce nothing whatso- 
 ever, who cannot write three lines of a letter which 
 shall express their sentiments, and which shall not 
 swarm with revolting faults of grammar and of 
 spelling ! 
 
 I will omit to observe that respect for nobles in a 
 state is necessary ; but that the respect shown simply 
 for their birth and wealth is not respect but false 
 feigned adulation. I will refrain from asserting that 
 a daily correspondence, maintained with a large 
 variety of persons — people who may not perhaps be 
 
EDUCATION. 195 
 
 scientific, but who understand whether a letter is 
 well written or ridiculous — may be capable of securing 
 a large part of the regard, or of occasioning a large 
 part of the contempt, bestowed on nobles. I make 
 no mention of the rich man in Signor Mercier's 
 comedy of Indigence, who found it impossible to 
 write a letter of the utmost importance because his 
 secretary was away from home. I will say nothing 
 to those scientific tutors of the scions of our aristo- 
 cracy, who instil derision and disdain for polite 
 literature and the art of elegance in diction into the 
 brains of their pupils, moulding them into geome- 
 tricians, mathematicians, philosophers, physicists, 
 astronomers, algebraical professors, naturalists, a 
 whole deluge of sciences, but who cannot after all 
 their labour express in writing what they have taught 
 or what the common business of life requires. 
 
 All these things, and everything which imposture 
 has presented to my senses and impressed upon my 
 mind, must remain unwritten in my pen. I have no 
 wish to make enemies. 
 
 Yet we cannot prevent drops of ink from falling 
 sometimes from the pen and making blots upon our 
 papers. Just so, while I am dictating these memoirs 
 of my life, I shall not be able to avoid splutterings, 
 however out of place and inconvenient. 
 
 I am almost ashamed to confess the intense 
 assiduity with which I applied myself to those frivo- 
 lous literary studies of which I have been speak- 
 
196 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 ing. They brought on a haemorrhage from the 
 nostrils, so violent and so frequent, that I was more 
 than once or twice given up for dead in the manner 
 of Seneca. 1 In their anxiety about my health, my 
 friends hid away all my books, and deprived me of 
 paper and inkstand ; but I was the cleverest of thieves 
 in searching for them, and went on doggedly read- 
 ing and writing by stealth in the uninhabited attics 
 of our mansion. After relating this fact about my 
 boyhood, malicious people may think that I am 
 claiming to be considered worthy of a panegyric. 
 They are quite mistaken. I fix them with my eye- 
 glass, and assure them that it is rather my intention 
 to provide them with another good reason for quizzing 
 me. The famous Doctor Tissot angrily rebukes ex- 
 cessive application to those studies which are uni- 
 versally esteemed as useless. He reserves his praise 
 for folk who ruin their health in pursuits considered 
 beneficial to humanity ; and such, I do not doubt, 
 are the studies affected by himself and his admirers. 
 
 The Abbe Giovan Antonio Verdani, keeper of 
 the select and extensive library of the patrician 
 family Soranzo, was a man of vast literary erudition. 
 He felt compassion for my weakness, which coincided 
 with his own, and directed my reading by lending me 
 the rarest books, masterpieces of pure Italian dic- 
 tion in prose and poetry. To estimate the quantities 
 
 1 Casanova, in the first chapter of his Memoirs, says that he suffered 
 during his hoyhood from the same violent haemorrhages. 
 
LITERARY TASTES. 197 
 
 of paper which I covered with my thoughts in verse 
 and prose, would be beyond my powers. I tried to 
 imitate the style of all the early Tuscan writers who 
 are most admired. Assuredly I never approached 
 the perfection of their language ; but I am none the 
 less sure that the diligent and attentive perusal of a 
 mass of the best works, treating of a vast variety of 
 subjects, cannot fail to furnish a better head than 
 mine with instruction and ideas, with the power of 
 making just reflections and probable conjectures, and 
 with the principles of sound morality. I am also 
 convinced that the imitation of style in writing, 
 pursued methodically, enables a man to express his 
 own thoughts with facility, propriety of colouring, 
 exactitude of phrase and term, according to the 
 variety of images, grave or gay, familiar or dignified, 
 which we desire to develop and to communicate 
 under their true aspect in prose or poetry. 
 
 Without attaining to the mastery of style at which 
 I aimed, I acquired the miserable satisfaction of 
 finding myself in the very select group of persons 
 who know this truth. I also earned the wretched- 
 ness of being forced to read with insuperable aver- 
 sion and disgust the works of many modern Italian 
 authors, which are full of false fancies and sophisms, 
 the rhetoric and diction of which never vary however 
 the subject-matter changes, which are defiled by all 
 manner of gibberish, bombast, nonsense, with periods 
 involved in unintelligible vortices, and with prepos- 
 
198 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 terous phraseology. The sciences, the discoveries, 
 the branches of new knowledge which are now so 
 loudly vaunted, ought to be accepted as useful, and 
 are worthy of respect. For this reason it is wrong 
 to profane them and to render them contemptible 
 by barbarous impurity and impropriety of diction. 
 Francesco Eedi, that great man, great philosopher, 
 great physician, great naturalist, confirms my doc- 
 trine by his written works. 1 As regards the litera- 
 ture of art and wit and fancy, it is obvious that with- 
 out correction of style this is absolutely worthless 
 and condemned to merited oblivion. No one could 
 count the fine and ample sentiments which perish, 
 smothered in the mire of inartistic writing. Not less 
 numerous, on the other hand, are the small but 
 brilliant thoughts, duly coloured with appropriate 
 terms, and placed at the right point of view by a 
 master-hand, which sparkle before the eyes of every 
 reader, be he learned or simple. 
 
 There is no disputing about tastes. Yet I think 
 it could be easily maintained that our century has 
 lapsed into a shameful torpor with regard to these 
 things. I have written and printed quite enough 
 upon the subject ; without effect, however ; and now 
 I see no reason why I should not utter a last funeral 
 lament over the mastery of art I longed to possess. 
 
 1 Gozzi might have cited Galileo, whose style, formed by the study 
 of the " divine " Ariosto, is a model of exquisite and urbane Italian 
 diction. 
 
LITERARY STUDIES. 199 
 
 That mastery, which nowadays is reckoned among 
 the inutilities of existence, has been freely conceded 
 to me by the verdict of contemporaries — blind 
 judges, governed not by intelligence but by ignorant 
 assumption — so that their opinion does not sustain 
 me with the sure conviction of having attained my 
 purpose. Nevertheless I am grateful even to the 
 blind and deaf, who see and hear what gives them 
 pleasure in my writings. 
 
 My pursuit of culture advanced on the lines I have 
 described, whether for my happiness or my misfor- 
 tune it is worthless to inquire. I read continually, 
 and wasted enormous quantities of ink ; paid close 
 attention to men and manners ; profited by the encour- 
 agement of the Abbe Verdani and Antonio Federigo 
 Seghezzi ; walked in the steps of my brother Gasparo ; 
 and frequented a literary society which met daily at 
 our house. From a Piedmontese, who knew how to 
 read and nothing more, I learned the first rudiments 
 of French ; not that I wished to talk French in Italy, 
 an affectation which I loathed ; but because it was 
 my desire, by the help of grammar and dictionary, 
 to study the books, most excellent in part, in part 
 injurious to society, which issue daily from the 
 French press. It was thus that I formed those 
 literary tastes, to which I have always clung for inno- 
 cent and disinterested amusement, and which, now 
 that my hairs are grey, will be my solace till the 
 hour of death. The giants of science, to whom I 
 
2oo MEMOIRS OF. COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 dare not raise my quizzing-glass for fear of commit- 
 ting an unpardonable sin, will perceive that in de- 
 scribing the scanty sources of my education, I am only 
 painting the portrait of a literary pigmy in all humility. 
 
 As regards my moral training, it is only necessary 
 to observe that the family of which I was a member 
 has always cherished a deep and fervent reverence 
 for the august image of religion, and that my father, 
 careless as he was in matters of economy, never 
 neglected religious duties or the good ensample of 
 honourable conduct. He was a bitter enemy of 
 falsehood. His delicate susceptibility detected a lie 
 by the inflection of the voice, and he punished it 
 upon the spot with sounding boxes on the ears of 
 his offspring. 
 
 Being a bold rider and passionately fond of horses, 
 he taught us to ride, and liked to see us every day on 
 horseback during our summer visits to the country. 
 It was useless to plead timidity, or to shrink from 
 the snortings and jibbings of some half-broken beast 
 he wanted us to back. Up we went ; a cut or two 
 of the switch across our legs set us off at a gallop ; 
 and there we were in full career, without a thought 
 for broken shins or necks. Some jockeys, who came 
 to break in vicious colts, put me up to tricks for 
 mastering a hard-mouthed bolting animal. One of 
 these tricks stood me in good stead upon an occasion 
 I shall afterwards relate. Indeed, I may say that I 
 owe my life to a jockey. 
 
PRIVATE THEATRICALS. 201 
 
 We had a little theatre of no great architectural 
 pretensions in our country-house ; and here we 
 children used to act. 1 Brothers and sisters alike 
 were gifted with some talent for comedy ; and all of 
 us, before a crowd of rustic spectators, passed for 
 players of the first quality. Beside tragic and comic 
 pieces learned by heart, we frequently improvised farces 
 with a slight plot upon some laughable motive. My 
 sister Marina and I had the knack of imitating certain 
 married couples notorious in the village for their 
 burlesque humours. We used to interpolate our 
 farces with scenes and dialogues in which the famous 
 quarrels of these women with their drunken husbands 
 were reproduced to the life. Our clothes were copied 
 from the originals ; and the imitation was so exact 
 that our bucolic audience hailed it with Homeric 
 peals of laughter, measuring their applause by the 
 delight it afforded their coarse natures. My father and 
 mother took a fancy to see themselves represented 
 in this way. My sister and I were shy at first, but we 
 had to obey our parents. Finally, we regaled them 
 with a perfect reproduction of their costume, their 
 gestures, their way of talking, and some of their 
 
 1 Compare what Goldoni says about the marionette theatre at his 
 grandfather's country-seat. In some of the great villas of the Venetian 
 nobility these private stages were built on an enormous scale. The 
 account of Marco Contarini's theatre at Piazzola near Padua, and of the 
 sumptuous dramatic performances which took place there, reads like a 
 passage from the Arabian Nights. See Romanin's Storia di Venezia, 
 vol. vii. p. 550. 
 
202 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 familiar household bickerings. Their astonishment 
 was great, and their laughter was the only punish- 
 ment of our dutiful temerity. 
 
 I learned to twang the guitar with a certain 
 amount of skill, and vied with my brother Gasparo 
 in improvising rhymed verses, which I sang to music 
 in our hours of recreation. This was done with all 
 the foolhardiness inseparable from a display which 
 the vulgar are only too apt to regard as miraculous. 
 Since I have touched upon the point, I will digress 
 a little on this so-called miracle. In my opinion, 
 the immense crowds of people hanging with open 
 mouths upon the lips of an improvisatore only prove 
 that, in spite of the contempt into which poetry has 
 fallen, it still possesses that power over the minds 
 and the brains of men which their tongues deny it. 
 Cristoforo Altissimo, a poet of the fifteenth century, 
 is said to have publicly improvised his epic in octave 
 stanzas on the Reali di Francia ; the words were 
 taken down from his lips, just as he composed them 
 at the moment. The book was published ; and though 
 it is extremely rare, I have read it through the kind- 
 ness of the Abbe Verdani. Only a few stanzas, out 
 of all that ocean of Averse, are worthy of the name of 
 poetry ; and yet we may believe that before the work 
 was given to the press, some pains had been bestowed 
 upon it. I have listened to many extempore versi- 
 fiers, male and female, the most famous of our 
 century. It has always struck me that if the 
 
IMPROVISATION. 203 
 
 deluges of verses which they spout forth with face 
 on fire, to the applause of frantic multitudes, were 
 written down, they would have very little poetical 
 value, and that nobody would have the patience to 
 read the twentieth part of them. Padre Zucchi, of 
 the Olivetan Order, whom I heard in my youth, 
 surpassed his rivals ; now and then he produced 
 sensible stanzas ; but he improvised so slowly that 
 reflection may have had some part in the result. I 
 do not deny that these extempore rhymesters may be 
 people of culture and learning, qualified to discourse 
 well upon the themes proposed to them. Yet they 
 would not be listened to, if they spoke ever so 
 divinely in prose. In order to draw a crowd, they 
 are forced to express their thoughts and images, just 
 as they come, with voluble rapidity, in bad rhymed 
 verses, which often are no better than a gabble of 
 words without sense. This throws their audience 
 into a trance of astonishment. Humanity has 
 always quested after the marvellous like a hound. If 
 a painter sought to depict foolhardiness or imposture 
 wearing the mask of poetry, I could recommend 
 nothing better than the portrait of an improvisatore, 
 with goggle-eyes and arms in air, and a multitude 
 staring up at him in stupid dumb amazement. These 
 being my sentiments, I am willing, out of mere polite- 
 ness and good manners, to approve the coronation of 
 a Cavaliere Perfetto or a Corilla on the Capitol. But 
 I can only accept with cordial and serious enthu- 
 
2o 4 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 siasm the honours of that sort paid to a Virgil, a 
 Petrarch, and a Tasso. 
 
 The Arcadians will laugh when I proceed to speak 
 about an improvisatore, whom I knew and whom I 
 have listened to a hundred times. Yet I should be 
 committing an injustice if I did not mention him, 
 and declare my opinion that he was the single really 
 wonder-worthy artist in this kind, with whom I ever 
 came in contact. He used to pour forth anacreontics, 
 octave stanzas, any and every metre, extempore, to 
 the music of a well-touched guitar. His verses 
 rhymed, but had no Clio, Euterpe, Plettro, Par- 
 naso, Aganippe, Ruscelletto, Zejiretto, and such 
 stuff, in them. They composed a well-developed 
 discourse, flowing evenly, not soaring, but with 
 abundance of well-connected images, and natural, 
 lively, graceful thoughts. He invariably used either 
 the Venetian or the Paduan dialect ; which will 
 augment the derisive laughter of Arcadia, and make 
 the Campicloglio ring. On one occasion, while he 
 was improvising on the theme : diligite inimicos 
 vestros, it happened that two enemies were present. 
 At another time, he dilated on his own grief for a 
 cavaliere 1 who had been kind to him, and who was 
 then dying, given over by the doctors. Not only did 
 the audience hang upon his lips with rapt attention ; 
 
 1 I may here say that the title of cavaliere, or knight, was commonly 
 given to members of patrician families at Venice, irrespective of their 
 being laymen or in orders. 
 
FIRST SONNET. 205 
 
 but in the former case, the enemies were reconciled, 
 while in the latter tears were freely shed for the 
 poet's expiring benefactor. Such influence over the 
 passions of the heart reveals a true poet ; for such a 
 man I reserve the laurel crown upon my Campi- 
 doglio. His name was Giovanni Sibiliato, brother 
 of the celebrated professor of literature in the Univer- 
 sity of Padua. 
 
 Eeturning from this digression, I will resume the 
 narrative of my boyhood. I learned to fence and 
 to dance ; but books and composition were my chief 
 pastime. Before a numerous audience in our literary 
 assemblies I felt no shyness. In private visits, 
 among people new to me, the reserve of my demea- 
 nour often passed for savagery. My first sonnet of 
 passable quality was written at the age of nine. 
 Beside the applause it won me, I was rewarded with 
 a box of comfits ; and for this reason I have never 
 forgotten it. The occasion of its composition was as 
 follows. A certain Signora Angela Arrnano, midwife 
 by trade, had a friend at Padua whose pet dog died 
 and left her inconsolable. Signora Angela wished 
 to comfort her friend ; indulged in condolements for 
 her loss ; and sent a little spaniel of her own, called 
 Delina, to replace the defunct pet. Delina was to 
 be given as a present, and a sonnet was to accom- 
 pany the gift, expressing all the sentiments which a 
 lady of Signora Angela's profession might entertain 
 in a circumstance of such importance. Though our 
 
2o6 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 family was a veritable lunatic asylum of poets, no 
 one cared to translate the good creature's gossipping 
 garrulity into verse. Moved by her entreaties, I 
 undertook the task ; and the following Bernesque 
 sonnet was the result : — 
 
 ' ; Madamu io vi \ r orrei pur confortare 
 Con qualche graziosa diceria, 
 Ma la sciagura vuole, e vostra, e mia, 
 Che in un sonetto la non vi puo stare. 
 
 Non vi state, mia cara, a disperare, 
 Che la sarebbe una poltroneria, 
 L'entrar per un can morto in frenesia ; 
 Chi nasce muor, convien moralizzare. 
 
 Vi sovvenite, ch' egli avra pisciato 
 
 Alcana volta in camera, o in cucina, 
 
 Che in quell' istante lo avreste ammazzato. 
 
 Io vi spedisco intanto la Delina 
 
 Che piu d'un cane ha d'essa innamorato, 
 E puo farvi di cani una dezina. 
 E bella, e picciolina ; 
 
 Di lei non voglio piti nuova, o risposta, 
 Servitevi per razza, o di supposta." 
 
 Two years later, a new edition of the poems of 
 Gaspara Stampa appeared in Venice, at the expense 
 of Count Antonio Ramboldo di Collalto of Vienna, 
 a prince distinguished for his birth and writings. 
 Scholars know that this sixteenth-century Sappho 
 sighed her soul forth in love-laments to a certain 
 Count Collaltino di Collalto, doughty warrior and 
 polished versifier, and that she was reputed to 
 have died of hopeless passion in her youth. 1 The 
 
 1 Gaspara Stampa was born at Padua, but was a gentlewoman of 
 Milan by descent. She died about 1554, at the age of thirty. If this 
 
OCCASIONAL POEMS. 207 
 
 ladies of our century will hardly believe her story ; 
 for Cupid has changed temper since those days, and 
 kills his victims with far different and less honourable 
 weapons. Some verses by contemporary writers in 
 praise of our literary heroine were to be appended 
 to this edition of her works. I dared to enter the 
 lists, and wrote a sonnet in the style of the earliest 
 Tuscan poets. Such as it is, the sonnet may be 
 found printed in the book which I have indicated. 
 It appears from this juvenile production that I already 
 acknowledged a mistress of my heart ; compliance 
 with fashion was alone responsible for my precocity. 
 This trifling composition was read by the famous 
 Apostolo Zeno. He deigned to inquire for the author, 
 who had reproduced the antique simplicity of Cino 
 da Pistoja, Guittone d'Arezzo, and Guido Cavalcanti. 
 On my presenting myself, Signor Zeno politely ex- 
 pressed surprise at discovering a mere boy in the 
 learned writer of the sonnet, treated me with kind 
 attention, and placed his choice library at my dis- 
 posal. 1 The encouragement of this distinguished 
 
 edition of Gaspara Stampa's Rime is the one prepared for publication 
 by Luisa Bergalli (Gozzi's sister-in-law), there is the same confusion of 
 dates here as I have noticed above. It was published when Gozzi had 
 reached his seventeenth year. 
 
 1 A tablet over the entrance to the restaurant at the Calcina on the 
 Zattere, records that Apostolo Zeno dwelt there. It was, perhaps, to 
 this house that young Gozzi paid his visit. Zeno (b. 1668, d. 1750) 
 exercised considerable influence over the Italian drama. He wrote plays 
 for music and oratorios. For some years he held the post of Cesarean 
 poet at Vienna, which he resigned to the more celebrated Metastasio. 
 
2o8 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 poet, true lover of pure style, and foe to seventeenth- 
 century conceits, added fuel to the tire of my literary 
 passion. From that day forward not one of those 
 collections of verses appeared, in which marriages, 
 the entrance of young ladies into convents, the 
 election of noblemen to offices of state, the deaths 
 of people, cats, dogs, parrots, and such events, are 
 celebrated in Venice and other towns of Italy, but 
 that it contained some specimen of my Muse in grave 
 or playful verse. 
 
 Books, paper, pens and iuk formed the staple of 
 my existence. I was always pregnant, always in 
 labour, giving birth to monsters in remote corners 
 of our mansion. I scribbled furiously, God knows 
 how, up to my seventeenth year. Besides innumer- 
 able essays in prose and multitudes of fugitive verses, 
 I wrote four long poems, entitled Berlinghieri, Don 
 Quixote, Moral Philosophy (based upon the talking 
 animals of Firenzuola), and Gonella in twelve cantos. 
 The Abbe Verdani took a fancy to this last, and 
 wished to see it printed. Signor Giulio Cesare 
 Beccelli, however, had published a poem at Verona 
 on the same subject, which robbed my work of 
 novelty ; and though mine was richer in facts drawn 
 from good old sources, I did not venture to enter 
 into competition with him. The three years' absence 
 from home, which I shall presently relate, and the 
 revolution in our domestic affairs which surprised 
 me on my return, exposed these boyish literary 
 
DOMESTIC TROUBLES. 209 
 
 labours to ruin and dispersion. It is probable that 
 pork-butchers and fruit-vendors exercised condign 
 justice on the children of my Muse. 
 
 III. 
 
 The Situation of my Family, and my Reasons for 
 Leaving Home. 
 
 In the course of these years, the early deaths of a 
 brother and a sister had reduced our numbers from 
 eleven to nine. Meanwhile, our annual expenditure 
 exceeded the resources at our command, and left but 
 little for the needs of a numerous offspring, too old 
 to be contented with a toy or plaything. Some law- 
 suits, which we lost, diminished the estate. Clouds 
 of doubt and care began to obscure the horizon, and 
 in a few years the family was plunged in pecuniary 
 embarrassment. 
 
 My brother Gasparo had taken a wife in a fit of 
 genial poetical abstraction. Even poetry has its 
 dangers. This man, who was really singular in his 
 absolute self-dedication to books, in his indefatigable 
 labours as an author, and in a certain philosophical 
 temper or indolence, which made him indifferent to 
 eveiything which was not literary, learned to fall in 
 love from Petrarch. A young lady, ten years older 
 
 vol. 1. o 
 
2io MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 than himself, named Lnigia Bergalli, 1 better known 
 among the shepherdesses of Arcady as Irmenia Par- 
 tenide, a poetess of romantic fancy, as her published 
 works evince, was my brother's Lanra. Not being a 
 canon, like Petrarch, he married her in Petrarch's 
 spirit, but with due legal formalities. This woman, 
 of fervent and soaring imagination, which fitted her 
 for high poetic flights, undertook to regulate the 
 disorder in our affairs. Impelled by the instincts of 
 a good nature, with something of ambition and a 
 flattering belief in her own practical ability, she did 
 the best that in her lay. Yet all her projects and 
 administrative measures revolved within a circle of 
 romantic raptures and Pindaric ecstasies. Thirsting 
 with soul-passion after an ideal realm, she found 
 herself the sovereign of a state in decadence. It 
 was the desire of her heart to make us all happy, 
 in the most disinterested way. Yet she accom- 
 plished nothing beyond involving every one, and her- 
 
 1 Luisa Pisana Bergalli was bora at Venice in 1703, of humble 
 parentage, being descended from a Piedmontese shoemaker. Luigi 
 Mocenigo and Pisana Cornaro held her at the font, and gave her their 
 two Christian names. She showed distinguished talents in early youth, 
 and was educated by the painter Rosalba Camera, afterwards by Cate- 
 rino and Apostolo Zeno. At twenty-three she published a tragedy and 
 an anthology of Italian poems by female writers ; at twenty-five another 
 tragedy ; at thirty a translation of Terence, and a comedy dedicated to 
 Count Jacopo Antonio Gozzi. It appears from this dedication to Le 
 avventure del poeta that she was the protegee of both Count Gozzi and his 
 wife, and on the best of terms with their children. She was thirty- 
 five and Gasparo was twenty-five when they married. See Tommasei, 
 Storia Civile nella Letteraria, pp. 1S5-188. 
 
DOMESTIC TROUBLES. 211 
 
 self to boot, in the meshes of still greater misfortune. 
 Her husband, poring perpetually upon his books, 
 could only oppose her at the sacrifice of ease and 
 quiet. This he was incapable of doing. — In order 
 to judge people equitably, it is necessary that char- 
 acter, temperament, and circumstances should be 
 thoroughly explained. 
 
 I know how unphilosophical it is to ascribe the 
 discords of a family to malignant planetary influences. 
 Our domestic circle consisted of a father, a mother, 
 four brothers, and five sisters, all of them good- 
 hearted, honourable, mutually well-inclined ; and 
 yet it became the very mirror of infelicity at every 
 moment and in each of the persons who composed it. 
 Minute investigation into the causes of this painful 
 fact would probably reveal them. But it is better to 
 adopt the language of the vulgar, and to say that a 
 bad star pursued our family. Otherwise, analysis 
 might lead one into acts of unkindness, and involve 
 one in hatred. 
 
 The confusion in which we lived at that period, 
 and the bitter discomforts we had to bear, were 
 augmented by expenses due to my brother's increas- 
 ing progeny. Our worst disaster, however (and this 
 wound I cany in my heart even to the present day), 
 was a cruel stroke of apoplexy which laid my beloved 
 father low. He continued to exist, an invalid, for 
 about seven years after the sad event ; dumb and 
 paralytic, but in possession of all his mental facul- 
 
212 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 ties — a circumstance which rendered his deplorable 
 condition almost unbearable to a man of my father's 
 extreme sensibility. 
 
 The tears of five sisters, the births of nephews and 
 nieces, a house swarming with female go-betweens, 
 brokers, and the Hebrew ministers of our decaying 
 realm — all this whirlpool of economical extravagance 
 and folly, to utter one word against which was 
 reckoned mutiny or treason, drove my second brother, 
 Francesco, into exile. He went into the Levant 
 with the Provveditore Generale di Mare, 1 his Excel- 
 lency the Cavaliere Antonio Loredano, of happy 
 memory. At that period I was about thirteen. 
 
 Letters written from Corfu by this brother de- 
 scribing the kindness shown him by his Provve- 
 ditore, and the rank of ensign to which he soon 
 attained, awoke in me a burning desire to escape 
 like him from those domestic turmoils, the gravity 
 of which I felt in experience and measured by 
 
 1 The title Provveditore Generale di Mare was given to the supreme head 
 of the Venetian naval and military forces in the Levant. He resided at 
 Corfu, where he maintained a princely court, and ruled like a sovereign, 
 being only responsible for his actions to the Senate. Next in import- 
 ance to this functionary was the Provveditore Generale di Dalmazia, of 
 whose Court we shall hear much in Gozzi's Memoirs. Casanova, who 
 went to Corfu in the train of the Prov. Gen, Doltino, called II Bucen- 
 toro because of his grand manner, and the father of the famous Caterina 
 Dolfin Tron, gives an excellent account of the Court there, its military, 
 naval, and civil establishment. Chapters xiii.-xvi. of the first volume 
 of his Memoirs deserve to be compared with the corresponding part 
 of Gozzi's. 
 
DEPARTURE FOR ZARA. 213 
 
 anticipation, but which my state of boyhood rendered 
 me unable to remedy. Our uncle on the mother's 
 side, Almoro Cesare Tiepolo, recommended me to his 
 Excellency Girolamo Quirini, Provveditore Generale 
 elect for Dalmatia and Albania. Furnished with a 
 modest outfit, in which my book-box and guitar were 
 not forgotten, I bade farewell to my parents at the age 
 of seventeen, 1 and went across seas as volunteer into 
 those provinces, to study the ways and manners of 
 my fellow-soldiers, and of the peoples among whom 
 we were quartered. 
 
 IV. 
 
 / Embark upon a Galley, and Cross the Seas to Zara. 
 
 I was not slow to perceive that I had adopted a 
 career by no means suited to my character, the proper 
 motto for which was always the following verse from 
 Berni : 
 
 " Voleva far da se, non commandato." 
 
 My natural dislike of changeableness kept me, 
 however, from showing by outward signs of any sort 
 that I repented of my choice ; and I reflected that 
 abundant opportunities were now at least offered for 
 observations on the men of a world new to me. 
 
 1 Not at seventeen, but at twenty. Gozzi was born in 1720, and 
 Quirmi took the government of Dalmatia in 1740. 
 
2i 4 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 This thought sufficed to keep me in good spirits and 
 a cheerful humour through all the vicissitudes of 
 my three years' sojourn in Illyria. 
 
 According to orders received from his Excellency, 
 the Provveditore Generale Quirini, I embarked before 
 him on a galley called Generalizia, which was riding 
 at the port of Malamocco. There I was to wait for 
 his arrival. A band of military officers received me 
 with glances of courtesy and some curiosity. In a 
 Court where all the members are seeking fortune, 
 each newcomer is regarded with suspicion. Whether 
 he has to be reckoned with or may be disregarded 
 on occasions of promotion, concerns the whole crew 
 of officials, who, like him, are dependent on the will 
 of the Provveditore. It was perhaps insensibility 
 which made me indifferent to these preoccupations ; 
 this the sequel of my narrative will show ; and yet 
 such thoughts are very wood-worms in the hearts of 
 courtiers. 
 
 I had to swallow a great quantity of questions, to 
 which I replied with the laconic brevity of an in- 
 experienced lad upon his guard. Some of those 
 gentlemen had known my brother Francesco at Corfu. 
 When they discovered who I was, they seemed to be 
 relieved of all anxiety on my account, and welcomed 
 me with noisy demonstrations of soldierly comrade- 
 ship. I expressed my thanks in modest, almost 
 monosyllabic phrases. They set me down for an 
 awkward young fellow, unobliging, and proud. This 
 
THE GENERAL'S COURT. 215 
 
 was a mistake, as they freely confessed a few months 
 later on. I had retired into myself, with the view 
 of studying their characters and sketching my line 
 of action. The quick and penetrative intuition with 
 which I was endowed at birth by God, together with 
 the faculty of imperturbable reserve, enabled me in 
 the course of a few hours to recognise in that little 
 group some men of noble birth and liberal culture, 
 some nobles ruined by the worst of educations, and 
 some plebeians who owed their position to powerful 
 protection. 
 
 Gaming, intemperance, and unbridled sensuality 
 were deeply rooted in the whole company. I laid 
 my plans of conduct, and found them useful in the 
 future. My intimacies were few, but durable. The 
 vices I have named, clung like ineradicable cancers 
 to the men with whom I associated. Sound principles 
 engrafted on me in my early years, regard for health, 
 and the slenderness of my purse helped me to avoid 
 their seductions. At the same time, I saw no reason 
 why I should proclaim a crusade against them. Hold- 
 ing a middle course, I succeeded in winning the 
 affection of my comrades. They invited me to take 
 part in their orgies. I did not play the prude. 
 Without yielding myself to the transports of brutal 
 appetite, I proved the gayest reveller at all those 
 lawless meetings. Some of my seniors, on whom a 
 career of facile pleasure had left its inevitable stigma, 
 used to twit me with being a reserved young simple- 
 
2 1 6 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 ton. I did not heed their raillery, but laughed at 
 the inebriation of my comrades, studied the bent of 
 divers characters, observed the animal brutality of 
 men, and used our uproarious debauches as a school 
 for fathoming the depths of human frailty. 
 
 Now I will return to the point of my embarkation 
 on the galley Generalizia in the port of Malamocco. 
 While awaiting the arrival of the Provveditore, I had 
 two whole days and nights to spend in sad reflections 
 on humanity. These were suggested by the spectacle 
 of some three hundred scoundrels, loaded with chains, 
 condemned to drag their life out in a sea of miseries 
 and torments, each of which was sufficient by itself 
 to kill a man. An epidemic of malignant fever raged 
 among these men, carrying away its victims daily 
 from the bread and water, the irons, and the whips 
 of the slavemasters. Attended in their last passage 
 by a gaunt black Franciscan friar, with thundering 
 voice and jovial mien, these wretches took their flight 
 — I hope and think — for Paradise. 
 
 The Provveditore' s arrival amid the din of instru- 
 ments and roar of cannon roused me from my dismal 
 reveries. I had visited this gentleman ten times at 
 least in his own palace, and had always been received 
 with that playful welcome and confidential sweetness 
 which distinguish the patricians of Venice. He made 
 his appearance now in crimson — crimson mantle, cap, 
 and shoes — with an air of haughtiness unknown to 
 me, and fierceness stamped upon his features. The 
 
THE FRANCISCAN FRIAR ON THE GALLEY 
 
 Original Etching by Ad. Lalau^c 
 
ARRIVAL OF THE GENERAL. 217 
 
 other officers informed me that when he donned this 
 uniform of state, he had to be addressed with pro- 
 found and silent salaams, different indeed from the 
 reverence one pays at Venice to a patrician in his 
 civil gown. 1 He boarded the galley, and seemed to 
 take no notice whatever of the crowd around him, 
 bowing till their noses rubbed their toes. The 
 affability with which he touched our hands in Venice 
 had disappeared ; he looked at none of us ; and 
 sentenced the young captain of the guard, called 
 Combat, to arrest in chains, because he had omitted 
 some trifle of the military salute. My comrades 
 stood dumbfounded, staring at one another with 
 open eyes. This singular change from friendliness 
 to severity set my brains at work. By the light of 
 my boyish philosophy I seemed to comprehend why 
 the noble of a great republic, elected general of an 
 armament 2 and governor of two wide provinces, on 
 his first appearance in that office, felt bound to 
 assume a totally different aspect from what was 
 natural to him in his private capacity. He had to 
 inspire fear and a spirit of submission into his sub- 
 ordinates. Otherwise they might have taken liberties 
 upon the strength of former courtesy displayed by him, 
 
 1 Togato. The State dignitaries of Venice wore robes of various 
 colours and forms, according to their office. A simple nobleman was 
 bound to go abroad in a flowing robe of silk, or toga, ample enough to 
 conceal whatever costume he may have worn beneath it. 
 
 2 Armata, composed of naval and military forces, to act equally on 
 sea and shore. 
 
218 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 beins: for the most part presumptuous young fell' 
 apt to boast about their favour with the general. For 
 mv own part, since I was firmly bent on doing my 
 duty without ambitious plans or dreams of fortune, 
 this formidable attitude and the harsh commands of 
 the great man made a less disheartening impression 
 on me than on my companions. I whispered to my- 
 self: " He certainly inspires me with a kind of 
 dread ; but he has taken immense trouble to trans- 
 form his nature in order to produce this effect ; I am 
 sure the irksomeness which he is suffering now must 
 be greater than any discomfort he can cause me." 
 
 The general retired to his cabin in the bowels of 
 our floating hell, and sent Lieutenant-Colonel Micheli, 
 his major in the province, to make out a list of all 
 the officers and volunteers on board, together with 
 the names of their protectors. Xobody expected 
 this ; for we had been personally presented to the 
 general at Venice, and had explained our affairs in 
 frequent conversations. Once more I reflected that 
 this was his way of damping the expectations which 
 might have been bred in scheming brains before he 
 exchanged the politenesses of private life for the 
 austerities of office. The Maggiore della Provincia 
 Micheli — a most excellent person and very fat — 
 bustled about his business, sweating, and scribbling 
 with a pencil on a sheet of paper, as though the 
 matter was one of life or death. Everybody began 
 to shy and grumble and chafe with indignation at 
 
LIFE OX A GALLEY. 219 
 
 passing under review in this way. When my turn 
 came, I answered frankly that I was called Carlo 
 Gozzi, and that I had been recommended by the 
 patrician Alrnoro Cesare Tiepolo. I withheld his 
 title of senator and the fact that he was my maternal 
 uncle, deeming it prudent not to seem ambitious. 
 
 The General izia, convoyed by another galley named 
 Conserva and a few light vessels of war. got under 
 way for the Adriatic ; l and the night fell very 
 dark upon the waters. I shall not easily forget that 
 night, because of a little incident which happened 
 to me, and which shows what a curious place of 
 refuge a galley is for young men leaving their homes 
 for the first time. A natural necessity made me 
 seek some comer for retirement. I was directed to 
 the bowsprit ; on approaching it, an Illyrian sentinel, 
 with scowling visage, bushy whiskers, and levelled 
 musket, howled his " Who goes there f" in a tremen- 
 dous voice. When he understood my business, he let 
 me pass. My next step lighted on a soft and yielding 
 mass, which gave forth a kind of gurgling sound, like 
 the stifled breath of an asthmatic patient, into the 
 dark silent night. Eetracing my path, I asked the 
 
 1 It seems from the names of these larger galleys that they were the 
 official ships of the Provveditore, his own flag-ship and her attendant 
 convoy. Romanin (vol. viii. p. 372) says that at this epoch Venice 
 kept fifteen heavy galleys, ten lighter, nine sailing ships of the frigate 
 build, and twenty-fuur armed craft of other descriptions. The galleys 
 and sailing ships were commanded only by patricians. This was her 
 peace establishment. 
 
2 2o MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 sentinel what the thing was, which responded with 
 its inarticulate gurgling voice to the pressure of my 
 feet. lie answered with the coldest indifference that 
 it was the corpse of a galley-slave, who had succumbed 
 to the fever, and had been flung there till he could 
 be buried on the sea-shore sands in Istria. The hair 
 on my head bristled with horror. But my happy 
 disposition for seeing the ludicrous side of things 
 soon came to my assistance. 
 
 After twelve days of much discomfort, and twelve 
 noisome nights, passed in broken slumbers under the 
 decks of that galley, which only too well deserved its 
 name, our little fleet entered the port of Zara. We 
 went on shore at first privately and quietly ; and 
 after a few days the public ceremonies of official 
 disembarkation were gone through. The Provveditore 
 Generale Jacopo Cavalli handed his baton of com- 
 mand over to the Provveditore Generale Girolamo 
 Quirini with all the formalities proper to the occasion. 
 This solemnity, which is performed upon the open 
 sea, to the sound of military music, the thunder of 
 artillery, and the crackling of musket-shots, deserves 
 to be witnessed by all who take an interest in im- 
 posing spectacles. An old man, fat and short of 
 stature, with a pair of moustachios bristling up 
 beneath his nostrils, a merry and most honest fellow 
 to boot, who bore the name of Captain Girolamo 
 Visinoni, was appointed master of these ceremonies, 
 on account of his intimate acquaintance with 
 
FEVER AT ZARA. 
 
 their details. I had no other duty that day but 
 to wear my best clothes, which did not cost much 
 trouble. 
 
 V. 
 
 / Fall Dangerously III ; Recover ; Form the only Intimate 
 Acquaintance I made in Dalmatia. 
 
 When the new Regency had been established and 
 the Court settled, I had but eight days to learn my 
 duties as volunteer or adjutant 1 to his Excellency, as 
 it is called there, before I fell ill of a fever which 
 was declared to be malignant. Alone among people 
 whom I hardly knew, at the commencement of my 
 career, poorly provided with money, and lying in a 
 wretched room, the windows of which were closed 
 with torn and rotten paper instead of glass, I could 
 not but compare my present destitution with the 
 comforts of our home. Here I was battling with a 
 mortal disease in solitude. There, at the least touch 
 of illness, I enjoyed the tender solicitude of a sister 
 or a servant at my pillow, to brush away the flies 
 which settled on my forehead. Fortunately, I was 
 not so strongly attached to life as to be rendered 
 miserable by unavailing recollections and gloomy 
 forebodings. 
 
 1 Gozzi says adjutante alone. Adjutante di campo is aide-de-camp. 
 
222 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 It happened one clay, as I lay there burning, that 
 a convict presented himself at the door of my miser- 
 able den, and asked me if I wanted anything which 
 he could fetch me. He was one of those men who 
 prowl around the officers' quarters, wrapped in an old 
 blanket with a bit of rope about the waist, ready to 
 do any dirty business and to pilfer if they find the 
 opportunity. I gave him a few farthings and told 
 him to send me a confessor — an errand very different 
 from what he had expected. Before long a good 
 Dominican appeared, who prepared me to die with 
 the courage of an ancient Roman. Our modern 
 sages may laugh at this plebeian wish of mine to 
 make my peace with Heaven ; but I have never been 
 able to dissociate philosophy from religion. Satisfied 
 to remain a little child before the mysteries of faith, 
 I do not envy wise men in their disengagement from 
 spiritual terrors. 
 
 The chief physician, Danieli, a man of prodigious 
 corpulence and blackness, who had been sent to my 
 assistance by the Governor, spared no attentions and 
 no remedies. As usual, they proved unavailing ; 
 and he bade me prepare myself for death by receiving 
 the holy sacrament. I summoned what remained to 
 me of vital force, and went through this ceremony 
 with devotion. There seemed to be so little differ- 
 ence between a sepulchre and the room in which my 
 body lay, that I felt no disgust at relinquishing my 
 corpse to the grave-diggers. I was now ready for the 
 
RECOVERY. 223 
 
 last unction, when an attack of hemorrhage from the 
 nostrils, like those which had already nearly brought 
 me to death's door, recalled me for the nonce to 
 life. All the ordinary remedies — ligatures, powders, 
 herbs, astringent plasters, sympathetic stones, mut- 
 tered charms, old wives' talismans — were exhibited 
 in vain. After filling two basons with blood, I lapsed 
 into a profound swoon, which the doctor styled a 
 syncope. To all appearances I was dead ; but the 
 blood stopped ; in a quarter of an hour I revived ; and 
 three days afterwards I found myself, weak indeed, 
 but wholly free from fever and on the road to re- 
 covery. My ignorance could not reconcile this 
 salutary crisis with Danieli's absolute prohibition of 
 blood-letting in my malady. But I suppose that 
 a score of learned physicians, each of them upon 
 a different system of hypotheses, conjectures, well- 
 based calculations, and trains of lucid argument, 
 would be able to demonstrate the phenomenon to 
 their own satisfaction and to the illumination or 
 confusion of my stupid brain. Stupendous indeed 
 are the mental powers which Almighty God has 
 bestowed on men ! 
 
 The readers of these Memoirs will hardly need to 
 be informed that my slender purse had nothing in 
 it at the termination of this illness. Under these 
 painful circumstances I found a cordial and open- 
 hearted friend in Signor Innocenzio Massimo, noble- 
 man of Padua, and captain of halbardiers at the 
 
224 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Dalmatian Court. This excellent gentleman, of rare 
 distinction for his mental parts, the quickness of his 
 spirit, his courage, energy, and honour, was the only 
 intimate friend whom I possessed during my three 
 years' absence from home. When they were over, 
 our friendship continued undiminished by lapse of 
 time, distance, and the various vicissitudes of life. 
 I have enjoyed it through thirty-five years, and am 
 sure that it will never fail me. Some qualities of his 
 character have exposed him to enmity ; among these 
 I may mention a particular sensitiveness to affronts, 
 an intolerance of attempts to deceive him, and a 
 quick perception of fraud, together with a firm resolve 
 to stem the tide of extravagance and fashionable 
 waste in his own family. His many virtues, the 
 decent comfort of his household, his hospitality to 
 friends and acquaintances, his careful provision for 
 the well-being of his posterity, his benevolence to 
 the poor and afflicted, his successful efforts as a 
 peacemaker among discordant fellow-citizens, his ex- 
 penditure of time and trouble upon all who come to 
 him for advice or assistance, have not sufficed to dis- 
 arm the malignity of a vulgar crowd, corrupted by 
 the false philosophy of our century, which goes from 
 bad to worse in dissolution and ill manners. 
 
A POLITIC DEVICE. 225 
 
 VI. 
 
 Short Studies in the Science of Fortification and Military 
 Exercises. — Some Reflections which will pass for Foolishness. 
 
 On the restoration of my health, his Excellency 
 placed me under Cavaliere Marchiori, Lieutenant- 
 Colonel of Engineers, to learn mathematics as applied 
 to fortification. This gentleman sent for me, and said 
 that he had heard from my uncle of my aptitude for 
 study, adding that the subject he proposed to teach 
 me was of the greatest consequence to a soldier. I 
 perceived at once that I was being treated on a 
 different footing from the other volunteers, and that 
 the studied forgetfulness of the Provveditore had 
 been, as I suspected, a politic device to humble am- 
 bitious schemers. I thanked Signor Marchiori, and 
 followed his instructions with pleasure, without how- 
 ever abandoning my own interest in literature. 
 
 He questioned me regarding my knowledge of 
 arithmetic, which was only elementary ; and when I 
 saw that I must master it, in order to pursue the 
 higher branch of study, I gave my whole head to the 
 business. In the space of a month, I could cipher 
 like a money-lender, and was ready to receive my 
 master's teaching. My friend Massimo possessed 
 a good collection of instruments for engineering 
 
 vol. 1. p 
 
226 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 draughtsmanship, and a library of French works on 
 geometry, mathematics, and fortification, both of 
 which he placed at my disposal. Signor Marchiori's 
 lectures, long discussions with Signor Massimo, per- 
 usal of Euclid, Archimedes, and the French books, 
 soon plunged me in the lore of points and lines and 
 calculations. I burned with the enthusiasm, droll 
 enough to my way of looking at the world, which in- 
 spires all students of this science. Yet I did not, like 
 them, regard moral philosophy and humane literature 
 as insignificant frivolities. I bore in mind for what 
 good reasons the Emperor Vespasian dismissed the 
 mathematicians who offered their assistance in the 
 building of his Roman edifices. I knew that in- 
 numerable vessels, fabricated on the principles of 
 science, have perished miserably in the tempests ; 
 that hundreds of fortresses, built by science, have 
 been destroyed and captured by the same science ; 
 that inundations are continually sweeping away 
 the dykes erected by science, to the ruin of thou- 
 sands of families, and that the inundations them- 
 selves are attributable to the admired masterpieces 
 of science bequeathed to us by former generations ; 
 that, in spite of science and her creative energy, 
 the buildings she erects are not secured from 
 earthquakes, conflagrations, and the thunderbolt. 
 It remains to be seen whether Professor Toaldo's 
 lightning-conductors will prove effectual against the 
 last of these disasters. Then I reckoned up the 
 
MILITARY STUDIES. 227 
 
 blessings and curses which this vaunted science has 
 conferred on humanity, arriving at the conclusion 
 that the harm which she has done infinitely exceeds 
 the good. I shuddered at the hundreds of thousands 
 of human beings ingeniously massacred in war or 
 drowned at sea by her devices ; and took more pleasure 
 in consulting my watch, her wise invention, for the 
 dinner-hour than at the hour of keeping an appoint- 
 ment with my lawyer. Without denying the utility 
 of sciences, I stuck resolutely to the opinion that 
 moral philosophy is of more importance to the human 
 race than mechanical inventions, and deplored the 
 pernicious influence of modern Lyceums and Poly- 
 technic schools upon the mind of Europe. 
 
 Signor Massimo and I kept house together in a 
 little dwelling on the city walls, facing the sea. The 
 sun, in his daily revolutions, struck this habitation 
 on every side ; and there was not an open space of 
 wall or window-sill without its dial, fabricated by 
 my skill, and adorned with appropriate but useless 
 mottoes on the flight of time. A lieutenant named 
 Giovanni Apergi, upright and pious, especially when 
 the gout he had acquired in the world's pleasures 
 made him turn his thoughts to Heaven, gave me 
 friendly lessons in military drill. I soon learned to 
 handle my musket, pike, and ensign ; and sweated a 
 shirt daily, fencing with Massimo, who was ferociously 
 expert in that fiendish but gentlemanly art. We 
 also spent some hours together over a great chess- 
 
228 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 board of his, covered with wooden soldiers, which 
 we moved from square to square, forming squadrons, 
 and studying the combinations which enable armies to 
 kill with prodigality and to be killed with parsimony, 
 — fitting ourselves, in short, for manuring cemeteries 
 in the most approved style. 
 
 I was already half a soldier, and meant to make 
 myself perfect in my profession ; not, however, with- 
 out a firm resolve to quit the army x at the expiration 
 of my three years' service. Twelve months spent 
 in studying my comrades convinced me that, though 
 some worthy fellows might be found among them, 
 their society as a whole was uncongenial to my 
 tastes. I had neither the ambition nor the greed of 
 gain which might have sapped this resolution ; and 
 my persistence during the appointed time was mainly 
 due to a dislike of seeming fickle. I wanted to gain 
 the respect of my relatives, whom I hoped to help 
 one day with my counsel, my credit, and the example 
 of my perseverance. 
 
 After eight months spent in the study of fortifica- 
 tion, I lost my poor master. He died suddenly of a 
 fit of spleen a few days after winning his company 
 in a regiment called Lagarde. This promotion he 
 
 1 This word is in the Italian armata. The armata, to which Gozzi 
 belonged, was properly an armament of mixed naval and military forces, 
 and armata would naturally be translated " navy." He was attached to 
 it, however, in the quality of soldier, and was eligible (as we shall after- 
 wards see) for transfer into the land forces of the State in Lombardy. 
 Thus he belonged to the Venetian army. 
 
ARMS AND LETTERS. 229 
 
 obtained by competition ; and some insulting words 
 dropped upon the occasion, which he was unable to 
 resent, caused his mortal illness. Every one deplored 
 the death of Marchiori ; but no one more than I 
 did. His goodness, sweetness, affability, and friendly 
 patience left a powerful impression on my memory. 
 Gradually my interest in geometry declined, and I 
 resumed my former studies with fresh ardour, attend- 
 ing meanwhile to my military duties, and waiting 
 philosophically till the three years should be over. 
 
 VII. 
 
 This Chapter proves that Poetry is not as use/ess as people 
 commonly imagine. 
 
 I am bound to confess that my weakness for poetry 
 and Italian literature was great. In the Venetian 
 service, and particularly in Dalmatia, there were very 
 few indeed who shared these tastes. I wrote and 
 read my compositions to myself, without seeking the 
 applause of an audience or boring my neighbours 
 with things they do not care for, as is the wont of 
 most scribblers. 
 
 The secretary of the Generalate, Signor Giovanni 
 Colombo, took some interest in literature. I may 
 mention, by the way, that he afterwards rose to high 
 dignity, which involved a calamity for him, sweetened, 
 
2 3 o MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 however, by a splendid funeral ; in other words, he 
 died Grand Chancellor of our most serene Bepublic. 1 
 This man, of gentle spirit and jovial temper, know- 
 ing the epidemic of poetry which possessed the 
 Gozzi family, encouraged me to read him some of 
 my trifles, and seemed to take pleasure in listening 
 to them. He owned a small but well-chosen library, 
 which he courteously allowed me to use. My verses, 
 satirical for the most part and descriptive of cha- 
 racters — without scurrility indeed, though based on 
 accurate observation of both sexes — were communi- 
 cated to him and Massimo alone. 
 
 The town of Zara was bent on testifying its respect 
 for our Provveditore Generale Quirini by a grand 
 public display. A large hall of wood was accordingly 
 erected on the open space before the fort, and hung 
 with fine damask. Tickets of invitation were then dis- 
 tributed to various persons, who were to compose an 
 Academy upon the day of the solemnity. Every acade- 
 mician had to recite two compositions in prose or 
 verse, as he thought fit. The subjects were set forth 
 on the tickets, and were as follows : — First, Is a 
 prince who preserves, defends, and improves his 
 dominions in peace, more praiseworthy than one 
 
 1 This was the highest office in the State to which a cittadino could 
 aspire. It conferred the rank of cavaliere. The Grand Chancellor 
 could open public despatches ; he attended the sittings of the Grand 
 Council and the Senate, but without a vote, and was the official chief 
 of all the civil servants. 
 
IMPROVISED ACADEMY. 231 
 
 who seeks to extend them by force of arms ? The 
 second was to be a panegyric of the Provveditore 
 Generale. An old nobleman of Zara, named Giovanni 
 Pellegrini, was chosen to preside in the Academy 
 and to dispense the invitations. He wore a black 
 velvet suit and a huge blonde wig, done up into 
 knotted curls, and possessed a fund of eloquence in 
 the style of Father Casimir Frescot. 1 
 
 I did not receive an invitation, which proves either 
 that I was an amateur of poetry unknown to fame, or 
 that Signor Pellegrini, in his gravity and wisdom, 
 judged me a mere boy, unworthy of consideration in 
 an enterprise which he treated with true Illyrico- 
 Italian seriousness. Signor Colombo and my friend 
 Massimo urged me to prepare two compositions on 
 the published themes ; but I reminded them that I 
 had no right to appear uninvited. Nevertheless, I 
 amused myself by scribbling a couple of sonnets, 
 which I consigned to the bottom of my pocket. 
 As may be imagined, I defended peace in the one, 
 and did my best to belaud his Excellency in the 
 other. 
 
 The Provveditore Generale, attended by his officers 
 and by the magnates of the city, entered the tempo- 
 rary hall, and took his seat upon a rich fauteuil 
 raised many steps above the ground. A covey of 
 literary celebrities, collected Heaven knows where, 
 
 1 Probably Freschot, the author of several works on Venice, a French- 
 man by birth. 
 
232 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 ranged their learned backs along a row of chairs, 
 which formed a semicircle round him. 
 
 Strolling outside the damasked tabernacle, I saw 
 some servants who were preparing beverages and 
 refreshments with a mighty bustle. I was thirsty, 
 and thought I should not be committing a crime if I 
 asked one of them for a lemonade. He replied that 
 express orders had been given not to quench the 
 thirst of anybody who was not a member of the 
 Academy. This discourteous rebuff, repeated to 
 the sitio of several officers, raised a spirit of silent 
 revolt among us. I resolved to put a bold face on 
 the matter, and to proclaim myself an academician, 
 thinking that the title of poet might win for me 
 the lemonade which was denied to the dignity and 
 the weapons of an officer. 
 
 This little incident confirmed my opinion of the 
 usefulness of poetry against the universal judgment 
 which regards it as an inutility. Poetry stood me 
 in good stead by procuring me a lemonade and sav- 
 ing me from dying of thirst. Having swallowed the 
 beverage, I proceeded to one of the seats in the 
 assembly, exciting some surprise among its members, 
 who were, however, kind enough to tolerate my 
 presence. For three whole hours the air resounded 
 with long inflated erudite orations and poems not 
 remarkable for sweetness. A yawn from the General 
 now and then did honour to the Academy and the 
 academicians. I must in justice say that some toler- 
 
A SONNET'S LUCK. 233 
 
 able compositions, superior to what I had expected, 
 struck my ears. A young abbd in holy orders 
 gushed with poetic eloquence. I have heard that 
 he is now become a bishop. Who knows whether 
 poetry was not as serviceable to him in the matter 
 of his mitre, as she was to me in the matter of my 
 lemonade ! 
 
 I declaimed my sonnets in their turn ; the second 
 of which, by Apollo's blessing, pleased his Excellency, 
 and consequently was received with general approval. 
 It established my reputation among the folk of Zara, 
 and led to a comic scene two days later. The Prov- 
 veditore Generale was in the habit of riding in the 
 cool some four or five miles outside the city ; a troop 
 of officers galloped at his heels, and I galloped with 
 them. While we were amusing ourselves in this 
 way, his Excellency took a fancy to hear my sonnet 
 over again ; for it had now become famous, as often 
 happens with trifles, which go the round of society 
 upon the strength of adventitious circumstances. 
 He called me loudly. I put spurs to my horse, 
 while he, still galloping, ordered me to recite. I do 
 not think a sonnet was ever declaimed in like man- 
 ner since the creation of the world. Galloping after 
 the great man, and almost bursting my lungs in the 
 effort to make myself heard, with all the trills, gasps, 
 cadences, semitones, clippings of words, and dis- 
 sonances, which the movement of a horse at full speed 
 could occasion, I recited the sonnet in a storm of sobs 
 
234 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 and sighs, and blessed my stars when I had pumped 
 out the fourteenth line. Knowing the temper of the 
 General, who was haughty and formidable in matters 
 of importance, but sometimes whimsical in his diver- 
 sions, I thought at the time that he must have been 
 seeking a motive for laughter. And indeed, I believe 
 this was the case. Anyhow, he can only have been 
 deceived if he hoped to laugh more at the affair than 
 I did. Yet I was rather afraid of becoming a laughing- 
 stock to my riding-companions also. Foolish fear ! 
 These honest fellows, like true courtiers, vied with 
 each other in congratulating me upon the partiality 
 of his Excellency and the honour he had done me. 
 They were even jealous of a burlesque scene in 
 which I played the buffoon, and sorry that they had 
 not enjoyed the luck of performing it themselves. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Confirmation of a hint I gave in the Second Chapter of these 
 Memoirs relating to a great danger which I ran. 
 
 I related in the second chapter of this book that 
 I once owed my life to a trick taught me by a jockey. 
 The incident happened during one of our cavalcades 
 with the Provveditore Generale. 
 
 At the hour appointed for riding out, all the officers 
 of the Court sent their saddles and bridles to the 
 
ADVENTURE ON HORSEBACK. 235 
 
 General's stables, and each of us mounted the animal 
 which happened to be harnessed with his own gear. 
 Now the Bashaw of Bosnia had presented the gover- 
 nor with a certain Turkish stallion, finely made, but so 
 vicious that no one liked to back the brute. One day 
 I noticed that the grooms had saddled this untamable 
 Turk for me. Who knows what motives determine 
 the acts of stable-boys ? I am not accustomed to 
 be easily dismayed ; besides, I had ridden many 
 dangerous horses in my time, and this was not the 
 minute to show the white feather before a crowd 
 of soldiers. I leapt upon the animal like an antique 
 paladin, without looking to see whether the bit and 
 trappings were in order. Our troops started ; but 
 my Bucephalus reared, whirled round in the air, and 
 bolted toward his stable, which lay below the ram- 
 parts. Pulling and working at the reins had no 
 effect upon the brute ; and when I bent down to 
 discover the cause, I found that the bit had not been 
 fastened, either through the negligence or the malice 
 of the grooms. 
 
 Rushing at the mercy of this demon through the 
 narrow streets and low doors of the city, I began to 
 reflect that I was not likely to reach the stables with 
 my head upon my shoulders. Then I remembered 
 the jockey's advice, and rising in my stirrups, leaned 
 forwards, and stuck my fingers into the two eyes of 
 the stallion. Suddenly deprived of sight, and not 
 knowiug whither he was going, he dashed furiously 
 
236 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 up against a wall, and fell all of a heap beneath me. 
 I leapt to earth with the agility of a practised rider, 
 and made the Turk get up ; he was trembling like 
 a leaf, while I with shaky fingers fastened the bit 
 firmly ; then I mounted again, and rejoined my 
 company among the shouts of applause which always 
 greet dare-devil escapades of this kind. The middle 
 finger of my left hand had been flayed by striking 
 against the wall. I still bear the scar of this glori- 
 ous wound. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Little incidents, trifling observations, moral reflections of no 
 value, gossip which is sure to make the reader yawn. 
 
 Our forces had little to occupy them in those pro- 
 vinces, so that my sonnet in praise of peace exactly 
 fitted. Some interesting incidents, and several jour- 
 neys which I undertook, furnished me, however, with 
 abundant matter for reflection. I shall here indulge 
 myself by setting down a few observations which 
 occur to my memory. 
 
 The regular troops which garrison the fortresses of 
 Dalmatia had been recalled to Italy, in order to defend 
 the neutrality of Venice during the wars which then 
 prevailed among her neighbours. In these circum- 
 stances the Senate commissioned our Provveditore 
 General e to levy new forces from the subject tribes, 
 
THE MORLACCHI. 237 
 
 not only for maintaining the military establishment 
 of Dalmatia. but also for drafting a large number of 
 Morlacchi 1 into Italy. It was a matter of no diffi- 
 culty to enrol garrisons for the Illyrian fortresses ; but 
 the exportation of the Morlacchi cost his Excellency 
 the greatest trouble. These ruffianly wild beasts, 
 wholly destitute of education, are aware that they 
 are subjects of Venice ; yet their firm resolve is to 
 indulge lawless instincts for robbery and murder as 
 they list, refusing obedience in all things which do 
 not suit their inclinations. To reason with them is 
 the same as talking in a whisper to the deaf. They 
 simply resisted the command to form themselves 
 into a troop and leave their lairs for Italy. 
 
 Their chiefs, who were educated men, brave and 
 loyal to their prince, strained every nerve to carry 
 out these orders. It was found needful to recall the 
 bandits, who swarm throughout those regions, out- 
 lawed for every sort of crime — robberies, homicides, 
 arson, and such-like acts of heroism. Bribes too 
 were offered of bounties and advanced pay, in order 
 to induce the wild and stubborn peasants to cross 
 the seas. I was present at the review of these Anthro- 
 pophagi ; for indeed they hardly merited a more civi- 
 lised title. It took place on the beach of Zara under 
 the eyes of the Proweditore, with ships under sail, 
 ready for the embarkation of the conscripts. Pair 
 
 1 The native Dalmatians of Slav origin, inhabiting the inland villages 
 and country districts, were called by this name. 
 
238 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 by pair, they came up and received their stipend ; 
 upon which they expressed their joy by howling out 
 some barbarous chant, and dancing off together with 
 uncouth gambols to the transport ships. I revered 
 God's handiwork in these savages while deploring 
 their bad education, and felt a passing wish to explore 
 the Eden of eternal beatitude in which the Morlacchi 
 dwell. 
 
 It is certain that the Italian cities under our be- 
 nign government were more disturbed than guarded 
 by these brutal creatures. At Verona, in particular, 
 they indulged their appetite for thieving, murdering, 
 brawling, and defying discipline, without the least 
 regard for orders. At the close of a few months, they 
 had to be sent back to their caves, in order to deliver 
 the Veneto from an unbearable incubus. Even at 
 the outset, their spirit of insubordination let itself 
 be felt. Scarcely had the transports sailed, when 
 the sight of the Illyrian mountains made them 
 burn to leap on shore. The seamen did their best 
 to restrain the unruly crew ; but finding that they 
 ran a risk of being cut in pieces, they finally un- 
 barred the pens before this indomitable flock of 
 rams. 
 
 What I am now writing may seem to have little 
 to do with the narrative of my own life, and may 
 look as though I wished to calumniate the natives 
 of Dalmatia. The rulers of those territories will, 
 however, bear me out in the following remarks. I 
 
DALMATIAN CUSTOMS. 239 
 
 have visited all the fortresses, many districts, and 
 many villages of the two provinces. In some 
 of the cities I found well-educated people, trust- 
 worthy, cordial, and liberal in sentiment. In places 
 far removed from the Provveditore Generale's Court 
 the manners of the population are incredibly rough. 
 All the peasants may be described as cruel, supersti- 
 tious, and irrational wild beasts. In their marriages, 
 their funerals, their games, they preserve the cus- 
 toms of pagan antiquity. Heading Homer and Virgil 
 gives a perfect conception of the Morlacchi. They 
 hire a troop of women to lament over their dead. 
 These professional mourners shriek by turns, reliev- 
 ing one another when voice and throat have been 
 exhausted by dismal wailings tuned to a music which 
 inspires terror. One of their pastimes is to balance 
 a heavy piece of marble on the lifted palm of the 
 right hand, and hurl it after taking a running jump. 
 The fellow who projects this missile in a straight 
 line to the greatest distance, wins. One is reminded 
 of the enormous boulders hurled by Diomede and 
 Turnus. 
 
 In their mountain homes the Morlacchi are fine 
 fellows, useful to the State of Venice on occasions 
 of war with the Turks, their neighbours, whom they 
 cordially detest. The inhabitants of the coast make 
 bold seamen, apt for fighting on the waters. Toward 
 Montenegro the tribes become even more like 
 savages. Families, who have been accustomed for 
 
2 4 o MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 some generations to die peaceably in their beds or 
 kennels, and cannot boast of a fair number of mur- 
 dered ancestors, are looked down upon by the rest. 
 On the beach outside the city walls of Budua, for 
 which these men and brothers leave their hills in 
 summer-time to taste the coolness of sea-breezes, I 
 have witnessed their exploits with the musket and 
 have seen three corpses stretched upon the sands. A 
 member of one of the pacific families I have de- 
 scribed, being taunted by some comrade, burned to 
 wipe out the shame of his kindred, and opened a 
 glorious chapter in their annals by slaughtering and 
 being slaughtered. Fierce battles and armed en- 
 counters between village and village are frequent 
 enough in those parts. The men of one village who 
 kill a man of the next village, have no peace unless 
 they pay a hundred sequins or discharge their debt 
 by the death of one of their own folk. Such is the 
 current tariff, fixed without consulting their sove- 
 reign, among these people, who regard brutality as 
 justice. I learned much about these traits of human 
 nature from a village priest of Montenegro, who 
 conversed with me nearly every day upon the beach 
 at Budua. He talked a strange Italian jargon, 
 narrated the homicides of his flock with compla- 
 cency, and let it be understood that a gun was 
 better suited to his handling than the vessels of 
 the sanctuary. 
 
 The thirst for vengeance is never slaked there. 
 
CUSTOMS OF MONTENEGRO. 241 
 
 It passes from heir to heir like an estate in tail. 
 Among the Morlacchi, who are less bloodthirsty than 
 the Montenegrins, I once saw a woman of some fifty 
 years fling herself at the feet of the Proyyeditore 
 Generale, extract a mummied head from a game-bag, 
 and cast it on the ground before him, weeping as 
 though her heart would burst, and calling aloud for 
 pity and justice. For thirty years she had preserved 
 this skull, the skull of her mother, who had been 
 murdered. The assassins had long ago been brought 
 to justice, but their punishment was insufficient to 
 lay the demon of ferocity in this affectionate daughter. 
 Accordingly, she presented herself indefatigably 
 through a course of thirty years before each of the suc- 
 cessive Provveditori Generali, with the same maternal 
 skull in her game-bag, with the same shrieks and tears 
 and cries for justice. 
 
 I liked seeing the Montenegrin women. They 
 clothe themselves in black woollen stuffs after a 
 fashion which was certainly not invented by coquetry. 
 Their hair is parted, and falls over their cheeks on 
 either shoulder, thickly plastered with butter, so as 
 to form a kind of large shiny bonnet. They bear 
 the burden of the hard work of the field and house- 
 hold. The wives are little better than slaves of the 
 men. They kneel and kiss the men's hands when- 
 ever they meet ; and yet they seem to be contented 
 with their lot. Perhaps it would not be amiss if 
 
 some Montenegrins came to Italy and changed our 
 vol. 1. o 
 
242 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 fashions with regard to women ; for ours are some- 
 what too marked in the contrary direction. 
 
 Climate renders both the men and women of 
 those provinces extremely prone to sensuality. Legis- 
 lators, recognising the impossibility of controlling 
 lawless lust here, have fixed the fine for seduction of 
 a girl with violence at a trifle above the sum which 
 a libertine in Venice bestows on the purveyor of his 
 venal pleasures. At the period of my residence in 
 Dalmatia, the cities retained something of antique 
 austerity. This did not, however, prevent the fair 
 sex from conducting intrigues by stealth. It is 
 possible that, since those days, enlightened and 
 philosophical Italians, composing the courts of suc- 
 cessive Provveditori Generali, may have removed 
 the last obstacles of prejudice which gave a spice of 
 danger to love-making. 
 
 In Dalmatia the women are handsome, inclining 
 for the most part toward a masculine robustness ; 
 among the Morlacchi of the villages, a Pygmalion 
 who chose to expend some bushels of sand in polish- 
 ing the fair sex up, would obtain fine breathing 
 statues for his pains. These women of Illyria are 
 less constant in their love than those of Italy ; but 
 merit less blame for their infidelity than the latter. 
 The Illyrian is blinded and constrained by her fer- 
 vent temperament, by the climate, by poverty and 
 credulity ; the Italian errs through ambition, avarice, 
 and caprice. I consider myself qualified for speaking 
 
AGRICULTURE. 243 
 
 with decision on these points, as will appear from 
 the chapter I intend to write upon the love-adven- 
 tures of my youth. 
 
 The land of those provinces is in great measure 
 mountainous, stony, and barren. There are, however, 
 large districts of plain which might be extremely fertile. 
 Neither the sterile nor the fertile regions are under 
 cultivation, but remain for the most part fallow and 
 unfruitful. Onions and garlic constitute the favourite 
 delicacies of the Morlacchi. The annual consump- 
 tion of these vegetables is enormous ; and it would 
 not be difficult to raise a large supply of both at 
 home. They insist, however, on importing them 
 from Eomagna ; and when one takes the peasants to 
 task for this sluggish indifference to their own inte- 
 rests, they reply that their ancestors never planted 
 onions, and that they have no mind to change their 
 customs. I often questioned educated inhabitants 
 of those regions upon the indolence and sloth which 
 prevail in rural Dalmatia. The answer I received 
 was that nobody, without exposing his life to peril, 
 could make the Morlacchi do more than they chose 
 to do, or introduce the least reform into their agricul- 
 ture. I observed that the proprietors might always 
 import Italian labour and turn those fertile plains 
 into a second Apulia. This remark was met with 
 bursts of laughter ; and when I asked the reason, 
 my informants told me that many Dalmatian gentle- 
 men had brought Italian peasants over, but that a 
 
244 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 few days after their arrival, they were found murdered 
 in the fields, without the assassins having ever been 
 detected. I perceived that my project was impracti- 
 cable. Yet I wondered at my friends laughing 
 rather than shedding tears, when they gave me these 
 convincing answers. 
 
 It is a pity that Illyria and Dalmatia cannot be 
 rendered fertile and profitable to the State. As it is, 
 they cost our treasury more than they yield, through 
 the expenses incidental to their forming our frontier 
 against Turkey. But I never made it my business 
 to meddle in affairs of public policy ; and perhaps 
 there are good reasons why these provinces should 
 be left to their sterility. The opinion I have con- 
 tinually maintained and published, that we ought 
 to begin by cultivating heads and hearts, has raised 
 a swarm of hostile projectors against me. Such men 
 take the truths of the gospel for biting satires, if they 
 detect the least shadow of opposition to their views 
 regarding personal interest, personal ambition, or 
 particular prejudice. Yet the real miseries which I 
 noticed in Dalmatia, the wretched pittance which 
 proprietors draw from their estates, and the dis- 
 honesty of the peasants, suffice to demonstrate my 
 principles of moral education beyond the possibility 
 of contradiction. 
 
 During my three years in Dalmatia I used to eat 
 superb game and magnificent fish for a mere nothing ; 
 often against my inclination, and only because the 
 
MORAL EDUCATION. 245 
 
 opportunity could not be neglected. When you are 
 in want of something, you rarely find it there. The 
 fishermen, who live upon the rocky islands, 1 ply their 
 trade when it pleases them. They take no thought 
 for fasts, and sell fish for the most part on days when 
 flesh is eaten. The fish too is brought to market 
 stuffed into sacks. I could multiply these observa- 
 tions ; but let what I have already said suffice. It 
 is my firm opinion that the economists of our century 
 are at fault when they propose material improvements 
 and indulge in visions of opulence and gain, without 
 considering moral education. Wealth is now re- 
 garded by the indigent with eyes of envy and the 
 passions of a pirate ; rich people act as though they 
 knew not what it was to possess wealth, and make a 
 shameless abuse of it in practice. The one class 
 need to learn temperance, moderation, and obedience 
 to duty ; the other ought to be trained to reason and 
 subordination. The sages of the present day enter- 
 tain very different views from these. In their eyes 
 nothing but material interest has any value ; and 
 instead of deploring bad morals and manners, they 
 seem to glory in them. 
 
 1 Scogli. A long low island opposite the harbour of Zara is so called. 
 
246 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 X. 
 
 / am enrolled in the Cavalry of the Republic. — What my 
 military services amounted to. 
 
 Some fifteen months of my three years' service had 
 elapsed, when the recall of our regular troops and 
 the enrolment of fresh forces in Dalmatia, which 
 have been described by me above, took place. I 
 have now to mention that the Provveditore Generale 
 chose this moment for placing me upon the roll of 
 the Venetian service. 
 
 He had me inscribed as a cadet noble 1 of cavalry. 
 Accordingly I blossomed out into a proper soldier at 
 the age of about eighteen. Signor Giorgio Barbarigo, 
 the paymaster, 2 a short, fat, honest fellow, informed 
 me that my commission was registered, and that I 
 was qualified to draw the salary of thirty-eight lire 
 in good Venetian coin monthly at his office. The 
 news surprised me, and I went at once to pay my 
 acknowledgments to his Excellency. 
 
 He told me that, nearly all the regular troops 
 having been recalled to Italy, he saw no prospect of 
 awarding me a higher rank during the term of his 
 
 1 This and other French terms show to what extent the military system 
 of Venice had been modernised. 
 
 2 Razionato. 
 
AN OFFICER'S DUTIES. 247 
 
 administration, a considerable part of which had 
 already elapsed. To this he added some ironical re- 
 marks to the following effect — "Although, indeed, I 
 do not think you mean to follow a military career, 
 having observed from many points in your behaviour 
 that you are rather inclined to assume the clerical 
 habit." I chose to interpret the irony of my chief to 
 my advantage, and answered cheerfully that although 
 I felt little inclination for the military profession, 
 nothing would ever induce me to become an ecclesi- 
 astic ; meanwhile I was glad to have studied human 
 nature as one finds it in an army and in those pro- 
 vinces ; above all things, I recognised the advantage 
 of having been allowed to serve his Excellency during 
 the three years of his office. I perceived that this 
 reply had not been unacceptable, and retired after 
 making the regulation bow. 
 
 I discharged my military duties with punctuality ; 
 and if my courage had been put to the test, I feel 
 sure that I should have faced death with romantic 
 enthusiasm. Yet I cannot boast of having earned my 
 monthly pay by any particular services. In addition to 
 the daily and nightly routine of discipline, I attended 
 his Excellency upon visits of inspection by sea and 
 land to the various fortified places of the territory. 
 When the plague broke out, I spoiled my shirts and 
 ruffles in fumigating the mass of correspondence 
 which used to reach the Provveditore Generale from 
 infected villages. I delivered sentences of arrest by 
 
248 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 word of mouth to Venetian patricians, noblemen, 
 and officers — always much against the grain. I lay, 
 together with several of my comrades, under arrest 
 on a false charge of malpractice, and owed my libera- 
 tion after a few hours to the intercession of a gentle 
 lady of the Veniero family. While enumerating these 
 martial deserts, I ought not perhaps to include the 
 sufferings endured upon my journeys, whether riding 
 the worst of nags under a fierce sun and sleeping 
 in jackboots upon the open fields, or rocking at sea 
 all night aboard some galley on a coil of cable, half 
 devoured by myriads of bugs. Great as these suffer- 
 ings were, I must admit that I endured greater in 
 the disorderly garrison amusements which I joined 
 of my own accord. Some account of these I intend 
 to give in another chapter. 
 
 It will be observed that my services to the State 
 were but slender. Yet many men have gained pro- 
 motion or a pension on the strength of nothing 
 better. And now I think upon it, I will mention 
 one notable achievement, which, though it be not 
 martial, might have put some other soldier laddie in 
 the way of rising to his colonelcy. I hardly expect 
 to be believed, but I am telling the truth, when I 
 affirm that I acquired renown throughout Dalmatia 
 as a soubrette in improvised comedy upon the boards 
 of a theatre. 
 
THEATRICAL TALENTS. 249 
 
 XI. 
 
 My theatrical talents; athletic exercises; imprudences of all 
 kinds ; dangers to which I exposed myself ; with reflec- 
 tions which are always frivolous. 
 
 All through the carnival, tragedies, dramas and 
 comedies used to be performed by amateurs in the 
 Court-theatre, for the amusement of his Excellency, 
 the patricians on the civil staff, officers of the garrison, 
 and the good folk of Zara. 1 
 
 Our troop was composed exclusively of male 
 actors, as is the case in general with unprofessional 
 theatres ; and young men, dressed like women, played 
 the female parts. I was selected to represent the 
 soubrette. 
 
 On weighing the tastes of my audience, and 
 taking into account the nation for whom I was to 
 act, I invented a wholly new kind of character. I 
 had myself dressed like a Dalmatian servant-girl, 
 with hair divided at the temples, and done up with 
 rose-coloured ribbands. My costume corresponded 
 at all points to that of a coquettish housemaid of 
 
 1 This chapter will be read with interest by students of the Commedia 
 dell' Arte. It throws light upon the way in which an actor of origi- 
 nality could adapt one of the fixed characters of that comedy, in this 
 case the servetta, to his own talents and to local circumstances. 
 
250 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Sebenico. I discarded the Tuscan dialect, which is 
 spoken by the soubrettes of our theatres in Italy, and 
 having learned Illyrian pretty well by this time, I 
 devised for my particular use a jargon of Venetian, 
 altering the pronunciation and interspersing various 
 Illyrian phrases. This produced a very humorous 
 effect, and lent itself both in dialogue and impro- 
 vised soliloquies to the expression of sentiments in 
 keeping with my part. Courage and loquacity were 
 always at my service ; after studying the plot of a 
 comedy, which had to be performed extempore, I 
 never found my readiness of wit at fault. Accord- 
 ingly, the new and unexpected type of the soubrette 
 which I invented was welcomed with enthusiasm 
 alike by Italians and natives. It created & furore in 
 my audience, and won for me universal sympathy. 
 
 My sketches of Dalmatian manners studied from the 
 life, my satirical repartees to the mistresses I served, 
 my piquant sallies upon incidents which formed the 
 talk of town and garrison, my ostentatious modesty, 
 my snubs to impertinent admirers, my reflections 
 and my lamentations, made the Provveditore Generale 
 and the whole audience declare with tears of laughter 
 running down their cheeks that I was the wittiest 
 and most humourous soubrette who ever trod the 
 boards of a theatre. They often bespoke improvised 
 comedies, in order to enjoy the amusing chatter and 
 Illyrico-Italian jargon of Luce ; for I ought to add 
 that I adopted this name, which is the same as 
 
THEATRICALS AT COURT. 251 
 
 our Lucia, instead of Srneraldina, Corallina, or 
 Colombina. 
 
 Ladies in plenty were eager to know the young 
 man who played Luce with such diablerie and ready 
 wit upon the stage. But when they met him face 
 to face in society, his reserve and taciturnity were so 
 unlike the sprightliness of his assumed character, that 
 they fairly lost their temper. Now that I am well 
 stricken in years, I recognise that their disappoint- 
 ment was anything bat a misfortune for me. The 
 conduct of those few who concealed their feelings 
 and pretended that my self-control and seriousness 
 had charms to win their heart, justifies this moral 
 reflection. Meanwhile my talent for comedy relieved 
 me of all military duties so long as carnival lasted. 
 Each year, at the commencement of this season, the 
 Provveditore Generale sent for me, and affably re- 
 quested me to devote my time and energy to his 
 amusement in the Court-theatre. 
 
 During summer he set the fashion of pallone- 
 playing, which had hitherto been unknown at Zara. 1 
 I had made myself an adept in this game at our Friu- 
 lian country-seat. Accordingly his Excellency urged 
 me to display my accomplishments for the entertain- 
 
 1 Pallone is a game played with a large leather ball, filled with air, 
 and something like our football. In Italy it is struck with the hand, 
 which is armed for the purpose with gloves or a flat short bat fixed on 
 the palm. Sides are chosen, and the game roughly resembles tennis on 
 a large scale. Pallone is the original of our balloon. 
 
252 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 merit of the public. In a short time my seductive 
 costume of fine white linen, with a waistband of 
 black satin and fluttering ribands, cut a prominent 
 figure among the competitors in this noble sport. My 
 turn for study, literary talent, grave demeanour, and 
 seriousness of character made far less impression on 
 the fair sex than my successes on the stage and the 
 pallone-ground. It was these and these alone which 
 put my chastity to the test and conquered it, as will 
 appear in the chapter on my love-adventures. I 
 might here indulge in a digression hardly flattering 
 to women. But I prefer to congratulate them on 
 their emancipation from the ideality of Petrarch's 
 age. Now they are at liberty to float voluptuously 
 on the tide of tender and electrical emotions, in 
 company with youths congenial to their instincts, 
 who have abandoned tedious studies for occupations 
 hardly more exacting than a game at ball or the im- 
 personation of a waiting-maid. 
 
 The truth of history compels me to touch upon 
 some incidents which put my boyish courage to the 
 proof; yet I must confess that my deeds of daring in 
 Dalmatia were nothing better than mad and brainless 
 acts of folly. While recording them, I dare hardly 
 hope — although I should sincerely like to do so — 
 that they will prove useful to parents by exposing 
 the kind of life which young men lead on foreign 
 service, or to sons by pointing out the errors of 
 my ways. 
 
GARRISON AMUSEMENTS. 253 
 
 We had no war on hand, and our valour was obliged 
 to find a vent for itself. I should have passed for a pol- 
 troon if I had not joined the amusements and adven- 
 tures of my comrades. These consisted for the most 
 part in frantic gambling, serenading houses which 
 returned our serenades with gunshots, entertaining 
 women of the town at balls and supper-parties, 
 brawling in the streets at night, disguising ourselves 
 
 O O 7 o o 
 
 to frighten people, and breaking the slumbers of the 
 good folk of the towns and fortresses where the 
 Court happened to be fixed. I remember that one 
 summer night in the city of Spalato, eight or ten of 
 us dressed up for the latter purpose. Each man put 
 on a couple of shirts, thrusting his legs through the 
 sleeves of one and his arms through the other, with a 
 big white bonnet on his head and a pole in his hand. 
 Thus attired, we scoured the town like spectres from 
 the other world, knocking at doors, uttering horrid 
 shrieks to rouse the population, and striking terror 
 into the breasts of women and children. Now it is 
 the custom there to leave the stable-doors open, 
 because of the great heat at night. Accordingly we 
 undid the halters of some fifty horses, and drove 
 them before us, clattering our staves upon the pave- 
 ment. The din was infernal. Folk leaped from 
 their beds, thinking that the Turks had made a raid 
 upon the town, and crying from their windows : 
 " Who the devil are you ? Who goes there ? Who 
 goes there 1 " They screamed to the deaf, while we 
 
254 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 went clattering and driving on. In the morning the 
 whole city was in an uproar, discussing last night's 
 prodigy and skurrying about to catch the frightened 
 animals. 
 
 My guitar- playing accomplishments made me indis- 
 pensable in these dare-devil escapades of hair-brained 
 boys, which by some miracle never seemed to reach the 
 Provveditore Generale's ears. Had they done so, I 
 suppose they would have been punished, as they de- 
 served ; for he was a man who knew how to maintain 
 discipline. The Italians and Illyrians do not dwell 
 together without a certain half-concealed antipathy. 
 This leads to frequent trials of strength and valour, 
 in which the Italians are most to blame. They insult 
 the natives and pick quarrels with a people famous 
 for their daring and ferocity. The courage displayed 
 in maintaining these quarrels and facing their atten- 
 dant dangers deserves the name of folly rather than 
 of bravery. After stating this truth, to which indeed 
 I was never blind, I dare affirm that no one met 
 musket-shots and menaces with a bolder front than 
 I did. Physicians versed in the anatomy of the 
 human frame may be able to explain my constitu- 
 tional imperturbability under all circumstances of 
 peril. I am content to account for it as sheer 
 stupidity. 
 
 We were at Buclua, toward Montenegro, my 
 friend Massimo and I. In this city women are 
 guarded with a watchful jealousy of which Italians 
 
A PRETTY QUARREL. 255 
 
 have no notion ; while homicides occur with facility 
 and frequency. Massimo began a gallant corre- 
 spondence from the window of our lodging with a 
 girl who was our neighbour. She belonged to one 
 of the noblest families of the place, and was engaged 
 to a gentleman of the city. Nevertheless, she re- 
 turned my friend's advances with the eagerness of 
 one who has been kept in slavery. I must add that 
 the future bridegroom obtained some inkling of this 
 aerial intrigue. He was a rough Illyrian of no breed- 
 ing. One morning this fellow opened conversation 
 with us officers in a little square, where we were 
 seated together on stone benches. With much 
 circumlocution and a kind of awkward sprightliness, 
 addressing himself to Massimo, and smiling half- 
 sourly and half-sillily, he expressed his own stupid 
 contempt for Italian customs with regard to women. 
 The long and the short of this involved discourse was 
 simply that all the men in Italy were cuckolds, and 
 all the women no better than they should be. Mas- 
 simo took care not to emphasise the meaning of the 
 fellow's innuendoes, which would have called for blood 
 and vengeance ; but contented himself with bluntly 
 defending our social institutions. In the course of his 
 argument he proved that the barbarity and tyranny 
 of men toward women, who are always sharp of wit 
 and full of cleverness in every climate, caused more 
 of immorality and intrigue in Illyria than freedom of 
 intercourse between the sexes caused in Italy. To 
 
256 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 my mind, he spoke what was partly true and partly 
 false ; for it cannot be maintained that the facilita- 
 tion and toleration of licentiousness remove it from 
 our midst. The Illyrian, however, lacked eloquence, 
 and felt ill at ease in carrying on a wordy warfare. 
 So he did not attempt to confute Massimo ; but 
 rolled his head and knit his brows, and told him that 
 he might soon be taught at his own cost how badly 
 the Italians conduct themselves in this respect. 
 
 Nothing more was wanted in the way of challenge 
 to set us Italians on our mettle. A trifle of this sort 
 turned us at once into knights-errant, championing 
 our nation's cause among half-savages, who murder 
 men with the same indifference as they kill quails 
 or fig-peckers. Massimo turned to me and said 
 that, when night fell, I must take my guitar and 
 follow him. Obeying the rash romantic impulse of 
 my heart, I replied that nothing should prevent me 
 from attending on him. The other Italians who 
 were present at this interview, with more prudence 
 than ourselves, affected to hear nothing. 
 
 It happened that a young Florentine named Stef- 
 fano Torri was at this time clerk in the secretary's 
 office of the Generalato. He played female parts in 
 our comedies and tragedies with much ability, and 
 sang like a nightingale. In order to give our noc- 
 turnal enterprise the character of a serenade — a thing 
 quite alien to the customs of that district — Massimo 
 invited this poor lad to warble, without informing 
 
IL CAPITANO (1668) 
 Illustrating the Italian Corn-media dell' Arte, or Impromptu Comedy 
 
A 
 
 V 
 
SERENADE AT BUDUA. 257 
 
 him of what had happened. He was only too glad 
 to let his fine voice be heard ; and being besides an 
 obliging creature, he gave his promise on the spot. 
 
 Night came. It was September ; the season warm, 
 and the moon shining brightly. We girt onr swords, 
 stuck a brace of pistols in our belts, and took up onr 
 station in the principal street, which was long and 
 straight, beneath the windows of Massimo's Dulcinea. 
 Torri sent melody after melody forth into the silent air, 
 while I twanged my guitar-strings for a good hour's 
 space. Suddenly a window, belonging to the mansion 
 we were honouring with our duet, flew violently open. 
 A great black head appeared, from which there issued 
 a hoarse voice like that of Charon in Dante's Inferno. 
 " What insolence ! " it uttered with a bad Italian 
 accent. We knew that the huge skull was consecrate, 
 and belonged to a certain Canon, uncle of the girl. 
 But something more was needed than the big bovine 
 voice of an ecclesiastic to disturb our tranquillity. 
 Torri, however, being a civilian and no soldier, began 
 to be aware that his melodious airs were out of place. 
 The prudence which is born of fear made him reflect 
 upon the situation, and he asked leave to retire. We 
 persuaded him to stay awhile, pointing out that the 
 street was public, that our amusement was lawful 
 and innocuous, and that it conferred an honour on 
 our nation. He resumed his singing ; but from this 
 moment the melodies had a certain quaver in them, 
 which the composer had not calculated. The first 
 
 vol. 1. R 
 
258 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 assault by the Canon was sustained and repulsed ; 
 for after roaring out " What insolence ! " three or 
 four times, he shut the window in our faces with a 
 crash. 
 
 The second attack upon our obstinacy was some- 
 thing very different and far more formidable than a 
 priest's voice, however horrible. It effectually shut 
 the mouth up of our young musician. By the light 
 of the moon we could discern six men at a distance 
 entering the street with six lowered and gleaming 
 muskets ; the cowls of their cloaks concealed their 
 faces, and they advanced at a slow pace toward us. 
 At this apparition our musician took to his heels, 
 and did not stop running till he reached his lodging. 
 Massimo and I stood our ground like Orlando and 
 E-odomonte. I went on playing ; my friend, to keep 
 the singing up, howled out some rustic ditties in a 
 bold voice, which was however, I am bound to say, 
 even less agreeable than the Canon's. His discords 
 were enough to cast eternal shame upon Italian 
 music ; and if the young lady heard them, they must 
 have frightened her out of her wits instead of giving 
 her the pleasure of a serenade. 
 
 Observing our determination to stand firm, the 
 six cowled men advanced to within twenty paces. 
 We heard the click of their six gunlocks, as they 
 cocked them, ready to give fire. At this point our 
 intrepidity deserved no other name than madness ; 
 it called for the lancet, hellebore, strait-jackets, a 
 
SEQUEL TO THE SERENADE. 259 
 
 good drubbing. Without budging an inch, we raised 
 our pistols at the muffled band. They looked at us, 
 we looked at them, for good two minutes. Then 
 they made their minds up to defile past, leaving us 
 at a little distance, but always keeping their eyes 
 fixed with a haughty defiance on our faces. We, on 
 our part, made our minds up to let them pass, return- 
 ing no less haughty glances. Perhaps they wished 
 to give us time for repentance, or for wholesome 
 reflections, which should make us quit our post. 
 Anyhow, they moved onward till they reached the 
 end of the street, when once again they turned and 
 faced us. 
 
 Little did those cowled and mantled fellows know 
 the length and breadth of our stupidity ! We recom- 
 menced our duet with a more hideous din than ever. 
 They retraced their steps, and advanced steadily 
 toward us. But when they found the pair of little 
 fighting-cocks still standing with raised pistols on 
 the watch, they judged it wiser to pursue their 
 course and disappear. The removal of the Court 
 from Budua, which took place one day after this 
 memorable exploit, probably saved us from being 
 shot down by an ambuscade. I also imagine that the 
 men only wished to frighten us away. Possibly our 
 expected departure from the city, or else respect for 
 our staff-uniform, restrained their fingers on the 
 trigger. Such considerations had certainly more 
 weight with those fierce natives than the insane 
 
2 6o MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 bravado of two insects armed with pistols. Anyhow, 
 I have always regarded our courage in this danger 
 as fool-hardiness rather than magnanimity. 
 
 I could relate an infinity of such adventures, in 
 all of which we risked our lives on some puerile 
 point of honour, or in pursuit of some impertinence 
 which called for castigation. One night at Spalato 
 our serenading party was welcomed with a storm of 
 heavy stones, which made us skip like kids, but 
 could not drive us from our post. We were paying 
 this compliment to a handsome girl of Ragusa, the 
 mistress of one of the chief nobles of the city, and 
 we maintained our station for the honour of Italy, 
 with skulls unbroken, till the day rose. 
 
 In the society of unemployed and lazy officers, a 
 young man may be said to have worked miracles 
 who preserves the good principles implanted in him 
 at home. Unless he conforms to the tone and 
 fashion of his comrades, he is sure to be derided and 
 despised. If he does conform, he is likely to lose 
 substance, health and reputation at cards, with 
 women, or by drinking. Besides this, he constantly 
 risks life and limb in the so-called pastimes I have 
 just described. 
 
 I am able to boast without exaggeration that I 
 never played for high stakes, that I never surrendered 
 myself to debauchery, that I preserved the sound 
 principles of my home education, and yet that I was 
 popular with all my comrades, owing to the clubbable 
 
FOOLHARDINESS AND COURAGE. 261 
 
 and fraternal attitude which I assumed at some risk, 
 it is true, yet always with the firm determination to 
 leave a good character behind me when my term of 
 service ended. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Shows how a young Cadet of Cavalry is capable of executing 
 a military stratagem. 
 
 Having described the dangers to which my system 
 of conduct in the army exposed me, I ought in justice 
 to myself to show that I was able on occasion to 
 reconcile our absurd code of honour with prudence 
 and diplomacy. With this object I will relate an 
 incident, which is neither more nor less insignificant 
 than the other events of my life. 
 
 The city of Zara is traversed by a main street of 
 considerable length, extending from the piazza of 
 San Simeone to the gate called Porta Marina. 
 Several lanes and alleys, leading downwards from the 
 ramparts on the side toward the sea, debouch into 
 this principal artery. It so happened that some of 
 the officers, wishing to traverse one of these lanes on 
 their way to the promenade upon the ramparts, had 
 been intercepted by a man muffled in a mantle, who 
 levelled an eloquent enormous blunderbuss at their 
 persons, and forced them to change their route. 
 This act of violence ought to have been reported to 
 
262 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 the Proweditore Generale, and he would have speedily 
 restored order and freedom of passage. Our military 
 code of honour, however, forbade recourse to justice 
 as an act of cowardice ; albeit some of my comrades 
 found it not derogatory to their courage to recoil 
 before a blunderbuss. 
 
 My readers ought to be informed that a girl of 
 the people, called Tonina, one of the loveliest women 
 whom eyes of man have ever seen, lived in this lane. 
 She had multitudes of admirers ; and the cozening 
 tricks she used to wheedle and entice a pack of 
 simpletons, made her no better than any other cheap 
 and venal beauty. Yet she contrived to sell her 
 favours by the sequin. A gentleman, whom I shall 
 mention lower down, was madly in love with this 
 little baggage. Wishing to keep the treasure to him- 
 self, he adopted a truly Dalmatian mode of testifying 
 his devotion, and stood sentinel in her alley. On 
 two consecutive evenings the passage was barred ; 
 we talked of nothing else in the ante-chamber of the 
 General, and laid plans how to reassert our honour. 
 A number of officers agreed to face the blunderbuss ; 
 I received an invitation to join the band ; and acting 
 on my system of good-fellowship, I readily consented. 
 
 Our discussion took place in the ante-chamber ; 
 silence was enjoined ; we settled that each of the 
 conspirators should wear a white ribband on his 
 hat, and that three hours after nightfall we should 
 assemble under arms at our accustomed mustering- 
 
ADVENTURE AT ZARA. 263 
 
 place. This was a billiard-saloon, whence we were 
 to sally forth to the assault of Buda. 
 
 An Illyrian nobleman, Signor Simeone C , of 
 
 handsome person, honourable carriage, and a resolute 
 temper, which inspired even soldiers with respect, 
 although he held no military grade, was sitting in a 
 corner of the ante-chamber, half-asleep, and appar- 
 ently inattentive to our project. I knew him to be 
 frank and genial, and he had often professed senti- 
 ments of sincere friendship for myself. After our 
 scheme had been concerted, I passed into the recep- 
 tion-room of the palace. He followed, and opened 
 a conversation on indifferent topics, in the course of 
 which he drew me aside, changed his tone, and 
 began to speak as follows : — 
 
 "The moment has arrived for me to testify the 
 cordial friendship which I entertain for you. I re- 
 gret that you have promised to join those fire-eaters 
 this evening. On your honour and secrecy I know 
 that I can count. I am sure that you will not reveal 
 what I am about to disclose ; else the higher powers, 
 whom we are bound to regard, might be involved, 
 and cowardice might be suspected in those whose 
 courage is indisputable. This preamble will enable 
 you to judge what I think of you, and to measure 
 the extent of my friendship. I am the man in the 
 mask. To-night there will be four blunderbusses in 
 the alley. I shall lose my life ; but several will lose 
 theirs before the lane is forced. I am sorry that you 
 
264 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 are in the affair. Contrive to get out of your engage- 
 ment. Let the rest come, and enjoy their fill of pas- 
 time at the cost of life or limb." 
 
 This blunderbuss of an oration took me by surprise. 
 But I did not lose my senses or my tongue, and 
 answered to the following effect : — 
 
 " I am amazed that you should have begun by 
 professing friendship and preaching caution. You 
 do not seem to understand the first elements of the 
 one or the simple meaning of the other. I am 
 obliged to you for one thing only, your belief that I 
 am incapable of divulging what you have just told 
 me. Upon this point alone your discernment is not 
 at fault. I would rather die than expose you. Yet 
 you want me, under threats, to break my word, and 
 to render myself contemptible in the eyes of all my 
 comrades. This you call a proof of friendship. It 
 is as clear as day, too, that you have yielded to a 
 hussy's importunities, risking your own life and the 
 lives of your friends upon a silly point of honour in a 
 shameful quarrel. This is the proof of your prudence. 
 If you withdraw from the engagement, no harm will 
 be done, and cowardice will only be imputed to a 
 nameless mask. But if I break my word, you cannot 
 free me from the imputation of having proved myself 
 a renegade and a dastard. I shall become an object 
 of scorn and abhorrence to the whole army. If I act 
 as you desire, my oath of secrecy to you will violate 
 the laws of friendship, prudence, everything which 
 
TONINA AND HER LOVER. 265 
 
 men hold sacred. Your promise of secrecy again puts 
 my honour in peril. How can you be sure that one of 
 your accomplices will not privily inform his Excellency 
 of your name and your mad enterprise ? Where shall 
 I then be ? No : it is clearly your duty to obey the 
 counsels dictated by my loyal friendship and my 
 sound prudence. Leave the alley open ; and then 
 you will in truth oblige me. Make love to your 
 Tonina with something more to the purpose than 
 a blunderbuss. Her physical shape excuses your 
 weakness for her ; her mind deserves your scorn ; 
 but I am not going to preach sermons on objects 
 worthy or unworthy of love ; I feel compassion for 
 human frailty." 
 
 It was obvious that Signor Simeone C felt 
 
 the force of these arguments. But he writhed with 
 rage under them, and showed no sign of consenting. 
 In his fierce Dalmatian way he burst into bare pro- 
 testations, swore that he would never quit the field, 
 and wound up with a vow to sell his life as dearly 
 as man ever did. 
 
 At this point I judged it needful to administer 
 a dose of histrionic artifice. After gaziDg at him 
 for some seconds with eyes which spoke volumes, 
 I assumed the declamatory tone of a tragedian, and 
 exclaimed : " Well then, I promise to be the first to 
 enter the lane this evening, and, without attacking 
 you, I shall offer my breast to your fire. I have only 
 this way left of proving to you that you are in no 
 
266 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 real sense of the word my friend." Then I turned 
 my back with a show of passion, taking care, how- 
 ever, to retire at a slow pace. Except for the fero- 
 city instilled by education, he was at bottom an excel- 
 lent good-hearted fellow. Seizing me by the arm, 
 he begged me wait a moment. I saw that he was 
 touched, and maintaining the tragic tone, I persuaded 
 him to leave the access to the alley free, without 
 resigning his exclusive right to the Tonina. For my 
 part, I undertook never to reveal our secret. This 
 promise I have kept for thirty-five years. Lapse 
 of time and the probability of his decease — for 
 he was much older than I — excuse me for now 
 breaking it. 
 
 On three following nights I joined the allied forces 
 at the billiard-room, armed to the teeth, and with a 
 white ribbon flying from my hat-band. I was always 
 the first to brave the blunderbusses, being sure that 
 no resistance would be offered. Indeed, the victory, 
 on which we piqued ourselves, had been won before- 
 hand in my battle of words. The culpable conduct 
 of Tonina, a girl of the people, who had exposed so 
 many gentlemen to serious danger, remained fixed in 
 my mind. I shall relate the sequel to this incident, 
 which took a comic turn, in the next chapter. For 
 the present, it is enough to add that Signor Simeone 
 
 C 's infatuation for this corsair of Venus rapidly 
 
 declined, as is the wont of passions begotten by 
 masculine appetite and feminine avarice. Tonina, 
 
SEQUEL TO TONINA'S STORY. 267 
 
 however, did not lack lovers, and the badness of her 
 nature continued to spread discord and foment dis- 
 order in our circle. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The fair Tonina is rudely rebuked by me upon an accidental 
 occasion in the theatre. — My reconciliation with the 
 young woman. — Reflections on my life in Dalmatia. 
 
 One evening during the last carnival of my three 
 years' service, the Provveditore Generale bespoke an 
 improvised comedy at the Court-theatre. The officers 
 arranged a supper-party and a ball in private rooms, 
 intending to pass the night gaily when the farce was 
 over. I had to play the part of Luce, married to 
 Pantalone, a vicious old man, broken in health and 
 fortune. I was reduced to extreme poverty, with 
 a daughter in the cradle, the fruit of my unhappy 
 marriage. 
 
 There was a night-scene, in which I had to solilo- 
 quise, while rocking my child and singing it to sleep 
 with some old ditty. This lullaby I interrupted from 
 time to time with the narrative of my misfortunes and 
 with sallies which made the audience die of laughter. 
 Bursts of applause brought the house down as I told 
 my story, enlarged upon my reasons for marrying an 
 old man, related the incidents of my life, alluded in 
 
268 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 modest monosyllables to what I had to bear, de- 
 scribed what a fine figure of a woman I had been, and 
 what a scarecrow matrimony had made me. I com- 
 plained of cold, hunger, evil treatment. I did not 
 make milk enough to suckle my baby ; and what I 
 made was sour, nay, venomous from fits of rage and 
 all the sufferings I had to go through. This bad 
 milk gave my darling, the fruit of my womb, the 
 stomach-ache. It kept bleating all night like a lamb, 
 and would not let me close an eye. The night was 
 far advanced. I was waiting for my old fool of a 
 husband. What could be keeping him abroad ? He 
 must surely be in the Calle del Pozzetto, notorious 
 at Zara for its evil fame. I had a presentiment of 
 coming troubles, moralised upon the woes of life, 
 and burst into a flood of tears, which made every- 
 body laugh. The truth was that one of our officers, 
 Signor Antonio Zeno, who played the part of Panta- 
 lone excellently, had not turned up at the proper 
 time to enter into dialogue with me. Until he 
 arrived, I was forced to continue my soliloquy, 
 which had already occupied the attention of the 
 audience full fifteen minutes. A good extempore 
 actor ought never to lose presence of mind, or to 
 be at a loss for material. In order to prolong 
 the scene, I pretended that my baby was crying, 
 and that it would not go to sleep for all my 
 lullabies and cradle-rocking. In a fit of impatience 
 I took it up, unlaced my dress, and laid it with en- 
 
LUCE'S SOLILOQUY. 269 
 
 dealing caresses to my breasts to quiet it. This fresh 
 absurdity, together with my lamentations over the 
 non-existent teats I said the greedy little thing was 
 biting, kept my audience in good-humour. From 
 time to time I turned my eyes to the sides, being 
 really disturbed at Signor Zeno-Pantalone's non- 
 appearance, and racking my brains in vain for some 
 new matter to sustain the soliloquy. 
 
 Just then I happened to catch sight of Tonina 
 seated in one of the front boxes of the theatre, 
 resplendent with beauty, and attired in a gala dress 
 which cast a glaring light upon her dubious career. 
 She was laughing with more assurance and sense 
 of fun than anybody at my jokes. The catastrophe 
 which she had nearly caused flashed suddenly 
 across my mind. I felt that I had discovered a 
 treasure ; and plunged like lightning into a new 
 subject. What I proceeded to do was bold, I admit, 
 yet quite within the limits of good taste upon our 
 amateur stage, where personal allusions were allowed 
 perhaps a little too liberally. I called my doll-baby 
 by the name of Tonina, and addressed my speech to 
 it. I caressed it, admired its features, flattered my 
 maternal heart with the hope that Tonina would 
 grow up a lovely girl. So far as I was concerned, 
 I vowed to give her a good education, by example, 
 precepts, chastisement, and watchful care. Then, 
 taking a tone of gravity, I warned her that if, in 
 spite of all my trouble, she fell into such and such 
 
2 7 o MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 faults, such and such acts of imprudence, such and 
 such immoral ways, and caused such and such dis- 
 turbances, she would be the worst Tonina in the 
 world, and I prayed God to cut her days short rather 
 in the cradle. All the evil things I mentioned were 
 faithfully copied from anecdotes about Tonina in the 
 front box, with which my audience were only too 
 well acquainted. 
 
 Never in my whole life have I known an improvised 
 soliloquy to be so tumultuously applauded as this of 
 mine was. The spectators at one point of the speech 
 turned their faces with a simultaneous movement 
 towards Tonina in her gala dress, clapping their 
 hands and laughing till the theatre rang again. His 
 Excellency, who had some inkling of the siren's 
 ways, honoured my unexpected satire with explosions 
 of unconcealed merriment. Tonina backed out of 
 her box in a fit of fury, and escaped from the theatre, 
 cursing my soliloquy and the man who made it. 
 Pantalone finally arrived, and the comedy ended 
 without any episode more mirthful than the scene 
 between me and my baby. 
 
 Do not imagine that I have related this incident 
 to brag about it. Although the young woman in 
 question was a girl of the people, whose dissolute 
 behaviour and ill-nature had been the cause of many 
 misadventures, and though the Provveditore Generale 
 applauded my performance, I blamed myself, when 
 it was over, for yielding to a mere impulse of vanity, 
 
TOXIXA AT THE BALL. 271 
 
 and exhibiting my power as a comedian at the cost 
 of committing an act of imprudence and indiscretion. 
 Much has to be condoned to youth which is never 
 conceded to maturity. 
 
 I have mentioned that a ball and supper-party had 
 been arranged by us officers after the play, and that 
 I was a member of the company. I went in my 
 costume of Luce, partly to save time, and partly to 
 carry on the joke. Tonina was among the guests. 
 She did not expect me, and was sitting in a corner, 
 angry and out of spirits. When she saw me, one 
 would have thought she had set eyes on the fiend ; 
 she looked as though she meant to leave the room. 
 I took her hand, and protested I would rather go 
 than that the company should lose its loveliest orna- 
 ment. I vowed that she was adorably beautiful, and 
 that it was a pity she was not equally good. I begged 
 her in gentle terms to take the accident of the even- 
 ing into account, to reflect upon the universal verdict 
 given by the audience on her ways of life, and to 
 guard against the private flatterers who blinded her 
 to the truth. I told her that God had meant to send 
 in her an angel, and not a devil into this world. I 
 interwove so many praises Avith so many insolences, 
 and with such complete frankness, that she could not 
 but laugh. Everybody laughed, down to her very 
 lovers. She expressed a wish to dance with me. I 
 accepted the invitation. This looked like a token 
 of peace ; but it was only treachery. While dancing, 
 
272 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZT. 
 
 she exerted all the charms, enticements, captivating 
 humours, pressures of the hand, and so forth, which 
 her bad vindictive and seductive nature could suggest 
 to enslave me. 
 
 A woman's coquetries directed to some purpose of 
 revenge are always blind, and give the best advantage 
 to a clever roue. The reason is that the woman, 
 piqued to the point of seeking a victory at any price, 
 lowers herself to the utmost, without being aware of 
 what she is conceding. I was not a roue ; and woe 
 to me if I had let myself be snared by the wiles and 
 artifices of that viper smarting under the sense of 
 recent insult ! 
 
 Our pleasure party was resumed soon after supper, 
 during which my fair foe kept me at her side. We 
 broke up about sunrise ; and Tonina never ceased to 
 call me her accursed little devil ; that was the sweet 
 Dalmatian term of endearment which she used. Com- 
 pelled by these compliments, I promised to pay her 
 a visit, but I did not keep my word. 
 
 I have now given some general notion of my ways 
 of thinking and acting, my character and conduct, 
 up to the age of eighteen on to twenty. Nothing 
 but the truth has dictated these reminiscences, from 
 which I have undoubtedly omitted many things of 
 similar importance. I am sure that if I had been 
 guilty of anything really wrong during this period, it 
 would not have escaped either my memory or my 
 pen. I have never hardened my heart against the 
 
REVIEW OF LIFE AT ZARA. 273 
 
 stings of remorse, and I would far rather frankly 
 record facts to my discredit than bear the stings of 
 conscience by suppressing what is true. Reviewing 
 the veracious picture of myself which I have painted, 
 friends will see in me a somewhat eccentric young 
 man, but of harmless disposition ; enemies will take 
 me for a worthless scapegrace ; the indifferent, who 
 know me superficially by sight, will discover some 
 one very different from their conception based on my 
 external qualities. At the proper place and time I 
 shall account for this not unreasonable and yet fal- 
 lacious conception formed of me by strangers. The 
 reasons will appear clearly in the detailed portrait I 
 intend to execute of myself, and which will surpass 
 the best work of any painter. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The end of my three years 1 service. — / cast up my accounts, 
 and reckon debts; calculate upon the future, with a 
 sad prevision of the truth. — My arrival in my home 
 at Venice. 
 
 The three years of my military service were nearly 
 at an end, when I contracted a slow fever, not dan- 
 gerous to life, but tedious. The time had come 
 for settling accounts, and seeing how I stood. My 
 family, since I left home, had furnished me with only 
 
 vol. 1. s 
 
274 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 two bills of exchange, one for fourteen, the other for 
 six sequins. My useless duties to the State had 
 brought me thirty-eight lire per month. Against 
 these receipts I balanced my expenses : so much for 
 my daily food ; so much for my lodging, clothing, and 
 washing ; so much for a servant, indispensable in my 
 position ; so much for two illnesses, together with 
 the small sums spent on unavoidable pleasures of 
 society. The result was that I found myself in debt 
 to my friend Massimo for exactly the sum of fifty-six 
 sequins and sixteen lire, or 200 ducats. 1 
 
 If the necessities of life are not to be considered 
 vices, this debt was certainly a modest one. Still it 
 weighed upon my mind. I consoled myself by re- 
 calling my friend's nobleness of nature, and felt sure 
 that I should be able to repay him on reaching home. 
 I computed that the gross sum I had received during 
 those three years amounted to 480 ducats ; and I 
 did not think I had been a spendthrift in consuming 
 about 150 ducats a year on my total expenditure. 
 I could indeed have saved something by attending 
 the table which the Provveditore Generale kept daily 
 for the officers of his Court and guard, but which his 
 sublime Excellency never honoured with his presence. 
 
 1 The sequin at this time was worth twenty-two lire Venete. The 
 worth of the lira was about half a franc, says Romanin (vol. viii. p. 302). 
 Romanin in the same place fixes the ducat at eight lire. Gozzi's debt 
 amounted to 1248 lire. This would make only 156 ducats at the above 
 rate. But the relation of the ducat to the sequin and the lira is very 
 obscure, and seems to have varied according to the kind of ducat. 
 
THREE YEARS' EXPENDITURE. 275 
 
 Little did he know what a gang of ruffians, with the 
 exception of a few patient souls constrained by 
 urgent need, denied his table, or what low tricks 
 were perpetrated at it. Since the day of my arrival 
 I had heard the infamous and compromising talk 
 which went on there, had watched the squabbles 
 between guest and guest, and guests and serving- 
 men, had seen the cups and platters flying through 
 the air — and, like a naughty boy perhaps, I preferred 
 to contract a debt of 200 ducats rather than accept 
 a hospitality so prostituted to vile uses. I attended 
 this table of Thyestes, as it seemed to me, only when 
 I could not help it, on the days when I had to 
 mount guard. 
 
 The financial statement I have just made will 
 appear to many of my readers a mere trifle, unworthy 
 of recording here. They are mistaken. When 
 they have learned in what a state of desolation I 
 found my father's house, and how I strove to 
 stem the tide of prodigality and waste which was 
 bringing our family to ruin, they will understand 
 my reasons for insisting on these trifles. Heads 
 heated by anger and resentment are only too ready 
 to invent false accusations ; and I shall soon be made 
 to appear a prodigal, a reckless gambler, a consumer 
 of the substance of my family during the three years 
 I spent abroad. This is why I am so scrupulous in 
 telling the plain truth about my cost of living in 
 Dalmatia. I have never been ashamed of letting the 
 
276 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 whole world know how modest are my fortunes. I 
 should think it a greater shame to pretend to possess 
 more than I really own. Iiiches have always seemed 
 to me to be a name, and to reside in the imagination. 
 If I cast my eyes on a carpenter, then raise them to 
 a duke, and finally lift them to a king, I obtain con- 
 vincing demonstration of the fact that he alone is 
 rich who has the mental wealth — to be contented 
 with his lot. Alas ! that only I and many millions 
 upon their deathbed recognise this truth. 
 
 My three years were over. The new Provveditore 
 Generale, Jacopo Boldu, arrived in Dalmatia, and 
 received the staff of office with the usual formalities 
 from his Excellency Quirini. In my moments of 
 leisure I had composed several poems in honour of 
 the latter, and had procured others from Venice. 
 These I copied out in the beautiful handwriting 
 which I then possessed, sewed them together, added 
 a respectful dedication, and had them bound in a 
 fine velvet cover. Then I paid my respects to his 
 Excellency in company with my friend Massimo, and 
 laid my literary tribute at his feet. I was no Virgil, 
 nor was I born in the golden age of Augustus. Only 
 my fanaticism for the art of poetry made me imagine 
 that verses could be anything worth offering as a gift. 
 
 The Cavaliere accepted my donation with affability. 
 He said : "I thank you. At least I have the where- 
 withal to show that, while a member of my Court, 
 you have remained at school." 
 
RETIREMENT FROM THE ARMY. 277 
 
 Afterwards I learned that he made a present of 
 this book to the Very Eminent Cardinal, his uncle, 
 Bishop of Brescia. His Excellency inquired whether 
 I preferred to return to Venice or to stay in Dalmatia, 
 occupying the post of cadet noble of cavalry on my 
 promotion. I begged him to take me in his train to 
 Venice, and he graciously accepted. 
 
 Some one else than I would have looked around 
 for testimonials little to be trusted, which might have 
 kept me fraudulently drawing pay upon the muster- 
 roll of Venice from a too indulgent Government. But 
 I had renounced the military career, and had no mind 
 to spunge upon the public treasury. Our Prince 
 I regarded as a common father, but did not think it 
 just to saddle him with thievish sons, each one of 
 whom by coaxed protections, adulations, hypocrisies, 
 and the vilest offices, eats into the common patrimony 
 of the nation, which ought to be reserved for urgent 
 needs. I was a poor lad, with a debt of 200 ducats ; 
 but I knew that the services rendered to the State 
 by me constituted no claim upon the public purse. 
 If I was poor, this came from our being too many in 
 our family and from the maladministration of our 
 property. 
 
 My wants were moderate. I flattered myself that 
 I could satisfy them by attending to the management 
 of the estate ; and I felt sure that my father, paralysed 
 and speechless as he was, would never refuse to pay the 
 trifling debt I had contracted. Meanwhile it is not 
 
278 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 improbable that my name remained npon the muster- 
 roll long after I left Dalmatia. Somebody may have 
 pocketed my pay and pilfered from the treasury to 
 this extent. I was not responsible for this, and had 
 no right to inquire into the matter, since I never asked 
 to be cashiered in form. Poor I was, poor I am, and 
 poor I expect to die. At any rate, I am sure that I 
 should die in desperation if I felt on my deathbed 
 that I had earned a fortune by deceit, injustice, and 
 intrigue. 
 
 It was in the month of October when at last I 
 embarked for Venice on the galley of his Excellency. 
 Wind and weather were against us. After a painful 
 voyage of twenty-two days, we came in sight of home, 
 and I drew breath again. After paying my respects 
 and returning thanks to the Cavaliere who had 
 brought me back, I set off for our ancestral mansion 
 at San Cassiano, accompanied by Signor Massimo, 
 whom I had invited to stay with me upon his way 
 to Padua. There I hoped to be able to pay my friend 
 some attention by giving him good quarters during 
 his sojourn in Venice. 
 
THE HOME OF MY ANCESTORS. 279 
 
 XV. 
 
 Disagreeable discoveries rclati)ig to oar family affairs, which 
 dissipate all illusions I may have formed. 
 
 Leaving the horrors of the galley for the ancient 
 home of my ancestors, I palpitated between pleasure 
 at escaping into freedom, hope of being able to make 
 my friend comfortable, and uneasiness lest this hope 
 might prove ill-founded. 
 
 We reached the entrance, and my companion 
 gazed with wonder at the stately structure of the 
 mansion, which has really all the appearance of a 
 palace. Asa connoisseur of architecture, he compli- 
 mented me upon its fine design. I answered, what 
 indeed he was about to discover by experience, that 
 attractive exteriors sometimes mask discomfort and 
 annoyance. He had plenty of time to admire the 
 facade, while I kept knocking loudly at the house- 
 door. I might as well have knocked at the portal 
 of a sepulchre. At last a woman, named Eugenia, 
 the guardian-angel of this wilderness, ran to open. 
 To my inquiries she answered, yawning, that the 
 family were in Friuli, but that my brother Gasparo 
 was momently expected. Our luggage had now been 
 brought from the boat, and we began to ascend a hand- 
 some marble staircase. No one could have expected 
 
28o MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 that this fine flight of steps would lead to squalor 
 and the haunts of indigence. Yet on surmounting 
 the last stair this was what revealed itself. The stone 
 floors were worn into holes and fissures, which spread 
 in all directions like a cancer. The broken window 
 panes let blasts from every point of the compass play 
 freely to and fro within the draughty chambers. The 
 hangings on the walls were ragged, smirched with 
 smoke and dust, fluttering in tatters. Not a piece 
 remained of that fine gallery of pictures which my 
 grandfather had bequeathed as heirlooms to the 
 family. I only saw some portraits of my ancestors 
 by Titian and Tintoretto still staring from their 
 ancient frames. I gazed at them ; they gazed at 
 me ; they wore a look of sadness and amazement, as 
 though inquiring how the wealth which they had 
 gathered for their offspring had been dissipated. 
 
 I have hitherto omitted to mention that our family 
 archives contain an old worm-eaten manuscript, in 
 which are registered the tenths 1 paid to the public 
 treasury. From this document it appears that the 
 father of my great-grandfather was taxed on upwards 
 of ten thousand ducats of income. It is perhaps a 
 folly to moralise on such things ; yet the recollection 
 of those mournful portraits gazing down upon me in 
 the squalor of our ancient habitation prompts me to 
 tell an idle truth. Nobody will be the wiser for it ; 
 
 1 Decime. Taxes annually raised upon the whole property of a 
 Venetian. 
 
A DILAPIDATED PALACE. 281 
 
 certainly none of our posterity in this prodigal age. 
 My grandfather left an only son and a good estate 
 settled in tail on heirs-male in perpetuity. Four 
 excellent residences, all of them well-furnished, one 
 in Venice, another in Padua, another in Pordenone, 
 another in the Friulian country-town of Vicinate, 
 were included in this entail, as appears from his last 
 will and testament. Little did he think that the 
 solemn appointments of the dead would be so lightly 
 binding on the living. 
 
 I had informed my friend Massimo of the exact 
 state of our affairs at home, so far as these were 
 known to me. I could not acquaint him with the 
 grave disasters which had happened in my three years' 
 absence, being myself in blessed ignorance as yet. 
 The news that my two elder sisters had been married 
 inclined me to expect that our domestic circumstances 
 were improving. Cruel deception wrapped me round, 
 and a hundred speechless but eloquent mouths were 
 now proclaiming, from the walls and chambers of my 
 home, how utterly deceived I had been. 
 
 Before long I broke, as usual, into laughter, and 
 gaily begged my comrade's pardon for bringing him 
 to such a wretched hostelry. I assured him that my 
 heart, at any rate, was not so ruined as my dwelling, 
 and engaged him in conversation, while we roamed 
 around its chambers, every nook of which increased 
 my mirth by some new aspect of dilapidation. Then I 
 bade him refresh his spirits with a survey of the noble 
 
282 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 facade ; till at last we settled down as well as circum- 
 stances permitted. Two days afterwards, my brother 
 Gasparo arrived. I presented the stranger I had 
 brought to share our hospitality, frankly expressing 
 my sense of his worth and my obligations to him as 
 a friend. Upon this we established ourselves in a 
 little society of three, enlivened by the conversation 
 of my brother, who, even with a fever on him, never 
 failed to be witty. 
 
 Gasparo and I were anxiously awaiting an oppor- 
 tunity to talk alone like brothers after my long 
 absence. When the moment came, I inquired after 
 my poor father, our mother, and the circumstances 
 of the family. What I had already seen on my 
 arrival prepared me for the disagreeable news I had 
 to hear. With his usual philosophy, but not without 
 an occasional sign of painful emotion, he gave me 
 the following details. The family was reduced to 
 really tragic straits. Our father lived on, but speech- 
 less and paralytic, in the same state as when I left 
 him. My two elder sisters, Marina and Giulia, were 
 married respectively to the Conte Michele di Prata 
 and the Conte Giovan-Daniele di Montereale. About 
 ten thousand ducats had been promised for their 
 dowries. To raise this sum, such and such portions 
 of the estate had been sold, and a debt of more 
 than two thousand ducats had been contracted. A 
 lawsuit was pending between the family and the 
 Conte Montereale concerning part of the dowry still 
 
A FAMILY ON THE ROAD TO RUIN. 283 
 
 due to him. Our other three sisters, Laura, Giro- 
 lama, and Chiara, were growing into womanhood, and 
 gave much to think of for their future. 
 
 I saw, to my great annoyance, that it would be 
 impossible to liquidate my debt upon the spot. But 
 all these terrifying details did not make me regret 
 my resignation of the post of cadet noble in the 
 cavalry. A few days later, Signor Massimo left for 
 Padua, with the assurance that his two hundred 
 ducats would be paid in course of time by me. 
 Upon this matter he only expressed the sentiments 
 of cordial friendship. 
 
 It was not too late in the season for a visit to the 
 country. I felt a strong desire to reach Friuli, and 
 to kiss the hands of my unhappy father. Thither 
 then I went, together with my brother, armed with 
 a giant's fortitude, which was not long in being put 
 to proof. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Fresh discoveries regarding the condition of our family. — 
 Vain hopes and wasted will to be of use. — / abandon 
 myself to my old literary studies. 
 
 Our country-house had been originally constructed 
 on an old-fashioned, roomy, and convenient scale, 
 with numbers of out-buildings. It was now reduced 
 to one of those dilapidated farms, which I have de- 
 
284 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 scribed in my burlesque poem La Marfisa Bizzarra, 
 canto xii., stanza 126. 1 Two-thirds of the edifice 
 had been demolished, and the materials sold. The 
 remaining fragments were inhabited, but bore written 
 on their front : " Here once was Troy." 
 
 Prepared as I was by the misery of our town-house 
 for the desolation of this rural mansion, I hardly 
 cared to cast a glance upon it. What I noticed on 
 arriving was a certain air of jollity and gladness, 
 breathing health, betokening contentment, which 
 all the faces of the village people wore. Amid the 
 jubilations of relatives, guests, serving-folk and lads 
 about the farm, not omitting a pack of barking dogs, 
 I descended from the caleche with my brother. 
 A whole crowd of people, whom I did not know and 
 could not number, fell upon my neck to bid me 
 welcome. Something of a military carriage, which I 
 had picked up abroad, but which had no relation to 
 
 1 Opere, vol. vii. p. 393. This is the stanza — 
 
 Gli antichi di provincia tuoi fedeli 
 Son quasi tutti fuggiti alle ville, 
 In castellacci discoperti a' cieli, 
 Con figli e figlie e nipoti e pupille, 
 Ripieni di pensieri acri e crudeli, 
 Allor che suonan mezzodi le squille. 
 Educazion non han, mangiar, ne bere ; 
 Pensa se daran nerbo alle tue schiere ! 
 
 This is said to the burlesque Carlo Magno of the poem. The passage 
 in the text confirms the theory that Gozzi intended his Carlo Magno 
 to represent the decrepit majesty of Venice. 
 
A PARALYTIC FATHER. 2S5 
 
 my real self, made our farm-folk stare upon me like 
 a comet. 
 
 Then I raised my eyes, and saw my poor father at 
 a window in the upper storey, with trembling limbs, 
 dragging himself forward on his stick to catch a 
 glimpse of me. All the blood turned suddenly and 
 galloped through my veins. I rushed up the stairs, 
 burst into the room where he was standing, seized 
 one of his hands, and kissed it in a transport of filial 
 affection. He fell upon my shoulder, more paralytic 
 than he had been when I last embraced him, and, in 
 his inability to speak, broke into a piteous fit of 
 weeping. The effort I made to restrain my own tears, 
 lest they should add to his unhappiness, made me 
 feel as though my lungs would burst. Leaning on 
 my arm, he slowly tottered after me, and little by 
 little we reached another room which he frequented. 
 October was nearly over, and the cold in that Friulian 
 climate was very sensible. A good fire burned on 
 the hearth, near which stood the arm-chair of my 
 father, who for seven years had dragged his life out 
 in this wretched state. All the resources of medical 
 science had been tried in vain. Physicians some- 
 times agreed and sometimes differed about his treat- 
 ment. But their concord and their discord were 
 equally impotent to effect a cure ; and he had not 
 yet reached the age of fifty- five. 
 
 I found my mother in the same apartment. She 
 uttered sentiments which were not inappropriate to 
 
286 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 her maternal character, but in a frigid tone and with 
 an air of stately self-control. I always loved and 
 respected her, not merely from a sense of duty, but 
 with a true filial instinct. She, on her side, used 
 frequently to protest when there was no need for 
 protestation, that she loved all her nine children with 
 exactly the same amount of affection. She often 
 repeated the following words with gravity, raising 
 her eyebrows as she spoke : "Cut off one of my 
 fingers and I suffer pain ; cut off a second and I 
 suffer ; " and so on through nine fingers, amputated 
 by the same figure of speech, with equal agony in each 
 case. Notwithstanding this, I believe that the loss 
 of eight fingers would not have given her the same 
 pain as that of the first-born finger, in other words, 
 of my brother Gasparo. He is still alive, a man of 
 honour, and a sage if ever sage existed ; and I feel 
 sure that he would admit the truth of this statement, 
 if called on to confirm it. 
 
 In my long and anxious study of human nature, I 
 have seen so many mothers with the weakness of 
 my own, that I never dreamed of blaming her. It 
 seemed right to me that my brother's mental gifts 
 and noble qualities should earn for him more of her 
 love than she bestowed on all her other eight chil- 
 dren. Mothers, however, who are so devoted to a 
 son generally spoil him, notably by extolling what 
 is good in his character, but also by defending his 
 natural frailties. Acting thus, my mother favoured 
 
A PARTIAL MOTHER. 287 
 
 Gasparo's marriage, which subjected her beloved son 
 to a real martyrdom. Her lifelong devotion to him, 
 and the prejudice displayed in his favour by her will, 
 only served to increase the unhappiness of a man 
 whom I always loved, loved still, and shall love as 
 friend and brother till the end of my days on earth. 
 This digression was rendered necessary by what will 
 follow in my Memoirs. 
 
 The room was soon full of relatives and intimate 
 friends, all curious about me. My father strove to 
 ply me with questions, but his tongue refused its 
 office, and he relapsed into weeping. Sad at heart 
 as I was for him, I contrived to relate the most 
 amusing anecdotes I could remember concerning my 
 life in Dalmatia and my travels. In this way I kept 
 him laughing, together with the whole company, 
 through the rest of that day. 
 
 The perfect country air ; a table abundantly served 
 with rural dainties, though somewhat deficient in 
 elegance ; the joviality, wit, and pleasant sallies which 
 never failed in our domestic circle, — all this pre- 
 vented me from attending to the defects of our estab- 
 lishment. Next day I began to discover that the real 
 cause of trouble was not in the building, but in the 
 minds of its inhabitants. I could not have explained 
 why, but I seemed to be a person of importance in 
 the eyes of everybody. My three sisters confided to 
 me in secret that my brother Gasparo's wife, in close 
 alliance with my mother, who doted on her as the 
 
288 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 consort of her favoured first-born, ruled all the affairs 
 of the family, which were rapidly going from bad to 
 worse. My father's authority as head of the house 
 had ceased to be more than a mere instrument for 
 carrying out what my sister-in-law advised and my 
 mother sanctioned. Unless I managed to stem the 
 tide of extravagance, we should all be plunged into 
 an abyss of ruin. One of my sisters, Girolama, a 
 girl devoted to reading, writing, and translating from 
 the French — for she too was bitten with our family 
 cacoethes — spoke like a sibyl, gravely and eloquently, 
 on these painful topics. At the same time, my 
 brother's wife contrived secret interviews, in which 
 she explained to me that her husband was indolent, 
 torpid, drowned in fruitless studies, devoted to the 
 company of a certain clever person, and wholly averse 
 from thoughts or cares about domestic matters. She 
 had done everything in her power — God knew she had. 
 She would go on doing her best — God should see 
 she would. Then she described her plans and pro- 
 jects, which, to tell the truth, were pure poetical 
 stupidities. She vowed that she was not in any 
 sense the mistress of the establishment, the adminis- 
 trator of the estate, or the disposer of its revenues ; 
 she merely gave advice, made suggestions, and ex- 
 erted herself for the common benefit and to supply 
 the needs of the family in general. She exhorted me 
 to speak seriously to her husband ; I was to make 
 him abandon his unprofitable studies, make him, 
 
A MEDDLING SISTER-IN-LAW. 289 
 
 above all things, give up those visits of taste and 
 soul, which did so much harm ; in fine, I was to force 
 him to sustain his wife in her stupendous labours, 
 and to concentrate his thoughts upon his children, 
 who were five in number. 
 
 When I came to analyse the curious compound of 
 truths, lies, and fancies which issued from the fevered 
 brains of this poor lady — always hard at work, always 
 embarrassed in a labyrinth of business— I seemed to 
 perceive that what moved her most was the fear of 
 being made herself responsible for our financial failure. 
 It was also clear that her original ambition of acting 
 the part of prime minister in a realm which only existed 
 in her own imagination, kept her always on the stretch; 
 while a certain little devil of feminine jealousy against 
 her husband added to her disquietude. He, good 
 fellow, had forgotten the long collection of Petrarchan 
 poems written by him for her honour in the past, 
 and which she had repaid with the gift of five children. 
 Not the least little sonnet issued from his pen to 
 celebrate her now. His lyrics were addressed to 
 another idol of the moment. 
 
 Meanwhile she set great store upon her personal 
 importance. Every member of our family, who 
 wanted a ducat, a pair of shoes, or something of the 
 sort, came to her with humble supplications, implor- 
 ing her good offices at head-quarters — and Heaven 
 knew where head-quarters were. This honour and 
 glory made up to her for all her heroic labours in 
 
 vol. 1. T 
 
2 9 o MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 the little realm, which she administered with real 
 authority, though her right to do so was contested, 
 and her schemes were pindarically unpractical. 
 
 My younger brother, Almorb, 1 was also at our villa, 
 on a holiday from school — the non-existent school 
 he never went to. His education seemed to have 
 been of the slightest, and his wardrobe left even more 
 to be desired. A boy of good heart and parts, how- 
 ever ; gay-spirited and innocent ; he was not old 
 enough and had not time to reflect upon our troubles ; 
 setting snares for little birds was all his pastime, and 
 when he talked to me, I heard only of the number 
 and the kinds of birds he caught, and the important 
 adventures he had met with in his fowling expe- 
 ditions. 
 
 My father did not converse with me, because he 
 could not ; my mother, because she would not. Gas- 
 paro's five children with their quarrels and their 
 games broke in upon the only solace which I had, 
 that of reading and writing. 
 
 To all the complaints I heard, to all the exhorta- 
 tions which were daily heaped upon me, I gave one 
 only answer : we will see and think it over. 
 
 One thing emerged with distinctness from this 
 hurlyburly of our family. If I attempted any salu- 
 tary innovation in the wasp's nest of my relatives, I 
 should find no difficulty in gaining supporters to 
 
 1 Almoro is the Venetian form of the name Ermolao. 
 
DOMESTIC ANARCHY. 291 
 
 assist me in my opposition to the government ; 
 but the government was in the hands of women, 
 under the shadow of my father's authority ; I should 
 therefore be misrepresented to him, prejudiced as he 
 was by education, susceptible and hot-blooded by 
 temperament, enfeebled by chronic illness ; and he 
 was still the master, still my father, loved and re- 
 spected by me. I doubted whether anything which 
 I could do would not prove ineffectual or worse. I 
 was afraid of becoming the object of everybody's 
 hatred ; for I observed that personal considerations, 
 rather than wise reflection and moderate ambitions, 
 were the motive principles of all the folk I had to 
 deal with. Finally I dreaded giving such a shock 
 to my father's declining frame as would cut short 
 the few days of life which still remained to him. 
 The sequel will show that these anticipations were 
 not ill-founded. 
 
 In these circumstances I determined to exercise 
 the strictest self-control, and to bear with everything 
 during my father's lifetime. Literature and my 
 favourite studies of the world meanwhile would 
 suffice to entertain me. Knowing that my uncle 
 Almorb Cesare Tiepolo was in the country on arj 
 estate of his not far from where we lived, I went to 
 pay him my respects. He inquired how I had been 
 treated in Dalmatia by his Excellency Quirini. I 
 answered that he had treated me very well indeed, 
 but that he could not give me any permanent com- 
 
292 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZL 
 
 mission, because our troops had been drafted into 
 Italy. He then proposed to recommend me to his 
 Excellency the Provveditore Generale at Verona. I 
 replied that I was grateful for his interest on my 
 behalf, but that Mars had not inspired me with a 
 vocation for military service. I foresaw that I should 
 have to employ all my energies upon the affairs of 
 my family, which were calling loudly for my assist- 
 ance. Shaking his head and pursing up his lips, he 
 answered that what I said was only too true. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Return from Friuli to Venice with my family. — / pursue my 
 chosen path in life, and open new veins of experience. — 
 Yet further painful discoveries as to our circumstances. — 
 The beginnings of domestic discord. 
 
 The month of November was wearing away when 
 our family began to think of Venice. It amused me 
 to watch the preparations for our journey and our 
 luggage, which in no wise resembled that of the 
 General's suite I had been used to. My father, an 
 invalid ; my mother, serious and diplomatical ; my 
 sister-in-law, the woman of business ; my brother 
 Gasparo, wool-gathering ; our little sisters, intent 
 upon the custody of their old-fashioned bonnets ; 
 Almor5, plunged in grief at leaving his birds and 
 
THE GOZZI AT VENICE. 293 
 
 cages, which he consigned by something like a 
 last will and testament to the bailiff; I, giving 
 myself military airs, quite out of season ; some 
 serving-maids and men in worn-out livery ; a few 
 cats and dogs ; these composed our travelling party. 
 which might have been compared to a troupe of 
 comedians upon the march. 
 
 I shall perhaps be told that there was no reason 
 to enumerate these humiliating circumstances. But 
 I have never had to blush for unworthy actions in 
 my family ; and it seems to me a poor philosophy 
 that feels ashamed where no shame is. Such as it 
 was, our caravan arrived in Venice, joking and laugh- 
 ing all the way, There we installed ourselves with 
 as much disorder and as little comfort as was proper 
 to a fine large mansion with nothing to fill its 
 empty spaces. 
 
 For my own use I chose out a little room at the 
 top of the house, where I set up a rickety table, 
 provided myself with a huge inkstand and plenty of 
 pens and paper, and spent at least six hours a day in 
 reading and scribbling poetic nonsense. This was my 
 best amusement ; but I ought to add that I devoted 
 some of my time to the cafes, studying types of 
 character and listening to conversation ; nor did I 
 neglect our theatres, where I saw the various trage- 
 dies and comedies which appeared. My brother 
 Gasparo had already given several serious pieces 
 to the stage. They pleased the public then ; and 
 
294 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 though they may be out of fashion now, they would 
 not fail to please me still. I know the instability 
 of taste too well to change my old opinions. 
 
 I had mixed with all sorts of men and learned to 
 know their characters — generals, admirals, noblemen, 
 great lords, officers, soldiers, the people of Illyrian 
 cities, the Morlacchi of the villages, Mainotti, Pas- 
 trovicchi, convicts, galley-slaves. It was time, I 
 thought, to become acquainted with my own Vene- 
 tians. I began by cultivating a set of men who go 
 in Venice by the name of Cortigiani. 1 My com- 
 panions of this kind were chiefly shopkeepers and 
 handicraftsmen, with a priest or two among the 
 number ; clever fellows, respectable, and versed in 
 all the ways of our Venetian world. Their courage 
 and readiness to take part in quarrels won them the 
 respect of the common people, and they carried the 
 art of getting the maximum of pleasure at a minimum 
 of outlay to perfection. On certain holidays I joined 
 their boating-parties, and went to shoot birds on the 
 marshes with them. Or else we lunched together 
 on the Giudecca, at Campalto, Malcontenta, Murano, 
 Burano, and other neighbouring islands. My share 
 
 1 Gozzi's description of the Venetian Cortesan may serve as illustra- 
 tion to a popular play of Goldoni's, Momolo Cortesan. This was the 
 first comedy of character Goldoni composed. Its title-role was written 
 for a celebrated Pantalone, Goliuetti (see Goldoni's Memoirs, part i. 
 ch. 40). When he printed it, he translated the title into L'Uomo di 
 Mondo, finding no exact eqruvalent for the Venetian phrase Cortesan- 
 Goldoni's account of the character tallies with Gozzi's. 
 
VENETIAN CORTESANL 295 
 
 of the expense on these occasions was not much 
 above sixpence, and I gained the hearty good-will 
 of my companions by contributing some slices of 
 excellent Friulian ham to our common table. The 
 characters and manners of these men delighted me ; 
 I took pleasure in listening to the stories of their 
 quarrels, reconciliations, love-adventures, misfortunes, 
 accidents of all kinds, told in racy Venetian dialect, 
 with the liveliness which is natural to our folk. 
 What is more, I learned much from them. Alas ! 
 the race of Cortigiani has degenerated, like every- 
 thing else in this corrupt age. When I chance to 
 meet a survivor of the honest jolly crew, he strikes 
 his forehead, and confesses that the good days of his 
 youth are irrecoverable, and that the Cortigiano is an 
 extinct species. 
 
 Meanwhile I took good care to interfere with 
 nobody and nothing in the household. This I did 
 for my poor father's sake. But I kept my eyes open 
 to observe the intrigues, schemes, and movements of 
 the government. Some Jews, some brokers, and a 
 crowd of women were always coming and going on 
 secret conferences with my sister-in-law. These 
 attracted my attention, and formed the subject of my 
 earnest cogitations. It grieved me to see my brother 
 Gasparo immersed in his philosophy and poetiy, 
 never for one moment giving the least thought to 
 domestic economy. It grieved me ; but I grieved 
 in silence. There was one circumstance, however, 
 
296 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 which fairly put me out of patience. We had three 
 sisters in the house ; and a swarm of drones, hulking 
 young fellows of the freest manners, kept buzzing 
 round them. When I came home and found these 
 visitors at their accustomed chatter, I used to scowl 
 at them, lift my hat and put it on again, turn my 
 back, and climb the stairs to my own den, with 
 the fixed intention of making the gentlemen per- 
 ceive how little their company attracted me. This 
 manoeuvre had its effect. My sister-in-law took it 
 upon her to read me a matronly lecture on the im- 
 propriety of insulting friends of the family by my 
 rough ways. I replied that I knew very well what 
 friendship was, but that I could distinguish the false 
 from the true ; I was not conscious of having been 
 rude to anybody ; my father was the master, and if 
 he did not mind some things which seemed to my 
 inexperience imprudent and irregular, a mere lad's 
 opinions were not worthy of consideration. This 
 hint of my displeasure made all the women of the 
 house regard me like a serpent. Even my three 
 sisters, who loved me sincerely, and were excellent 
 creatures, imbued with the soundest religious prin- 
 ciples, could not help harbouring a trifle of suspicion 
 in their feminine brains. For the rest, I said what I 
 thought when I was consulted upon affairs of no im- 
 portance. My advice in such matters pleased nobody. 
 I ran on little errands if these were intrusted to me ; 
 and above all, I devoted some hours of every evening 
 
FINANCIAL FOLLY. 297 
 
 to my father, who always received me with tenderness 
 and tears. 
 
 From conversation with my sisters I learned that 
 the five thousand ducats raised by sale of lands in 
 Friuli, ostensibly to make up portions for my married 
 sisters, had either not been paid by the purchasers 
 or had only reached the hands of the husbands in 
 part. The same had happened with the drapery, 
 linen, and jewels, for which a large debt had been 
 contracted with a company of merchants. These 
 and similar confidences made it clear to my mind 
 that the marriages of my two sisters had not been 
 arranged for their settlement in life so much as with 
 the view of raising money under colourable pretexts, 
 and of alienating entailed property with some show 
 of legality. In fact, I scented disastrous dealings of 
 the sort which are known at Venice by the name of 
 stocchi} As natural consequences of this crooked 
 
 1 In these and several passages which follow, Gozzi ascribes the 
 pecuniary embarrassments of his family to the maladministration of 
 his mother, aided by his sister-in-law. It is only fair to say, that 
 Gasparo Gozzi's correspondence confirms his veracity. That favourite 
 and favoured eldest son complains bitterly that, even to the last days 
 of her life, his mother insisted on managing the property, and that she 
 made underhand contracts to the prejudice of himself and his children. 
 It was, in fact, a misfortune for the Gozzi that their father, Jacopo 
 Antonio, married into a patrician family of higher rank and pretensions 
 than his own. Angela Tiepolo, knowing herself to be one of the last 
 representatives of a very noble house, with considerable expectations 
 from her childless brother, drove her easy-going husband into ruinous 
 expenditure, and domineered over her kindred by right of a marriage 
 which savoured of a mesalliance. See the article upon her in Litta's 
 Famiglie Celebri, sub tit. "Tiepolo." 
 
298 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 policy, urgent needs for ready money and embarrass- 
 ments of all sorts had ensued, which led to fresh 
 expedients and ever-growing financial distress. 
 
 Without attributing malice to any one, I merely 
 blamed the bad luck of our family, owing to which 
 my grandfather's fine estate had passed into the 
 hands of women under two administrations, and had 
 been wasted by a course of insane irregularities. I 
 took care to send an accurate report of our domestic 
 circumstances to my brother Francesco at Corfu. 
 And now I must embark upon the sea of my worst 
 troubles. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 / become, without fault of my own, quite unjustly, the object 
 of hatred to all members of my household. — Resolve to 
 return to Dalmatia. — My father 's death. 
 
 It had not escaped my notice that my mother 
 and sister-in-law were in the habit of going abroad 
 together in the mornings. During the five winter 
 months they wore masks, and their proceedings had 
 all the appearance of some secret business. 1 Now 
 Carnival was over. We had reached the month of 
 March 1745, a date which will be always painful 
 
 1 The bautta and the mask were permitted at Venice from the first 
 Sunday in October until Ash Wednesday. 
 
RAISING THE WIND. 299 
 
 to my recollection. Every morning the two ladies 
 left the house together, no longer masked, but 
 wearing the zendado. 1 I asked my sisters if they 
 knew the object of these daily expeditions. They 
 answered to the following effect : all they knew 
 for certain was that my father's invalid condition 
 made a residence in Venice irksome to him ; now 
 that the spring was advancing, he wished to go 
 into Friuli with my mother, leaving our sister-in- 
 law at the head of affairs in Venice ; meanwhile 
 the treasury was empty, the barns and cellars of our 
 country-house had nothing left in them. I shrugged 
 my shoulders, and kept silence. 
 
 A few days afterwards, while I was attempting to 
 drive away care by study in my little upper chamber, 
 my three sisters entered. They were weeping, and 
 my first fear was lest my father should have died. 
 Reassuring me upon this point, they passionately 
 besought me to interpose between the family and 
 shameful ruin. I alone was capable of doing this. 
 The secret expeditions of my mother and sister-in- 
 law had resulted in a contract with a certain Signor 
 Francesco Zini, cloth merchant. He undertook to 
 pay down six hundred ducats in exchange for our 
 ancestral mansion, agreeing, moreover, to hand over 
 
 1 This was a very long scarf of black silk, which, draped above the 
 head, and falling over the shoulders, was tied in a knot, and allowed to 
 hang on both sides of the wearer's skirts. The mask or bautta was only 
 permitted during the prolonged Venetian Carnival. 
 
300 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 a little dwelling of his own in the distant quarter of 
 San Jacopo dall' Orio. They added that my father 
 was ready to give his assent to this bargain, and my 
 brothers Gasparo and Almorb would offer no opposi- 
 tion. I felt deeply moved by the distress of these 
 poor girls as well as by my own keen sense of 
 humiliation; and when they concluded by enjoining 
 the strictest secrecy upon myself in the transaction, 
 a gulf of dissensions, disagreeableness, and misery 
 of all kinds seemed to yawn before my feet. Our 
 pressing want of money, the contract verbally com- 
 pleted by my mother and sister-in-law, my father's 
 consent, the adhesion of my brothers to the scheme, 
 the obligation to secrecy laid upon me by my sisters, 
 my own bad reputation in the household as a dis- 
 turber of domestic quiet, my lack of friends and 
 supporters in Venice, all filled me with terror. Yet 
 I resolved to try what I could do to gratify my 
 father's desire for the country, and to put a stop to 
 this humiliating contract. With that object in view 
 I also undertook a secret mission and went to visit 
 Signor Francesco Zini. 
 
 I laid myself open to him in terms of flattering 
 politeness, appealing to his excellent disposition, 
 and pointing out that he was about to enter on a 
 business which would expose him to risk and us to 
 notable humiliation. I told him that my father had 
 been an invalid for many years, that our ancestral 
 mansion was subject to a strict entail, that on my 
 
PLAN TO SELL THE PALACE. 301 
 
 father's death he would lose his money and the 
 house, that all the sons of the family were not pre- 
 pared to sanction the contract, that one of them was 
 in the Levant, that I had not the least intention 
 of assenting, and that the utmost I could do would 
 be to abandon the house at my father's express com- 
 mand. Then I passed to the pathetic. I described a 
 numerous family departing with their scanty bundles 
 from the loved paternal nest, bowed down with grief 
 and shame before the eyes of all their neighbours, 
 who would be exclaiming : "See those gentlefolk upon 
 the move, because their home has been sold over their 
 heads ! " I proved to him that if he gained a fine 
 house to live in, he would also gain an odious and 
 ugly reputation. Finally, I besought him, as a man 
 of worth, to seize some plausible pretext for breaking 
 a bargain which, happily for his advantage and our 
 own, had not been ratified. 
 
 Over the fat, red, small-pox-pitted features of 
 Signor Zini spread amazement and perplexity. He 
 did not understand my rigmarole, he said ; he was 
 an honest man, pouring out his blood, not water, 
 to obtain the house ; my mother and sister-in-law, 
 together with the broker of this honourable bargain, 
 had assured him that my father wished to conclude 
 it, and that all his sons were prepared to emancipate 
 themselves from the paternal authority, in order to be 
 able to sign the contract, thus giving it validity, and 
 securing the rightful interest of the innocent pur- 
 
3 o2 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 chaser. The affair had been settled, the necessary 
 deeds were waiting on the bureau of Marchese Suarez, 
 his advocate. Most assuredly, unless my father's male 
 heirs procured their emancipation, in order to give 
 validity to the contract in perpetuity, he would not 
 unbutton his pockets to disburse a penny ; he was 
 not a fool, to be imposed upon with fibs and fables. 
 
 I commended the fat gentleman's perspicacity and 
 caution ; repeated that I had no intention of pro- 
 curing my emancipation, and that nothing on earth 
 would force me to consent ; once more I begged him 
 to find some excuse for breaking off the bargain ; 
 and wound up by imploring him to keep silence 
 upon my interference in the matter. I made it clear 
 that only a brute, devoid of Christian charity, would 
 reject a son's entreaties, and render him odious to 
 mother and father without any advantage to himself. 
 He promised to respect my secrecy, wagging his 
 huge scarlet jowl and lifting his night-cap, with so 
 many protestations of being touched to the heart, 
 that I ought to have been put upon my guard. I 
 did not yet know human nature, and retired as happy 
 as if I had taken Gibraltar by assault, feeling con- 
 fident that my prudence and discretion had averted 
 a lamentable catastrophe. 
 
 Nothing was said by me about the course which I 
 had followed, even to my three sisters. I reflected 
 that they were women, and awaited a quiet termina- 
 tion of the affair, trusting to Signor Zini's humanity. 
 
THE PLAN FRUSTRATED. 303 
 
 Meanwhile I ruminated how to procure my father's 
 removal to the country, and how to help the family 
 without waiting for the harvest, which would be 
 finished in three months. I computed the value of 
 my clothes, my watch, my snuff-box ; prepared as I 
 was then, to sell everything I possessed. But these 
 calculations only reduced me to despair. My one 
 real friend was Signor Massimo, then at Padua. I 
 remembered that I already owed him two hundred 
 ducats, and that he was living on an allowance from 
 his father. Yet I knew that both father and son, as 
 well as a brother of my comrade, were no less gene- 
 rous toward persons on whose character for loyalty 
 and friendship they relied, than they were suspicious 
 of intriguers and impostors. I was also aware that 
 they were in a position to render me substantial 
 services. How often, during the tempestuous vicissi- 
 tudes of my existence, have I not had the opportunity 
 to verify this fact ! 
 
 While thus engaged in studying ways and means, 
 Signor Zini broke rudely in upon my meditations. 
 Possessed with the desire to obtain our dwelling for 
 his own, he divulged the secret of my visit, and ex- 
 posed what I had said to him in terms of his own 
 choosing. My belief is that his communication 
 amounted to this : — unless the hot-headed impetuous 
 young fellow, who had come to treat with him, were 
 brought to reason, and compelled to sign the con- 
 tract, he refused to disburse two shillings. 
 
304 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 I was in my upper chamber, studying as usual, and 
 talking with my brother Almor5 about his wretched 
 schooling, when my mother appeared one day. Some- 
 thing of philosophical severity in her toilette, some- 
 thing imposing in her manner, which concealed, 
 however, an internal irritation, proclaimed the gravity 
 of her mission. She addressed herself pointedly to 
 me, with the features of a judge rather than a mother, 
 and began a long narration of the straits to which 
 we were reduced. She said that, God be blessed, 
 she had been inspired and assisted to discover six 
 hundred ducats in the hands of a benevolent mer- 
 chant, which would be placed immediately at her 
 disposal upon such and such conditions. The notary 
 was ready to engross the necessary deeds ; and she 
 begged me to declare what I thought about this 
 special providence. 
 
 At the bottom of her heart I read Sign or Zini's act 
 of treason, and saw that I was lost. However, I 
 answered respectfully that a contract of this kind 
 struck me as anything but providential ; still my 
 father had full power to do what he thought fit, with- 
 out rendering an account of his actions to his sons. 
 She flamed up, and cried with a threatening air that 
 my consent was also needed ; she could not believe 
 that I should be so rash and headstrong as to pre- 
 vent a plan which would relieve my father and the 
 family in our present painful circumstances. I could 
 have uttered several truths without a wish to wound ; 
 
MOTHER AND SON. 305 
 
 but certain truths, ouce spoken, wound incurably. 
 Therefore, I contented myself with observing that 
 I was ready to shed my blood for my father, but that 
 I could not assent to a contract so humiliating and 
 ruinous, the last of a whole series dictated by suicidal 
 policy. People who understood economy were in 
 the habit of calculating and making provision for the 
 future, not of selling or mortgaging their property to 
 meet embarrassments created by their own extrava- 
 gance. The latter course was rapidly bringing our 
 whole family to the workhouse. Under a disastrous 
 financial system our income had been reduced to three 
 thousand ducats ; yet I could not comprehend how 
 we were in such straits as she had described. When 
 people were unable to maintain a decent state in the 
 capital, they could live at ease in the country at one- 
 third of the same cost. Houses ought to be let, and 
 not sold. Still my father had the power to make 
 any contract he thought right ; only I did not believe 
 him capable of forcing me to give consent against 
 my will and judgment. 
 
 The gestures of submission, respect, and supplica- 
 tion with which I accompanied this speech had no 
 power to mollify the pungency of its significance. My 
 mother rose, with her arms akimbo, and inquired 
 who it was I meant to blame for our misfortunes. 
 Instead of telling the bitter and irrefutable truth, I 
 said that I only blamed fate and the misfortunes 
 themselves. " I reckon," she replied with a smile of 
 
 vol. 1. u 
 
3 o6 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 fury, " that you will give in your adhesion." " Indeed 
 I shall not," was my answer ; and the profound bow 
 with which I spoke these words had the appearance 
 of impertinent irony, although God knows I did not 
 mean it. This was enough to fan the smothered 
 flames into a Vesuvius in eruption. My mother bent 
 her stormy brows upon me — upon the sixth finger of 
 her maternal hands — and broke into the following 
 declamation. "From the moment of my return she 
 had prophesied, like Cassandra, that I should turn 
 the household upside down. She did not know me 
 for one of her own children. The intimacy of a 
 certain friend to whom I had attached myself was 
 ruining the family, as it had ruined me. (Poor inno- 
 cent generous Signor Massimo !) If I had behaved 
 well during my three years' service, his Excellency 
 Quirini would certainly have rewarded me with some 
 good military situation. As it was, my excursion 
 into Dalmatia had been a source of burdensome ex- 
 pense. I had led a vicious life there . . . she knew 
 . . . she did not mean to speak . . . but . . . enough 
 . . . and my debt of two hundred ducats to Massimo 
 was merely a sum lost by me at basset." 
 
 Now this debt had not yet been paid, and had 
 therefore been of no inconvenience to my family. 
 Such extravagant accusations took me by surprise ; 
 and the reader will now perceive the reason of the ac- 
 counts which I rendered in a former passage of these 
 Memoirs. I should perhaps have flown into a fury 
 
RESOLVE TO JOIN THE ARMY. 307 
 
 alien to my real nature, if these reproofs had been 
 based on truth. The wounding allusion to Signor 
 Massimo nearly roused me, but I preserved my self- 
 control. It was clear that my mother had been 
 deeply prejudiced and cruelly instigated against 
 me. The consciousness of my innocence and a 
 sense of duty made me stand before her rigid and 
 mute as a statue. With an impulse of affection, 
 maternal as it seemed, my mother took my brother 
 Almoro by the arm, and gazing at me with contempt, 
 which strove to be compassionate, she addressed 
 these words to him : " Come away, my dear boy ; 
 let us leave that madman to the error of his ways ! " 
 Then she turned her back and led him from the 
 room, as though she were saving an innocent crea- 
 ture from some fearful danger. 
 
 Convinced by this tragi-comedy that I was the 
 victim of a family cabal, I saw no other course open 
 but to resume my commission as a cadet of cavalry. 
 I left my room, went downstairs, and found all the 
 family (except my father) assembled in commotion, 
 listening to the commiserations of their usual friends 
 enraged against me. It had been proclaimed aloud 
 that I had called them all thieves, retorted against 
 my mother with scandalous and impious audacity, and 
 betrayed my determination to make myself the tyrant 
 of the household. Even my three sisters, who had 
 urged me into opposition, showed themselves sulkily 
 scornful ; and though I might have exposed them 
 
308 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 before the whole company, I did not deign to do so. 
 Confirmed in my resolve to leave Venice for Dalmatia, 
 I buckled on my sword, wasted no words about my 
 intention, and repaired to the Riva dei Schiavoni, to 
 see if I could find a ship for Zara. There I dis- 
 covered that a trabacolo would set sail in four or 
 five days. The captain was a certain Bernetich. 
 I took down his name, and, wrapped up in my own 
 dark thoughts, spent all that day in exile, wandering 
 far from home. 
 
 On my return, I noticed that, though everybody 
 wore a crabbed face against me, something had hap- 
 pened to their satisfaction. Signor Zini, it appeared, 
 was willing to execute the contract without requir- 
 ing my consent. I did not know that my brother 
 Francesco had left a power of attorney to act for him 
 in Gasparo's hands. With voices of triumph they 
 all exclaimed together that the great sacrifice was to 
 be solemnly and legally performed next day. I did 
 not care to inquire how things had been brought to 
 this conclusion ; but putting on as cheerful a face as 
 possible, I went to keep my poor father company as 
 usual for a few hours in the evening. 
 
 It will be as well at this point to describe the 
 topography of our house. It was originally built for 
 two separate residences, with double entrances upon 
 the street and water-side, two staircases and two 
 cisterns. At the time when it was planned, the 
 Gozzis formed two families, which were afterwards 
 
THE GOZZI MANSION. 309 
 
 reduced to one. We occupied the lower floor and 
 some apartments in the highest storey. The second 
 floor was let for 150 ducats a year to an honest iron- 
 monger called Uccelli ; but this portion of the mansion 
 had also been sold upon my father's life, by one of 
 those contracts which were only too frequent in our 
 family, for the sum of 1 200 ducats to his Excellency 
 the Procuratore Sagredo. 
 
 I did all in my power to avoid the least allusion 
 to the painful scenes of the preceding day ; but my 
 dear father kept gazing earnestly at me, and shedding 
 tears from time to time. In vain I tried to inspire 
 him with happier thoughts. Would that I could 
 banish all recollection of that night, which was one 
 of the most sombre, the most painful, in the whole 
 course of my existence. Paralysed and dumb for seven 
 long years, he yet retained his mental faculties in 
 their full vigour. Summoning all his force, by signs 
 and stammerings and tears, he made it only too clear 
 how much he suffered from the miserable straits to 
 which the family had been reduced. He also con- 
 tinued to express his sympathy with me for my dis- 
 like to sign the projected contract. To my surprise 
 and grief, he intimated that I had only a brief time 
 to wait ; his swift approaching death would restore to 
 us the upper dwelling, which had been sold upon his 
 life, and which was much better than the one we occu- 
 pied. This inarticulate but eloquent discourse ended 
 in a flood of tears. Deeply moved to the bottom of 
 
3 io MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 my heart, I strove to tranquillise his rnind, and direct 
 his thoughts from such afflicting topics. I perceived 
 that no pains had been spared to make me odious in 
 my father's eyes, and that this had been done with- 
 out the least regard for his infirmity. Yet I did not 
 attempt to justify my conduct, and said nothing 
 about my firm resolve to leave home. His departure 
 for Friuli had been fixed on the third day after this 
 fatal evening, and I mentally decided to set out for 
 Dalmatia two days later on. My assumed cheerful- 
 ness, and the merry turn I gave to all those dismal 
 subjects of reflection, seemed to tranquillise him. 
 Then he tried to lift himself from his arm-chair, as 
 though to get to bed. I helped to raise him, but he 
 tottered more than usual, and sank with his knees 
 toward the ground. I took him in my arms to keep 
 him from falling. Agonising moment ! It was clear 
 that a last stroke of apoplexy was carrying away my 
 father from my arms. In a loud voice and with per- 
 fect articulation he pronounced the words : " I am 
 dying ! " They fell like lead upon my heart, with 
 such cruel force that I nearly dropped. My mother, 
 who was present, fled from the room. I called aloud 
 for aid. Servants hurried in ; one of these I dis- 
 patched for medical assistance, while the others helped 
 me to place my poor dear father, now quite incapable 
 of any movement, on his bed. A physician, Doctor 
 Bonariva by name, had him bled at once. But 
 nothing could be done to save his life. Assisted 
 
DEATH OF GOZZI'S FATHER. 311 
 
 by Don Pietro Pighetti, now Canon of S. Marco, in 
 the last religions duties of our creed, he displayed 
 all the signs of Christian resignation and intelli- 
 gence ; and after eight hours of oppression, toilsome 
 suffering, and the pangs of death, my unhappy 
 parent closed his eyes upon the vast obscurity in 
 which his family was plunged. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 My attempts at pacification defeated. — Useless philosophical 
 reflections. — A terrible domestic storm begins to breiv. 
 
 No sooner had my father breathed his last than 
 my lady sister-in-law, all activity and bustle, issued 
 from the room of mourning, and took upon her to 
 console his sorrowing children with the convincing 
 statement that he was the most lovely corpse which 
 eyes of men had ever seen. This wholly unexpected 
 statement, which had nothing of humanity, morality, 
 or philosophy in it, and which she kept repeating 
 and affirming upon oath for our relief, filled me then, 
 and fills me now, with such fury, that I should be 
 angry to think that any of my readers could laugh 
 at it. 
 
 One disastrous thought kept breaking in upon 
 our sorrow at this tragic moment. Am I to record it ? 
 We had neither the wherewithal to provide a decent 
 
3 i2 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 interment for my father, nor the credit to obtain 
 it. The habitues of the house gave words in abun- 
 dance, but no pecuniary aid. I had only one friend, 
 Massimo, my creditor, the object of my relatives' 
 calumnies. Grief inspired me with the thought of 
 writing to lay our difficulties before his generous 
 mind. The special messenger by whom I sent this 
 letter returned with a sum of money more than 
 sufficient to defray the expenses of a becoming 
 funeral. On receiving it, I took my brother Gasparo 
 apart, placed the money in his hands, and told him 
 who had given it. Then I begged him not to mis- 
 interpret what I was about to say. He was my elder, 
 and I willingly acknowledged him to be the head of 
 our family. He could not be blind to the deplorable 
 condition into which we had declined. Duty re- 
 quired that he should take the reins with manly 
 resolution, and should withdraw the management of 
 our affairs from the hands of those who had brought us 
 to utter shipwreck. My brother accepted the money 
 aud my speech as well as might have been expected 
 from a man of his excellent disposition and superior 
 intelligence. He admitted that he saw the necessity 
 of a thorough economical reform, earned through 
 with virile firmness. Some increase of income, owing 
 to the expiration of contracts made upon my father's 
 life, would facilitate the undertaking. He was will- 
 ing to relinquish literary occupations, which were 
 neither appreciated nor remunerated in Italy, for the 
 
GASPARO'S INCAPACITY. 313 
 
 sake of being able to devote his energy and time to 
 the administration of our common property. 
 
 I did not flatter myself that anything so much to 
 be desired would come to pass. I knew how impos- 
 sible it is for people to change their character and 
 nature. I knew his wife's meddlesome, restless, im- 
 perious thirst for ruling — his own peaceable tempera- 
 ment, averse from opposition, addicted to the habits 
 of a student. Yet I saw the necessity of taking the 
 step I did, if only to correct the bad impression of 
 myself, which had grown up under malevolent in- 
 fluences in the family. 
 
 I had no heart to follow my father to the grave, 
 but shut myself up in my little chamber, where I 
 gave way through three days and three nights to 
 grief, not unmingled with remorse for having inno- 
 cently helped to hasten his death. Nothing less 
 than this tragedy was needed to cancel Signor Fran- 
 cesco Zini's contract. 
 
 I feel some repugnance at sitting down to write 
 what happened at this epoch in my family. I wish 
 that I could tell the tale without appearing to censure 
 any of my relatives and without seeming to draw 
 a vain-glorious picture of myself. The truth at any 
 cost has to be reported ; but I protest with emphasis, 
 and this is also true, that I always experienced real 
 pain when I beheld the disastrous consequences 
 which the faults of others brought upon themselves, 
 and that I neither took pleasure in revenge, nor 
 
3H MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 cherished sentiments of ambition in doing good to 
 my family — if indeed I did do good. The reader 
 •will he able to judge of that from the sequel of these 
 Memoirs. 
 
 When a group of closely related persons in one 
 household fall to quarrelling, all the causes which 
 perpetuate faults of character and conduct begin to 
 operate. Each member of the company is perfectly 
 acquainted with the weak side of his neighbour, 
 and knows exactly how to sting him to the quick. 
 Exacerbated tempers and prejudiced minds judge 
 everything awry, while partisans and flatterers add 
 fuel to the fire. Zeal is misconstrued into craft and 
 tyranny ; no protestations and no arguments suffice 
 to remove such false impressions. The torment of 
 the hell in which one has to live blinds reason and 
 enslaves the freedom of volition ; years of unhappiness 
 pass by before the weapons of vindictive rage are 
 blunted by constant acts of toleration and dis- 
 interested deeds of kindness, and the innocent are 
 seen in their true light. To blame the doings of a 
 family divided against itself is much the same as 
 blaming the actions of somnambulists. 
 
 We had never used the outward demonstrations 
 of affection, kisses and caresses, in our domestic 
 circle. Yet we were bound together by real senti- 
 ments of friendliness and love on all sides. Un- 
 luckily the seeds of discord had already begun to 
 germinate in our braius. Besides my mother, three 
 
DOMESTIC WARFARE. 315 
 
 brothers and three sisters, my sister-in-law was there, 
 with her hot, headstrong, vindictive temperament, 
 her aptitude for colouring everything to suit her own 
 purpose, and her established dominion over the 
 minds of my relations. During my father's long 
 illness there had been no real head in the household. 
 Everybody passed for master. No one learned the 
 virtues of submission and filial obedience. Each 
 member of the family had his own engagements, his 
 own separate obligations, together with the passions 
 proper to himself as a human being. There was no 
 defect of intelligence or mental energy. But lacking 
 a central authority which might have brought man's 
 egotistic passions into wholesome subjection, self- 
 love and caprice turned the individuals of the group 
 into so many political agents, bent on achieving their 
 own ends, without regard for the common interest. 
 I must not omit the chronic malady under which we 
 suffered — that predilection for poetry, which tinged 
 all we thought and planned with romanticism. During 
 a period of many years no records had been kept 
 either of the income derived from our estate, or of 
 the sales which had been made. With perfect justice 
 each in turn denied that he had directed our affairs. 
 In such circumstances the death of the father leaves 
 a family exposed to direst intestine warfare ; and I 
 should be both indiscreet and inhuman if I were 
 to lay the whole blame of what ensued upon any 
 of the six relatives whom I have mentioned. 
 
3i6 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 A young man like myself, of little more than 
 twenty years, prone to thinking rather than to speak- 
 ing, with a military air acquired abroad, when he 
 found himself in the middle of so many working 
 brains, and attempted to effect a total revolution, 
 could not but raise irascibilities of all sorts and ex- 
 pose himself to odious suspicions. The portrait which 
 I mean to paint of my own physical and other qualities 
 will perhaps reveal defects which rendered such sus- 
 picions, unjust as they are, at any rate excusable. 
 
 My mother was not so overwhelmed by the recent 
 loss of her husband as to be unable to think of busi- 
 ness. She demanded the repayment of her dowry, 
 small as it was, like one who feels the coming ship- 
 wreck and seeks a skiff for his salvation. My sister- 
 in-law, bent as usual on displaying her talent for 
 affairs, called the brokers, Jews, and female go- 
 betweens around her. My sisters were always con- 
 ferring in secret among themselves, or with my 
 sister-in-law, who kept promising them husbands 
 and marriage-portions. My brother Gasparo, at the 
 very moment when he solemnly promised to assume 
 the reins of government, handed over the money I 
 had got from Padua to his wife, to do as she thought 
 best with, reserving only a few coins for his own 
 purse. Then he relapsed into his ordinary ways of 
 life, his literary studies, his society of wit and genius, 
 and gave no signs of any firm intention to make 
 himself the master. 
 
A FAMILY COUNCIL. 317 
 
 About twenty days had passed since my father 
 died, when I was summoned to a serious conference 
 with my elder brother, my mother, and my sister-in- 
 law. We seated ourselves upon four straw-bottomed 
 rickety chairs, and my sister-in-law, with an air be- 
 tokening the gravity of the occasion, moved the 
 following resolution. Signor Massimo ought to be 
 repaid (this, mark well, was meant to gain me over). 
 With a view to discharging the debts we owed him, 
 and for other urgent necessities, it would be advis- 
 able to sell the upper dwelling in our town-house 
 for the sum of 1200 ducats on the lives of us four 
 brothers. A purchaser was ready (possibly Signor 
 Francesco Zini). The capital left over would enable 
 us to put our affairs in order, and to go forward 
 swimmingly upon a new and proper method of 
 administration. My mother blinked approval of 
 this fine idea. My brother declared that it was the 
 only course left open to us. They all looked at me 
 and waited for my assent. I did not comprehend by 
 what right my mother and sister-in-law took part in 
 the conference, or how my brother was not ashamed 
 of cutting the figure he did there, and of following 
 his wife's suggestions with such docility. A hell 
 of squabbling yawned before me, and I answered as 
 coldly as I could that, so far as Signor Massimo was 
 concerned, I could trust his generous indulgence 
 towards a friend in difficulties, and that I did not 
 approve of selling property upon our joint lives. 
 
318 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 Such a step seemed to me mere progress on the 
 former road to ruin. I should prefer to let our 
 mansion, removing the whole family to the country, 
 where we could live for one-third of the expense, 
 until our debts were paid and the estate was nursed 
 into comparative prosperity. 
 
 This scandalous ultimatum, which wounded the 
 inclinations and the self-interest of every member in 
 the family, won me the reputation of a very Diony- 
 sius of Syracuse. Day by day, in secret conclaves, 
 the storm against me grew and gathered strength. 
 My brother Francesco, however, had written from 
 Corfu that he was coming home, and I judged it 
 prudent to await his arrival. Until I gained his 
 support, I stood alone, hated and dreaded like a 
 fatal comet by my kindred. To distract my mind 
 from painful thoughts, I summoned all my mental 
 forces, and poured forth torrents of verse and prose 
 and bizarre fancies upon paper. All through my long 
 and troubled life I have drawn relief from two main 
 sources. One is my own robust and democratic 1 
 bent of mind. The other is my aptitude for studying 
 human nature and for writing. I may truly say that 
 
 1 The Italian is democraziano. Perhaps Gozzi wrote clemocriziano, 
 from Democritus, the sage who laughed at all things. In either case 
 the adjective is wrongly formed. It ought to be either democratico or 
 democritico. But democrazia may have led him to democraziano. He 
 not infrequently employs this phrase, which always puzzles me, because 
 nobody -was really less democratic than Carlo Gozzi, and as yet, in 1780, 
 he had no reason, under the pressure of the Revolution, to dissemble. 
 
ATTEMPTS AT REFORM. 319 
 
 the exercise of fancy and the art of composition have 
 been to my mental pains what opiates are to physical 
 torments. 
 
 XX. 
 
 We plunge from bad to worse, deeper and deeper into the mire. 
 
 When my brother Francesco arrived from the 
 Levant, I explained to him the state of our affairs, 
 and my own wishes with regard to their admini- 
 stration. We both decided that he should repair 
 to Friuli, and undertake the management of our 
 estates there. Gasparo was to remain titular head 
 of the family, while Francesco received rents, kept 
 strict accounts, and provided for the common house- 
 hold. Meanwhile we begged our mother to charge 
 herself with certain domestic duties, and our sister- 
 in-law with certain others, hoping by this appor- 
 tionment of officers to introduce harmony and order 
 into the establishment. My sister-in-law displayed 
 a really exemplary resignation, merely expressing 
 her desire that, at this juncture, the account-book 
 of expenditure which she had kept for some years 
 past should be signed by her husband and his three 
 brothers, in token of approval and in discharge to 
 her of all pecuniary obligations. 
 
 I strove to make her understand that there was 
 no need for such a receipt in form ; nobody would 
 
3 2o MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 dream of calling her to account, and we were all 
 very grateful for her services. She would not listen 
 to my arguments, but insisted on our signing a 
 certain notebook scrawled with cabalistic characters 
 and numbers. Francesco observed that we might 
 safely sign, for the sake of peace and quiet. Having 
 entered our family without a farthing, accompanied 
 by her father and mother, whom we had supported 
 for many years and buried at our own charges, she 
 was incapable of making claims on the estate. To 
 this he added that he had consulted lawyers, and 
 that he was quite convinced of the propriety of 
 yielding to her wishes. 
 
 The sequel of this history will show that his 
 reasoning, though plausible enough, was faulty, and 
 that the policy he recommended led to further com- 
 plications. Gasparo and Alrnoro had already signed ; 
 Francesco was prepared to follow suit ; I did not care 
 to take the odium of standing out alone. Accord- 
 ingly, four signatures were generously appended to 
 the mass of undecipherable hieroglyphics, without 
 any attempt on our part to examine the accounts, 
 which by this act we formally accepted. 
 
 Francesco set off for Friuli, after promising to 
 maintain a detailed correspondence with Gasparo on 
 the state and management of our farms there, and 
 not to let himself be wheedled out of money or 
 produce at the demand of every one and anybody. 
 I did not then know what a worthless coadjutor I 
 
GOING FROM BAD TO WORSE. 3 ?i 
 
 had summoned to support my policy. Without the 
 least intention to defraud, he was governed by an 
 insect's blind instinct for his own particular advan- 
 tage. Under a compliant exterior, he concealed the 
 subtlety of a diplomatist. His sole aim was to 
 temporise and make concessions, with the view of 
 bringing matters to a rupture and of obtaining his 
 own share in the division of our common patrimony. 
 This end he pursued in secrecy and silence, without 
 reflecting on his duties to the family, or the position 
 of our three unmarried sisters, and the discords 
 which his pursuit of self-interest was bound to 
 foment. 
 
 What followed after his departure for Friuli 
 seemed conclusively to prove that a plan had been 
 laid to drive him to the Levant and me to Dalmatia 
 by involving us in embarrassments of all sorts. I 
 accuse nobody ; the heated passions which raged 
 round us, and the injuries from which I suffered, 
 deserve compassion more than blame. 
 
 Scarcely a day passed without letters being sent 
 from Venice, begging my brother to dispatch pro- 
 visions or money on various pretences. He complied 
 with every application, whether it bore the name of 
 Gasparo or of my mother or my sister-in-law. In 
 the course of some seven months he had exhausted 
 the whole harvest of that year, without asking for 
 accounts or disputing the claims made upon the pro- 
 perty he managed. In like manner the profits of 
 
 vol. i. x 
 
322 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 certain houses in Venice, and of some farms at Ber- 
 gamo and Vicenza, amounting to 800 ducats, had 
 been dissipated. When letters still kept coming, 
 demanding supplies and setting forth our urgent 
 needs, my brother could only answer that there was 
 nothing left to send. It was vain to inquire how 
 the casks of wine and sacks of corn and bags of cash 
 had vanished. Everybody had taken something to 
 defray his own particular expenses. One said, " I got 
 only so much ; " another, " I got so much ; I did this, 
 and I did that." Gasparo knew less than anybody 
 how matters had been managed, and had kept no 
 account of the least article. The conclusion arrived 
 at was that we must all die of hunger unless we sold 
 some piece of the estate upon our joint lives. 
 
 " Ora incomencian le dolenti note." 
 " And now begins the Iliad of our woes." 
 
 XXI. 
 
 My attitude of patient calm is useless. — Volcanic eruptions, 
 machinations, tragi-comic civil wars within our household. 
 
 At this point I resolved to step forth boldly and 
 to take the whole weight of our affairs upon my 
 shoulders, without troubling my head about being 
 called a tyrant and disturber of domestic peace. I 
 proclaimed aloud that the family must retire for some 
 
GOZZI'S ATTITUDE. 323 
 
 time into the country and economise. Nothing would 
 induce me to consent to sales or mortgages. Then 
 I began to contract debts on my own account, and 
 to part with my personal trifles for the support of the 
 household. I soon saw that it was impossible in 
 this way to keep fifteen people, servants included, at 
 Venice. Whenever I insisted upon the necessity of 
 leaving for the country, all the women rose in revolt, 
 and turned their backs without a word of answer. 
 Our dining-table became the scene of daily quarrels, 
 sullen faces, surly glances, biting speeches. I was 
 deeply grieved to observe that a final division of the 
 estate was drawing nearer and nearer. To avert this 
 catastrophe seemed impracticable, and I reflected 
 gloomily upon the condition to which my brother 
 Gasparo would be reduced, with a wife and five chil- 
 dren to support upon the fourth part of our en- 
 cumbered property. Meanwhile I could not blame 
 him except for his incurable indolence and absolute 
 immersion in studies for which I shared his weak- 
 ness. 
 
 Among the habitues of the house, none of them 
 friends of mine, were certain lawyers. I noticed that 
 these gentlemen had frequent conferences with the 
 ladies of the family who ruled my brother. They 
 were clearly plotting against me, and seeking means 
 to set the machinery of the law in movement in order 
 to hamper my free action. There was also a lady to 
 whom the female members of my family paid visits 
 
3 2 4 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 every evening. She was the Countess Elisabetta 
 Ghcllini of Vicenza, widow of the patrician Barbarigo 
 Balbi, who died some years before this epoch, leaving 
 her the mother of an only son. It is exceedingly 
 rare to find a lady endowed with the excellent 
 qualities of heart and head which she possessed in 
 a supreme degree. About forty years of age, infirm 
 of health, and exposed to constant litigation through 
 various claims advanced against her moderate estates, 
 she bore the trials of life with steady courage and 
 constant trust in Heaven. Her chief interest was 
 the education of her son, a boy of eight or nine, for 
 whom she had provided masters, while she herself 
 instilled into his mind the principles of sound 
 religion and morality. Gifted with a lively intellect, 
 and fond of literature, she spent a large part of the 
 day in reading poetry, and opened her house to 
 a society composed mainly of persons who had 
 suffered in the battles of life. Her extreme sym- 
 pathy for the afflicted led her to despoil herself with 
 admirable intrepidity, and to bestow on others what 
 was needed for her own support. This compassionate 
 and pious lady had for her adviser and advocate 
 in the numerous lawsuits to which she was con- 
 demned, the celebrated Conte Francesco Santorini. 
 
 It will appear from the sequel that this digression 
 upon the Countess Ghellini was needed to explain 
 an important passage in my life. Amid the din and 
 squabbles of our home, I used at times to catch frag- 
 
CONTESSA GHELLINI BALBI. 325 
 
 ments of the panegyrics poured forth by my female 
 relatives and Gasparo upon this lady, and heard them 
 rehearse the sonnets which they intended to recite in 
 her honour, or to offer for her recreation. Such was 
 the common custom at that period, observed by poets 
 in the houses they frequented. I speedily divined 
 that a plot was in process of formation to secure the 
 assistance of a very famous advocate against me. 
 Trusting this intuition, I resolved to introduce my- 
 self, although I had received no invitation, to the 
 lady whom my enemies so warmly praised. 
 
 She received me, and asked who I might be. On 
 giving my name, the noble and yet kindly distance 
 of her manner changed suddenly to sternness. A 
 few phrases which I thought it right to utter about 
 her interest in my relatives increased this expression 
 of reserve ; and she began to speak as follows, with ' 
 the happy choice of words which was peculiar to 
 her : " Sir, I am a poor woman as regards the wealth 
 of this life, but by the grace of God I am rich in the 
 possession of good sentiments and a sound education. 
 Your family is cultivated, and deserves to meet with 
 kindly feeling and esteem from all the world. It is 
 a pity that such a family should be annoyed and 
 brought to sorrow by a certain individual bound to it 
 by ties of blood, duty, and respect. A mother of very 
 noble birth treated with contempt, sisters domineered 
 over, persons of merit regarded with hatred — all 
 kinds of extravagances and injustice — such things 
 
326 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 dishonour the individual of whom I speak." This 
 preamble made me feel inclined to bow myself out of 
 the room in silence, since I am by nature far from 
 prone to justify my innocence ; but politeness and a 
 fear that a certain famous advocate, if prejudiced 
 against me, might upset my plans, kept me where I 
 was. I suffered, however, keenly from the barbarous 
 picture which had been presented to me, and began 
 to plead in self-defence. She interrupted me by 
 saying that she did not believe me to be entirely 
 bad-hearted, and that if I ceased to follow the 
 counsels of a certain friend of mine, I might be- 
 come a rational and right-feeling young man. So 
 then, here was Signor Massimo once more made a 
 scape-goat — the friend who had assisted me in Dal- 
 matia, succoured my family in our distress, and who 
 still remained our uncomplaining creditor. The im- 
 propriety of this attack stung me so sharply that I 
 could not hold my tongue. I had been treated as a 
 knave and fool without losing patience ; but never 
 in my life have I heard my friends insulted without 
 resenting the injustice. 
 
 I told the lady, knitting my brows and speaking 
 seriously, that she was bound to listen to me : un- 
 less, as I thought not, she was indifferent to equity. 
 Prejudice, I said, is a very unjust judge, and I did 
 not wish her to fall into that category. Then I 
 entered into a candid narration of our family affairs. 
 I described the ill results of reckless mal-administra- 
 
A DIPLOMATIC INTERVIEW. 327 
 
 tion. I related what had already happened and was 
 sure to happen, what I wanted, how I was opposed, 
 my honourable intentions, the plots and schemes to 
 thwart me, the services rendered by my friend and 
 his guiltlessness of any machinations. I could see 
 that she was both surprised and penetrated by my 
 reasoning. Just at this point Conte Francesco San- 
 torini entered the apartment, tired and drowsy. We 
 exchanged greetings, and the lady spoke to him in 
 this way: "Count, you were quite right to doubt 
 about the Gozzi. This gentleman has put a very 
 different face upon the matter, and I know not what 
 to think." The Count sank sleepily into a chair, 
 murmuring: "Did I not tell you that you ought to 
 hear both sides ? The chatter of women, heated 
 brains "... And having said these words, he sub- 
 sided into slumber. 
 
 I begged this noble lady to continue her protec- 
 tion to our family, and to receive the visits which I 
 hoped to pay her ; if she sought to help us, she could 
 do so by allaying the fever which was burning in so 
 many irritated bosoms. For my part, I cultivated 
 her friendship through many loug years, until death 
 forced me to deplore the loss of one whom I esteemed 
 and reverenced. My relatives, on the other hand, 
 gradually relaxed in their attentions, ceased to visit 
 her, and changed their eulogistic sonnets into petty 
 satires. 
 
328 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 The dogs of the law are let loose on rue by my family. — // is 
 impossible to avoid a separation. 
 
 As time went on, my steady intention to remove 
 our family into the country, and my other plans of 
 reform, roused my domestic antagonists to various 
 pettifogging stratagems. The black-robed seedy myr- 
 midons of the courts began to haunt our dwelling, 
 taking inventories of every nail on the pretext of my 
 mother's dowry, delivering demands in form from my 
 three sisters for maintenance and marriage portions, 
 presenting bills for drapery and jewels furnished by a 
 company of merchants to the tune of 1500 ducats, and 
 suing on the part of my two brothers-in-law for some 
 4000 ducats owed to them. Little creditors of all de- 
 scriptions rose in swarms around us ; and what was 
 still more astounding, my sister-in-law advanced a 
 claim of 900 ducats, due to her, she said, upon the 
 statement of accounts which we had signed so negli- 
 gently. One would have thought the myrmidons 
 and ban-dogs of the law had been unleashed by 
 hunters bent on driving a wild beast from his lair ; 
 while the satisfaction and triumph depicted on the 
 faces of my relatives showed too clearly who were the 
 real authors of this legal persecution. 
 
COUNT SANTORINI'S ADVICE. 329 
 
 I bore the brunt of these attacks with my habitual 
 philosophy of laughter, drew closer to my brother 
 Almorb, and informed Francesco by letter of what 
 was being conspired against us. Count Francesco 
 Santorini helped me at this pinch with excellent 
 advice. Under his direction I took the following 
 measures. Francesco received instructions to hold 
 fast by every rood of our Friulian property, and to 
 send me copies of any writs which might be served 
 upon him there. I recognised my mother's dowry, 
 and offered annual payments to the merchants and 
 my brothers-in-law. To my sisters I replied in writ- 
 ing that their maintenance should be duly attended 
 to, but that it was impossible to create marriage por- 
 tions for them under the conditions of entail to which 
 the estate was subjected. With regard to the mon- 
 strous claims advanced by my sister-in-law, I flatly 
 denied their validity until they had been submitted 
 to a court of justice. Then I proceeded to meet the 
 current expenditure of our establishment as well as 
 I was able, while waiting for the time of harvest ; 
 and all this I did without mooting the question of 
 Gasparo's separation from our brotherhood, in the 
 hope that little by little things would settle down 
 in peace and quietness. Vain and idle expectation ! 
 My reforms, by cutting at the root of vested interests, 
 and checking the arbitrary sway of Heaven knows 
 whom, merely fanned the flames of rage which burned 
 against me. In a private memorial, addressed to my 
 
33Q MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 mother, brother, sister-in-law, and sisters, I finally 
 explained the impossibility of supporting the family 
 any longer at Venice, exposed as I was to annoying 
 and expensive litigation with the very persons who 
 ate and drank at the same table. I might just as well 
 have talked to images. Writs issued by my mother, 
 my sister-in-law, my sisters, fell in showers. Slights 
 and insults thickened daily. Our common table had 
 become a pit of hell, worthy to be sung by Dante. 
 To such a state of misery had irrational dissensions 
 brought a set of relatives who really loved each 
 other. 
 
 In order to shelter Almorb and myself from the 
 wordy missiles which fell like hail all dinner-time, 
 I had a little table laid for us two in a separate 
 apartment. The covers were removed with rudeness, 
 on the pretext that the linen, plates, dishes, &c, 
 belonged to my mother's dowry, and that if I wanted 
 such furniture I must buy it. Pushed in this way to 
 extremities, I decided to leave a house which had 
 become for me a hell on earth. Perhaps it was im- 
 politic to take this step. But I could not stand 
 these petty persecutions longer. Before quitting the 
 infernal regions, I begged permission from my mother 
 to take away the beds in which my brother Almorb 
 and I enjoyed our troubled slumbers, offering to pay 
 their price to the credit of her dowry. She re- 
 plied with a sardonic smile of discontent that she 
 could not grant my request, since the beds were 
 
GOZZI LEAVES HIS HOME. 331 
 
 needed by the family. I accepted this refusal with 
 hilarity. 
 
 "E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle." 
 " And thence we issued to review the stars." 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Calumnious reports, negotiations, a legal partition of our 
 family estate, tranquillity sought in vain. 
 
 I had hardly settled down with my brother Almorb 
 in the remote quarter of S. Caterina, where lodgings 
 are cheap in proportion to their inconvenience and 
 discomfort, before the whole town began to talk about 
 our doings. Three of the brothers Gozzi, it was 
 rumoured, had laid violent hands upon the family 
 estate ; their eldest brother with his wife and five chil- 
 dren, their three unmarried sisters, and their mother, 
 a Venetian noblewoman worthy of all respect, had 
 been plunged in tears and indigence by the barbarous 
 inhumanity of these unnatural monsters. The hovel 
 I had hired, and where I suffocated with Almorb in 
 the smoke of a miserable kitchen, ill-furnished and 
 waited on by an old beldame called Jacopa, was 
 besieged by the myrmidons of the law. Everything 
 was done to dislodge me from the city, and to make 
 me abandon the line of action on which I had 
 resolved. Democritus and my innocence came to 
 
332 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 my aid ; and I determined to stand firm with silent 
 and passive resistance. 
 
 In these painful circumstances I heard to my great 
 sorrow that my brother's wife had persuaded him to 
 become the lessee of the theatre of S. Angelo at 
 Venice. 1 Her romantic turn of fancy, together with 
 her love of domination, made her conceive wild 
 hopes of profit from this scheme. A company of 
 actors were engaged at fixed salaries ; and she was 
 to play the part of controller, purse-holder, and stage- 
 manager for the troupe at Venice and on the main- 
 land. Moved by pity for my brother and his inno- 
 cent children, I did everything I could, without 
 appearing personally in the matter, to dissuade this 
 hot-headed woman from so perilous an enterprise. 
 She repelled all such attempts with scorn, being 
 firmly convinced that she would gain a fortune and 
 make her brothers-in-law bite their nails with envy. 
 
 I saw that the division of our patrimony could no 
 longer be postponed, and civilly intimated to Gasparo 
 that the time was come for taking this supreme step. 
 Articles were accordingly drawn up, whereby the 
 several parcels of our estate in Friuli, Venice, Ber- 
 gamo, and Vicenza were partitioned into four lots. 
 Provision was made for the repayment of my mother's 
 dowry and for the proper maintenance of my three 
 
 1 The theatres of Venice were called by the names of the parishes in 
 which they stood, or of non-parochial churches to which they were con- 
 tiguous. S. Anerelo was one of the smaller. 
 
PARTITION OF THE FAMILY ESTATES. 333 
 
 sisters, all of whom elected to reside with Gasparo. 
 A fund was formed for the liquidation of debts, the 
 charge of which devolved on me. I undertook to 
 render an annual report of this operation, showing 
 how I had bestowed the monies in my hands as 
 trustee for the family. Nothing was fixed about my 
 sister-in-law's claims for reimbursement ; but it will 
 be seen that when her theatrical speculation proved 
 a ruinous failure, I had to take these also into 
 account. Gasparo expressed a wish to obtain the 
 upper dwelling in our mansion as part of his share. 
 The lower dwelling was conceded to Francesco, 
 Almoro and myself. To my mother and sisters we 
 offered the hospitality of sons and brothers, in case 
 at any time they should repent of their decision to 
 abide with Gasparo. 
 
 It might be imagined that, while these negotia- 
 tions were in progress, I had no time to spend on 
 literary occupations. Nothing could be further from 
 the fact. I found in them my solace and distraction, 
 pouring forth multitudes of compositions, for the 
 most part humorous and alien to the cares which 
 weighed upon my mind. The course of my Memoirs 
 will bring to light many curious incidents which 
 these literary pastimes occasioned, and the narration 
 of which will prove, I hope, far from saddening to 
 my readers. 
 
334 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 / enter oil a period of toilsome litigation, and become acquainted 
 with Venetian lawyers. 
 
 I should have been an arrant fool had I nattered 
 myself with the hope that this partition would intro- 
 duce the olive-branch of peace into our midst. On 
 the contrary, I looked forward, and with justice, to 
 all kinds of coming* troubles. Two-thirds of the 
 estate were saved from extravagant administration 
 by the process ; but the minds of Gasparo's family 
 had been almost incurably embittered by the same 
 cause. When I wanted to lay my hands upon our 
 documents, in order to study the nature of various 
 entails and trusts under which the estates were 
 settled, I found that all these papers had been sold 
 out of spite. Who had done this I did not learn, 
 but I was informed in great secrecy by a servant- 
 maid that they had beeD sold to a certain pork- 
 butcher. I repaired immediately to his shop, and 
 was only just in time to repurchase some abstracts 
 and wills, which had not yet been used to wrap up 
 sausages. Then I set to work in the cabinets of 
 notaries and advocates and in the public archives, 
 following the scent afforded by my recovered papers. 
 More than eighty bulky suits in my own handwrit- 
 
VENETIAN LAW COURTS. 335 
 
 ing remain to show how patiently I studied the 
 rights and claims of our estate, and now I prepared 
 myself for the task of laying these before the courts. 
 
 At this epoch I made acquaintance with the cele- 
 brated pleader, Antonio Testa, under whose direction 
 and advice I embarked upon a series of litigations 
 which kept me fully occupied for eighteen years, 
 and in the course of which I became acquainted 
 with the men who haunt our palace of justice, and 
 learned the chicaneries of legal warfare. Inveterate 
 abuses, introduced in the remote past, and compli- 
 cated by the ingenuity of lawyers through successive 
 generations (most of them men of subtle brains, some 
 of them devoid of moral rectitude), have been built up 
 into a system of pleading as false as it is firmly 
 grounded and imbued with ineradicable insincerity. 
 This system consists, for the most part, of quibbling 
 upon side-issues, throwing dust in the eyes of judges, 
 cavilling, misrepresenting, taking advantage of tech- 
 nical errors, doing everything in short to gain a cause 
 by indirect means. And from this false system 
 neither honourable nor dishonest advocates are able 
 to depart. 
 
 In justice to the legal profession, I must, however, 
 say that I found many practicians who combined 
 the gifts of eloquence and intellectual fervour with 
 urbanity, cordiality, prudence, and disinterested zeal. 
 Outside the vicious circle of their system they were 
 men of loyalty and honour, xlmong these I ought 
 
336 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 to pay a particular tribute to my friendly counsel 
 and defender, Signor Testa. Knowing my circum- 
 stances and my upright motives, he refused to take 
 the fees which were his due, and not unfrequently 
 opened his purse to me at a pinch in my necessities. 
 I have never met with a lawyer more quick at 
 seizing the strong and weak points of a case, more 
 rapid in his analysis of piles of documents, more 
 sagacious in divining the probable issue of a suit, or 
 more acute in calculating the mental powers, the 
 bias, and the equity of judges. Time and the cir- 
 cumstances of our several lives have drawn us some- 
 what apart. But nothing can diminish the feeling of 
 deep gratitude which I shall always cherish for one 
 who helped to heal the distractions and to improve 
 the fallen fortunes of my family. 
 
 The final result of eight or nine tedious lawsuits, 
 carried through with the assistance of Signor Testa, 
 was that I received several parcels of our estates 
 in Friuli, Vicenza, Bergamo, and Venice, which had 
 been alienated by fraudulent evasions of entail. 1 
 Meanwhile I found time to visit my mother and 
 
 1 I have condensed in this sentence the details of a long and tiresome 
 chapter (chap. xxix.). It is worth adding here that the law of Venice 
 with regard to entail was very strict ; time gave no title to a purchaser 
 who had obtained possession of an estate subject to fidei commissa. 
 One of Goethe's most interesting letters from Venice (October 5, 17S6) 
 contains the full description of a cause he heard pleaded in the Ducal 
 palace for the recovery of illegally alienated real property. Goethe 
 remarks upon the extraordinary permanence of trusts in Venice. 
 
ARMED TRUCE IN THE FAMILY. 337 
 
 Gasparo's family. The latter were busily engaged in 
 concocting and translating plays for my brother's 
 theatre. These visits, paid with cordiality and frank- 
 ness on my side, were usually the occasions of 
 requests for money on my mother's. She begged 
 with maternal dignity for little loans. I complied 
 to the best of my ability, and forgot to remind her 
 of her debts. My sister-in-law forced herself to treat 
 me with an affectation of flattery. My sisters looked 
 upon me with real affection, checked in its expres- 
 sion by I know not what untoward influence. My 
 brother accepted me with philosophical indifference. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 A collision with my brothers family, due to old grudges and to 
 present needs. — They make me a married man without 
 my having taken a wife. 
 
 My brother Gasparo's income, derived from his 
 portion of the family estates, from the interest on my 
 mother's dowry and the annual allowance for my 
 sisters' maintenance, together with the profits of his 
 writing and of certain literary services rendered to 
 his Excellency Marco Foscarini, 1 late Doge of glori- 
 ous memory, amounted to about 1500 ducats, free 
 
 1 The author of an unfinished work on Venetian literature. 
 VOL. I. Y 
 
338 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 of all debts and obligations. This was certainly 
 nothing very splendid ; but neither would the wealth 
 of Croesus have been anything to boast of in the 
 hands of an extravagant family, ruled only by the 
 caprice of its component members. 
 
 I have mentioned above that Gasparo obtained the 
 upper dwelling in our house at Venice, which was let 
 for 150 ducats, while we three brothers received the 
 lower dwelling, at that time inhabited by him. Some 
 few months were allowed him to remove from the 
 one apartment to the other. But no sooner had he 
 entered into legal possession of his new habitation 
 than he, or perhaps I ought to say his wife, let it 
 again to the noble lady Ginevra Loredan Zeno. She 
 paid the rent of several years in advance, and in- 
 stalled herself in Gasparo's part of the mansion, while 
 he, with all his family, continued to inhabit our 
 part with the utmost sang-froid, taking no further 
 heed of the engagement he was under to us three 
 brothers. Now we had resolved to put this tenement 
 into good repair and to let it for some years, until the 
 debts of the estate had been discharged and we could 
 go to live in it at peace. With this view we had 
 already found a tenant, who was no other than the 
 Contessa Ghellini Balbi. She, on her side, had given 
 up her old apartment, which was already let in advance 
 to other tenants by her landlord. Time went on, and 
 I saw no sign of our house being abandoned to our 
 use, according to the family agreement. It appeared 
 
DISPUTE ABOUT THE MANSINO. 339 
 
 only too clearly that the partition I had demanded, 
 my resolve to pay the family debts out of income 
 without resorting to sale or mortgage, and my appli- 
 cation to the courts for annulment of contracts made 
 during my father's lifetime, were all of them un- 
 pardonable offences in the eyes of those who had 
 made the debts, the mortgages, the contracts. 
 
 I began by gently asking for the house which was 
 our portion, seeing that we had resigned the upper 
 dwelling to our brother at his particular request. 
 No answer reached me ; but rumours ran around 
 the city that I was now attempting to turn my old 
 mother, my three marriageable sisters, my brother, 
 his wife, and five innocent children into the streets. 
 At this point I expected that one of those intermin- 
 able lawsuits, which are the dishonour of the legal 
 profession, but which never lack advocates to keep 
 them going, would be commenced against me. In 
 order to lend colour and substance to their false 
 report, my relatives determined to give me a wife 
 without consulting me. It was impossible to fix 
 definite calumnies upon Mme. Ghellini Balbi, because 
 of her exemplary life and conspicuous piety. But my 
 daily visits to her house offered a pretext for injuri- 
 ous insinuations ; and I soon heard it announced that 
 I was secretly married to this lady, and that all my 
 plots had only this one end in view. Such gossip 
 did me honour in some respects. Yet I was grieved 
 that a lady of excellent conduct, devoted to her only 
 
34Q MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 son, and old enough to be my mother, should be 
 made the butt of malignant animosity. 1 
 
 Without wasting time or breath in contradicting 
 these unjust and lying vociferations of my private 
 enemies, I made my mind up to obtain possession of 
 my house by all the straightforward means in my 
 power. Accordingly I managed to meet my brother 
 apart from the din of women, and laid a clear state- 
 ment before him of my obligations to Mme. Ghel- 
 lini Balbi (who ran the risk of remaining without a 
 roof to shelter her) and of my well-founded rights 
 which were being iniquitously set at nought. The 
 poor fellow seemed on the point of weeping. His 
 gestures reminded me of patient Job, while he pro- 
 tested that he had nothing whatever to do with a state 
 of affairs the injustice of which he frankly admitted. 
 He added that he had to put up with infernal 
 clamourings — that he was called a chicken-hearted 
 poltroon, a father without entrails for his offspring — 
 in short, that he was neither obeyed nor listened 
 to at home. Then, to convince me that it was not 
 he who opposed my entrance into our part of the 
 house, he took a pen and wrote and signed a declara- 
 tion to the effect that he fully acknowledged the 
 title of his brothers Francesco, Carlo, and Alrnoro, 
 and that he would never interfere to prevent our 
 taking possession of our lawful property. 
 
 1 It seems probable that Gozzi was really at one time on the point of 
 marrying this lady. 
 
A FAMILY LAWSUIT. 341 
 
 All these steps proved fruitless. Time pressed, 
 and I found myself obliged to bring my cause be- 
 fore a judge, who chanced to be his Excellency 
 Count Galean Angarano, at that time Avvogador del 
 Comune. 1 What was my astonishment when I saw 
 my sister-in-law, like an advocate in petticoats, at 
 the head of my mother and my sisters, with my hen- 
 pecked brother to bring up the rear, come marching 
 into court. I will not dwell upon this too too comic 
 scene — 
 
 " For my Thalia takes no thought to sing." 
 
 The judge recognised that my claims were indis- 
 putable. But before pronouncing sentence in my 
 favour he strove to settle matters by mediation. Con- 
 ferences took place ; first between the bench and his 
 Excellency the Senator Daniele Eeniero, who acted 
 for Mme. Ghellini Balbi ; then between the Senator 
 and my sister-in-law, who was the rock and stone of 
 our vexation. I was curious to know the upshot of 
 these whispered confabulations. At length Senator 
 Reniero came up and told me that if I was willing 
 to disburse sixty ducats, which my sister-in-law had 
 pressing need of, I might enter at once into posses- 
 
 1 The Avvogadori del Comune, or Advocatores Comunis, corresponded 
 in a certain sense to the modern Procuratori di Stato, and had some re- 
 semblance to the Roman tribunes. They formed a High Court of Justice 
 for the guardianship of property accruing to the Exchequer, for the 
 protection of private rights in property, rights of minors and widows, 
 the superintendence of registers of births and marriages, &c. Three 
 patricians formed the board. 
 
342 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 sion of the house without a verdict from the bench. 
 Such a verdict would be appealed against and would 
 certainly lead to indescribable delays. I thanked 
 his Excellency for suggesting this arrangement. My 
 sister-in-law received her ducats, and we obtairied 
 our dwelling. I had it straightway put into repair, 
 for it looked as though it had sustained a siege. 
 Mine. Balbi went at once to live there with a lease 
 of five years only, while I retired with my brothers 
 into a cheap house, which I had taken at S. Ubaldo 
 and furnished with strict regard to economy. Here 
 I arranged for Almoro's tuition by an excellent 
 ecclesiastic. For my own part, I went on paying off 
 debts, rebuilding such of our houses as needed it, 
 prosecuting my lawsuits, and amusing myself in 
 leisure hours with literature. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 A serious event, depicting the character of my uncle, the 
 Senator Almorb Cesare Ticpolo. 
 
 A very long time had elapsed since I visited my 
 maternal uncle, the Senator Almoro Cesare Tiepolo. 
 I imagined that my mother and the persons about 
 her, who were assiduous in paying court to him from 
 motives wholly alien to my nature, might have pre- 
 judiced the good old man against me. Still I did not 
 
ALMORO CESARE TIEPOLO. 343 
 
 choose to undergo the mortification of defending 
 myself, especially as I could only do so by accusing 
 those for whom at the bottom of my heart I felt both 
 love and reverence. I knew, moreover, that our 
 Venetian patricians, though just and dispassionate 
 upon the bench in their capacity of judges, were 
 singularly liable to be influenced by what they heard 
 in private at their own homes from suitors or clients, 
 and that it was extremely difficult to remove impres- 
 sions which had once been made upon their minds. 
 This weakness I have always ascribed to their amia- 
 bility, and have regarded the nobles of our Republic 
 as really adorable for qualities of the heart, in spite 
 of the sentimental bias I have mentioned. 
 
 My habitual taciturnity and solitary ways of life, 
 my neglect of petty social duties, my habit of asking 
 and desiring nothing from fortune, together with the 
 freedom of my pen, might have won me formidable 
 enemies, if any such had deigned to look down upon 
 a person of so little consequence as I am. 
 
 My wise and good uncle, who was suffering from 
 a dropsy in the chest, and not far from death's door, 
 let me know that he should like to- see me. I 
 went at once to his house ; and was bidden to take 
 a seat at his bedside. He began to complain gently 
 that I had so long neglected to visit him. I answered 
 frankly that I had stayed away through fear of his 
 having been wrongfully prejudiced against me, and 
 also because I heard that he was angry with me, 
 
344 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 perhaps on account of my prolonged absence. " If 
 I complained," he said, " that my sister and your 
 mother was being exposed to ill-treatment and 
 affronts, this was no reason why you should suspend 
 your visits." " I see," I replied, " that my suspicions 
 and my fears are not without foundation. But this 
 is not the proper time to trouble you with lengthy 
 narratives in self-defence. Your health is a matter 
 of concern to me for your sake and for my own. I 
 have tried everything in my power to avert discords 
 and divisions, eveu to the point of doing violence to 
 my naturally pacific temper. I feel sure, when you 
 recover, as I hope you will with all my heart, that 
 I shall make it clear to you that I have hurt nobody 
 and attacked nobody, and that I am only doing all I 
 can to benefit our family, without the least regard 
 for my mere private interest ; nay, that I am bearing 
 the burden of enormous cares and weighty business, 
 not to speak of exposing myself to risks and dangers, 
 for the common good." 
 
 He was just, prudent, a philosopher, and ill. 
 Therefore he made no immediate answer. I renewed 
 my daily visits, and had the satisfaction of hearing 
 afterwards that the venerable old man expressed 
 himself in these words to my mother : " Believe me, 
 your son Carlo is a good young fellow." 
 
 His illness kept increasing, and I perceived, by 
 the persons whom he urged to visit him, that he was 
 anxious to be reconciled with all of his acquaintances 
 
A MODEL VENETIAN. 345 
 
 who might be under the impression that he bore a 
 grudge against them. A certain Frate Bernardo of 
 the Gesuati, who then passed for a learned ecclesi- 
 astic, acted as his spiritual director, and used to read 
 at his request portions of the Holy Scriptures aloud 
 to him. Observing his indifference upon the point 
 of death, this excellent friar was moved to say : "I 
 do not want you to prepare yourself for death too 
 much like a philosopher." 
 
 Though he had filled important posts in the 
 Government, and had frequently sat as member of 
 the sublime Council of Ten, he was never heard, 
 throughout his last illness, to utter the least word 
 regarding the tribunals of justice or the state. 
 
 During his whole lifetime he had taken delight 
 in gathering company around his hospitable board, 
 and seeing the table furnished with good cheer, 
 especially with the choicest kinds of fish. Now that 
 he was sick unto death, and could only take some 
 spoonfuls of such broth as are administered to dying 
 persons, he still would have the table served as 
 formerly for guests. Every morning he used to send 
 for one of his gondoliers, and inquire what sorts of 
 fine fish were that day in the market. On receiving 
 the man's report, he commented in praise or blame, 
 as this might be, upon the season and the quality 
 of the fishes for sale, and the various waters in which 
 they had been caught. After settling these affairs 
 of the household, he proceeded to religious exer- 
 
346 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 cises, grave discourses "with his spiritual director, and 
 prayers of fervent piety. I ought furthpr to testify 
 that he breathed his last in the spirit of a great man, 
 philosophically Christian, and that his example in- 
 spired me with the desire to imitate his end. 
 
 He possessed the virtue of patience in the highest 
 degree. No one ever saw his temper stirred by any 
 untoward accident which happened to him. In order 
 to give a single instance of his intrepid constancy, 
 I will relate an event which happened some years 
 before his death. One evening, while alighting from 
 his gondola, he caught his foot in the long and 
 ample robes of the patrician mantle, and was upon the 
 point of falling into the canal. The gondolier, in 
 his anxiety to catch and keep him up, let the oar 
 go which he was holding in his hands. The oar fell 
 with violence upon the right arm of his master, and 
 broke it. The gondolier was not aware of what had 
 happened ; and my uncle, though he knew very well, 
 uttered no complaint. He ascended the stairs, and 
 when he reached his apartment, the valet came for- 
 ward to help him off, as usual, with his cloak. Then 
 at last he remarked with imperturbable long-suffering: 
 " Pull gently, for my right arm is in two pieces." 
 The uproar among the servants, who were greatly 
 attached to him, was tremendous. The gondolier 
 ran up, weeping bitterly and begging to be pardoned. 
 He bade them all be calm, and said to the man : 
 " You did me harm when you were meaning to do 
 
ANECDOTE OF A PATRICIAN. 347 
 
 me good. What fault have you committed, which 
 requires my pardon ? " After this he had to lie forty 
 days in bed without altering his position, at the 
 surgeon's orders ; yet he never uttered a syllable 
 that betrayed any impatience. I could relate a 
 number of such traits of character, but they have 
 nothing to do with the Memoirs of my life. 
 
 After his death, which I felt very deeply, as every 
 one could see, a certain Signor Giovannantonio Guseo 
 came to call on me. This man practised as notary, 
 land-surveyor, advocate, registrar, and judge in cer- 
 tain courts of Friuli. He was known to be more 
 wily than the old Greek Sinon, and had assisted my 
 brother's wife in procuring the alienation of certain 
 portions of our entailed estates. Now he suggested 
 that it would do me great honour, as a sign of affec- 
 tionate remembrance, if I were to contribute ten 
 sacks of flour and two casks of wine annually to my 
 mother, in addition to her dowry. I saw at once 
 from whom this proposal emanated, and admired the 
 address with which the proper moment had been 
 chosen for working on my feelings. Such artifices, 
 however, were repugnant to my nature ; and chang- 
 ing my tone from sadness to cold reserve, I replied to 
 the following effect. " I thought my mother's prefer- 
 ence for my brother Gasparo's family unfortunate ; 
 my own house was always open to her, and here she 
 would be revered and loved by three respectful sons. 
 Here she would enjoy her yearly maintenance, and 
 
348 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 the income of her dowry. By refusing our offer, she 
 only affronted us. By accepting it, she would confer 
 a benefit on Gasparo, the number of whose family 
 would be diminished. Meanwhile, the obligation I 
 was under of reducing debts, repairing buildings on 
 the property, and reclaiming parts of the entailed 
 estates, rendered it impossible that I should weaken 
 the insufficient resources at my command by any 
 such donation as Signor Guseo had proposed." This 
 answer set tongues wagging again, and revived the 
 opinion that I was a downright Phalaris. 
 
 The estate of my uncle Tiepolo had gained nothing 
 by his regency of Zante and by other lucrative ap- 
 pointments. The probity of his character did not 
 suffer him to enrich himself at the expense of the 
 State. Accordingly, he provided by will that all his 
 debts should be paid off, appending a schedule of his 
 creditors. The residue he bequeathed to his sister 
 Girolama for her lifetime, with reversion to my 
 mother. On the same sad occasion my mother 
 inherited a portion of some landed property in 
 Friuli, which had belonged to an old aunt Tiepolo, 
 who died intestate. This, united to her dowry, 
 formed a sufficient fund for her establishment. 
 
 My mother continued to regard me as her sixth 
 finger, amputated without any suffering on her part. 
 Of course she had the right to dispose of her affec- 
 tions as she felt inclined, and to keep her tender heart 
 open for the persons who possessed her favour. It was 
 
CONTESSA GOZZI'S SETTLEMENT. 349 
 
 my misfortune not to possess it, but I did not envy 
 those who had that privilege ; and I can assure my 
 readers that what caused me the greatest annoyance 
 with regard to my mother, was seeing her always with- 
 out a ducat to spend according to her fancy. This 
 state of things continued when the whole property 
 of that branch of the Tiepolos passed into her hands 
 upon the death of her sister Girolama, who left 
 furniture and a considerable amount of money to 
 my mother, jointly with my brother Gasparo and 
 his children. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 It is decided that I was a husband, though I had no wife. — 
 Some anecdotes of a serious character. 
 
 An event happened which clenched the gossip 
 of my imaginaiy marriage to the Contessa Ghellini 
 Balbi. The patrician Benedetto Balbi, Canon of 
 Padua and Abbot of Lonigo, a gentleman abundantly 
 endowed with gifts of nature and of fortune, who was 
 this lady's brother-in-law, had caused himself to be 
 legally appointed sole guardian of his nephew Paolo, 
 the widow's only son. The lad may have been about 
 ten years old at this epoch ; and his uncle resolved to 
 separate him from his mother, and to place him in a 
 school kept by the Somascan fathers, at San Cipriano 
 
35o MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 on the island of Murano. 1 His mother, who was ten- 
 derly devoted to her son, did not oppose his entrance 
 into this college, but resented his being torn from 
 the arms which had nursed and fostered him till now, 
 as though she were a peril to his youth and had no 
 claim to supervise his education in the school. Sharp 
 and angry words passed ; and Mme. Balbi applied 
 to the courts, demanding to be nominated guardian 
 together with her brother-in-law. The conflagration 
 spread, and I, innocent as I was, found myself in- 
 volved in it. With the object of strengthening his 
 case, the Cavaliere went about the town, loudly 
 protesting that his sister-in-law had contracted a 
 second alliance with Count Carlo Gozzi ; that she 
 had ceased thereby to be a Balbi, and had lost all 
 rights over the boy, who belonged to his family. I 
 laughed, as usual, with the lady over the pertina- 
 city of folk in thinking we were married. But my 
 laughter was turned to seriousness, when the Cava- 
 liere finally declared his intention to be free of legal 
 quarrels, and to abandon all the schemes which he 
 
 1 The Somascan Order was founded about 1 540 by Girolamo Miani, 
 a Venetian senator, upon the model of the Theatines. Its object was 
 education, principally of the poor. With regard to the school at S. 
 Cipriano, it is worth mentioning that the famous adventurer, Casanova, 
 was placed there by his guardian the Abbe Grimani in the year 1740 
 or thereabouts. He gives a full account of the institution in his 
 Memoirs (vol. i. ch. vi.), from which it appears that at this epoch about 
 1 50 youths were educated by the Somascan monks. Readers of Casanova 
 need hardly be reminded that he was expelled from the seminary after 
 a few weeks' residence. Gasparo Gozzi was also educated here. 
 
PAOLO BALBI. 351 
 
 had formed for his nephew's advantage, leaving him 
 entirely to his mother's authority. 
 
 Assuming a Catonian gravity, I pointed out to 
 Mine. Balbi that she ought to waive her just 
 claims and to stomach her natural resentment for 
 the sake of her son. I firmly believed in my own 
 soul that an ounce of sincere love was worth more 
 than a hundred pounds of gold. Yet I reminded 
 her that she was not in the position to make up to 
 her boy for the loss of his uncle's property. This 
 reasoning, which I regard as mere sophistry, but 
 which the world accepts as irrefutable, made the 
 lady burst into a flood of tears and then exclaim : 
 " You are right ! I am a poor woman, and should 
 be condemned by everybody, perhaps even in the 
 future by my own son. I am ready to sacrifice my 
 rights ; I will bury in my breast the stirrings of 
 maternal love, the sense of insult and of injury, all 
 that may prove prejudicial to the interests of my 
 adored son, on whom I am unable to confer those 
 benefits which lie within his uncle's power. Pray do 
 me the further kindness of undertaking to explain the 
 unalterable decision at which I have arrived." 
 
 I praised her virtuous resolution, and reported to 
 the noble gentleman, her brother-in-law, from whom 
 I have always received distinguished marks of polite- 
 ness, the decision she had come to. In doing so, I 
 attempted to draw a picture of her merits, and to 
 maintain that her feelings were not merely excusable, 
 
352 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 but worthy of the highest commendation. The 
 Cavalicre replied with some emotion : " You must 
 not take me for a wild beast ! I mean that the boy- 
 shall be visited by his mother, and looked after in 
 all his wants, the charge of supplying which I take 
 for the future on myself. I am quite willing to let 
 her bring him back from time to time to dine with 
 her, and only stipulate that her demonstrations of 
 tenderness shall not interfere with his education and 
 discipline." These solemn words of covenant having 
 been exchanged, I was the instrument of separating 
 the boy from his mother's embraces, and of conduct- 
 ing him to his appointed school. His behaviour 
 on this occasion, in which firmness blent with filial 
 emotion, made me feel sure that he was destined to 
 reward his mother's virtues and his uncle's benevo- 
 lence with conduct worthy of the highest honours of 
 his country. Only death, which spared neither of his 
 relatives, and which prevented them from reaping 
 the fruits of their respective love and kindness, 
 defeated these prognostications. The mother died 
 twelve, and the uncle fifteen years after the events 
 I have narrated. Young Balbi grew up to be an 
 ornament, by his intellectual and moral qualities, by 
 his probity and purity of manners, by his sympathy for 
 the oppressed, and by his thoroughly national temper, 
 to the Venetian Republic, in the administration of 
 which his birth opened for him a career of usefulness 
 and honour. 
 
FREE FROM MALICE. 353 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 / should not have believed what is narrated in this chapter, if 
 I had not seen it with my own eyes. 
 
 Family jars and discords have this effect upon 
 embittered minds that each member, wherever the 
 wrong may really lie, is apt to think, not only that 
 he is in the right, but that the right is absolutely 
 and wholly on his side. For my part, I am not 
 altogether sure that I was justified in doing what 
 I did, and what I have described above with perfect 
 candour. 
 
 I was aware that the theatrical speculation into 
 which my brother had been induced to enter had 
 taken a bad turn, and that worse might be expected 
 in the future. A malignant and vindictive spirit 
 would have found some satisfaction in these circum- 
 stances. As it was, I felt sincerely sorry, and flattered 
 myself on being therefore free from malice. In pro- 
 portion as things went from bad to worse, the 
 rancour against myself increased, as though I had 
 been responsible for an enterprise which I had 
 always solemnly condemned by act and. word. 
 
 I kept up relations with my brother's family, wish- 
 ing to maintain the links of relationship unbroken, 
 and to explain from time to time what I was doing 
 
 vol. 1. z 
 
354 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 for the common good. In spite of these demonstra- 
 tions of a kindly feeling, which I admit were never 
 very gushing, I saw to my deep regret that the 
 wounds caused by the partition of our patrimony 
 had not ceased to bleed. 
 
 The youngest of my sisters, Chiara by name, in- 
 duced perhaps by some presentiment of coming 
 trouble, asked me one day to take her under the 
 protection of us three brothers. I cordially acceded 
 to her request, and would have done the like by my 
 mother and our two other sisters, had they not 
 spurned the acceptance of what they had hitherto 
 rejected as a great misfortune. 
 
 I told this youngest of my sisters that, our mother 
 not being under my roof, my brother Francesco 
 occupied with the estates in Friuli, Almorb a mere 
 boy engaged in studies, and I absorbed in legal 
 affairs for the common interests of the family, she 
 could not with any propriety be left to the custody 
 of a rough and stupid serving-woman. I therefore 
 begged her to enter a convent for a while, until we 
 should have changed our mode of living, and should be 
 in a position to receive her more suitably and to take 
 thought for her proper establishment. My sisters 
 are neither foolish nor ill-natured. Chiara accepted 
 my proposal, and was placed in the convent of S. 
 Maria degli Angeli at Pordenone, as a young lady in 
 charge of the Superior. 
 
 Any one exposed, as I was, to the rage of angry 
 
DISCORD IN THE FAMILY. 355 
 
 tongues, blackening me with the epithets of unjust, 
 inhumane, tyrannical, marrying me against my will, 
 and capable of insinuating the worst of charges 
 against me for my guardianship of a sister, would 
 act rightly if he took the precautions I did. Yet the 
 precautions of the most prudent man on earth do 
 not always bear the good results expected of them. 
 I speak with experience derived from long study of 
 ill-inclined men and worse-inclined women, who have 
 invariably taken my unalterable good faith for veno- 
 mous maliciousness. 
 
 I was excessively pained to observe that the 
 bitterness created in my brother Gasparo's family by 
 the events I have narrated remained unconquerable. 
 It is true that they concealed, as far as possible, their 
 grudge against me, whenever I paid them visits and 
 treated them with brotherly good-will. This grudge, 
 however, could not help showing itself in public ; 
 and it did so in a monstrous fashion, which I should 
 not have credited unless I had been an eye-witness 
 of the scandal. 
 
 My brothers and I were in the habit, during car- 
 nival-time, of frequently attending the theatre of 
 S. Angelo, which was under the direction of my sister- 
 in-law far rather than her husband. Amusement 
 was less our object than the wish to support, so far 
 as in us lay, a speculation to which we feared our 
 brother had been sacrificed. We persuaded Mme. 
 Ghellini Balbi to accompany us ; and she entered 
 
356 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 into our designs by applauding as heartily as any of 
 the audience. 
 
 They had given at this theatre a translation of the 
 French comedy called Esop at the Court, which 
 succeeded partly by the elegance of my brother's 
 Italian version, and partly by its novelty. Rumour 
 told us that the sequel, by the same French author, 
 entitled Esop in the Town, was being translated and 
 would soon appear. We were eager to be present 
 at the first night, to back the piece with our approval, 
 and to witness its triumph. 
 
 A worthy fellow, who aired his eloquence at Gas- 
 paro's house and also in our own, took me apart one 
 day, and spoke with an air of secrecy and consterna- 
 tion to the following effect : " You must know that 
 the forthcoming play of Esop in the Town will 
 contain a scene, interpolated, not translated from the 
 original, in which you, your brothers Francesco and 
 Almorb, and Mme. Ghellini Balbi, are held up in 
 a cruel satire to the public scorn. Do not let my 
 name transpire ; but take means to prevent this 
 scandal ; the comedy will be represented in five days 
 from now." I was far from disbelieving that what 
 my friend said was the truth ; yet I took care to 
 let no sign of my belief escape me. I thanked him 
 for the friendly interest which had prompted him to 
 warn me, but laughed the matter off as something 
 beyond the range of possibility. He strained every 
 nerve to convince me, but got nothing for his pains 
 
"ESOP IN THE TOWN." 357 
 
 beyond smiles and ironical protestations of gratitude. 
 I left him there fuming with anger at my obstinate 
 hilarity. 
 
 I kept guard over my tongue in the presence of 
 my brothers and the lady, and made a show of great 
 anxiety to see the new play produced upon the boards. 
 At last the first night came, and we all provided our- 
 selves with a convenient box for the occasion. We 
 were disappointed to find the theatre ill-attended, 
 and to notice that the comedy dragged. Esojy at the 
 Court had caught the public by something piquant 
 in its chief character, by his grotesque, crook-backed 
 figure, and by the appropriate fables which had been 
 written with real dramatic skill for the part. Esop 
 in the Town was no less worthy of attention, but the 
 novelty had evaporated ; it seemed a plagiarism of 
 the former piece, and wearied the audience like a 
 composition which has lost its salt. At length the 
 interpolated scene, of which my friend had warned 
 me, came on. 1 
 
 An ancient dame, attired in black, made her 
 entrance, and unfolded the tale of her self-styled 
 calamities to Esop. Pouring forth an interminable 
 catalogue of woes, she enumerated all the lies which 
 
 1 This scene has actually been preserved and printed in Gasparo 
 Gozzi's works. Opere, Minerva, Padova, vol. vii. It forms the 6th 
 scene of the 3rd act of Esopo in Cittd, and is very much as Carlo 
 Gozzi describes it. The ancient lady throws the principal blame for 
 her domestic sufferings upon a certain " Sicofante, Dottor legista di 
 questa citta," whom I take to be Carlo's lawyer, Testa. 
 
358 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 had been circulated against myself and Mme. Balbi 
 at the period of our family dissensions. The ancient 
 dame summed up by saying that she had been turned 
 out of house and home, together with a loving 
 son, three daughters, a daughter-in-law, and five 
 grandchildren, by three of her own male children, 
 the barbarous perverted offspring of her womb. 
 Then she appealed with tears for counsel and advice 
 to Esop, who expressed his sympathy in a frigidly 
 elaborated fable. The ancient dame, attired in 
 black, was an exact image of our poor mother, who 
 had been blinded by a touch of spite against me and 
 by the mud-honey of her favouritism into allowing 
 herself to be exposed in this way on a public stage 
 for the mirth of the populace. 
 
 The scene was very long ; it had nothing to do 
 with the action of the piece, having been foisted in to 
 gratify a private animosity. The audience, ignorant 
 of what it meant, began to yawn ; and it contributed 
 in no small measure to the failure of the play. 
 
 While this indecent and malignant episode was 
 dragging its slow length along, I saw Mme. Ghellini 
 Balbi becoming momently more taciturn and out of 
 humour, my two brothers flaming into anger and 
 preparing for some act of violence. The shouts of 
 laughter with which I greeted this abortion of a 
 satire added fuel to their fire, and Francesco, spurred 
 by martial ardour, was on the point of defying the 
 players. He only made me laugh the louder ; but I 
 
SATIRE ON THE STAGE. 559 
 
 had some difficulty in persuading my companions to 
 quench their indignation in a cup of water, and to 
 wrap themselves around with imperturbable indiffer- 
 ence. They obeyed me. If we had made a disturb- 
 ance, we should have put the cap on our own heads. 
 As it was, our cold behaviour snuffed out the whole 
 episode, without awaking anybody's interest. And 
 such will, peradventure, be the fate of these Memoirs 
 I am writing of my life. 
 
 In after days I was glad to have laughed at this 
 indecent exhibition. The perusal of an anecdote 
 in iElian confirmed my self-congratulation. It was 
 to the following effect. " When," says he, " a firm 
 courageous spirit is attacked before the public in 
 quizzical caricatures and gibing insults, these trifles 
 vanish like mist before the wind ; but if they meet 
 with a nature which is base and proud and abject 
 all at one and the same time, they fill it with melan- 
 choly and madness, which often lead it to the grave. 1 
 Take the proof of these remarks. Socrates, when he 
 was ridiculed upon the public stage by Aristophanes, 
 enjoyed the fun and laughed at it. Poliagros, 
 under the same circumstances, went mad and hanged 
 himself." 
 
 In concluding this episode, which I leave my 
 readers to characterise with stronger epithets than I 
 
 1 Gozzi can hardly not have been thinking of poor Gratarol, when he 
 penned these lines. Mentally he contrasts his own conduct under the 
 inconvenience of a stage-satire with Gratarol's. 
 
360 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 shall use, I wish to affirm that I never have believed, 
 or can believe, that my brother Gasparo lent his 
 pen or his assent to the production of the scene in 
 question. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 A disagreeable action at law brought against me. 
 
 While busily engaged in prosecuting my many 
 lawsuits, I was unpleasantly surprised by the revival 
 of my sister-in-law's old claim for reimbursement of 
 monies expended by her in the management of our 
 affairs during my father's lifetime. 1 This prepos- 
 terous claim had long been lying dormant, and the 
 better terms on which we were gradually coming to 
 live together made me forget it as a chimera of the 
 past. 
 
 My brother Gasparo's direction of the theatre of 
 which he was the sole lessee bore such fruits as 
 every one predicted. Instead of the pecuniary profits 
 he had been encouraged to expect, the poor fellow 
 was worried with vexatious and aggressive opposition, 
 peculiarly trying to one of his gifts and temperament, 
 but only too usual in enterprises of this kind. 
 
 Wounded pride and thirst for vengeance, together 
 with the hideous necessity of meeting debts con- 
 
 1 See above, p. 319. 
 
A CABALISTIC ACCOUNT BOOK. 361 
 
 traded in this unsuccessful speculation, were the 
 causes which roused his wife to bring her alleged 
 claims upon the family into a law-court. The defen- 
 dants in this suit were myself and my two brothers 
 Francesco and Almorb. It will be remembered that 
 she had induced us to sign her cabalistic book of 
 magic numbers with the sole object of freeing her 
 from any possible pretensions upon our side. My 
 elder brother, who had been the first to sign, in order 
 to give a good example to his juniors, was not pro- 
 secuted by his wife. 
 
 Our legal advisers maintained, with some show 
 of reason, that Gasparo was the real mover in this 
 matter. For my part, knowing as I did his peaceful 
 character, I felt certain, that though he was capable 
 of countenancing irregularities through indolence and 
 the desire to live a quiet life, he was incapable of 
 stirring up litigious strife on such foundations. I 
 was not ignorant that he had stooped to the theatrical 
 speculation in order merely to escape from a vortex 
 of domestic intrigues. I knew, moreover, that, after 
 the partition of our patrimony, his wife and family 
 had changed their residence at least six times, 
 through restlessness, without informing him ; so that 
 he had gone to knock at empty house-doors, and had 
 casually learned from neighbours in what quarter of 
 the town his nighty brood had nested last. It also 
 reached my ears that his wife was selling property upon 
 his life, and that he had finally been driven by the 
 
362 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 tempest of his home to take a distant lodging of two 
 rooms, 1 where he installed himself with his little heap 
 of books and abandoned himself to study, seeking 
 the peace he could not find. After all, the father 
 of a family who flies domestic cares, only brings upon 
 himself more carping cares than those which he has 
 fled from. All these considerations put together 
 enabled me to convince my counsel that Gasparo had 
 no share in the proceedings of his wife. 
 
 In the pleadings which set forth my sister-in-law's 
 cause, Signor Guse5, already named by me above, 
 deposed on obviously false oath that he had been 
 commissioned by ns three brothers to examine her 
 accounts, and that he had found her claim for re- 
 imbursement in the sum demanded to be just. To 
 cut a long story short, our arguments upon the 
 other side were useless. It was in vain that we 
 expounded the inability of a woman who had entered 
 our family without dowry, and had got the manage- 
 ment of affairs into her hands through the indolence 
 of its real head, to constitute herself its creditor ; in 
 vain that we denounced the collusion of one brother 
 with his wife against the interests of three innocent 
 brothers, who had been absent many years without 
 burdening the estate ; in vain that we showed how 
 the father and the mother of the plaintiff had been 
 received into our house and maintained for full 
 
 1 On the Fonclamenta Nuove, looking across Murano to the moun- 
 tains of the Dolomites. See Tommasei, op. cit., p. 258. 
 
ANOTHER FAMILY LAWSUIT. 363 
 
 fifteen years until their death, and how her relatives 
 had been more the masters there than its legitimate 
 owners ; in vain that we brought forward the chaotic 
 account-book, signed by us in compliance with our 
 elder brother for the sole sake of calming troubled 
 tempers ; in vain that we pointed out figures, garbled, 
 cancelled, altered in these precious documents ; in 
 vain that we offered to discharge sums due to credi- 
 tors for money or goods rendered to the plaintiff in 
 her administration of the family affairs. All these 
 solid pleas were like words thrown to the winds 
 before the impudence of two scoundrelly petti- 
 foggers, the very scum of the Venetian law-courts, 
 who managed to convince our sapient judges that 
 men ought to open their eyes wide before they signed 
 papers. From that moment until now, I have always 
 read my letters through ten times before appending 
 my signature. 
 
 As usual, I consoled myself by laughing over the 
 inevitable. Nor did I dream of complaining to 
 Francesco, who had drawn me into the affair by his 
 desire to settle matters. He, good fellow, met my 
 laughter with a sorry countenance, protesting that 
 he could never have anticipated such an abominable 
 trick of fortune. 
 
 Seven hundred ducats were passed to my sister-in- 
 law's credit on the termination of this suit. They 
 did my brother's family no good. Debts to come- 
 dians had eaten up the capital beforehand ; and I was 
 
364 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 obliged to pay a set of hungry fellows with the con- 
 sent of him and his wife. The annoyance, however, 
 did not stop here. In order to bolster up her claim, 
 my sister-in-law had raked together a multitude of 
 soi-disant creditors, who pretended to have supplied 
 money or goods to our family; and declarations signed 
 by them, recognising her as their sole debtor, were 
 put into court as evidence. When they found their 
 expectations frustrated, the wasp's nest swarmed out 
 against us three brothers, and sequestrated our house- 
 property for payment of their alleged debts. Before 
 I succeeded in finally shaking them off, I had to 
 transact much tiresome business and to fight several 
 lawsuits. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 A long and serious illness. — My recovery. — The doctors dif- 
 fer. — One of my sisters takes the veil. — Beginnings 
 of literary squabbles, and other trifles. 
 
 In the midst of these annoyances, I found the 
 time and strength to pursue my literary studies, 
 especially in the now neglected art of poetry, and 
 enjoyed excellent health; when suddenly, one night, 
 a violent hemorrhage from the lungs warned me that 
 the life of mortals hangs upon the frailest thread. 
 
 Bleeding, vegetable diet, and a frugality in food, 
 which few, I think, are capable of continuing for as 
 
CHIARA TAKES THE VEIL. 365 
 
 long a space of time as I can, together with my 
 philosophical indifference to death, restored me to 
 something like a tolerable state of health. 
 
 It seemed to me at this period that my two brothers 
 and I, who always kept together, were in a position 
 to settle down again into our paternal home. Mme. 
 Ghellini Balbi, who had rented the house for more 
 than five years, politely retired at my request, and 
 found another habitation at S. Agostino. I furnished 
 our ancestral nest as decently as I was able ; and 
 we were soon installed there. It was then that I 
 invited my youngest sister to leave her convent 
 and join us, travelling myself to Pordenone for this 
 purpose. 
 
 Whether through weakness, or human influence, 
 or Divine inspiration, I know not ; but I found the 
 good girl obstinate against my prayers, my anger, and 
 my threats. She entreated with a holy stubbornness 
 to be left in prison, to be indulged in her desire 
 to pass her lifetime in that blessed aviary of virgins. 
 I commanded her to come home for at least three 
 or four months. At the end of that time, if she still 
 persisted in her pious fanaticism, I promised to play 
 the part of executioner at her request. She replied 
 with a serious enthusiasm, which made me laugh, that 
 she knew enough of the world to be experienced in 
 its wickedness ; and when I insisted, she met me 
 with rather less than heavenly doggedness by remark- 
 ing that nothing short of cutting her in pieces would 
 
366 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 make her quit the convent-gratings. Though I did 
 not believe that this ultimatum was dictated by the 
 angels, I bent my head in order to avoid a scandal. 
 On taking the veil, she received those appointments 
 and allowances which are usually bestowed upon the 
 brides of Christ. 
 
 Were I to fix my thoughts upon the troubles which 
 my four married sisters have had to suffer and still 
 suffer — and I am only too well informed about them — 
 I should be obliged to admit that the youngest chose 
 the better part in life. They were always in straits, 
 always weeping, with their gentle natures and their 
 illimitable powers of endurance. One of them died 
 before my eyes, to my deep sorrow, only because she 
 was a wife. Meanwhile, the nun, beloved by her 
 sisters, placidly smiled at things which we, refined 
 in pleasures, finding nowhere solid pleasure for our 
 satisfaction, would call barbarous tortures, and took 
 delight in little treats, which we philosophers, past- 
 masters in the arts of greed, are wont to scorn and 
 turn our backs upon. In due course she attained 
 the highest rank of Abbess in her convent ; and I 
 believe she was more gratified with this honour than 
 Louis XVI. with his titles of King of France and of 
 Navarre. 1 
 
 Time had at length allayed the discords of our 
 family. My two remaining sisters found husbands. 
 
 1 This was written in 1780, but when it was printed in 1797, Louis 
 XVI. had little reason to be proud of his titles. 
 
GASPARO'S EMOLUMENTS. 367 
 
 My brother Gasparo obtained a post at the University 
 of Padua, which brought him six hundred ducats a 
 year, besides pecuniaiy gratifications for extraordinary 
 services. 1 This proves that literature is not wholly 
 unremunerated in Venice. In addition to these 
 emoluments, he found another way, legitimate indeed, 
 but one which seems incredible, for accumulating 
 the sequins so much needed after his theatrical 
 disaster. There was not a marriage, a taking of the 
 veil among our noble families, an election of a 
 Doge, or procurator, or grand chancellor, without my 
 brother being engaged to produce the panegyrics or 
 poems which are usual on such occasions — more 
 sought perhaps by fashion than by studious readers. 
 The patricians made it their custom to reward him 
 with a hundred sequins, which contributed to the 
 splendour of their families, but did him little good, 
 for in his hands money found wings and flew away. 
 
 These details have little to do with my Memoirs ; 
 yet they are honourable to my nation, and are not 
 without a certain bearing on my subject. Poetical 
 trifles, published by me in collections, found favour 
 by some aspect of novelty and by genial satire on 
 contemporary fashions. Unluckily, they got me the 
 reputation of a good poet and good writer. Accord- 
 ingly, many of our lords tried to press me into the 
 ranks of the Raccoglitori — collectors and compilers 
 
 1 He was made secretary to the Riformatori dello Studio. 
 
368 MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 of occasional verse-books. They did not know that 
 I had adopted for my motto that line of Berni : — 
 
 " Voleva far da se, non comandato." 
 " His master be would be, and no man's man." 
 
 Whenever they did me the honour to force this 
 function on me, I civilly declined, and sent their mes- 
 sengers on to my brother, without, however, refusing 
 compositions of my own, which swelled the collec- 
 tions, to their gain or loss as chance might have it. 
 
 I never abandoned the scheme I had formed of 
 moving at law against the Marchese Terzi of Ber- 
 gamo in a suit for the recovery of lands and rights 
 belonging to us. 1 But while I was engaged on the 
 preliminary business, a fresh attack of pulmonary 
 hemorrhage cooled my ardour. Many learned physi- 
 cians whom I consulted, looked upon me as a victim 
 of consumption, at the point of death. Beggars in 
 the street, when they saw me pass, promised to pray 
 for my life if I would fling them a copper. The 
 cleverest professors of medicine at Padua prescribed 
 ass's milk, which was tantamount to saying : "Phthi- 
 sical creature, go and make your peace with Heaven ! " 
 My own doctor in ordinary, Arcadio Cappello by 
 name, now dead — an old man, experienced, well 
 
 1 Gozzi bere resumes a portion of the 29th chapter of his Memoirs, 
 which I have condensed in Chapter XXIV. above (see note to p. 336). It 
 seemed unnecessary to burden the translation of his autobiography with 
 more of legal details than was absolutely necessary for understanding 
 the tenor of his life-experience. 
 
A DANGEROUS ILLNESS. 369 
 
 acquainted with my constitution, and a philosopher 
 to boot — forbade me milk as though it had been 
 poison. "You," he said, "are suffering from a nasty 
 malady. Yet it has not the origin, nor has it made 
 the progress, which these eminent physicians fancy. 
 If you let your illness prey upon your mind, you will 
 die. If you have the strength and heart to throw 
 aside all thoughts about it, you will recover. It has 
 in you no other basis than a hypochondriacal habit, 
 which you have contracted by a sedentary life of 
 worry, business, and excessive study. Raw milk of 
 any kind is a pure poison in your case. Live regu- 
 larly, cast aside reflections on your symptoms, take 
 horse-exercise two or three hours a day. These are 
 your best medicines." 
 
 Marchese Terzi owes no thanks to my malady. 
 Bloodless as I was, through what I lost by hemor- 
 rhage and venesection, my intellect enjoyed the high- 
 est qualities of penetration and acumen. Stretched 
 out upon my bed, I had the necessary papers for my 
 lawsuit brought to me — abstracts and wills recovered 
 from the pork-butcher — a whole paraphernalia of docu- 
 ments forbidden by my doctors — and set up a scheme 
 of proofs and arguments, so clear and so convincing 
 that they subsequently drove my enemy to desperate 
 measures. 
 
 These annoying relapses of my malady continued 
 for two years and a half to fall upon me when I least 
 expected them. They were enough to dishearten 
 
 vol. 1. 2 A 
 
37o MEMOIRS OF COUNT CARLO GOZZI. 
 
 any man less stupid than myself, and make him 
 despair of living. Contrary to the advice of several 
 physicians, who protested with wide-open horror- 
 stricken eyes that riding would inflame my blood and 
 burst the arteries of my lungs, I followed the pre- 
 scription of Doctor Arcadio Cappello, half- suffocated 
 as I was with hemorrhage. He proved to be right. 
 Regular diet, contempt for my symptoms, and horse- 
 exercise completed my cure. It is now twenty years 
 and more since I have been reminded that I was 
 ever subject to this indisposition. 
 
 As I have often had occasion to remark, no busi- 
 ness, no quarrels, no lawsuits, and no illnesses pre- 
 vented me from devoting some hours every day to 
 poetry. This being the case, when controversies 
 arose in Venice on philology and the higher Italian 
 literature — controversies of which I mean to render 
 some account in the following chapters — I went on 
 vomiting blood from my veins, and scribbling sonnets, 
 satires, essays in defence of our great writers, treatises 
 on style, polemics against Chiari and Goldoni and 
 their followers. All these trifles, when I read them 
 aloud, made my friends laugh, as well as my doctor 
 and the surgeon who attended on me. 
 
 Before engaging in the circumstances which led 
 to my becoming a writer for the theatre, I will wind 
 up the history of our private affairs. First of all, I 
 let the lawsuit with Marchese Terzi drop. My rea- 
 sons were as follows : — With the best intentions 
 
STATE OF THE FAMILY. 371 
 
 in the world, and the strongest desire to reunite 
 the scattered members of our family under one roof, 
 I found this task impossible. My sisters married. 
 My brothers Francesco and Almoro in course of time 
 took wives and begat children. My mother's inheri- 
 tance of the Tiepolo property (though strictly speak- 
 ing it ought to have been treated as entailed upon 
 her sons) ran to waste in the hands of Gasparo and 
 his wife. I had the old debts of our estate still 
 weighing on my shoulders. It seemed to me, in 
 this condition of affairs, best to remain a bachelor, 
 and to devote myself to the duties I had un- 
 dertaken, without ambitious projects and without 
 assuming heavier obligations. Freed from further 
 responsibilities to my family, whom I had loyally 
 served in their material interests, and against none 
 of whom I harboured any rancour, I was master of 
 my time and could devote myself to the literary exer- 
 cises which were so congenial to my temper. 
 
 END of vol. 1. 
 
 PRINTED BY BALLAXTYNE, HANSON AND CO. 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON. 
 


 
 
 
 
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