Sketches and studies in
Italy and Greece
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES
IN ITALY
AIND

THE ILDEFONSO
GROUP
FROM THE MUSEUM AT MADRID
Loulutty Brith Elger 0:15 Waterice Fiac
ļ
4
SKETCHES AND STUDIES
IN ITALY
BY
ERAL LIBRAR
University of
MICHIGAN
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
AUTHOR OF RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 'STUDIES OF THE GREEK POETS' ETC.
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1879
[All rights reserved]
These Studies and Sketches are reprinted in a great measure
from the 'Fortnightly Review' and the Cornhill Magazine.
In preparing them for the press I have been unable, owing to
my distance from all libraries of reference, to give them the
final benefit of verification in minor details. I trust that in
cases of discovered inaccuracy this admission may serve me
in stead of further apology.
DAVOS PLATZ:
January 1879.
་
ΤΟ
H. F. B.
1.
X
1
I)
1
X
1
CONTENTS. .
PAGE
I. AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI
I
II. THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS
28
IIJ. ANTINOUS
47
IV. LUCRETIUS,
91
V. FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI .
118
.
VI. THE DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE
173
VII.
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE
190
VIII. THE ORFEO' OF POLIZIANO.
6
226
.
IX. CANOSSA
243
X. FORNOVO
259
XI. Two DRAMATISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY
278
XII. CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX
.
292
XIII. BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI
305
XIV. COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO
3?3
XV. LOMBARD VIGNETTES
339
XVI. APPENDIX : BLANK VERSE
377
NOTE ON THE ORFEO'
429
Errata.
Page 121, line 5, for 1233 read 1253.
122,
26, 1283 1293.
91
19
1879
dilinde
lo el
Cele
A
SKETCHES AND
AND STUDIES
STUDIES IN ITALY.
AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI.
The road between Vietri and Amalfi is justly celebrated as one
of the most lovely pieces of coast scenery in Italy. Its only
rivals are the roads from Castellammare to Sorrento, from
Genoa to Sestri, and from Nice to Mentone. Each of these
has its own charm; and yet their similarity is sufficient to invite
comparison : under the spell of each in turn, we are inclined to
say, This then, at all events, is the most beautiful. On first
quitting Vietri, Salerno is left low down upon the sea-shore,
nestling into a little corner of the bay which bears its name,
and backed up by gigantic mountains. With each onward step
these mountain-ranges expand in long aërial line, revealing
reaches of fantastic peaks, that stretch away beyond the plain
of Pæstum, till they end at last in mist and sunbeams shim-
mering on the sea. On the left hand hangs the cliff above the
deep salt water, with here and there a fig tree spreading fanlike
leaves against the blue beneath. On the right rises the hill-side,
clothed with myrtle, lentisk, cistus, and pale yellow coronilla-
a tangle as sweet with scent as it is gay with blossom. Over
the parapet that skirts the precipice lean heavy-foliaged locust-
trees, and the terraces in sunny nooks are set with lemon-
orchards. There are but few olives, and no pines. Meanwhile
each turn in the road brings some change of scene—now a
B
go
2
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
!
a
village with its little beach of grey sand, lapped by clearest sea-
waves, where bare-legged fishermen mend their nets, and naked
boys bask like lizards in the sun—now towering bastions of
weird rock, broken into spires and pinnacles like those of Skye,
and coloured with bright hues of red and orange—then a ravine,
where the thin thread of a mountain streamlet seems to hang
suspended upon ferny ledges in the limestone-or a precipice
defined in profile against sea and sky, with a lad, half dressed
in goat-skin, dangling his legs into vacuity and singing-or a
tract of cultivation, where the orange, apricot, and lemon-trees
nestle together upon terraces with intermingled pergolas of
vines.
Amalfi and Atrani lie close together in two of these ravines,
the mountains almost arching over them, and the sea washing
their very house-walls. Each has its crowning campanile; but
that of Amalfi is the stranger of the two, like a Moorish tower
at the top, and coloured with green and yellow tiles that glitter
in the sunlight. The houses are all dazzling white, plastered
against the naked rock, rising on each other's shoulders to get
a glimpse of earth and heaven, jutting out on coigns of vantage
from the toppling cliff, and pierced with staircases as dark as
night at noonday. Some frequented lanes lead through the
basements of these houses ; and as the donkeys pick their way
from step to step in the twilight, bare-chested macaroni-makers
crowd forth like ants to see us strangers pass. A myriad of
swallows or a swarm of mason bees might build a town like
this.
It is not easy to imagine the time when Amalfi and Atrani
were one town, with docks and arsenals and harbourage for
their associated fleets, and when these little communities were
second in importance to no naval power of Christian Europe.
The Byzantine Empire lost its hold on Italy during the eighth
century; and after this time the history of Calabria is mainly
concerned with the republics of Naples and Amalfi, their
1
1
1
AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI.
3
conflict with the Lombard dukes of Benevento, their opposition
to the Saracens, and their final subjugation by the Norman
conquerors of Sicily. Between the year 839 A.D., when Amalfi
freed itself from the control of Naples and the yoke of Benevento,
and the year 1131, when Roger of Hauteville incorporated the
republic in his kingdom of the Two Sicilies, this city was the
foremost naval and commercial port of Italy. The burghers
of Amalfi elected their own doge ; founded the Hospital of
Jerusalem, whence sprang the knightly order of S. John ; gave
their name to the richest quarter in Palermo ; and owned
trading establishments or factories in all the chief cities of the
Levant. Their gold coinage of tari formed the standard of
currency before the Florentines had stamped the lily and S.
John upon the Tuscan florin. Their shipping regulations
supplied Europe with a code of maritime laws. Their scholars,
in the darkest depth of the dark ames, prized and conned a
famous copy of the Pandects of Justinian ; and their seamen
;
deserved the fame of having first used, if they did not actually
invent, the compass.
To modern visitors those glorious centuries of Amalfitan
power and independence cannot but seem fabulous ; so difficult
is it for us to imagine the conditions of society in Europe when
a tiny city, shut in between barren mountains and a tideless
sea, without a circumjacent territory, and with no resources but
piracy or trade, could develop maritime supremacy in the
Levant and produce the first fine flowers of liberty and
culture.
If the history of Amalfi's early splendour reads like a brilliant
legend, the story of its premature extinction has the interest of
a tragedy. The republic had grown and flourished on the
decay of the Greek Empire. When the hard-handed race of
Hauteville absorbed the heritage of Greeks and Lombards and
Saracens in Southern Italy, these adventurers succeeded in
annexing Amalfi. But it was not their interest to extinguish
a
B 2
4
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
the state. On the contrary, they relied for assistance upon the
navies and the armies of the little commonwealth. New powers
had meanwhile arisen in the North of Italy, who were jealous
of rivalry upon the open seas; and when the Neapolitans
resisted King Roger in 1135, they called Pisa to their aid, and
sent her fleet to destroy Amalfi. The ships of Amalfi were on
guard with Roger's navy in the Bay of Naples. The armed
citize is were, under Roger's orders, at Aversa. Meanwhile the
home of the republic lay defenceless on its mountain-girdled sea-
board. The Pisans sailed into the harbour, sacked the city, and
carried off the famous Pandects of Justinian as a trophy. Two
years later they returned, to complete the work of devastation.
Amalfi never recovered from the injuries and the humiliation
of these two attacks. It was ever thus that the Italians, like
the children of the dragon's teeth which Cadmus sowed, con-
sumed each other. Pisa cut the throat of her sister-port Amalfi,
and Genoa gave a mortal wound to Pisa, when the waters of
Meloria were dyed with blood in 1284. Venice fought a duel
to the death with Genoa in the succeeding century; and what
Venice failed to accomplish was completed by Milan and the
lords of the Visconti dynasty, who crippled and enslaved the
haughty queen of the Ligurian Riviera.
The naval and commercial prosperity of Amalfi was thus
put an end to by the Pisans in the twelfth century. But it was
not then that the town assumed its present aspect. What
surprises the student of history more than anything is the total
absence of fortifications, docks, arsenals, and breakwaters,
bearing witness to the ancient grandeur of a city which
numbered 50,000 inhabitants, and traded with Alexandria,
Syria, and the far East. Nothing of the sort, with the exception
of a single solitary tower upon the Monte Aureo, is visible.
Nor will he fail to remember that Amalfi and Atrani, which are
now divided by a jutting mountain buttress, were once joined
ly a tract of sea-beach, where the galleys of the republic rested
1
AMALFI, PAESTUM, CAPRI.
5
-
6
after sweeping the Levant, and where the fishermen drew up
iheir boats upon the smooth grey sand. That also has dis-
appeared. The violence of man was not enough to reduce
Amalfi to its present state of insignificance. The forces of
nature aided-partly by the gradual subsidence of the land,
which caused the lower quarters of the city to be submerged,
and separated Amalfi from her twin-port by covering the beach
with water-partly by a fearful tempest, accompanied by earth-
quake, in 1343. Petrarch, then resident at Naples, witnessed
the destructive fury of this great convulsion, and the descrip-
tion he wrote of it soon after its occurrence is so graphic that
some notice
may
well be taken of it here.
His letter, addressed to the noble Roman, Giovanni
Colonna, begins with a promise to tell something of a storm
which deserved the title of poetic,' and in a degree so super-
lative that no epithet but "Homeric' would suffice to do it
justice. This exordium is singularly characteristic of Petrarch,
who never forgot that he was a literary man, and lost no
opportunity of dragging the great names of antiquity into his
rhetorical compositions. The catastrophe was hardly unex-
pected; for it had been prophesied by an astrological bishop,
whom Petrarch does not name, that Naples would be over-
whelmed by a terrible disaster in December 1343. The
people were therefore in a state of wild anxiety, repenting of
their sins, planning a total change of life under the fear of
imminent death, and neglecting their ordinary occupations.
On the day of the predicted calamity women roamed in
trembling crowds through the streets, pressing their babies to
their breasts, and besieging the altars of the saints with prayers.
Petrarch, who shared the general disquietude, kept watching
the signs of the weather ; but nothing happened to warrant an
extraordinary panic. At sunset the sky was quieter than usual ;
and he could discern none of the symptoms of approaching
tempest, to which his familiarity with the mountains of Vaucluse
6
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
1
accustomed him. Aſter dusk he stationed himself at a window
to observe the moon until she went down, before midnight,
obscured by clouds. Then he betook himself to bed ; but
scarcely had ne fallen into his first sleep when a most horrible
noise aroused him. The whole house shook; the night-light
on his table was extinguished ; and he was thrown with violence
from his couch. He was lodging in a convent; and soon after
this first intimation of the tempest he heard the monks calling
to each other through the darkness. From cell to cell they
hurried, the ghastly gleams of lightning falling on their terror-
stricken faces. Headed by the Prior, and holding crosses and
relics of the saints in their hands, they now assembled in
Petrarch's chamber. Thence they proceeded in a body to the
chapel, where they spent the night in prayer and expectation of
impending ruin. It would be impossible, says the poet, to
relate the terrors of that hellish night-the deluges of rain, the
screaming of the wind, the earthquake, the thunder, the howling
of the sea, and the shrieks of agonising human beings. All these
horrors were prolonged, as though by some magician's spell, for
what seemed twice the duration of a natural night. It was so,
dark that at last by conjecture rather than the testimony of their
senses they knew that day had broken. A hurried mass was
said. Then, as the noise in the town above them began to
diminish, and a confused clamour from the sea-shore continually
increased, their suspense became unendurable. They mounted
their horses, and descended to the port-to see and perish. A
fearſul spectacle awaited them. The ships in the harbour had
broken their moorings, and were crashing helplessly together.
The strand was strewn with mutilated corpses. The break-
waters were submerged, and the sea seemed gaining momently
upon the solid land. A thousand watery mountains surged up
into the sky between the shore and Capri ; and these massive
billows were not black or purple, but hoary with a livid foam.
After describing some picturesque episodes-such as the
AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI.
7
gathering of the knights of Naples to watch the ruin of their
city, the procession of court ladies headed by the queen to
implore the intercession of Mary, and the wreck of a vessel
freighted with 400 convicts bound for Sicily-Petrarch con-
cludes with a fervent prayer that he may never have to tempt
the sea, of whose fury he had seen so awful an example.
The capital on this occasion escaped the ruin prophesied.
But Amalfi was inundated ; and what the waters then gained
has never been restored to man. This is why the once so
famous city ranks now upon a level with quiet little towns
whose names are hardly heard in history-with San Remo, or
Rapallo, or Chiavari-and yet it is still as full of life as a wasp's
nest, especially upon the molo, or raised piazza paved with
bricks, in front of the Albergo de' Cappuccini. The changes
of scene upon this tiny square are so frequent as to remind
one of a theatre. Looking down from the inn-balcony, between
the glazy green pots gay with scarlet amaryllis-bloom, we are
inclined to fancy that the whole has been prepared for our
amusement. In the morning the corn for the macaroni-flour,
after being washed, is spread out on the bricks to dry. In the
afternoon the fishermen bring their nets for the same purpose.
In the evening the city magnates promenade and whisper.
Dark-eyed women, with orange or crimson kerchiefs for head-
gear, cross and re-cross, bearing baskets on their shoulders.
Great lazy large-limbed fellows, girt with scarlet sashes and
finished off with dark blue nightcaps (for a contrast to their
saffron-coloured shirts, white breeches, and sunburnt calves)
slouch about or sleep face downwards on the parapets. On
either side of this same molo stretches a miniature beach of
sand and pebble, covered with nets, which the fishermen are
always mending, and where the big boats lade or unlade,
trimming for the sardine fishery, or driving in to shore with a
whirr of oars and a jabber of discordant voices. As the land-
wind freshens, you may watch them set off one by one, like
8
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
pigeons taking flight, till the sea is flecked with twenty sail all
scudding in the same direction. The torrent runs beneath the
molo, and finds the sea beyond it ; so that here too are the
washerwomen, chattering like sparrows; and everywhere the
naked boys, like brown sea-urchins, burrow in the clean warm
sand, or splash the shallow brine. If you like the fun, you
may get a score of them to dive together and scramble for
coppers in the deeper places, their lithe bodies gleaming wan
beneath the water in a maze of interlacing arms and legs.
Over the whole busy scene rise the grey hills, soaring into
blueness of air-distance, turreted here and there with ruined
castles, capped with particoloured campanili and white
convents, and tufted through their whole height with the
orange and the emerald of the great tree-spurge, and with the
live gold of the blossoming broom. It is difficult to say when
this picture is most beautiful-whether in the early morning,
when the boats are coming back from their night-toil upon the
sea, and along the headlands in the fresh light lie swathes of
fleecy mist, betokening a still, hot day—or at noontide, when
the houses on the hill stand, tinted pink and yellow, shadow-
less like gems, and the great caruba-trees above the tangles of
vines and figs are blots upon the steady glare-or at sunset,
when violet and rose, reflected from the eastern sky, make all
these terraces and peaks translucent with a wondrous glow.
The best of all, perhaps, is night, with a full moon hanging
high overhead. Who shall describe the silhouettes of boats
upon the shore or sleeping on the misty sea? On the horizon
lies a dusky film of brownish golden haze, between the moon
and the glimmering water ; and here and there a lamp or
candle burns with a deep red. Then is the time to take a
boat and row upon the bay, or better, to swim out into the
waves and trouble the reflections from the steady stars. The
mountains, clear and calm, with light-irradiated chasms and
hard shadows cast upon the rock, soar up above a city built of
AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI.
9
:
alabaster, or sea-foam, or summer clouds. The whole is
white and wonderful: no similes suggest an analogue for the
lustre, solid and transparent, of Amalfi nestling in moonlight
between the grey-blue sea and lucid hills. Stars stand on all
the peaks, and twinkle, or keep gliding, as the boat moves,
down the craggy sides. Stars are mirrored on the marble of
the sea, until one knows not whether the oar has struck sparks
from a star image or has scattered diamonds of phosphorescent
brine.
All this reads like a rhapsody; but indeed it is difficult
not to be rhapsodical when a May night of Amalfi is in the
memory, with the echo of rich baritone voices chanting
Neapolitan songs to a mandoline. It is fashionable to com-
plain that these Italian airs are opera-tunes; but this is only
another way of saying that the Italian opera is the genuine
outgrowth of national melody, and that Weber was not the
first, as some German critics have supposed, to string
together Volkslieder for the stage. Northerners, who have
never seen or felt the beauty of the South, talk sad nonsense
about the superiority of German over Italian music. It is true
that much Italian music is out of place in Northern Europe,
where we seem to need more travail of the intellect in art.
But the Italians are rightly satisfied with such facile melody
and such simple rhythms as harmonise with sea and sky and
boon earth sensuously beautiful. "Perchè pensa ? Pensando
s'invecchia,' expresses the same habit of mind as another
celebrated saying, 'La musica è il lamento dell' amore o la
preghiera agli Dei.' Whatever may be the value of Italian
music, it is in concord with such a scene as Amalfi by moon-
light; and he who does not appreciate this no less than some
more artificial combination of sights and sounds in Wagner's
theatre at Bayreuth, has scarcely learned the first lesson in the
lore of beauty
There is enough and to spare for all tastes at Amalfi. The
IO
SK’ETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
student of architecture may spend hours in the Cathedral,
pondering over its high-built western front, and wondering
whether there is more of Moorish or of Gothic in its delicate
arcades. The painter may transfer its campanile, glittering
like dragon's scales, to his canvas. The lover of the pic-
turesque will wander through its aisle at mass-time, watching
the sunlight play upon those upturned Southern faces with
their ardent eyes ; and happy is he who sees young men and
maidens on Whit-Sunday crowding round the chancel rails, to
catch the marigolds and gillyflowers scattered from baskets
which the priest has blessed. Is this a symbol of the Holy
Spirit's gifts, or is it some quaint relic of Pagan sparsiones ?
This question, with the memory of Pompeian graffiti in our
mind, may well suggest itself in Southern Italy, where old and
new faiths are so singularly blended. Then there is Ravello
on the hills above. The path winds upward between stone-
walls tufted with maidenhair ; and ever nearer grow the
mountains, and the sea-line soars into the sky. An English-
man has made his home here in a ruined Moorish villa, with
cool colonnaded cloisters and rose-embowered terraces, lend-
ing far prospect over rocky hills and olive-girdled villages to
Pæstum's plain. The churches of Ravello have rare mosaics,
and bronze doors, and marble pulpits, older perhaps than those
of Tuscany, which tempt the archæologist to ask if Nicholas
the Pisan learned his secret here. But who cares to be a
sober antiquary at Amalfi? Far pleasanter is it to climb the
staircase to the Capuchins, and linger in those caverns of the
living rock, and pluck the lemons hanging by the mossy walls;
or to row from cove to cove along the shore, watching the
fishes swimming in the deeps beneath, and the medusas
spreading their filmy bells; to land upon smooth slabs of
rock, where corallines wave to and fro; or to rest on samphire-
tufted ledges, when the shadows slant beneath the westering
sun.
AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI.
II
There is no point in all this landscape which does not
make a picture. Painters might even complain that the pictures
are too easy and the poetry too facile, just as the musicians find
the melodies of this fair land too simple. No effect, carefully
sought and strenuously seized, could enhance the mere beauty
of Amalfi bathed in sunlight. You have only on some average
summer day to sit down and paint the scene.
Little scope is
afforded for suggestions of far-away weird thoughts, or
for elaborately studied motives. Daubigny and Corot are as
alien here as Blake or Dürer.
What is wanted, and what no modern artist can successfully
recapture from the wasteful past, is the mythopæic sense-the
apprehension of primeval powers akin to man, growing into
shape and substance on the borderland between the world and
the keen human sympathies it stirs in us. Greek mythology
was the proper form of art for scenery like this. It gave the
final touch to all its beauties, and added to its sensuous charm
an inbreathed spiritual life. No exercise of the poetic faculty,
far less that metaphysical mood of the reflective consciousness
which leads from nature up to nature's God,' can now supply
this need. From sea and earth and sky, in those creative ages
when the world was young, there leaned to greet the men
whose fancy made them, forms imagined and yet real-human,
divine--the archetypes and everlasting patterns of man's deep-
est sense of what is wonderful in nature. Feeling them there,
for ever there, inalienable, ready to start forth and greet suc-
cessive generations as the Hamadryad greeted Rhaicos from
his father's oak—those mythopoets called them by immortal
names. All their pent-up longings, all passions that consume,
all aspirations that inflame-the desire for the impossible,
which is disease, the day.dreams and visions of the night,
which are spontaneous poems-were thus transferred to nature.
And nature, responsive to the soul that loves her, gave them
back transfigured and translated into radiant beings of like sub.
12
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
stance with mankind.
It was thus, we feel, upon these south-
ern shores that the gods of Greece came into being. The
statues in the temples were the true fine flower of all this
beauty, the culmination of the poetry which it evoked in hearts
that feel and brains that think.
In Italy, far more than in any other part of Europe, the
life of the present is imposed upon the strata of successive past
lives. Greek, Latin, Moorish, and mediæval civilisations have
arisen, flourished, and decayed on nearly the same soil ; and it
is common enough to find one city, which may have perished
twenty centuries ago, neighbour to another that enjoyed its
brief prosperity in the middle of our era. There is not, for
example, the least sign of either Greek or Roman at Amalfi.
Whatever may have been the glories of the republic in the
early middle ages, they had no relation to the classic past. Yet
a few miles off along the bay rise the ancient Greek temples
of Pæstum, from a desert—with no trace of any intervening
occupants. Poseidonia was founded in the sixth century be-
fore Christ, by colonists from Sybaris. Three centuries later
the Hellenic element in this settlement, which must already
have become a town of no little importance, was submerged
by a deluge of recurrent barbarism. Under the Roinan rule
it changed its name to Pæstum, and was prosperous. The
Saracens destroyed it in the ninth century of our era ; and
Robert Guiscard carried some of the materials of its buildings
to adorn his new town of Salerno. Since then the ancient
site has been abandoned to malaria and solitude. The very
existence of Pæstum was unknown, except to wandering herds-
men and fishers coasting near its ruined colonnades, until the
end of the last century. Yet, strange to relate, after all these
revolutions, and in the midst of this total desolation, the only
relics of the antique city are three Greek temples, those very
temples where the Hellenes, barbarised by their Lucanian neigh-
bours, met to mourn for their lost liberty. It is almost impossible
AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI.
13
to trace more than the mere circuit of the walls of Poseidonia.
Its port, if port it had in Roman days, has disappeared. Its
theatre is only just discernible. Still not a column of the great
hypæthral temple, built by the Sybarite colonists two thousand
and five hundred years ago, to be a house for Zeus or for Posei-
don, has been injured. The accidents that erased far greater
cities, like Syracuse, from the surface of the earth-pil-
lage, earthquake, the fury of fanatics, the slow decay of perish-
able stone, or the lust of palace builders in the middle ages -
have spared those three houses of the gods, over whom, in
the days of Alexander, the funeral hymn was chanted by the
enslaved Hellenes.
"We do the same,' said Aristoxenus in his Convivial Mis-
cellanies, 'as the men of Poseidonia, who dwell on the Tyr-
rhenian Gulf. It befell them, having been at first true Hellenes,
to be utterly barbarised, changing to Tyrrhenes or Romans, and
altering their language, together with their other customs. Yet
they still observe one Hellenic festival, when they meet together
and call to remembrance their old names and bygone institu-
tions ; and having lamented one to the other, and shed bitter
tears, they afterwards depart to their own homes. Even thus
a few of us also, now that our theatres have been barbarised,
and this art of music has gone to ruin and vulgarity, meet
together and remember what once music was.' ?
This passage has a strange pathos, considering how it was
penned, and how it has come down to us, tossed by the dark
indifferent stream of time. The Aristoxenus, who wrote it, was
a pupil of the Peripatetic School, born at Tarentum, and there-
fore familiar with the vicissitudes of Magna Græcia. The study
of music was his chief preoccupation ; and he used this episode
in the agony of an enslaved Greek city, to point his own con-
servative disgust for innovations in an art of which we have no
Athenæus, xiv. 632.
14
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
knowledge left. The works of Aristoxenus have perished, and the
fragment I have quoted is imbedded in the gossip of Egyptian
Athenæus. In this careless fashion has been opened for us, as
it were, a little window on a grief now buried in the oblivion of a
hundred generations. After reading his words one May morning,
beneath the pediment of Pæstum's noblest ruin, I could not
refrain from thinking that if the spirits of those captive Hellenes
were to revisit their old habitations, they would change their
note of wailing into a thin ghostly pæan, when they found that
Romans and Lucanians had passed away, that Christians and
Saracens had left alike no trace behind, while the houses of
their own avro Oɛoi-dawn-facing deities-were still abiding
in the pride of immemorial strength. Who knows whether
buffalo-driver or bandit may not ere now have seen processions
of these Poseidonian phantoms, bearing laurels and chaunting
hymns on the spot where once they fell each on the other's
neck to weep? Gathering his cloak around him and cowering
closer to his fire of sticks, the night-watcher in those empty
colonnades may have mistaken the Hellenic outlines of his
shadowy visitants for fevered dreams, and the melody of their
evanished music for the whistling of night winds or the cry of
owls. So abandoned is Pæstum in its solitude that we know
not even what legends may have sprung up round those relics
of a nightier age.
The shrine is ruined now; and far away
To east and west stretch olive groves, whose shade
Even at the height of summer noon is grey.
Asphodels sprout upon the plinth decayed
Of these low columns, and the snake hath found
Her haunt 'neath altar-steps with weeds o'erlaid.
Yet this was once a hero's temple, crowned
With myrtle-boughs by lovers, and with palm
By wrestlers, resonant with sweetest sound
Of flute and fife in summer evening's calm,
And odorous with incense all the year,
With nard and spice, and galbanum and balm.
AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI.
15
These lines sufficiently express the sense of desolation felt
at Pæstum, except that the scenery is more solemn and mournful,
and the temples are too august to be the shrine of any simple
hero. There are no olives. The sea plunges on its sandy
shore within the space of half-a-mile to westward. Far and
wide on either hand stretch dreary fever-stricken marshes. The
plain is bounded to the north, and east, and south, with moun-
tains, purple, snow-peaked, serrated, and grandly broken like
the hills of Greece. Driving over this vast level where the
Silarus stagnates, the monotony of the landscape is broken now
and then by a group of buffaloes standing up to their dewlaps
in reeds, by peasants on horseback, with goads in their hands,
and muskets slung athwart their backs, or by patrols of Italian
soldiers crossing and re-crossing on the brigand-haunted roads.
Certain portions have been reclaimed from the swamp, and
here may be seen white oxen in herds of fifty grazing; or gangs
of women at field-labour, with a man to oversee them, cracking
a long hunting-whip ; or the mares and foals of a famous stud-
farm browsing under spreading pines. There are no villages,
and the few farmhouses are so widely scattered as to make us
wonder where the herdsmen and field-workers, scanty as they
are, can possibly be lodged.
At last the three great temples come in sight. The rich
orange of the central building contrasts with the paler yellow of
its two companions, while the glowing colour of all three is
splendidly relieved against green vegetation and blue mountain-
flanks. Their material is travertine-a calcareous stone formed
by the deposit of petrifying waters, which contains fragments of
reeds, spiral shells, and other substances, embedded in the por-
ous limestone. In the flourishing period of old Poseidonia
these travertine columns were coated with stucco, worked to a
smooth surface, and brilliantly tinted to harmonise with the gay
costumes of a Greek festival. Even now this coating of fine
sand, mingled with slaked lime and water, can be seen in
a
16
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
patches on the huge blocks of the masonry. Thus treated,
the travertine lacked little of the radiance of marble, for it must
be remembered that the Greeks painted even the Pentelic cor-
nice of the Parthenon with red and blue. Nor can we doubt
that the general effect of brightness suited the glad and genial
conditions of Greek life.
All the surroundings are altered now, and the lover of the
picturesque may be truly thankful that the hand of time, by
stripping the buildings of this stucco, without impairing their
proportions, has substituted a new harmony of tone between
the native stone and the surrounding landscape, no less sym-
pathetic to the present solitude than the old symphony of
colours was to the animated circumstances of a populous Greek
city. In this way those critics who defend the polychrome
decorations of the classic architects, and those who contend
that they cannot imagine any alteration from the present toning
of Greek temples for the better, are both right.
In point of colour the Pæstum ruins are very similar to
those of Girgenti ; but owing to their position on a level plain,
in front of a scarcely indented sea-shore, we lack the irregu-
larity which adds so much charm to the row of temples on
their broken cliff in the old town of Agrigentum. In like
manner the celebrated asymmetreia of the buildings of the
Athenian Acropolis, which causes so much variety of light and
shade upon the temple-fronts, and offers so many novel points
of view when they are seen in combination, seems to have
been due originally to the exigencies of the ground. At Pas-
tum, in planning out the city, there can have been no utilitarian
reasons for placing the temples at odd angles, either to each
other or the shore. Therefore we see them now almost exactly
in line and parallel, though at unequal distances. If some-
thing of picturesque effect is thus lost at Pæstum through the
flatness of the ground, something of impressive grandeur on
the other hand is gained by the very regularity with which
AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI.
17
those phalanxes of massive Doric columns are drawn up to face
the sea.
Poseidonia, as the name betokens, was dedicated to the
god of the sea ; and the coins of the city are stamped with his
effigy bearing a trident, and with his sacred animal, the bull.
It has therefore been conjectured that the central of the
three temples—which was hypäthral and had two entrances,
east and west-belonged to Poseidon ; and there is something
fine in the notion of the god being thus able to pass to and fro
from his cella through those sunny peristyles, down to his
chariot, yoked with sea-horses, in the brine. Yet hypæthral
-
temples were generally consecrated to Zeus, and it is therefore
probable that the traditional name of this vast edifice is wrong.
The names of the two other temples, Tempio di Cerere and
Basilica, are wholly unsupported by any proof or probability.
The second is almost certainly founded on a mistake ; and if
we assign the largest of the three shrines to Zeus, one or other
of the lesser belonged most likely to Poseidon.
The style of the temples is severe and primitive. In general
effect their Doric architecture is far sterner than that adapted
by Ictinus to the Parthenon. The entablature seems somewhat
disproportioned to the columns and the pediment; and, owing
to this cause, there is a general effect of heaviness. The
columns, again, are thick-set; nor is the effect of solidity re-
moved by their gradual narrowing from the base upwards. The
pillars of the Neptune are narrowed in a straight line ; those of
the Basilica and Ceres by a gentle curve. Study of these
buildings, so sublime in their massiveness, so noble in the
parsimony of their decoration, so dignified in their employment
of the simplest means for the attainment of an indestructible
effect of harmony, heightens our admiration for the Attic genius
which found in this grand manner of the elder Doric architects
resources as yet undeveloped ; creating, by slight and subtle
alterations of outline, proportion, and rhythm of parts, what
с
18
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
may fairly be classed as a style unique, because exemplified in
only one transcendent building.
It is difficult not to return again and again to the beauty of
colouring at Pæstum. Lying basking in the sun upon a flat
slab of stone, and gazing eastward, we overlook a foreground
of dappled light and shadow, across which the lizards run-
quick streaks of living emerald-making the bunches of yellow
rue and little white serpyllum in the fissures of the masonry
nod as they hurry past. Then come two stationary columns,
built, it seems, of solid gold, where the sunbeams strike along
their russet surface. Between them lies the landscape, a
medley first of brakefern and asphodel and feathering acanthus
and blue spikes of bugloss; then a white farm in the middle
distance, roofed with the reddest tiles and sheltered by a
velvety umbrella pine. Beyond and above the farm, a glimpse
of mountains purple almost to indigo with cloud shadows, and
flecked with snow. Still higher-but for this we have to raise
our head a little—the free heavens enclosed within the frame-
work of the tawny travertine, across which sail hawks and
flutter jackdaws, sharply cut against the solid sky. Down from
the architrave, to make the vignette perfect, hang tufts of
crimson snapdragons. Each opening in the peristyle gives a
fresh picture.
The temples are overgrown with snapdragons and mallows,
yellow asters and lilac gillyflowers, white allium and wild fig.
When a breeze passes, the whole of this many-coloured tapestry
waves gently to and fro. The fields around are flowery
enough ; but where are the roses ? I suppose no one who has
read his Virgil at school, crosses the plain from Salerno to
Pæstum without those words of the Georgics' ringing in his
ears: biferique rosaria Pæsti. They have that w nderful
Virgilian charm which, by a touch, transforms mere daily sights
and sounds, and adds poetic mystery to common things. The
poets of ancient Rome seem to have felt the magic of this
AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI.
19
6
phrase; for Ovid has imitated the line in his Metamorphoses,'
tamely substituting tepidi for the suggestive biferi, while again
in his Elegies' he uses the same termination with odorati for his
epithet. Martial sings of Pastane rose and Pastani gloria
ruris. Even Ausonius, at the very end of Latin literature,
draws from the rosaries of Pæstum a pretty picture of beauty
doomed to premature decline :
Vidi Pæstano gaudere rosaria cultu
Exoriente novo roscida Lucifero.
'I have watched the rose-beds that luxuriate on Pæstum's well-tilled soil,
all dewy in the young light of the rising dawn-star.'
What a place indeed was this for a rose-garden, spreading far
and wide along the fertile plain, with its deep loam reclaimed
from swamps and irrigated by the passing of perpetual streams!
But where are the roses now? As well ask, où sont les neiges
d'antan?
We left Amalfi for Capri in the freshness of an early morn-
ing at the end of May. As we stepped into our six-oared boat
the sun rose above the horizon, flooding the sea with gold and
flashing on the terraces above Amalfi. High up along the
mountains hung pearly and einpurpled mists, set like resting-
places between a world too beautiful and heaven too far for
mortal feet. Not a breath of any wind was stirring. The water
heaved with a scarcely perceptible swell, and the vapours
lifted gradually as the sun's rays grew in power. Here the
hills descend abruptly on the sea, ending in cliffs where light
reflected from the water dances. Huge caverns open in the
limestone; on their edges hang stalactites like beards, and the
sea within sleeps dark as night. For some of these caves the
maidenhair fern makes a shadowy curtain; and all of them.
might be the home of Proteus, or of Calypso, by whose side
her mortal lover passed his nights in vain home-sickness :
ἐν σπέσσι γλαφυροῖσι παρ' οὐκ ἐθέλων ἐθελούσῃ.
C 2
20
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
As we
This is a truly Odyssean journey. Soon the islands of the
Sirens come in sight,—bare bluffs of rock, shaped like galleys
taking flight for the broad sea.
row past in this
ambrosial weather, the oarsmen keeping time and ploughing
furrows in the fruitless fields of Nereus, it is not difficult to
hear the siren voices—for earth and heaven and sea make
melodies far above mortal singing. The water round the
Galli-so the islands are now called, as antiquaries tell us,
from an ancient fortress named Guallo-is very decp, and
not a sign of habitation is to be seen upon them. In bygone
ages they were used as prisons; and many doges of Amalfi
languished their lives away upon those shadeless stones, watch-
ing the sea around them blaze like a burnished shield at noon,
and the peaks of Capri deepen into purple when the west was
glowing after sunset with the rose and daffodil of Southern
twilight.
The end of the Sorrentine promontory, Point Campanella,
is absolutely barren-grey limestone, with the scantiest over-
growth of rosemary and myrtle. A more desolate spot can
hardly be imagined. But now the morning breeze springs up
behind; sails are hoisted, and the boatmen ship their oars.
Under the albatross wings of our lateen sails we scud across
the freshening waves. The precipice of Capri soars against the
sky, and the Bay of Naples expands before us with those
sweeping curves and azure amplitude that all the poets of the
world have sung.
Even thus the mariners of ancient Hellas
rounded this headland when the world was young. Rightly
they named yon rising ground, beneath Vesuvius, Posilippo-
rest from grief. Even now, after all those centuries of toil,
though the mild mountain has been turned into a mouth of
murderous fire, though Roman emperors and Spanish despots
have done their worst to mar what nature made so perfect, we
may here lay down the burden of our cares, gaining tran-
quillity by no mysterious lustral rites, no penitential prayers or
1
AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI.
21
offerings of holocausts, but by the influence of beauty in the
earth and air, and by sympathy with a people unspoiled in
their healthful life of labour alternating with simple joy.
The last hour of the voyage was beguiled by stories of our
boatmen, some of whom had seen service on distant seas,
while others could tell of risks on shore and love adventures.
They showed us how the tunny-nets were set, and described the
solitary life of the tunny-watchers, in their open boats, wait-
ing to spear the monsters of the deep entangled in the
chambers made for them beneath the waves. How much of
Æschylean imagery, I reflected, is drawn from this old fisher's
art-the toils of Clytemnestra and the tragedy of Psyttaleia
rising to my mind. One of the crew had his little son with
him, a child of six years old ; and when the boy was restless,
his father spoke of Barbarossa and Timberio (sic) to keep him
quiet ; for the memory of the Moorish pirate and the mighty
emperor is still alive here. The people of Capri are as familiar
with Tiberius as the Bretons with King Arthur ; and the hoof-
mark of illustrious crime is stamped upon the island.
Capri offers another example of the versatility of Southern
Italy. If Amalfi brings back to us the naval and commercial
prosperity of the early middle ages; if Pæstum remains a
monument of the oldest Hellenic civilisation ; Capri, at a few
;
miles distance, is dedicated to the Roman emperor who
made it his favourite residence, when, life-weary with the
world and all its shows, he turned these many peaks and
slumbering caves into a summer palace for the nursing of his
brain-sick phantasy. Already, on landing, we are led to
remember that from this shore was loosed the galley bearing
that great letter-verbosa et grandis epistola—which undid
Sejanus and shook Rome. Riding to Ana-Capri and the
Salto di Tiberio, exploring the remains of his favourite twelve
villas, and gliding over the smooth waters paved with the white
marbles of his baths, we are for ever attended by the same
22
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
6
a
forbidding spectre. Here, perchance, were the sedes ai ca-
narum libidinum whereof Suetonius speaks; the Spintrian
medals, found in these recesses, still bear witness that the
biographer trusted no mere fables for the picture he has drawn.
Here, too, below the Villa Jovis, gazing 700 feet sheer down
into the waves, we tread the very parapet whence fell the
victims of that maniac lust for blood. • After long and
exquisite torments,' says the Roman writer, ‘he ordered con-
demned prisoners to be cast into the sea before his eyes ;
marines were stationed near to pound the fallen corpses with
poles and oars, lest haply breath should linger in their limbs.'
The Neapolitan Museum contains a little bas-relief represent-
ing Tiberius, with the well-known features of the Claudian
house, seated astride upon a donkey, with a girl before him.
A slave is leading the beast and its burden to a terminal statue
under an olive-tree. This curious relic, discovered some
while since at Capri, haunted my fancy as I climbed the olive-
planted slopes to his high villa on the Arx Tiberii. It is some
relief, amid so much that is tragic in the associations of this
place, to have the horrible Tiberius burlesqued and brought
into donkey-riding relation with the tourist of to-day. And
what an ironical revenge of time it is that his famous Salto
should be turned into a restaurant, where the girls dance
tarantella for a few coppers ; that a toothless hermit should
occupy a cell upon the very summit of his Villa Jovis ;
and that the Englishwoman's comfortable hotel should be
called Timberio by the natives! A spiritualist might well
believe that the emperor's ghost was forced to haunt the island,
and to expiate his old atrocities by gazing on these modern
vulgarisms.
Few problems suggested by history are more darkly
fascinating than the madness of despots; and of this madness,
whether inherent in their blood or encouraged by the circum-
stance of absolute autocracy, the emperors of the Claudian and
AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI.
23
.
Julian houses furnish the most memorable instance. It is
this that renders Tiberius ever present to our memory at Capri.
Nor will the student of Suetonius forget his even more memor-
able grand-nephew Caligula. The following passage is an
episode from the biography of that imperial maniac, whose
portrait in green basalt, with the strain of dire mental tension
on the forehead, is still so beautiful that we are able at this
distance of time to pity more than loathe him. “Above all, he
was tormented with nervous irritation, by sleeplessness; for he
enjoyed not more than three hours of nocturnal repose, nor
even these in pure untroubled rest, but agitated by phantasmata
of portentous augury ; as, for example, upon one occasion,
among other spectral visions, he fancied that he saw the sea,
under some definite impersonation, conversing with himself.
Hence it was, and from this incapacity of sleeping, and from
weariness of lying awake, that he had fallen into habits of
ranging all night long through the palace, sometimes throwing
himself on a couch, sometimes wandering along the vast
corridors, watching for the earliest dawn, and anxiously wishing
its approach.' Those corridors, or loggie, where Caligula
spent his wakeful hours, opened perchance upon this Bay of
Naples, if not upon the sea-waves of his favourite Porto d'Anzio;
for we know that one of his great follies was a palace built
above the sea on piles at Baiæ; and where else could Pelagus,
with his cold azure eyes and briny locks, have more appro-
priately terrified his sleep with prophecy conveyed in dreams?
The very nature of this vision, selected for such special com-
ment by Suetonius as to show that it had troubled Caligula
profoundly, proves the fantastic nature of the man, and justifies
the hypothesis of insanity.
| De Quincey, in his essay on The Cæsars, has worked out this subject
with such artistic vividness that no more need be said. From his pages I
have quoted the paraphrastic version of Suetonius that follows.
24
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
}
1
But it is time to shake off the burden of the past. Only
students, carrying superfluity of culture in their knapsacks, will
ponder over the imperial lunatics who made Capri and Baiæ
fashionable in the days of ancient Rome. Neither Tiberius
nor Caligula, nor yet Ferdinand of Aragon or Bomba for that
matter, has been able to leave trace of vice or scar of crime on
nature in this Eden. A row round the island, or a supper-
party in the loggia above the sea at sunset-time, is no less
charming now, in spite of Roman or Spanish memories, than
when the world was young.
Sea-mists are frequent in the early summer mornings,
swathing the cliffs of Capri in impenetrable wool and brooding
on the perfectly smooth water till the day-wind rises. Then
they disappear like magic, rolling in smoke-wreaths from the
surface of the sea, condensing into clouds and climbing the
hill-sides like Oceanides in quest of Prometheus, or taking
their station on the watch-towers of the world, as in the chorus
of the Nephelai. Such a morning may be chosen for the giro
of the island. The blue grotto loses nothing of its beauty, but
rather gains by contrast, when passing from dense fog you
find yourself transported to a world of wavering subaqueous
sheen. It is only through the opening of the very topmost
arch that a boat can glide into this cavern ; the arch itself
spreads downward through the water, so that all the light is
transmitted from beneath and coloured by the sea. The grotto
is domed in many chambers ; and the water is so clear that
you can
see the bottom, silvery, with black-finned fishes
diapered upon the blue white sand. The flesh of a diver in
this water showed like the faces of children playing at snap-
dragon; all around him the spray leapt up with living fire ;
and when the oars struck the surface, it was as though a phos-
phorescent sea had been smitten, and the drops ran from the
blades in blue pearls. I have only once seen anything (outside
the magic-world of a pantomime) to equal these effects of blue
AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI.
25
and silver ; and that was when I made my way into an ice-
cave in the Great Aletsch glacier-not an artificial gallery
such as they cut at Grindelwald, but a natural cavern, arched,
hollowed into fanciful recesses, and hung with stalactites of
pendent ice. The difference between the glacier-cavern and
the sea-grotto was that in the former all the light was trans-
mitted through transparent sides, so that the whole was one
uniform azure, except in rare places where little chinks opened
upwards to the air, and the light of day came glancing with a
roseate flush. In the latter the light sent from beneath through
the water played upon a roof of rock; reflections intermingled
with translucence; and a greater variety of light and shadow
compensated the lack of that strange sense of being shut
within a solid gem.
Numberless are the caves at Capri. The so-called green
grotto has the beauty of moss-agate in its liquid floor ; the red
grotto shows a warmer chord of colour ; and where there is no
other charm to notice, endless beauty may be found in the play
of sunlight upon roofs of limestone, tinted with yellow, orange,
and pale pink, mossed over, hung with fern, and catching tones
of blue or green from the still deeps beneath.
Sheets of water, wherever found, are the most subtle
heighteners of colour. To those who are familiar with Venetian
or Mantuan sunsets, who have seen the flocks of flamingoes
reflected on the lagoons of Tunis, or who have watched stormy
red flakes tossed from crest to crest of great Atlantic waves on
our own coasts, this need hardly be said. Yet I cannot leave
this beauty of the sea at Capri without touching on a melo-
drama of light and colour I once saw at Castellammare. It
was a. festa-night, when the people sent up rockets and fire-
works of every hue from the harbour-breakwater. The surf
rolled shoreward like a bath of molten metals, all confused of
blue, and red, and green, and gold-dying dolphin tints that
burned strangely beneath the purple skies and tranquil stars.
26
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Boats at sea hung out their crimson cressets, flickering in long
lines on the bay; and larger craft moved slowly with rows of
lamps defining their curves; while the full moon shed over all
her vitreous pour, just tinged with blue.' To some tastes this
mingling of natural and artificial effects would seem unworthy
of sober notice; but I confess to having enjoyed it with
childish eagerness like music never to be forgotten.
After a day upon the water it is pleasant to rest at sunset
in the loggia above the sea. The Bay of Naples stretches far
and wide in front, beautiful by reason chiefly of the long fine
line descending from Vesuvius, dipping almost to a level and
then gliding up to join the highlands of the north. Now sun
and moon begin to iningle : waning and waxing splendours.
The cliffs above our heads are still blushing a deep flame-
colour, like the heart of some tea-rose ; when lo, the touch
of the huntress is laid upon those eastern pinnacles, and the
horizon glimmers with her rising. Was it on such a night that
Ferdinand of Aragon fled from his capital before the French,
with eyes turned ever to the land he loved, chanting, as he
leaned from his galley's stern, that melancholy psalm-Except
the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain'-
and seeing Naples dwindle to a white blot on the purple
shore ?
Our journey takes the opposite direction. Farewell to
Capri, welcome to Sorrento ! The roads are sweet with scent
of acacia and orange flowers. When you walk in a garden at
night, the white specks beneath your feet are fallen petals of
lemon blossoms. Over the walls hang cataracts of roses,
honey-pale clusters of the Banksia rose, and pink bushes of
the China rose, growing as we never see them grow with us.
The grey rocks wave with gladiolus-feathers of crimson, set
amid tufts of rosemary, and myrtle, and tree-spurge. In the
clefts of the sandstone, and behind the orchard-walls, sleeps a
dark green night of foliage, in the midst of which gleam globed
6
AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI.
27
oranges, and lemons dropping like great pearls of palest amber
dew. It is difficult to believe that the lemons have not grown
into length by their own weight, as though mere hanging on
the bough prevented them from being round--so waxen are
they. Overhead soar stone-pines—a roof of sombre green, a
lattice-work of strong red branches, through which the moon
peers wonderfully. One part of this marvellous piano is bare
rock tufted with keen-scented herbs, and sparsely grown with
locust-trees and olives. Another waves from sea to summit
with beech-copses and oak-woods, as verdant as the most
abundant English valley. Another region turns its hoary
raiment of olive-gardens to the sun and sea, or flourishes with
fig and vine. Everywhere, the houses of men are dazzling
white, perched on natural coigns of vantage, clustered on the
brink of brown cliffs, nestling under mountain eaves, or piled
up
from the sea-beach in ascending tiers, until the broad knees
of the hills are reached, and great Pan, the genius of solitude
in nature, takes unto himself a region yet untenanted by man.
The occupations of the sea and land are blent together on this
shore ; and the people are both blithe and gentle. It is true
that their passions are upon the surface, and that the knife is
ready to their hand. But the combination of fierceness and
softness in them has an infinite charm when one has learned
by observation that their lives are laborious and frugal, and
that their honesty is hardly less than their vigour. Happy
indeed are they-so happy that, but for crimes accumulated
through successive generations by bad governors, and but for
superstitions cankering the soul within, they might deserve
what Shelley wrote of his imagined island in · Epipsychidion.'
28
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS.
What is the meaning of our English Christmas? What makes
it seem so truly Northern, national, and homely, that we do not
like to keep the feast upon a foreign shore? These questions
grew upon me as I stood one Advent afternoon beneath the
Dome of Florence. A priest was thundering from the pulpit
against French scepticism, and exalting the miracle of the
Incarnation. Through the whole dim church blazed altar
candles. Crowds of men and women knelt or sat about the
transepts, murmuring their prayers of preparation for the festival.
At the door, were pedlars, selling little books, in which were
printed the offices for Christmas-tide, with stories of S. Felix
and S. Catherine, whose devotion to the infant Christ had
wrought them weal, and promises of the remission of four pur-
gatorial centuries to those who zealously observed the service of
the Church at this most holy time. I knew that the people of
Florence were preparing for Christmas in their own way. But
it was not our way. It happened that outside the church the
climate seemed as wintry as our own-snow-storms and ice,
and wind and chilling fog, suggesting Northern cold. But as
the palaces of Florence lacked our comfortable firesides, and
the greetings of friends lacked our hearty handshakes and loud
good wishes, so there seemed to be a want of the home feeling
in those Christmas services and customs. Again I asked myself,
What do we mean by Christmas?'
The same thought pursued me as I drove to Rome : by
>
THOUGHTS IN ITÁLY ABOUT CHRISTMAS.
29
Siena, still and brown, uplifted, mid her russet hills and wilder-
ness of rolling plain ; by Chiusi, with its sepulchral city of a
dead and unknown people; through the chestnut forests of the
Apennines; by Orvieto's rock, Viterbo's fountains, and the oak-
grown solitudes of the Ciminian heights, from which one looks
across the broad lake of Bolsena and the Roman plain. Bril-
liant sunlight, like that of a day in late September, shone upon
the landscape, and I thought-Can this be Christmas ? Are
they bringing mistletoe and holly on the country carts into the
towns in far-off England ? Is it clear and frosty there, with
the tramp of heels upon the flag, or snowing silently, or foggy
with a round red sun and cries of warning at the corners of the
streets ?
I reached Rome on Christmas-eve, in time to hear mid-
night services in the Sistine Chapel and S. John Lateran, to
breathe the dust of decayed shrines, to wonder at doting
cardinals begrimed with snuff, and to resent the open-mouthed
bad taste of my countrymen who made a mockery of these
palsy-stricken ceremonies. Nine cardinals going to sleep, nine
train-bearers talking scandal, lwenty huge, handsome Switzers
in the dress devised by Michael Angelo, some ushers, a choir
caged off by gilded railings, the insolence and eagerness of poly-
glot tourists, plenty of wax-candles dripping on people's heads,
and a continual nasal drone proceeding from the gilded cage,
out of which were caught at intervals these words, and these
only,— Sæcula sæculorum, amen.' Such was the celebrated
Sistine service. The chapel blazed with light, and very strange
did Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, his Sibyls, and his Pro-
phets, appear upon the roof and wall above this motley and
unmeaning crowd.
Next morning I put on my dress-clothes and white tie,
and repaired, with groups of Englishmen similarly attired, and
of Engliswomen in black crape—the regulation costume-to
S. Peter's. It was a glorious and cloudless morning ; sun-
30
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
beams streamed in columns from the southern windows, falling
on the vast space full of soldiers and a mingled mass of every
kind of people. Up the nave stood double files of the
Pontifical guard. Monks and nuns mixed with the Swiss
cuirassiers and halberds. Contadini crowded round the sacred
images, and especially round the toe of S. Peter. I saw many
mothers lift their swaddled babies up to kiss it. Valets of car-
dinals, with the invariable red umbrellas, hung about side
chapels and sacristies. Purple-mantled monsignori, like
emperor butterflies, floated down the aisles from sunlight into
shadow. Movement, colour, and the stir of expectation, made
the church alive. We showed our dress-clothes to the guard,
were admitted within their ranks, and solemnly walked up
toward the dome. There under its broad canopy stood the
altar, glittering with gold and candles. The choir was carpeted
and hung with scarlet. Two magnificent thrones rose ready
for the Pope : guards of honour, soldiers, attachés, and the
élite of the residents and visitors in Rome, were scattered in
groups picturesquely varied by ecclesiastics of all orders and
degrees. At ten a stirring took place near the great west door.
It opened, and we saw the procession of the Pope and his
cardinals. Before him marched the singers and the blowers of
the silver trumpets, making the most liquid melody. Then
came his Cap of Maintenance, and three tiaras; then a com-
pany of mitred priests; next the cardinals in scarlet ; and last,
aloft beneath a canopy, upon the shoulders of men, and flanked
by the mystic fans, advanced the Pope himself, swaying to and
fro like a Lama, or an Aztec king. Still the trumpets blew
most silverly, and still the people knelt; and as he came, we
knelt and had his blessing. Then he took his state and
received homage. After this the choir began to sing a mass
of Palestrina's, and the deacons robed the Pope. Marvellous
putting on and taking off of robes and tiaras and mitres ensued,
during which there was much bowing and praying and burning
THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS.
31
of incense. At last, when he had reached the highest stage of
sacrificial sanctity, he proceeded to the altar, waited on by
cardinals and bishops. Having censed it carefully, he took a
higher throne and divested himself of part of his robes. Then
the mass went on in earnest, till the moment of consecration,
when it paused, the Pope descended from his throne, passed
down the choir, and reached the altar. Every one knelt; the
shrill bell tinkled ; the silver trumpets blew; the air became
sick and heavy with incense, so that sun and candle light
swooned in an atmosphere of odorous cloud-wreaths. The
whole church trembled, hearing the strange subtle music vibrate
in the dome, and seeing the Pope with his own hands lift
Christ's body from the altar and present it to the people. An
old parish priest, pilgrim from some valley of the Apennines,
who knelt beside me, cried and quivered with excess of adora-
tion. The great tombs around, the sculptured saints and
angels, the dome, the volumes of light and incense and un-
familiar melody, the hierarchy ministrant, the white and central
figure of the Pope, the multitude-made up an overpowering
scene. What followed was comparatively tedious. My mind
again went back to England, and I thought of Christmas
services beginning in all village churches and all cathedrals
throughout the land-their old familiar hymn, their anthem of
Handel, their trite and sleepy sermons. How different the
two feasts are--Christmas in Rome, Christmas in England-
Italy and the North—the spirit of Latin and the spirit of
Teutonic Christianity.
What, then, constitutes the essence of our Christmas as dif-
ferent from that of more Southern nations? In their origin
they are the same. The stable of Bethlehem, the star-led kings,
the shepherds, and the angels—all the beautiful story, in fact,
which S. Luke alone of the Evangelists has preserved for us-
are what the whole Christian world owes to the religious feeling
of the Hebrews. The first and second chapters of S. Luke
32
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
are most important in the history of Christian mythology and
art. They are far from containing the whole of what we mean
by Christmas; but the religious poetry which gathers round
that season, must be sought upon their pages. Angels, ever
since the Exodus, played a first part in the visions of the
Hebrew prophets and in the lives of their heroes. We know
not what reminiscences of old Egyptian genii, what strange
shadows of the winged beasts of Persia, Aitted through their
dreams. In the desert, or under the boundless sky of Babylon,
these shapes became no less distinct than the precise outlines
of Oriental scenery. They incarnated the vivid thoughts and
intense longings of the prophets, who gradually came to give
them human forms and titles. We hear of them by name, as
servants and attendants upon God, as guardians of nations,
and patrons of great men. To the Hebrew mind the whole
unseen world was full of spirits, active, strong, and swift of
flight, of various aspect, and with power of speech. It is hard
to imagine what the first Jewish disciples and the early Greek
and Roman converts thought of these great beings. To us,
the hierarchies of Dionysius, the services of the Church, the
poetry of Dante and Milton, and the forms of art, have made
them quite familiar. Northern nations have appropriated the
Angels, and invested them with attributes alien to their Oriental
origin. They fly through our pine-forests, and the gloom of
cloud or storm ; they ride upon our clanging bells, and gather
in swift squadrons among the arches of Gothic cathedrals;
we see them making light in the cavernous depth of woods,
where sun or moon beams rarely pierce, and ministering to
the wounded or the weary; they bear aloft the censers of the
mass; they sing in the anthems of choristers, and live in
strains of poetry and music ; our churches bear their names ;
we call our children by their titles; we love them as our
guardians, and the whole unseen world is made a home to
us by their imagined presence. All these things are the
THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS. 33
growth of time and the work of races whose myth-making
imagination is more artistic than that of the Hebrews. Yet this
rich legacy of romance is bound up in the second chapter of
S. Luke; and it is to him we must give thanks when at Christ-
mias-tide we read of the shepherds and the angels in English
words more beautiful than his own Greek.
The angels in the stable of Bethlehem, the kings who came
from the far East, and the adoring shepherds, are the gift of
Hebrew legend and of the Greek physician Luke to Christmas.
How these strange and splendid incidents affect modern fancy
remains for us to examine ; at present we must ask, What did
the Romans give to Christmas ? The customs of the Christian
religion, like everything that belongs to the modern world,
have nothing pure and simple in their nature. They are the
growth of long ages, and of widely different systems, parts of
which have been fused into one living whole. In this respect
they resemble our language, our blood, our literature, and our
modes of thought and feeling. We find Christianity in one
sense wholly original ; in another sense composed of old
materials ; in both senses universal and cosmopolitan. The
Roman element in Christmas is a remarkable instance of this
acquisitive power of Christianity. The celebration of the
festival takes place at the same time as that of the Pagan Satur-
nalia ; and from the old customs of that holiday, Christmas
absorbed much that was consistent with the spirit of the
new religion. During the Saturnalia the world enjoyed, in
thought at least, a perfect freedom. Men who had gone to bed
as slaves, rose their own masters. From the ergastula and
dismal sunless cages they went forth to ramble in the streets
and fields. Liberty of speech was given them, and they might
satirise those vices of their lords to which, on other days, they
had to minister. Rome on this day, by a strange negation of
logic, which we might almost call a prompting of blind con-
science, negatived the philosophic dictum that barbarians were
D
34
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
1
1
by law of nature slaves, and acknowledged the higher principle
of equality. The Saturnalia stood out from the wliole year
as a protest in favour of universal brotherhood, and the
right that all men share alike to enjoy life after their own
fashion, within the bounds that nature has assigned them. We
do not know how far the Stoic school, which was so strong in
Rome, and had so many points of contact with the Christians,
may have connected its own theories of equality with this old
custom of the Saturnalia. But it is possible that the fellowship
of human beings, and the temporary abandonment of class
prerogatives, became a part of Christmas through the habit of
the Saturnalia. We are perhaps practising a Roman virtue to
this day when at Christmas-time our hand is liberal, and we
think it wrong that the poorest wretch should fail to feel the
pleasure of the day.
Of course Christianity inspired the freedom of the Saturnalia
with a higher meaning. The mystery of the Incarnation, or
the deification of human nature, put an end to slavery through
all the year, as well as on this single day. What had been a
kind of aimless licence became the most ennobling principle
by which men are exalted to a state of self-respect and mutual
Still in the Saturnalia was found, ready-made, an
easy symbol of unselfish enjoyment. It is, however, dangerous
to push speculations of this kind to the very verge of possibility.
The early Roman Christians probably kept Christmas with
no special ceremonies. Christ was as yet too close to them.
He had not become the glorious creature of their fancy, but
was partly an historic being, partly confused in their imagina-
tion with reminiscences of Pagan deities. As the Good
Shepherd, and as Orpheus, we find him painted in the Cata-
combs ; and those who thought of him as God, loved to dwell
upon his risen greatness more than on the idyll of his birth.
To them his entry upon earth seemed less a subject of rejoicing
than his opening of ihe heavens; they suffered, and looked
reverence.
THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS.
35
forward to a future happiness ; they would not seem to make
this world permanent by sharing its gladness with the Heathens.
Theirs, in truth, was a religion of hope and patience, not of
triumphant recollection or of present joyfulness.
The Northern converts of the early Church added more to
the peculiar character of our Christmas. Who can tell what
Pagan rites were half sanctified by their association with that
season, or how much of our cheerfulness belonged to Heathen
orgies and the banquets of grim warlike gods? Certainly
nothing strikes one more in reading Scandinavian poetry, than
the strange mixture of Pagan and Christian sentiments which it
presents. For though the missionaries of the Church did all
they could to wean away the minds of men from their old
superstitions ; yet, wiser than their modern followers, they saw
that some things might remain untouched, and that even the
great outlines of the Christian faith might be adapted to the
habits of the people whom they studied to convert. Thus, on
the one hand, they destroyed the old temples one by one, and
called the idols by the name of devils, and strove to obliterate
the songs which sang great deeds of bloody gods and heroes ;
while, on the other, they taught the Northern sea-kings that
Jesus was a Prince surrounded by twelve dukes, who conquered
all the world. Besides, they left the days of the week to their
old patrons. It is certain that the imagination of the people
preserved more of heathendom than even such missionaries
could approve; mixing up the deeds of the Christian saints with
old heroic legends; seeing Balder's beauty in Christ and the
strength of Thor in Samson; attributing magic to S. John ;
swearing, as of old, bloody oaths in God's name, over the
gilded boar’s-head; burning the yule-log, and cutting sacred
boughs to grace their new-built churches.
The songs of choirs and sound of holy bells, and superstitious
reverence for the mass, began to tell upon the people ; and
soon the echo of their old religion only swelled upon the ear at
D 2
36
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
a
intervals, attaching itself to times of more than usual sanctity.
Christmas was one of these times, and the old faith threw
around its celebration a fantastic light. Many customs of the
genial Pagan life remained; they seemed harmless when the
sense of joy was Christian. The Druid's mistletoe graced the
church porches of England and of France, and no blood lingered
on its berries. Christmas thus became a time of extraordinary
.
mystery. The people loved it as connecting their old life with
the new religion, perhaps unconsciously, though every one
might feel that Christmas was no common Christian feast. On
its eve strange wonders happened: the thorn that sprang at
Glastonbury from the sacred crown which Joseph brought with
him from Palestine, when Avalon was still an island, blossomed
on that day. The Cornish miners seemed to hear the sound
of singing men arise from submerged churches by the shore,
and others said that bells, beneath the ground where villages
had been, chimed yearly on that eve. No evil thing had
power, as Marcellus in ‘Hamlet' tells us, and the bird of dawning
crowed the whole night through. One might multiply folk-lore
about the sanctity of Christmas, but enough has been said to
show that round it lingered long the legendary spirit of old
Paganism. It is not to Jews, or Greeks, or Romans only that
we owe our ancient Christmas fancies, but also to those half-
heathen ancestors who lovingly looked back to Odin's days,
and held the old while they embraced the new.
Let us imagine Christmas Day in a mediæval town of
Northern England. The cathedral is only partly finished. Its
nave and transepts are the work of Norman architects, but
the choir has been destroyed in order to be rebuilt by more
graceful designers and more skilful hands. The old city is full
of craftsmen, assembled to complete the church. Some have
come as a religious duty, to work off their tale of sins by bodily
labour. Some are animated by a love of art—simple men, who
might have rivalled with the Greeks in ages of more cultivation.
THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS.
37
Others, again, are well-known carvers, brought for hire from
distant towns and countries beyond the sea. But to-day, and
for some days past, the sound of hammer and chisel has been
silent in the choir. Monks have bustled about the nave,
dressing it up with holly-boughs and bushes of yew, and pre-
paring a stage for the sacred play they are going to exhibit on
the feast day. Christmas is not like Corpus Christi, and now
the market-place stands inches deep in snow, so that the
Miracles must be enacted beneath a roof instead of in the open
air. And what place so appropriate as the cathedral, where
poor people may have warmth and shelter while they see the
show? Besides, the gloomy old church, with its windows
darkened by the falling snow, lends itself to candlelight effects
that will enhance the splendour of the scene. Everything is
ready. The incense of morning mass yet lingers round the
altar. The voice of the friar who told the people from the
pulpit the story of Christ's birth, has hardly ceased to echo.
Time has just been given for a mid-day dinner, and for the
shepherds and farm lads to troop in from the country-side.
The monks are ready at the wooden stage to draw its curtain,
and all the nave is full of eager faces. There you may see the
smith and carpenter, the butcher's wife, the country priest,
and the grey cowled friar. Scores of workmen, whose home
the cathedral for the time is made, are also here, and you
may know the artists by their thoughtful foreheads and keen
eyes.
That
young
monk carved Madonna and her Son above
the southern porch. Beside him stands the master mason,
whose strong arms have hewn gigantic images of prophets and
apostles for the pinnacles outside the choir; and the little
man with cunning eyes between the two is he who cuts such
quaint hobgoblins for the gargoyles. He has a vein of satire
in him, and his humour overflows into the stone. Many and
many a grim beast and hideous head has he hidden among
vine-leaves and trellis-work upon the porches. Those who
38
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
know him well are loth to anger him, for fear their sons and sons'
sons should laugh at them for ever caricatured in solid stone.
Hark! there sounds the bell. The curtain is drawn,
and the candles blaze brightly round the wooden stage. What
is this first scene? We have God in Heaven, dressed like a
Pope with triple crown, and attended by his court of angels.
They sing and toss up censers till he lifts his hand and speaks.
In a long Latin speech he unfolds the order of creation
and his will concerning man. At the end of it up leaps an ugly
buffoon, in goatskin, with rams' horns upon his head. Some
children begin to cry; but the older people laugh, for this is the
Devil, the clown and comic character, who talks their common
tongue, and has no reverence before the very throne of Heaven.
He asks leave to plague mien, and receives it; then, with many
a curious caper, he goes down to Hell, beneath the stage.
The angels sing and toss their censers as before, and the first
scene closes to a sound of organs. The next is more conven-
tional, in spite of some grotesque incidents. It represents the
Fall; the monks hurry over it quickly, as a tedious but neces-
sary prelude to the birth of Christ. That is the true Christmas
part of the ceremony, and it is understood that the best actors
and most beautiful dresses are to be reserved for it. The
builders of the choir in particular are interested in the coming
scenes, since one of their number has been chosen, for his
handsome face and tenor voice, to sing the angel's part. He
is a young fellow of nineteen, but his beard is not yet grown,
and long hair hangs down upon his shoulders. A chorister of
the cathedral, his younger brother, will act the Virgin Mary.
At last the curtain is drawn.
We see a cottage-room, dimly lighted by a lamp, and Mary
spinning near her bedside. She sings a country air, and goes
on working, till a rustling noise is heard, more light is thrown
upon the stage, and a glorious creature, in white raiment, with
broad golden wings, appears. He bears a lily, and cries,-
THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS.
39
*Ave Maria, Gratia Plena !! She does not answer, but stands
confused, with down-dropped eyes and timid mien. Gabriel
rises from the ground and comforts her, and sings aloud his
message of glad tidings. Then Mary gathers courage, and,
kneeling in her turn, thanks God; and when the angel and his
radiance disappears, she sings the song of the Magnificat, clearly
and simply, in the darkened room. Very soft and silver sounds
this hymn through the great church. The women kneel, and
children are hushed as by a lullaby. But some of the hinds
and 'prentice-lads begin to think it rather dull. They are not
sorry when the next scene opens with a sheepfold and a little
camp-fire. Unmistakable bleatings issue froir the fold, and
five or six common fellows are sitting round the blazing wood.
One might fancy they had stepped straight from the church
Aoor to the stage, so natural do they look. Besides, they call
themselves by common names-Colin, and Tom Lie-a-bed,
and nimble Dick. Many a round laugh wakes echoes in the
church when these shepherds stand up, and hold debate about
a stolen sheep. Tom Lie-a-bed has nothing to remark but
that he is very sleepy, and does not want to go search of
to-night ; Colin cuts jokes, and throws out shrewd suspicions
that Dick knows something of the matter ; but Dick is sly,
and keeps them off the scent, although a few of his asides
reveal to the audience that he is the real thief. While they are
thus talking, silence falls upon the shepherds. Soft music
from the church organ breathes, and they appear to fall asleep.
The stage is now quite dark, and for a few moments the
aisles echo only to the dying melody. When, behold, a ray of
light is seen, and splendour grows around the stage from hidden
candles, and in the glory Gabriel appears upon a higher plat.
form made to look like clouds. The shepherds wake in con-
fusion, striving to shelter their eyes from this unwonted brilliancy.
But Gabriel waves his lily, spreads his great gold wings, and
bids good cheer with clarion voice. The shepherds fall to
40
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
up
worship, and suddenly round Gabriel there gathers a choir of
angels, and a song of 'Gloria in Excelsis' to the sound of a
deep organ is heard far off. From distant aisles it swells, and
seems to come from heaven. Through a long resonant ſugue
the glory flies, and as it ceases with complex conclusion, the
lights die out, the angels disappear, and Gabriel fades into the
darkness. Still the shepherds kneel, rustically chanting a
carol half in Latin, half in English, which begins . In dulci
Jubilo.' The people know it well, and when the chorus rises
with 'Ubi sunt gaudia ?' its wild melody is caught by voices
and down the nave. This scene makes deep impression
upon many hearts; for the beauty of Gabriel is rare, and few
who see him in his angel's dress would know him for the lad
who daily carves his lilies and broad water flags about the
pillars of the choir. To that simple audience he interprets
Heaven, and little children will see him in their dreams. Dark
winter nights and awful forests will be trodden by his feet,
made musical by his melodious voice, and parted by the rustling
of his wings. The youth himself may return to-morrow to the
workman's blouse and chisel, but his memory lives in many
minds and may form a part of Christmas for the fancy of men
as yet unborn.
The next drawing of the curtain shows us the stable of
Bethlehem crowned by its star. There kneels Mary, and
Joseph leans upon his staff. The ox and ass are close at
hand, and Jesus lies in jewelled robes on straw within the
manger. To right and left bow the shepherds, worshipping in
dumb show, while voices from behind chant a solemn hymn.
In the midst of the melody is heard a flourish of trumpets, and
heralds step upon the stage, followed by the three crowned
kings. They have come from the far East, led by the star.
The song ceases, while drums and fifes and trumpets play a
stately march. The kings pass by, and do obeisance one by
Each gives some costly gift ; each doffs his crown and
one.
THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS.
41
leaves it at the Saviour's feet. Then they retire to a distance
and worship in silence like the shepherds. Again the angel's
song is heard, and while it dies away the curtain closes, and
the lights are put out.
The play is over, and evening has come. The people must
go from the warm church into the frozen snow, and crunch
their homeward way beneath the moon. But in their minds
they carry a sense of light and music and unearthly loveliness.
Not a scene of this day's pageant will be lost. It grows within
them and creates the poetry of Christmas. Nor must we forget
the sculptors who listen to the play. We spoke of them
minutely, because these mysteries sank deep into their souls
and found a way into their carvings on the cathedral walls.
The monk who made Madonna by the southern porch, will
remember Gabriel, and place him bending low in lordly saluta-
tion by her side. The painted glass of the chapter-house will
glow with fiery choirs of angels learned by heart that night.
And who does not know the mocking devils and quaint satyrs
that the humorous sculptor will carve among his fruits and
flowers ? Some of the misereres of the stalls still bear portraits
of the shepherd thief, and of the ox and ass who blinked so
blindly when the kings, by torchlight, bronght their dazzling
gifts. Truly these old miracle-plays and the carved work of
cunning hands that they inspired, are worth to us more than all
the delicate creations of Italian pencils. Our homely Northern
churches still retain, for the child who reads their bosses and
their sculptured fronts, more Christmas poetry than we can find
in Fra Angelico's devoutness or the liveliness of Giotto. Not
that Southern artists have done nothing for our Christmas.
Cimabue's gigantic angels at Assisi, and the radiant seraphs of
Raphael or of Signorelli, were seen by Milton in his Italian
journey. He gazed in Romish churches on graceful Nativities,
into which Angelico and Credi threw their simple souls. How
much they tinged his fancy we cannot say. But what we know
42
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
of heavenly hierarchies we later men have learned from Milton ;
and what he saw he spoke, and what he spoke in sounding
verse lives for us now and sways our reason, and controls our
fancy, and makes fine art of high theology.
Thus have I attempted rudely to recall a scene of
mediæval Christmas. To understand the domestic habits of
that
age is not so easy, though one can fancy how the barons
in their halls held Christmas, with the boar's head and the
jester and the great yule-log. On the daïs sat lord and lady,
waited on by knight and squire and page ; but down the long
hall feasted yeomen and hinds and men-at-arms. Little
remains to us of those days, and we have outworn their jollity.
It is really from the Elizabethan poets that our sense of old-
fashioned festivity arises. They lived at the end of one age
and the beginning of another. Though born to inaugurate the
new era, they belonged by right of association and sympathy
to the period that was fleeting fast away. This enabled them
to represent the poetry of past and present. Old customs and
old states of feeling, when they are about to perish, pass into
the realm of art. For art is like a flower, which consummates
the plant and ends its growth, while it translates its nature into
loveliness. Thus Dante and Lorenzetti and Orcagna enshrined
mediæval theology in works of imperishable beauty, and
Shakspere and his fellows macle immortal the life and manners
that were decaying in their own time. Men do not reflect
upon their mode of living till they are passing from one state
to another, and the consciousness of art implies a beginning of
new things. Let one who wishes to appreciate the ideal of an
English Christmas read Shakspere's song, "When icicles
hang by the wall ;' and if he knows some old grey grange, far
from the high-road, among pastures, with a river flowing near,
and cawing rooks in elm-trees by the garden-wall, let him
place Dick and Joan and Marian there.
We have heard so much of pensioners, and barons of beef,
THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS.
43
and yule-logs, and bay, and rosemary, and holly boughs cut upon
the hill-side, and crab-apples bobbing in the wassail bowl, and
masques and munimers, and dancers on the rushes, that we need
not here describe a Christmas-eve in olden times. Indeed, this
last half of the nineteenth century is weary of the worn-out
theme. But one characteristic of the age of Elizabeth may
be
mentioned : that is its love of music. Fugued melodies, sung
by voices without instruments, were much in vogue. We call
them madrigals, and their half-merry, half-melancholy music
yet recalls the time when England had her gift of art, when
she needed not to borrow of Marenzio and Palestrina, when
her Wilbyes and her Morlands and her Dowlands won the
praise of Shakspere and the court. We hear the echo of
those songs; and in some towns at Christmas or the New
Year old madrigals still sound in praise of Oriana and of
Phyllis and the country life. What are called “waits' are but a
poor travesty of those well-sung Elizabethan carols. We turn
in our beds half-pitying, half-angered by harsh voices that quaver
senseless ditties in the fog, or by tuneless fiddles playing popular
airs without propriety or interest.
It is a strange mixture of picturesquely blended elements
which the Elizabethan age presents. We see it afar off like the
meeting of a hundred streams that grow into a river.
sailing on the flood long after it has shrunk into a single tide,
and the banks are dull and tame, and the all-absorbing ocean
is before us. Yet sometimes we hear a murmur of the distant
fountains, and Christmas is a day on which for some the many
waters of the age of great Elizabeth sound clearest.
The age which followed, was not poetical. The Puritans
restrained festivity and art, and hated music. Yet from this
period stands out the hymn of Milton, written when he was a
youth, but bearing promise of his later muse. At one time,
as we read it, we seem to be looking on a picture by sonie
old Italian artist. But ro picture can give Milton's music or
We are
44
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
a
make the base of heaven's deep organ blow. Here he
touches new associations, and reveals the realm of poetry which
it remains for later times to traverse. Milton felt the true
sentiment of Northern Christmas when he opened his poem
with the winter wild,' in defiance of historical probability, and
what the French call local colouring. Nothing shows how
wholly we people of the North have appropriated Christmas, and
made it a creature of our own imagination, more than this
dwelling on winds and snows and bitter frosts, so alien from
the fragrant nights of Palestine. But Milton's hymn is like a
symphony, embracing many thoughts and periods of varying
melody. The music of the seraphim brings to his mind the
age of gold, and that suggests the judgment and the redemp-
tion of the world. Satan's kingdom fails, the false gods go
forth, Apollo leaves his rocky throne, and all the dim Phoeni-
cian and Egyptian deities, with those that classic fancy fabled,
troop away like ghosts into the darkness. What a swell of stormy
sound is in those lines ! It recalls the very voice of Pan,
which went abroad upon the waters when Christ died, and all
the utterances of God on earth, feigned in Delphian shrines,
or truly spoken on the sacred hills, were mute for ever.
After Milton came the age which, of all others, is the
prosiest in our history. We cannot find much novelty of
interest added to Christmas at this time. But there is one
piece of poetry that somehow or another seems to belong to
the reign of Anne and of the Georges--the poetry of bells.
Great civic corporations reigned in those days; churchwardens
tyrannised and were rich; and many a goodly chime of bells
they hung in our old church-steeples. Let us go into the
square room of the belfry, where the clock ticks all day, and
the long ropes hang dangling down, with fur upon their hemp
for ringers' hands above the socket set for ringers' feet. There
we may read long lists of gilded names, recording mountainous
bob-majors, rung a century ago, with special praise to him
THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS.
45
who pulled the tenor-bell, year after year, until he died, and
left it to his son. The art of bell-ringing is profound, and
requires a long apprenticeship. Even now, in some old cities,
the ringers form a guild and mystery. Suppose it to be
Christmas-eve in the year 1772. It is now a quarter before
twelve, and the sexton has unlocked the church-gates and
set the belfry door ajar. Candles are lignted in the room
above, and jugs of beer stand ready for the ringers. Up they
bustle one by one, and listen to the tickings of the clock that
tells the passing minutes. At last it gives a click ; and now
they throw off coat and waistcoat, strap their girdles tighter
round the waist, and each holds his rope in readiness.
Twelve o'clock strikes, and forth across the silent city go the
clamorous chimes. The steeple rocks and reels, and far
away the night is startled. Damp turbulent west winds, rush-
ing from the distant sea, and swirling up the inland valleys,
catch the sound, and toss it to and fro, and bear it by gusts
and snatches to watchers far away, upon bleak moorlands and
the brows of woody hills. Is there not something dim and
strange in the thought of these eight men meeting, in the heart
of a great city, in the narrow belfry-room, to stir a mighty
sound that shall announce to listening ears miles, miles away,
the birth of a new day, and tell to dancers, mourners,
students, sleepers, and perhaps to dying men, that Christ is
born ?
Let this association suffice for the time. And of our own
Christmas so much has been said and sung by better voices,
that we may leave it to the feelings and the memories of those
who read the fireside tales of Dickens, and are happy in their
homes. The many elements which I have endeavoured to
recall, mix all of them in the Christmas of the present, partly,
no doubt, under the form of vague and obscure sentiment ;
partly as time-honoured reminiscences, partly as a portion of
our own life. But there is one phase of poetry which we
46
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
a
enjoy more fully than any previous age. That is music.
Music is of all the arts the youngest, and of all can free herself
most readily from symbols. A fine piece of music moves
before us like a living passion, which needs no form or colour,
no interpreting associations, to convey its strong but indistinct
significance. Each man there finds his soul revealed to him,
and enabled to assume a cast of feeling in obedience to the
changeful sound. In this manner all our Christmas thoughts
and emotions have been gathered up for us by Handel in his
drama of the 'Messiah.' To Englishmen it is almost as well
known and necessary as the Bible. But only one who has
heard its pastoral episode performed year after year from
childhood in the hushed cathedral, where pendent lamps or
sconces make the gloom of aisle and choir and airy column
half intelligible, can invest this music with long associations of
accumulated awe. To his mind it brings a scene at midnight
of hills clear in the starlight of the East, with white flocks
scattered on the down. The breath of winds that come and
go, the bleating of the sheep, with now and then a tinkling
bell, and now and then the voice of an awakened shepherd, is
all that breaks the deep repose. Overhead shimmer the bright
stars, and low to west lies the moon, not pale and sickly (he
dreams) as in our North, but golden, full, and bathing distant
towers and tall aërial palms with floods of light. Such is a
child's vision, begotten by the music of the symphony; and
when he wakes from trance at its low silver close, the dark
cathedral seems glowing with a thousand angel faces, and all
the air is tremulous with angel wings. Then follow the solitary
treble voice and the swift chorus.
47
ANTINOUS.
VISITORS to picture and sculpture galleries are haunted by the
forms of two handsome young men—Sebastian and Antinous.
Both were saints : the one of decadent Paganism, the other of
mythologising Christianity. According to the popular beliefs
to which they owed their canonisation, both suffered death in
the bloom of earliest manhood for the faith that burned in them.
There is, however, this difference between the two-that whereas
Sebastian is a shadowy creature of the pious fancy, Antinous
preserves a marked and unmistakable personality. All his
statues are distinguished by unchanging characteristics. The
pictures of Sebastian vary according to the ideal of adolescent
beauty conceived by each successive artist. In the frescoes of
Perugino and Luini he shines with the pale pure light of saint-
liness. On the canvas of Sodoma he reproduces the volup.
tuous charm of youthful Bacchus, with so much of anguish in
his martyred features as may serve to heighten his dæmonic
fascination. On the richer panels of the Venetian masters he
glows with a flame of earthly passion aspiring heavenward.
Under Guido's hand he is a model of mere carnal comeliness.
And so forth through the whole range of the Italian painters.
We know Sebastian only by his arrows. The case is very dif-
ferent with Antinous. Depicted under diverse attributes—as
Hermes of the wrestling-ground, as Aristæus or Vertumnus, as
Dionysus, as Ganymede, as Herakles, or as a god of ancient
Egypt-his individuality is always prominent. No metamor-
$8
SK'E TCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
phosis of divinity can change the lineaments he wore on earth.
And this difference, so marked in the artistic presentation of
the two saints, is no less striking in their several histories. The
legend of Sebastian tells us nothing to be relied upon, except
that he was a Roman soldier converted to the Christian faith,
and martyred. In spite of the perplexity and mystery that in-
volve the death of Antinous in impenetrable gloom, he is a true
historic personage, no phantom of myth, but a man as real as
Hadrian, his master.
Antinous, as he appears in sculpture, is a young man of
eighteen or nineteen years, almost faultless in his form. His
beauty is not of a pure Greek type. Though perfectly propor-
tioned and developed by gymnastic exercises to the true athletic
fulness, his limbs are round and florid, suggesting the possibility
of early over-ripeness. The muscles are not trained to sinewy
firmness, but yielding and elastic ; the chest is broad and sin-
gularly swelling; and the shoulders are placed so far back from
the thorax that the breasts project beyond them in a massive
arch. It has been asserted that one shoulder is slightly lower
than the other. Some of the busts seem to justify this state-
ment; but the appearance is due probably to the different posi-
tion of the two arms, one of which, if carried out, would be
liſted and the other be depressed. The legs and arms are
modelled with exquisite grace of outline ; yet they do not show
that readiness for active service which is noticeabie in the statues
of the Meleager, the Apoxyomenos, or the Belvedere Hermes.
The whole body combines Greek beauty of structure with
something of Oriental voluptuousness. The same fusion of
diverse elements may be traced in the head. It is not too large,
though more than usually broad, and is nobly set upon a mas-
sive throat, slightly inclined forwards, as though this posture
were habitual ; the hair lies thick in clusters, which only form
curls at the tips. The forehead is low and somewhat square ;
the eyebrows are level, of a peculiar shape, and very thick, cor-
ANTINOUS.
49
>
6
verging so closely as almost to meet above the deep-cut eyes.
The nose is straight, but blunter than is consistent with the
Greek ideal. Both cheeks and chin are delicately formed, but
fuller than a severe taste approves : one might trace in their
rounded contours either a survival of infantine innocence and
immaturity, or else the sign of rapidly approaching over-bloom.
The mouth is one of the loveliest ever carved ; but here again
the blending of the Greek and Oriental types is visible. The
lips, half parted, seem to pout; and the distance between mouth
and nostrils is exceptionally short. The undefinable expression
of the lips, together with the weight of the brows and slumber-
ous half-closed eyes, gives a look of sulkiness or voluptuousness
to the whole face. This, I fancy, is the first impression which
the portraits of Antinous produce; and Shelley has well con-
veyed it by placing the two following phrases, eager and im-
passioned tenderness' and 'effeminate sullenness,' in close
juxtaposition. But, after longer familiarity with the whole
range of Antinous' portraits, and after study of his life, we are
brought to read the peculiar expression of his face and form
somewhat differently. A prevailing melancholy, sweetness of
temperament overshadowed by resignation, brooding reverie,
the innocence of youth touched and saddened by a calm
resolve or an accepted doom-such are the sentences we form
to give distinctness to a still vague and uncertain impression.
As we gaze, Virgil's lines upon the young Marcellus recur to
our mind : what seemed sullen, becomes mournful ; the un-
mistakable voluptuousness is transfigured in tranquillity.
After all is said and writien, the statues of Antinous do not
render up their secret. Like some of the Egyptian gods with
whom he was associated, he remains for us a sphinx, secluded
in the shade of a 'mild mystery.' His soul, like the Harpo-
crates he personated, seems to hold one finger on closed lips,
Fragment, The Coliseum.
E
50
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
in token of eternal silence. One thing, however, is certain.
We have before us no figment of the artistic imagination, but a
real youth of incomparable beauty, just as nature made him, with
all the inscrutableness of undeveloped character, with all the
pathos of a most untimely doom, with the almost imperceptible
imperfections that render choice reality more permanently charm-
ing than the ideal. It has been disputed whether the Antinous
statues are portraits or idealised works of inventive art ; and
it is usually conceded that the sculptors of Hadrian's age were
not able to produce a new ideal type. Critics, therefore, like
Helbig and Overbeck, arrive at the conclusion that Antinous
was one of nature's masterpieces, modelled in bronze, marble,
and granite with almost flawless technical dexterity. Without
attaching too much weight to this kind of criticism, it is well
to find the decisions of experts in harmony with the instincts
of simple observers. Antinous is as real as any man who ever
sat for his portrait to a modern sculptor.
But who was Antinous, and what is known or him? He
was a native of Bithynium or Claudiopolis, a Greek town
claiming to have been a colony from Arcadia, which was
situated near the Sangarius, in the Roman province of Bithynia ;
therefore he may have had pure Hellenic blood in his veins,
or, what is more probable, his ancestry may have been hybrid
between the Greek immigrants and the native populations of
Asia Minor. Antinous was probably born in the first decade
of the second century of our era. About his youth and educa-
tion we know nothing. He first appears upon the scene of the
world's history as Hadrian's friend. Whether the Emperor
met with him during his travels in Asia Minor, whether he
found him among the students of the University at Athens,
or whether the boy had been sent to Rome in his childhcod,
must remain matter of the merest conjecture. We do not even
know for certain whether Antinous was free or a slave. The
report that he was one of the Emperor's pages rests lipon the
ANTINOUS.
51
а
testimony of Hegesippus, quoted by a Christian Father, and
cannot therefore be altogether relied upon. It receives, how-
ever, some confirmation from the fact that Antinous is more
than once represented in the company of Hadrian and Trajan
in a page's hunting dress upon the bas-reliefs which adorn the
Arch of Constantine. The so-called Antinous-Castor of the Villa
Albani is probably of a similar character. Winckelmann, who
adopted the tradition as trustworthy, pointed out the similarity
between the portraits of Antinous and some lines in Phædrus,
which describe a curly-haired atriensis. If Antinous took the
rank of atriensis in the imperial pædagogium, his position would
have been, to say the least, respectable; for to these upper servants
was committed the charge of the atrium, where the Romans
kept their family archives, portraits, and works of art.
must have quitted this kind of service some time before his
death, since we find him in the company of Hadrian upon one
of those long journeys in which an atriensis would have had
no atrium to keep. By the time of Hadrian's visit to Egypt,
Antinous had certainly passed into the closest relationship with
his imperial master ; and what we know of the Emperor's in-
clination towards literary and philosophical society perhaps
justifies the belief that the youth he admitted to his friendship
had imbibed Greek culture, and had been initiated into those
cloudy metaphysics which amused the leisure of senii-Oriental
thiakers in the last age of decaying Paganism.
It was a moment in the history of the human mind when
East and West were blending their traditions to form the husk
of Christian creeds and the faniastic visions of Neoplatonism.
Rome herself had received with rapture the strange rites of
Nilotic and of Syrian superstition. Alexandria was the forge
of fanciful imaginations, the majority of which were destined to
pass like vapours and leave not a wrack behind, while a few
fastened with the force of dogma on the conscience of awaken-
ing Christendom. During Hadrian's reign it was still un-
E 2
52
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
certain which among the many hybrid products of that motley
age would live and flourish ; and the Emperor, we know,
dreamed fondly of reviving the cults and restoring the splendour
of degenerate Hellas. At the same time he was not averse to
the more mystic rites of Egypt : in his villa at Tivoli he built
a Serapeum, and named one of its quarters Canopus. What
part Antinous may have taken in the projects of his friend and
master we know not; yet, when we come to consider the
circumstances of his death, it may not be superfluous to have
thus touched upon the intellectual conditions of the world in
which he lived. The mixed blood of the boy. born and bred
in a Greek city near the classic ground of Dindymean rites,
and his beauty, blent of Hellenic and Eastern qualities, may
also not ur profitably be remembered. In such a youth,
nurtured between Greece and Asia, admitted to the friendship
of an emperor for whom Neo-Hellenism was a life's dream in
the midst of grave state-cares, influenced by the dark and
symbolical creeds of a dimly apprehended East, might there
not have lurked some spark of enthusiasm combining the
impulses of Atys and Aristogeiton, pathetic even in its ineffi-
ciency when judged by the light of modern knowledge, but
heroic at that moment in its boundless vista of great deeds to
be accomplished ?
After journeying through Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Pales,
tine, and Arabia, Hadrian, attended by Antinous, came to Egypt.
He there restored the tomb of Pompey, near Pelusium, with
great magnificence, and shortly afterwards embarked from
Alexandria upon the Nile, proceeding on his journey through
Memphis into the Thebaïd. When he had arrived near an
ancient city named Besa, on the right bank of the river, he lost
his friend. Antinous was drowned in the Nile. He had
thrown himself, it was believed, into the water ; seeking thus by
a voluntary death to substitute his own life for Hadrian's, and
to avert predicted perils from the Roman Empire. What these
ANTINOUS.
53
perils were, and whether Hadrian was ill, or whether an oracle
had threatened him with approaching calamity, we do not know.
Even supposition is at fault, because the date of the event is
still uncertain; some authorities placing Hadrian's Egyptian
journey in the year 122, and others in the year 130 A.D. Of
the two dates, the second seems the more probable. We are
left to surmise that, if the Emperor was in danger, the recent
disturbances which followed a new discovery of Apis, inay have
exposed him to fanatical conspiracy. The same doubt affects
an ingenious conjecture that rumours which reached the Roman
court of a new rising in Judæa had disturbed the Emperor's
mind, and led to the belief that he was on the verge of a mys-
terious doom. He had pacified the Empire and established
its administration on a solid basis. Yet the revolt of the
indomitable Jews—more dreaded since the days of Titus than
any other perturbation of the imperial economy-would have
been enough, especially in Egypt, to engender general uneasi-
However this may have been, the grief of the Emperor,
intensified either by gratitude or remorse, led to the immediate
canonisation of Antinous. The city where he died was re-
built, and named after him. His worship as a hero and as a god
spread far and wide throughout the provinces of the Mediterra-
nean. A new star, which appeared about the time of his
decease, was supposed to be his soul received into the company
of the immortals. Medals were struck in his honour, and
countless works of art were produced to make his memory
undying. Great cities wore wreaths of red lotos on his feast-
day in commemoration of the manner of his death. Public
games were celebrated in his honour at the city Antinoë, and
also in Arcadian Mantinea. This canonisation may probably
have taken place in the fourteenth year of Hadrian's reign, A.D.
130.' Antinous continued to be worshipped until the reign of
Valentinian.
· Overbeck, Hausrath and Mommsen, following apparently the con•
ness.
54
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Thus far I have told a simple story, as though the details of
the youth's last days were undisputed. Still we are as yet but
on the threshold of the subject. All that we have any right
to take for uncontested is that Antinous passed from this life
near the city of Besa, called thereafter Antinoopolis or Antinoë.
Whether he was drowned by accident, whether he drowned
himself in order to save Hadrian by vicarious suffering, or
whether Hadrian sacrificed him in order to extort the secrets
of fate from blood-propitiated deities, remains a question
buried in the deepest gloom. With a view to throwing such
light as is possible upon the matter, we must proceed to
summon in their order the most trustworthy authorities among
the ancients.
Dion Cassius takes precedence. In compiling his life of
Hadrian, he had beneath his eyes the Emperor's own 'Commen-
taries,' published under the name of the freedman Phlegon.
We therefore learn from him at least what the friend of Antinous
wished the world to know about his death ; and though this
does not go for much, since Hadrian is himself an accused
person in the suit before us, yet the whole Roman Empire
may be said to have accepted his account, and based on it a
pious cult that held its own through the next three centuries of
growing Christianity. Dion, in the abstract of his history
compiled by Xiphilinus, speaks then to this effect : 'In Egypt
he also built the city named after Antinous. Now Antinous
was a native of Bithynium, a city of Bithynia, which we also
6
clusions arrived at by Flemmer in his work on Hadrian's journeys, place it
in 130 A.D. This would leave an interval of only eight years between the
deaths of Antinous and Hadrian. It may here be observed that two
medals of Antinous, referred by Rasche with some hesitation to the Egyptian
series, bear the dates of the eighth and ninth years of Hadrian's reign. If
these coins are genuine, and if we accept Flemmer's conclusions, they must
have been struck in the lifetime of Antinous. Neither of them represents
Antinous with the insignia of deity: one gives the portrait of Hadrian
upon the reverse.
INTINOUS.
55
call Claudiopolis. He was Hadrian's favourite, and he died in
Egypt : whether by having fallen into the Nile, as Hadrian
writes, or by having been sacrificed, as the truth was. For
Hadrian, as I have said, was in general overmuch given to
superstitious subtleties, and practised all kinds of sorceries and
magic arts. At any rate he so honoured Antinous, whether
because of the love he felt for him, or because he died
voluntarily, since a willing victim was needed for his purpose,
that he founded a city in the place where he met this fate, and
called it after him, and dedicated statues, or rather images, of
him in, so to speak, the whole inhabited world. Lastly, he
affirmed that a certain star which he saw was the star of
Antinous, and listened with pleasure to the myths invented by
his companions about this star having really sprung from the
soul of his favourite, and having then for the first time appeared.
For which things he was laughed at.'
We may now hear what Spartian, in his 'Vita Hadriani,'has
to say –He lost his favourite, Antinous, while sailing on the
Nile, and lamented him like a woman. About Antinous
reports vary, for some say that he devoted his life for Hadrian,
while others hint what his condition seems to prove, as well as
Hadrian's excessive inclination to luxury. Some Greeks, at the
instance of Hadrian, canonised him, asserting that oracles were
given by him, which Hadrian himself is supposed to have made up.'
In the third place comes Aurelius Victor :-'Others main-
tain that this sacrifice of Antinous was both pious and religious ;
for when Hadrian was wishing to prolong his life, and the
magicians required a voluntary vicarious victim, they say that,
upon the refusal of all others, Antinous offered himself.'
These are the chief authorities. In estimating them we
must remember that, though Dion Cassius wrote less than a
century after the event narrated, he has come down to us
merely in fragments and in the epitome of a Byzantine of the
twelfth century, when everything that could possibly be
56
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
done to discredit the worship of Antinous, and to blacken the
memory of Hadrian, had been attempted by the Christian
Fathers. On the other hand, Spartianus and Aurelius Victor
compiled their histories at too distant a date to be of first-rate
value. Taking the three reports together, we find that antiquity
differed about the details of Antinous's death. Hadrian himself
averred that his friend was drowned ; and it was surmised that
he had drowned himself in order to prolong his master's life.
The courtiers, however, who had scoffed at Hadrian's fondness
for his favourite, and had laughed to see his sorrow for his
death, somewhat illogically came to the conclusion that
Antinous had been immolated by the Emperor, either because
a victim was needed to prolong his life, or because some human
sacrifice was required in order to complete a dark mysterious
magic rite. Dion, writing not very long after the event,
believed that Antinous had been immolated for some such pur-
pose with his own consent. Spartian, who wrote at the distance
of more than a century, felt uncertain about the question of
self-devotion ; but Aurelius Victor, following after the interval
of another century, unhesitatingly adopted Dion's view,
and gave it a fresh colour. This opinion he summarised in a
compact, authoritative form, upon which we may perhaps found
an assumption that the belief in Antinous, as a self-devoted
victim, had been gradually growing through two centuries.
There are therefore three hypotheses to be considered.
The first is that Antinous died an accidental death by drown-
ing; the second is, that Antinous, in some way or another,
gave his life willingly for Hadrian's ; the third is, that Hadrian
ordered his immolation in the performance of magic rites.
For the first of the three hypotheses we have the authority
of Hadrian himself, as quoted by Dion. The simple words eis
τον Νείλον εκπεσών imply no more than accidental death ; and
l;
yet, if the Emperor had believed the story of his favourite's
self-devotion, it is reasonable to suppose that he would have re-
a
ANTINOUS.
57
corded it in his 'Memoirs.' Accepting this view of the case, we
must refer the deification of Antinous wholly to Hadrian's
affection ; and the tales of his devotio may have been invented
partly to flatter the Emperor's grief, partly to explain its vio-
lence to the Roman world. This hypothesis seems, indeed,
by far the most natural of the three ; and if we could strip the
history of Antinous of its mysterious and mythic elements, it is
rational to believe that we should find his death a simple
accident. Yet our authorities prove that writers of history
among the ancients wavered between the two other theories of
(i.) Self-Devotion and (ii.) Immolation, with a bias toward the
latter. These, then, have now to be considered with some
attention. Both, it may parenthetically be observed, relieve
Antinous froin a moral stigma, since in either case a pure un-
tainted victim was required.
If we accept the former of the two remaining hypotheses,
we can understand how love and gratitude, together with
sorrow, led Hadrian to canonise Antinous. If we accept the
latter, Hadrian's sorrow itself becomes inexplicable ; and we
must attribute the foundation of Antinoë and the deification of
Antinous to remorse. It may be added, while balancing these
two solutions of the problem, that cynical sophists, like
Hadrian's Græculi, were likely to have put the worst construc-
tion on the Emperor's passion, and to have invented the worst
stories concerning the favourite's death. To perpetuate these
calumnious reports was the real interest of the Christian apolo-
gists, who not unnaturally thought it scandalous that a hand-
some page should be deified. Thus, at first sight, the balance
of probability inclines toward the former of the two solutions,
while the second may be rejected as based upon courl-gossip
and religious animosity. Attention may also again be called to
the fact that Hadrian ventured to publish an account of
Antinous quite inconsistent with what Dion chose to call the
truth, and that virtuous Emperors like the Antonines did not
58
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
interfere with a cult, which, had it been paid to the mere
victim of Hadrian's passion and his superstition, would have
been an infamy even in Rome. Moreover, that cult was not,
like the creations of the impious emperors, forgotten or de-
stroyed by public acclamation. It took root and flourished
apparently, as we shall see, because it satisfied some craving of
the popular religious sense, and because the people believed
that this man had died for his friend. It will not, however, do
to dismiss the two hypotheses so lightly.
The alternative of self-devotion presents itself under a
double aspect. Antinous may either have committed suicide
by drowning with the intention of prolonging the Emperor's
life, or he may have offered himself as a voluntary victim to
the magicians, who required a sacrifice for a similar purpose.
Spartian's brief phrase, aliis eum devotum pro Hadriano, may
seem to point to the first form of self-devotion ; the testimony
of Aurelius Victor clearly supports the second : yet it does
not much matter which of the two explanations we adopt.
The point is whether Antinous gave his life willingly to save
the Emperor's, or whether he was murdered for the satisfaction
of some superstitious curiosity. It was absolutely necessary
that the vicarious victim should make a free and voluntary
oblation of himself. That the notion of vicarious suffering
was familiar to the ancients is sufficiently attested by the
phrases åvriyuxor, ärraròpoe, and hostia succilanea. We find
traces of it in the legend of Alcestis, who died for Admetus,
and of Cheiron, who took the place of Prometheus in Hades.
Suetonius records that in the first days of Caligula's popularity,
when he was labouring under dangerous illness, many Romans
of both sexes vowed their lives for his recovery in temples of
the gods. That this superstition retained a strong hold on the
popular imagination in the time of Hadrian is proved by the
curious affirmation of Aristides, a contemporary of that Em-
peror. He says that once, when he was ill, a certain Philu-
ANTINOUS.
59
V
67
(7
mene offered her soul for his soul, her body for his body, and
that, upon his own recovery, she died. On the same testimony
it appears that her brother Hermeas had also died for Aristides.
This faith in the efficacy of substitution is persistent in the
human race.
Not long ago a Christian lady was supposed to
have vowed her own life for the prolongation of that of Pope
Pius IX., and good Catholics inclined to the belief that the
sacrifice had been accepted. We shall see that in the first
centuries of Christendom the popular conviction that Antinous
had died for Hadrian brought him into inconvenient rivalry
with Christ, whose vicarious suffering was the cardinal point of
the new creed.
The alternative of immolation has next to be considered.
The question before us here is, Did Hadrian sacrifice Antinous
for the satisfaction of a superstitious curiosity, and in the per-
formance of magic rites? Dion Cassius uses the word ispovpyn-
Heis, and explains it by saying that Hadrian needed a voluntary
human victim for the accomplishment of an act of divination
in which he was engaged. Both Spartian and Dion speak
cmphatically of the Emperor's proclivities to the black art ;
and all antiquity agreed about this trait in his character.
Ammianus Marcellinus spoke of him as “ futurorum sciscitationi
nimiæ deditum.' Tertullian described him as curiositatum
omnium exploratorem.' To multiply such phrases would, how-
ever, be superfluous, for they are probably mere repetitions
from the text of Dion. That human victims were used by the
Romans of the Empire seems certain. Lampridius, in the
“Life of Heliogabalus,' records his habit of slaying handsome and
noble youths, in order that he might inspect their entrails.
Eusebius, in his 'Life of Maxentius,' asserts the same of that
Emperor. Quum inspiceret exta pueriiia, venyrūv onláyxra
βρέφων διερευνομένου, are the words used by Lampridius and
Eusebius. Justin Martyr speaks of εποπτεύσεις παίδων αδιαφ-
Hópwr. Caracalla and Julian are credited with similar bloody
60
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
sacrifices. Indeed, it may be affirmed in general that tyrants
have ever been eager to foresee the future and to extort her
secrets from Fate, stopping short at no crime in the attempt
to quiet a corroding anxiety for their own safety. What we
read about Italian despots-Ezzelino da Romano, Sigismondo
Malatesta, Filippo Maria Visconti, and Pier Luigi Farnese-
throws light upon the practice of their Imperial predecessors;
while the mysterious murder of the beautiful Astorre Manfredi
by the Borgias in Hadrian's Mausoleum has been referred by
modern critics of authority to the same unholy curiosity. That
Hadrian laboured under this moral disease, and that he deliber-
ately used the body of Antinous for extispicium, is, I think, Dion's
opinion. But are we justified in reckoning Hadrian among
these tyrants ? That must depend upon our view of his
character.
Hadrian was a man in whom the most conflicting qualities
were blent. In his youth and through his whole life he was
passionately fond of hunting ; hardy, simple in his habits,
marching bareheaded with his legions through German frost and
Nubian heat, sharing the food of his soldiers, and exercising
the most rigid military discipline. At the same time he has
aptly been described as the most sumptuous character of
antiquity.' He filled the cities of the Empire with showy
buildings, and passed his last years in a kind of classic Munich,
where he had constructed imitations of every celebrated monu-
ment in Europe. He was so far fond of nature that, anticipat-
ing the most recently developed of modern tastes, he ascended
Mount Ætna and the Mons Casius, in order to enjoy the
spectacle of sunrise. In his villa at Tivoli he indulged a trivial
fancy by christening one garden Tempe and another the
Elysian Fields ; and he had his name carved on the statue of
the vocal Memnon with no less gusto than a modern tourist :
audiri voces divinas. His memory was prodigious, his elo-
quence in the Latin language studied and yet forcible, his
ANTINOUS.
61
knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy far from con-
temptible. He enjoyed the society of Sophists and distin-
guished rhetoricians, and so far affected authorship as to win
the unenviable title of Grieculus in his own lifetime : yet he
never neglected state affairs. Owing to his untiring energy
and vast capacity for business, he not only succeeded in re-
organising every department of the empire, social, political,
fiscal, military, and municipal ; but he also held in his own
hands the threads of all its complicated machinery. He was
strict in matters of routine, and appears to have been almost
a martinet among his legions : yet in social intercourse he
lived on terms of familiarity with inferiors, combining the graces
of elegant conversation with the bonhomie of boon companion-
ship, displaying a warm heart to his friends, and using magnifi-
cent generosity. He restored the domestic as well as the military
discipline of the Roman world ; and his code of laws lasted till
Justinian. Among many of his useful measures of reform he
issued decrees restricting the power of masters over their slaves,
and depriving them of their old capital jurisdiction. His
biographers find little to accuse him of beyond a singular
avidity for fame, addiction to magic arts and luxurious vices:
yet they adduce no proof of his having, at any rate before the
date of his final retirement to his Tiburtine villa, shared the
crimes of a Nero or a Commodus. On the whole, we must
recognise in Hadrian a nature of extraordinary energy, capacity
for administrative government, and mental versatility. A cer-
tain superficiality, vulgarity, and commonplaceness seems to
have been forced upon him by the circumstances of his age, no
less than by his special temperament. This quality of the
immitigable commonplace is clearly written on his many
portraits. Their chief interest consists in a fixed expression
of fatigue--as though the man were weary with much seeking
and with little finding. In all things, he was somewhat of a
dilettante; and the Nemesis of that sensibility to impressions
62
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
which distinguishes the dilettante, came upon him ere he died.
He ended his days in an appalling and persistent paroxysm of
ennui, desiring the death which would not come to his relief.
The whole creative and expansive force of Hadrian's cen-
tury lay concealed in the despised Christian sect. Art was
expiring in a sunset blaze of gorgeous imitation, tasteless
grandeur, technical elaboration. Philosophy had become
sophistical or mystic ; its real life survived only in the phrase
‘entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren' of the Stoics. Litera-
ture was repetitive and scholastic. Tacitus, Suetonius, Plutarch,
and Juvenal indeed were living ; but their works formed the
last great literary triumph of the age. Religion had degene-
rated under the twofold influences of scepticism and intrusive
foreign cults. It was, in truth, an age in which, for a sound
heart and manly intellect, there lay no proper choice except
between the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius and the Christianity
of the Catacombs. All else had passed into shams, unrealities,
and visions. Now Hadrian was neither stoical nor Christian,
though he so far coquetted with Christianity as to build temples
dedicated to no Pagan deity, which passed in after times for un-
finished churches. He was a Græculus. In that contemptuous
epithet, stripping it of its opprobrious significance, we find the
real key to his character. In a failing age he lived a restless-
minded, many-sided soldier.prince, whose inner hopes and
highest aspirations were for Hellas. Hellas, her art, her history,
.
her myths, her literature, her lovers, her young heroes filled him
with enthusiasm. To rebuild her ruined cities, to restore her
deities, to revive her golden life of blended poetry and science,
to reconstruct her spiritual empire as he had reorganised the
Roman world, was Hadrian's dream. It was indeed a dream;
one which a far more creative genius than Hadrian's could not
have realised.
But now, returning to the two alternatives regarding his
friend's death : was this philo-Hellenic Emperor the man to have
ANTINOUS.
63
immolated Antinous for extispicium and then deified him ?
Probably not. The discord between this bloody act and subse-
quent hypocrisy upon the one hand, and Hadrian's Greek sym-
pathies upon the other, must be reckoned too strong for even such
a dipsychic character as his. There is nothing in either Spartian
or Dion to justify the opinion that he was naturally cruel or
fantastically deceitful. On the other hand, Hadrian's philo-
Hellenic, splendour-loving, somewhat tawdry, fame-desiring
nature was precisely of the sort to jump eagerly at the deifica-
tion of a favourite who had either died a natural death or
killed himself to save his master. Hadrian had loved Antinous
with a Greek passion in his lifetime. The Roman Emperor
was half a god. He remembered how Zeus had loved Gany-
mede, and raised him to Olympus; how Achilles had loved
Patroclus, and performed his funeral rites at Troy; how the
demigod Alexander had loved Hephæstion, and lifted him
into a hero's seat on high. He, Hadrian, would do the like,
now that death had robbed him of his comrade. The Roman,
who surrounded himself at Tivoli with copies of Greek temples,
and who called his garden Tempe, played thus at being Zeus,
Achilles, Alexander; and the civilised world humoured his
whim. Though the Sophists scoffed at his real grief and
honourable tears, they consecrated his lost favourite, found
out a star for him, carved him in breathing brass, and told
tales about his sacred flower. Pancrates was entertained in
Alexandria at the public cost for his fable of the lotos; and the
lyrist Mesomedes received so liberal a pension for his hymn to
Antinous that Antoninus Pius found it needful to curtail it.
After weighing the authorities, considering the circum-
stances of the age, and estimating Hadrian's character, I am
thus led to reject the alternative of ir:imolation. Spartian's
own words, quem muliebriter flevit, as well as the subsequent
acts of the Emperor and the acquiescence of the whole world
in the new deity, prove to my mind that in the suggestion of
64
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
extispicium we have one of those covert calumnies which it is.
impossible to set aside at this distance of time, and which
render the history of Roman Emperors and Popes almost
impracticable,
The case, then, stands before us thus. Antinous was
drowned in the Nile, near Besa, either by accident or by
voluntary suicide to save his master's life. Hadrian's love
for him had been unmeasured, so was his grief. Both of
them were genuine ; but in the nature of the man there was
something artificial. He could not be content to love and
grieve alone ; he must needs enact the part of Alexander, and
realise, if only by a sort of makebelieve, a portion of his
Greek ideal. Antinous, the beautiful servant, was to take the
place of Ganymede, of Patroclus, of Hephæstion ; never mind
if Hadrian was a Roman and his friend a Bithynian, and if the
love between them, as between an emperor of fifty and a boy
of nineteen, had been less than heroic. The opportunity was
too fair to be missed; the rôle too fascinating to be rejected.
The world, in spite of covert sneers, lert itself to the sham, and
Antinous became a god.
The uniformly contemptuous tone of antique authorities
almost obliges us to rank this deification of Antinous, together
with the Tiburtine villa and the dream of a Hellenic Renais-
sance, among the part-shams, part-enthusiasms of Hadrian's
* sumptuous' character.
Spartian's account of the consecra-
tion, and his hint that Hadrian composed the oracles delivered
at his favourite's tomb ; Arrian's letter to the Emperor describ-
ing the island Leuke and flattering him by an adroit comparison
with Achilles ; the poem by Pancrates mentioned in the Deip-
nosophista, which furnished the myth of a new lotos dedicated
to Antinous ; the invention of the star, and Hadrian's conversa:
tions with his courtiers on this subject-all converge to form
the belief that soinething of consciously unreal mingled with
this act of apotheosis by Imperial decree. Hadrian sought to
6
ANTINOUS.
65
assuage his grief by paying his favourite illustrious honours
after death ; he also desired to give the memory of his own
love the most congenial and poetical environment, to feed
upon it in the daintiest places, and to deck it with the prettiest
flowers of fancy. He therefore canonised Antinous, and took
measures for disseminating his cult throughout the world, care-
less of the element of imposture which might seem to mingle
with the consecration of his true affection. Hadrian's super-
ficial taste was not offended by the gimcrack quality of the
new god ; and Antinous was saved from being a merely pinch-
beck saint by his own charming personality.
This will not, however, wholly satisfy the conditions of the
problem ; and we are obliged to ask ourselves whether there
;
was not something in the character of Antinous himself, some-
thing divinely inspired and irradiate with spiritual beauty,
apparent to his fellows and remembered after his mysterious
death, which justified his canonisation, and removed it from
the region of Imperial makebelieve. If this was not the case,
if Antinous died like a flower cropped from the seraglio garden
of the court-pages, how should the Emperor in the first place
have bewailed him with “unhusbanded passion,' and the people
afterwards have received him as a god ? May it not have
been that he was a youth of more than ordinary promise,
gifted with intellectual enthusiasms proportioned to his beauty
and endowed with something of Phoebean inspiration, who,
had he survived, might have even inaugurated a new age for
the world, or have emulated the heroism of Hypatia in a
hopeless cause? Was the link between him and Hadrian
formed less by the boy's beauty than by his marvellous
capacity for apprehending and his fitness for realising the
Emperor's Greek dreams? Did the spirit of Neoplatonism find
in him congenial incarnation? At any rate, was there not enough
in the then current beliefs about the future of the soul, as
abundantly set forth in Plutarch's writings, to justify a convic-
a
6
F
66
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
tion that after death he had already passed into the lunar sphere,
awaiting the final apotheosis of purged spirits in the sun? These
questions may be asked-indeed, they must be asked-for,
without suggesting them, we leave the worship of Antinous an
almost inexplicable scandal, an almost unintelligible blot on
human nature. Unless we ask them, we must be content to
echo the coarse and violent diatribes of Clemens Alexan-
drinus against the vigils of the deified exoletus. But they
cannot be answered, for antiquity is altogether silent about
him ; only here and there, in the indignant utterance of a
Christian Father, stung to the quick by Pagan parallels between
Antinous and Christ, do we catch a perverted echo of the
popular emotion upon which his cult reposed, which recognised
his godhood or his vicarious self-sacrifice, and which paid
enduring tribute to the sublimity of his young life untimely
quenched.
The senatus consultum required for the apotheosis of an
Emperor was not, so far as we know, obtained in the case of
Antinous. Hadrian's determination to exalt his favourite
sufficed ; and this is perhaps one of the earliest instances of
those informal deifications which became common in the later
Roman period. Antinous was canonised according to Greek
ritual and by Greek priests : Græci quidam volente Hadriano
eum consecraverunt. How this was accomplished we know not;
but forms of canonisation must have been in common usage,
seeing that emperors and members of the Imperial family
received the honour in due course. The star, which was
supposed to have appeared soon after his death, and which
represented his soul admitted to Olympus, was somewhere
near the constellation Aquila, according to Ptolemy, but not
part of it. I believe the letters n.0.6.6.d. of Aquila now bear
the name of Antinous; but this appropriation dates only from
the time of Tycho Brahe. It was also asserted that as a new
star had appeared in the skies, so a new flower had blossomed on
ANTINOUS.
67
the earth, at the moment of his death. This was the lotos, of
a peculiar red colour, which the people of Lower Egypt used
to wear in wreaths upon his festival. It received the name
Antinoeian ; and the Alexandrian sophist, Pancrates, seeking
to pay a double compliment to Hadrian and his favourite,
wrote a poem in which he pretended that this lily was stained
with the blood of a Libyan lion slain by the Emperor. As
Arrian compared his master to Achilles, so Pancrates flattered
him with allusions to Herakles. The lotos, it is well known,
was a sacred flower in Egypt. Both as a symbol of the all-
nourishing moisture of the earth and of the mystic marriage of
Isis and Osiris, and also as an emblem of immortality, it
appeared on all the sacred places of the Egyptians, especially
on tombs and funeral utensils. To dignify Antinous with the
lotos emblem was to consecrate him ; to find a new species of
the revered blossom and to wear it in his honour, calling it by
his name, was to exalt him to the company of gods. Nothing,
as it seems, had been omitted that could secure for him the
patent of divinity.
He met his death near the city Besa, an ancient Egyptian
town upon the eastern bank of the Nile, almost opposite to
Hermopolis. Besa was the name of a local god, who gave
oracles and predicted future events. But of this Besa we know
next to nothing. Hadrian determined to rebuild the city, change
its name, and let his favourite take the place of the old deity.
Accordingly, he raised a splendid new town in the Greek style ;
furnished it with temples, agora, hippodrome, gymnasium, and
baths; filled it with Greek citizens; gave it a Greek constitu-
tion, and named it Antinoë. This new town, whether called
Antinoë, Antinoopolis, Antinous, Antinoeia, or even Besan-
tinous (for its titles varied), continued long to flourish, and was
mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus, together with Copton and
Hermopolis, as one of the three most distinguished cities of
the Thebaïd. In the age of Julian these three cities were
F 2
68
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
perhaps the only still thriving towns of Upper Egypt. It has
even been maintained on Ptolemy's authority that Antinoë was
the metropolis of a nome, called Antinoeitis ; but this is
doubtful, since inscriptions discovered among the ruins of the
town record no nanie of nomarch or strategus, while they prove
the government to have consisted of a Boulè and a Prytaneus,
who was also the Eponymous Magistrate. Strabo reckons it,
together with Ptolemais and Alexandria, as governed after the
Greek municipal system.
In this city Antinous was worshipped as a god. Though a
Greek god, and the eponym of a Greek city, he inherited the
place and functions of an Egyptian deity, and was here
represented in the hieratic style of Ptolemaic sculpture. A
fine specimen of this statuary is preserved in the Vatican,
showing how the Neohellenic sculptors had succeeded in
maintaining the likeness of Antinous without sacrificing the
traditional manner of Egyptian piety. The sacred emblems of
Egyptian deities were added : we read, for instance, in one
passage, that his shrine contained a boat. This boat, like the
mystic egg of Erôs or the cista of Dionysos, symbolised the
embryo of cosmic life. It was specially appropriated to Osiris,
and suggested collateral allusions doubtless to immortality and
the soul's journey in another world. Antinous had a college
of priests appointed to his service; and oracles were delivered
from the cenotaph inside his temple. The people believed
him to be a genius of warning, gracious to his suppliants, but
terrible to evil-doers, combining the qualities of the avenging and
protective deities. Annual games were celebrated in Antinoë
on his festival, with chariot races and gymnastic contests ;
and the fashion of keeping his day seems, from Athenæus's
testimony, to have spread through Egypt. An inscription
in Greek characters discovered at Rome upon the Campus
Martius entitles Antinous a colleague of the gods in Egypt-
ΑΝΤΙΝΟΩΙ ΣΥΝΘΡΟΝΩΙ ΤΩΝ ΕΝ ΑΙΓΥΠΤΩΙ ΘΕΩΝ.
ANTINOUS.
69
a
The worship of Antinous spread rapidly through the Greek and
Asian provinces, especially among the cities which owed debts
of gratitude to Hadrian or expected from him future favours.
At Athens, for example, the Emperor, attended perhaps by
Antinous, had presided as Archon during his last royal progress,
had built a suburb called after his name, and raised a splendid
temple to Olympian Jove. The Athenians, therefore, founded
games and a priesthood in honour of the new divinity. Even
now, in the Dionysiac theatre, among the chairs above the
orchestra assigned to priests of elder deities and more august
tradition, may be found one bearing the name of Antinous-
IEPENE ANTINOOY. A marble tablet has also been discovered
inscribed with the names of agonothetai for the games celebrated
in honour of Antinous; and a stele exists engraved with the
crown of these contests together with the crowns of Severus,
Commodus, and Antoninus. It appears that the games in honour
of Antinous took place both at Eleusis and at Athens ; and that
the agonothetai, as also the priest of the new god, were chosen
from the Ephebi. The Corinthians, the Argives, the Achaians,
and the Epirots, as we know from coins issued by the priests
of Antinous, adopted his cult ;' but the region of Greece
proper where it flourished most was Arcadia, the mother state
of his Bithynian birthplace. Pausanias, who lived contem-
poraneously with Antinous, and might have seen him, though
he tells us that he had not chanced to meet the youth alive,
mentions the temple of Antinous at Mantinea as the newest in
that city. The Mantineans,' he says, 'reckon Antinous among
“
,
their gods.' He then describes the yearly festival and mysteries
connected with his cult, the quinquennial games established in
his honour, and his statues. The gymnasium had a cell dedi-
cated to Antinous, adorned with pictures and fair stone-work.
The new god was in the habit of Dionysus.
6
| For example :
ΟΣΤΙΛΙΟΣ ΜΑΡΚΕΛΛΟΣΟ ΙΕΡΕΥΣ ΤΟΥ ΑΝΤΙΝΟΟΥ ΑΝΕΘΗΚΕ ΤΟΙΣ ΑΧΑΙΟΙΣ
and a similar inscription for Corinth.
70
SK’ETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
.
As was natural, his birthplace paid him special observance.
Coins dedicated by the province of Bithynia, as well as by the
town Bithynium, are common, with the epigraphs, ANTINOVY
Η ΠΑΤΡΙΣ and AΝΤΙΝΟΟΝ ΘΕΟΝ Η ΠΑΤΡΙΣ. Among the
cities of Asia Minor and the vicinity the new cult seems to
have been widely spread. Adramyttene in Mysia, Alabanda,
Ancyra in Galatia, Chalcedon, Cuma in Æolis, Cyzicum in
Mysia, the Ciani, the Hadrianotheritæ of Bithynia, Hierapolis
in Phrygia, Nicomedia, Philadelphia, Sardis, Smyrna, Tarsus,
the Tianians of Paphlagonia, and a town Rhesæna in Meso-
potamia, all furnish their quota of medals. On the majority
of these medals he is entitled Herôs, but on others he has the
higher title of god ; and he seems to have been associated in
each place with some deity of local fame.
Being essentially a Greek hero, or divinised man received
into the company of immortals and worshipped with the attri-
butes of god, his cult took firmer root among the Neohellenic
provinces of the Empire than in Italy. Yet there are signs
that even in Italy he found his votaries. Among these may
first be mentioned the comparative frequency of his name in
Roman inscriptions, which have no immediate reference to him,
but prove that parents gave it to their children. The discovery
of his statues in various cities of the Roman Campagna shows
that his cult was not confined to one or two localities. Naples
in particular, which remained in all essential points a Greek
city, seems to have received him with acclamation. A quarter
of the town was called after his name, and a phratria of priests
was founded in connection with his worship. The Neapolitans
owed much to the patronage of Hadrian, and they repaid him
after this fashion. At the beginning of the last century Raffaello
Fabretti discovered an inscription near the Porta S. Sebastiano
at Rome, which throws some light on the matter. It records
the name of a Roman knight, Sufenas, who had held the office
of Lupercus and had been a fellow of the Neapolitan phratria
ANTINOUS.
71
of Antinous-fretriaco Neapoli Antinoiton et Eunostidon.
Eunostos was a hero worshipped at Tanagra in Baotia, where
he had a sacred grove no female foot might enter; and the
wording of the inscription leaves it doubtful whether the Eunos-
tidæ and Antinoitæ of Naples were two separate colleges, or
whether the heroes were associated as the common patrons of
one brotherhood.
A valuable inscription discovered in 1816 near the Baths
at Lanuvium or Lavigna shows that Antinous was here as-
sociated with Diana as the saint of a benefit club. The rules
of the confraternity prescribe the payments and other contribu-
tions of its members, provide for their assembling on the feast
days of their patrons, fix certain fines, and regulate the cere-
monies and expenses of their funerals. This club seems to
have resembled modern burial societies, as known to us in
England ; or still more closely to have been formed upon
the
same model as Italian confraternitè of the Middle Ages. The
Lex, or table of regulations, was drawn up in the year 133 A. D.
It fixes the birthday of Antinous as v. k. Decembr., and alludes
to the temple of Antinous— Tetrastylo Antinoi. Probably we
cannot build much on the birthday as a genuine date, for the
same table gives the birthday of Diana ; and what was wanted
was not accuracy in such matters, but a settled anniversary for
banquets and pious celebrations. When we come to consider
the divinity of Antinous, it will be of service to remember that
at Lanuvium, together with Diana of the nether world, he was
reckoned among the saints of sepulture. Could this thought
have penetrated the imagination of his worshippers : that since
Antinous had given his life for his friend, since he had faced
death and triumphed over it, winning immortality and god-
hood for himself by sacrifice, the souls of his votaries might be
committed to his charge and guidance on their journey through
the darkness of the tomb? Could we venture to infer thus
much from his selection by a confraternity existing for the
2
72
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
purpose of securing decent burial or pious funeral rites, the
date of its formation, so soon after his death, would confirm
the hypothesis that he was known to have devoted his life for
Hadrian.
While speaking of Antinous as a divinised man, adscript to
the gods of Egypt, accepted as hero and as god in Hellas,
Italy, and Asia Minor, we have not yet considered the nature
of his deity. The question is not so simple as it seems at first
sight : and the next step to take, with a view to its solution, is
to consider the various forms under which he was adored-the
phases of his divinity. The coins already mentioned, and the
numerous works of glyptic art surviving in the galleries of
Europe, will help us to place ourselves at the same point of
view as the least enlightened of his antique votaries. Reasoning
upon these data by the light of classic texts, may afterwards
enable us to assign him his true place in the Pantheon of
decadent and uninventive Paganism.
In Egypt, as we have already seen, Antinous was wor-
shipped by the Neohellenes of Antinoopolis as their Epony-
mous Hero; but he took the place of an elder native god, and
was represented in art according to the traditions of Egyptian
sculpture. The marble statue of the Vatican is devoid of
hieratic emblems. Antinous is attired with the Egyptian head-
dress and waistband: he holds a short truncheon firmly clasped
in each hand ; and by his side is a palm-stump, such as one
often finds in statues of the Greek Hermes. Two colossal
statues of red granite discovered in the ruins of Hadrian's villa,
at Tivoli, represent him in like manner with the usual Egyptian
head-dress. They seem to have been designed for pillars
supporting the architrave of some huge portal ; and the wands
grasped firmly in both hands are supposed to be symbolical
of the genii called Dii Averrunci. Von Levezow, in his mono-
graph upon Antinous in art, catalogues five statues of a similar
description to the three already mentioned. From the indistinct
ANTINOUS.
73
character of all of them, it would appear that Antinous was
nowhere identified with any one of the great Egyptian deities,
but was treated as a Dæmon powerful to punish and protect.
This designation corresponds to the contemptuous rebuke
addressed by Origen to Celsus, where he argues that the new
saint was only a malignant and vengeful spirit. His Egyptian
medals are few and of questionable genuineness : the majority
of them seem to be purely Hellenic ; but on one he bears a
crown like that of Isis, and on another a lotos wreath. The
dim records of his cult in Egypt, and the remnants of Græco-
Egyptian art, thus mark him out as one of the Averruncan
deities, associated perhaps with Kneph or the Agathodæmon of
Hellenic mythology, or approximated to Anubis, the Egyptian
Hermes. Neither statues nor coins throw much light upon his
precise place among those gods of Nile whose throne he is said
to have ascended. Egyptian piety may not have been so
accommodating as that of Hellas.
With the Græco-Roman world the case is different. We
obtain a clearer conception of the Antinous divinity, and
recognise him always under the mask of youthful gods already
honoured with fixed ritual. To worship even living men under
the names and attributes of well-known deities was no new
thing in Hellas. We may remember the Ithyphallic hymn with
which the Athenians welcomed Demetrius Poliorkêtes, the
marriage of Anthony as Dionysus to Athenè, and the deifica.
tion of Mithridates as Bacchus. The Roman Emperors had
already been represented in art with the characteristics of gods
-Nero, for example, as Phoebus, and Hadrian as Mars. Such
compliments were freely paid to Antinous. On the Achaian
coins we find his portrait on the obverse, with different types of
Hermes on the reverse, varied in one case by the figure of a
ram, in another by the representation of a temple, in a third by
a nude hero grasping a spear. One Mysian medal, bearing
the epigraph ‘Antinous Iacchus,' represents him crowned with
74
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
6
ivy, and exhibits Demeter on the reverse. A single specimen
from Ancyra, with the legend 'Antinous Herôs,' depicts the
god Lunus carrying a crescent moon upon his shoulder. The
Bithynian coins generally give youthful portraits of Antinous
upon the obverse, with the title of ‘Herôs'or Theos;' while
the reverse is stamped with a pastoral figure, sometimes bearing
the talaria, sometimes accompanied by a feeding ox or a boar
or a star. This youth is supposed to be Philesius, the son of
Hermes. In one specimen of the Bithynian series the reverse
yields a head of Proserpine crowned with thorns. A coin of
Chalcedon ornaments the reverse with a griffin seated near a
naked figure. Another, from Corinth, bears the sun god in a
chariot; another, from Cuma, presents an armed Pallas. Bulls,
with the crescent moon, occur in the Hadrianotheritan medals :
a crescent moon in that of Hierapolis : a ram and star, a female
head crowned with towers, a standing bull, and Harpocrates
placing one finger on his lips, in those of Nicomedia ; a horned
moon and star in that of Epirot Nicopolis. One Philadelphian
coin is distinguished by Antinous in a temple with four
columns; another by an Aphrodite in her cella. The Sardian
coins give Zeus with the thunderbolt, or Phoebus with the lyre ;
those of Smyrna are stamped with a standing ox, a ram, and
the caduceus, a female panther and the thyrsus, or a hero re-
clining beneath a plane-tree ; those of Tarsus with the Diony-
sian cista, the Phæbean tripod, the river Cydnus, and the
epigraphs Neos Puthios,' Neos Iacchos ;' those of the
Tianians with Antinous as Bacchus on a panther, or, in ore
case, as Poseidon.
It would be unsafe to suppose that the emblems of the
reverse in each case had a necessary relation to Antinous,
whose portrait is almost invariably represented on the obverse.
They may refer, as in the case of the Tarsian river-god, to the
locality in which the medal was struck. Yet the frequent
occurrence of the well-known type with the attributes and
ANTINOUS.
75
>
sacred animals of various deities, and the epigraphs Neos
Puthios' or 'Neos Iacchos,' justify us in assuming that he
was associated with divinities in vogue among the people who
accepted his cult-especially Apollo, Dionysus, and Hermes.
On more than one coin he is described as Antinous-Pan,
showing that his Arcadian compatriots of Peloponnese and
Bithynia paid him the compliment of placing him beside their
great local deity. In a Latin inscription discovered at Tibur,
he is connected with the sun-god of Noricia, Pannonia and
Illyria, who was worshipped under the title of Belenus :
Antinoo et Beleno par ætas famaque par est ;
Cur non Antinous sit quoque qui Belenus ?
:
This couplet sufficiently explains the ground of his adscription
to the society of gods distinguished for their beauty. Both
Belenus and Antinous are young and beautiful : why, therefore,
should not Antinous be honoured equally with Belenus ? The
same reasoning would apply to all his impersonations. The
pious imagination or the æsthetic taste tricked out this favourite
of fortune in masquerade costumes, just as a wealthy lover
may amuse himself by dressing his mistress after the similitude
of famous beauties. The analogy of statues confirms this
assumption. A considerable majority represent him as
Dionysus Kisseus : in some of the best he is conceived as
Hermes of the Palæstra or a simple hero : in one he is pro-
bably Dionysus Antheus ; in another Vertumnus or Aristæus ;
yet again he is the Agathos Daimon : while a fine specimen
preserved in England shows him as Ganymede raising a goblet
of wine : a little statue in the Louvre gives him the attributes
of youthful Herakles ; a bas-relief of somewhat doubtful
genuineness in the Villa Albani exhibits him with Romanised
features in the character perhaps of Castor. Again, I am not
sure whether the Endymion in the celebrated bas-relief of the
Capitol does not yield a portrait of Antinous.
76
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
This rapid enumeration will suffice to show that Antincus
was universally conceived as a young deity in bloom, and that
preference was given to Phoebus and Iacchus, the gods of
divination and enthusiasm, for his associates. In some cases
he appears to have been represented as a simple hero without
the attributes of any deity. Many of his busts, and the fine
nude statues of the Capitol and the Neapolitan Museum,
belong to this class, unless we recognise the two last as Antinous
under the form of a young Hercules, or of the gymnastic
Hermes. But when he comes before us with the title of
Puthios, or with the attributes of Dionysus, distinct reference is
probably intended in the one case to his oracular quality, in
the other to the enthusiasm which led to his death. Allusions
to Harpocrates, Lunus, Aristæus, Philesius, Vertumnus, Castor,
Herakles, Ganymedes, show how the divinising fancy played
around the beauty of his youth, and sought to connect him
with myths already honoured in the pious conscience. Lastly,
though it would be hazardous to strain this point, we find in
his chief impersonations a Chthonian character, a touch of the
mystery that is shrouded in the world beyond the grave. The
double nature of his Athenian cult may perhaps confirm this
view. But, over and above all these symbolic illustrations, one
artistic motive of immortal loveliness pervades and animates
the series.
It becomes at this point of some moment to determine
what was the relation of Antinous to the gods with whom he
blended, and whose attributes he shared. It seems tolerably
certain that he had no special legend which could be idealised
in art. The mythopoic fancy invented no fable for him. His
cult was parasitic upon elder cults. He was the colleague of
greater well established deities, from whom he borrowed a pale
and evanescent lustre. Speaking accurately, he was a hero or
divinised mortal, on the same grade as Helen immortalised for
her beauty, as Achilles for his prowess, or as Herakles for his
a
ANTINOUS.
77
great deeds. But having no poet like Homer to sing his
achievements, no myth fertile in emblems, he dwelt beneath
the shadow of superior powers, and crept into a place with
them. What was this place worth? What was the meaning
attached by his votaries to the title σύνθρονος Or πάρεδρος
Dec? According to the simple meaning of both epithets, he
occupied a seat together with or by the side of the genuine
Olympians. In this sense Pindar called Dionysus the rápɛèpuc
of Demeter, because the younger god had been admitted to her
worship on equal terms at Eleusis. In this sense Sophocles
spoke of Himeros as tápečpos of the eternal laws, and of
Justice as ouvoixac with the Chthonian deities. In this sense
Euripides makes Helen Eurakoc with her brethren, the
Dioscuri. In this sense the three chief Archons at Athens
were said to have two rápeopoi apiece. In this sense, again,
Hephæstion was named a 0xòc Tápeopoc, and Alexander in his
lifetime was voted a thirteenth in the company of the twelve
Olympians. The divinised emperors were πάρεδροι or σύν-
Opo vou ; nor did Virgil hesitate to flatter Augustus by question-
ing into which college of the immortals he would be adscript
after death,
Tuque adeo, quem mox quæ sint habitura deorum
Concilia, incertum est.
Conscript deities of this heroic order were supposed to avert
evils from their votaries, to pursue offenders with calamity, to
inspire prophetic dreams, and to appear, as the phantom of
Achilles appeared to Apollonius of Tyana, and answer questions
put to them. They corresponded very closely and exactly to
the saints of mediævalism, acting as patrons of cities, confrater-
nities, and persons, and interposing between the supreme
powers of heaven and their especial devotees. As a tápelpos
πάρεδρος
of this exalted quality, Antinous was the associate of Phoebus,
Bacchus, and Hermes among the Olympians, and a colleague
78
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
with the gods of Nile. The principal difficulty of grasping his
true rank consists in the variety of his emblems and divine
disguises.
It must here be mentioned that the epithet raredpoc had a
secondary and inferior signification. It was applied by later
authors to the demons or familiar spirits who attended upon
enchanters like Simon Magus or Apollonius; and such satellites
were believed to be supplied by the souls of innocent young
persons violently slain. Whether this secondary meaning of
the title indicates a degeneration of the other, and forms the
first step of the process whereby classic heroes were degraded
into the foul fiends of mediæval fancy, or whether we find in it
a wholly new application of the word, is questionable. I am
inclined to believe that, while tápeopos Deos in the one case
means an associate of the Olympian gods, πάρεδρος δαίμων in
the other means a fellow-agent and assessor of the wizard. In
other words, however they may afterwards have been con-
founded, the two uses of the same epithet were originally
distinct : so that not every trápeèpoc deos, Achilles, or Hephæs-
tion or Antinous, was supposed to haunt and serve a sorcerer,
but only some inferior spirit over whom his black art gave him
authority. The rápedpoç Deòs was so called because he sat with
the great gods. The múpeopoc caiuwr was so called because he sat
beside the magician. At the same time there seems sufficient
evidence that the two meanings came to be confounded ; and
as the divinities of Hellas, with all their lustrous train, paled
before the growing splendour of Christ, they gradually fell
beneath the necromantic ferule of the witch.
Returning from this excursion, and determining that Anti-
nous was a hero or divinised mortal, adscript to the college of
the greater gods, and invested with many of their attributes, we
may next ask the question, why this artificial cult, due in the
first place to imperial passion and caprice, and nourished by
the adulation of fawning provinces, was preserved from the
ANTINOUS.
79
rapid dissolution to which the flimsy products of court-flattery
are subject. The mythopoetic faculty was extinct, or in its last
phase of decadent vitality. There was nothing in the life of
Antinous to create a legend or to stimulate the sense of awe;
and yet this worship persisted long after the fear of Hadrian
had passed away, long after the benefits to be derived by
humouring a royal fancy had been exhausted, long after any-
thing could be gained by playing out the farce. It is clear,
from a passage in Clemens Alexandrinus, that the sacred nights
of Antinous were observed, at least a century after the date of
his deification, with an enthusiasm that roused the anger of the
Christian Father. Again, it is worthy of notice that, while
many of the noblest works of antiquity have perished, the statues
of Antinous have descended to us in fair preservation and in
very large numbers. From the contemptuous destruction which
erased the monuments of base men in the Roman Empire they
were safe ; and the state in which we have them shows how
little they had suffered from neglect. The most rational con-
clusion seems to be that Antinous became in truth a popular
saint, and satisfied some new need in Paganism, for which
none of the elder and more respectable deities sufficed. The
novelty of his cult had, no doubt, something to do with the
fascination it exercised ; and something may be attributed to
the impulse art received from the introduction of so rare and
original a type of beauty into the exhausted cycle of mythical
subjects. The blending of Greek and Egyptian elements was
also attractive to an age remarkable for its eclecticism. But
after allowing for the many adventitious circumstances which
concurred to make Antinous the fashion, it is hardly unreason-
able to assume that the spirit of poetry in the youth's story, the
rumour of his self-devoted death, kept him alive in the memory
of the people. It is just that element of romance in the tale of
his last hours, that preservative association with the pathos of
self sacrifice, which forms the interest we still feel for him.
80
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
watalie
The deified Antinous was therefore for the Roman world a
charming but dimly felt and undeveloped personality, made
perfect by withdrawal into an unseen world of mystery. The
belief in the value of vicarious suffering attached itself to his
beautiful and melancholy form. His sorrow borrowed some-
thing of the universal world-pain, more pathetic than the hero-
pangs of Herakles, the anguish of Prometheus, or the passion of
Iacchus-Zagreus, because more personal and less suggestive of
a cosmic mystery. The ancient cries of Ah Linus, Ah Adonis,
found in him an echo. For votaries ready to accept a new god
as simply as we accept a new poet, he was the final manifestation
of an old-world mystery, the rejuvenescence of a well-known
incarnation, the semi-Oriental realisation of a recurring Avatar.
And if we may venture on so bold a surmise, this last flower of
antique mythology had taken up into itself a portion of the
blood outpoured on Calvary. Planted in the conservatory of
semi-philosophical yearnings, faintly tinctured with the colours
of misapprehended Christianity, without inherent stamina, with-
out the powerful nutrition which the earlier heroic fables had
derived from the spiritual vigour of a truly mythopeic age,
the cult of Antinous subsisted as an echo, a reflection, the last
serious effort of deifying but no longer potent Paganism, the
last reverberation of its oracles, an æsthetic rather than a reli-
gious product, viewed even in its origin with sarcasm by the
educated, and yet sufficiently attractive to enthral the minds of
simple votaries, and to survive the circumstances of its first
creation. It may be remembered that the century which wit-
nessed the canonisation of Antinous, produced the myth of
Cupid and Psyche-or, if this be too sweeping an assertion,
gave it final form, and handed it, in its suggestive beauty, to
the modern world. Thus at one and the same moment the
dying spirit of Hellas seized upon those doctrines of self-devo-
tion and immortality which, through the triumph of Christian
teaching, were gaining novel and incalculable value for the
ANTINOUS.
81
a
world. According to its own laws of inspiration, it stamped
both legends of Love victorious over Death, with beautiful form
in myth and poem and statuary.
That we are not altogether unjustified in drawing this con-
clusion may be gathered from the attitude assumed by the
Christian apologists toward Antinous. There is more than the
mere hatred of a Pagan hero, more than the bare indignation at
a public scandal, in their acrimony. Accepting the calumnious
insinuations of Dion Cassius, these gladiators of the new faith
found a terrible rhetorical weapon ready to their hands in the
canonisation of a court favourite. Prudentius, Clemens Alexan-
drinus, Tertullian, Eusebius, Justin Martyr, Athanasius, Tatian
-all inveigh, in nearly the same terms, against the Emperor's
Ganymede, exalted to the skies, and worshipped with base fear
and adulation by abject slaves. But in Origen, arguing with
Celsus, we find a somewhat different keynote struck. Celsus,
it appears, had told the story of Antinous, and had compared
his cult with that of Christ. Origen replies justly, that there
was nothing in common between the lives of Antinous and of
Christ, and that his supposed divinity is a fiction. We can
discern in this response an echo of the faith which endeared
Antinous to his Pagan votaries. Antinous was hated by the
Christians as a rival ; insignificant, it is true, and unworthy, but
still of sufficient force to be regarded and persecuted. If Anti-
nous had been utterly contemptible, if he had not gained some
firm hold upon the piety of Græco-Roinan Paganism, Celsus
could hardly have ventured to rest an argument upon his worship,
nor would Origen have chosen to traverse that argument with
solid reasoning, instead of passing it by in rhetorical silence.
Nothing is more difficult than to understand, the conditions of
that age or to sympathise with its dominant passions. Educated
as we have been in the traditions of the finally triumphant
Christian faith, warmed through and through as we are by its
summer glow and autumn splendour, believing as we do in the
G
82
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
adequacy of its spirit to satisfy the cravings of the human heart,
how can we comprehend a moment in its growth when the
divinised Antinous was not merely an object offensive to the
moral sense, but also a parody dangerous to the pure form of
Christ?
It remains to say somewhat of Antinous as he appears in
art. His place in classic sculpture corresponds to his position
in antique mythology. The Antinous statues and coins are
reflections of earlier artistic masterpieces, executed with
admirable skill, but lacking original faculty for idealisation in
the artists. Yet there is so much personal attraction in his
type, his statues are so manifestly faithful portraits, and we find
so great a charm of novelty in his delicately perfect individua-
lity, that the life-romance which they reveal, as through a veil
of mystery, has force enough to make them rank among the
valuable heirlooms of antiquity. We could almost believe that,
while so many gods and heroes of Greece have perished,
Antinous has been preserved in all his forms and phases for
his own most lovely sake ; as though, according to Ghiberti's
exquisite suggestion, gentle souls in the first centuries of
Christianity had spared this blameless youth, and hidden him
away with tender hands, in quiet places, from the fury of
iconoclasts. Nor is it impossible that the great vogue of his
worship was due among the Pagan laity to this same fascination
of pure beauty. Could a more graceful temple of the body
have been fashioned, after the Platonic theory, for the habita-
tion of a guileless, god inspired, enthusiastic soul? The per-
sonality of Antinous, combined with the suggestion of his self-
devoted death, made him triumphant in art as in the affections
of the pious.
It would be an interesting task to compose a catalogue
raisonné of Antinous statues and bas-reliefs, and to discuss the
question of their mythological references. This is, however, not
the place for such an inquiry. And yet I cannot quit Antinous
ANTINOUS.
83
without some retrospect upon the most important of his por-
traits. Among the simple busts, by far the finest, to my think-
ing, are the colossal head of the Louvre, and the ivy-crowned
bronze at Naples. The latter is not only flawless in its execu-
tion, but is animated with a pensive beauty of expression.
The former, though praised by Winckelmann, as among the
two or three most precious masterpieces of antique art, must
be criticised for a certain vacancy and lifelessness. Of the
heroic statues, the two noblest are those of the Capitol and
Naples. The identity of the Capitoline Antinous has only
once, I think, been seriously questioned; and yet it may be
reckoned more than doubtful. The head is almost certainly
not his. How it came to be placed upon a body presenting so
much resemblance to the type of Antinous I do not know.
Careful comparison of the torso and the arms with an indubit-
able portrait, will even raise the question whether this fine
statue is not a Hermes or a hero of an earlier age. Its atti-
tude suggests Narcissus or Adonis; and under either of these
forms Antinous may properly have been idealised. The
Neapolitan marble, on the contrary, yields the actual Antinous
in all the exuberant fulness of his beauty. Head, body, pose,
alike bring him vividly before us, forming an undoubtedly
authentic portrait. The same personality, idealised, it is true,
but rather suffering than gaining by the process, is powerfully
impressed upon the colossal Dionysus of the Vatican. What
distinguishes this great work is the inbreathed spirit of divinity,
more overpowering here than in any other of the extant dv&pl-
ártaç kai dyaluara. The bas-relief of the Villa Albani, re-
stored to suit the conception of a Vertumnus, has even more
of florid beauty ; but whether the restoration was wisely made,
may be doubted. It is curious to compare this celebrated
masterpiece of technical dexterity with another bas-relief in the
Villa Albani, representing Antinous as Castor. He is standing,
half clothed with the chlamys, by a horse. His hair is close-
G 2
84
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
a
а
cropped, after the Roman fashion, cut straight above the fore-
head, but crowned with a fillet of lotos-buds. The whole face
has a somewhat stern and frowning Roman look of resolution,
contrasting with the mild benignity of the Bacchus statues, and
the almost sulky voluptuousness of the busts. In the Lateran
Museum Antinous appears as a god of flowers, holding in his
lap a multitude of blossoms, and wearing on his head a wreath.
The conception of this statue provokes comparison with the
Flora of the Neapolitan Museum. I should like to recognise
in it a Dionysus Antheus, rather than one of the more prosy
Roman gods of horticulture. Not unworthy to rank with
these first-rate portraits of Antinous is a Ganymede, engraved
by the Dilettante Society, which represents him standing alert,
in one hand holding the wine-jug and in the other liſting a cup
aloft. It will be seen from even this brief enumeration of a
few among the statues of Antinous, how many and how various
they are. One, however, remains still to be discussed, which,
.
so far as concerns the story of Antinous, is by far the most in-
teresting of all. As a work of art, to judge by photographs, it
is inferior to others in execution and design. Yet could we
but understand its meaning clearly, the mystery of Antinous
would be solved : the key to the whole matter probably lies
here ; but, alas ! we know not how to use it. I speak of the
Ildefonso Group at Madrid.
On one pedestal there are three figures in white marble.
To the extreme right of the spectator stands a little female
statue of a goddess, in archaistic style, crowned with the
calathos, and holding a sphere, probably of pomegranate fruit,
to her breast. To the left of this image are two young men,
three times the height of the goddess, quite naked, standing
one on each side of a low altar. Both are crowned with a
wreath of leaves and berries- laurel or myrtle. The youth to
the right, next the image, holds a torch in either hand : with
See Frontispiece.
a
1
ANTINOUS.
85
the right he turns the flaming point downwards, till it lies upon
the altar ; with the left he lifts the other torch aloft, and rests
it on his shoulder. He has a beautiful Græco-Roman face,
touched with sadness or ineffable reflection. The second
youth leans against his comrade, resting his left arm across the
other's back, and this hand is lightly placed upon the shoulder,
close to the lifted torch. His right arm is bent, and so placed
that the hand just cuts the line of the pelvis a little above the
hip. The weight of his body is thrown principally upon the
right leg ; the left foot is drawn back, away from the altar. It
is the attitude of the Apollo Sauroctonos. His beautiful face,
bent downward, is intently gazing with a calm, collected, serious,
and yet sad cast of earnest meditation. His eyes seem fixed
on something beyond him and beneath him—as it were on an
inscrutable abyss; and in this direction also looks his com-
panion. The face is unmistakably the face of Antinous; yet
the figure, and especially the legs, are not characteristic. They
seem modelled after the conventional type of the Greek
Ephebus. Parts of the two torches and the lower half of the
ght arm of Antinous are restorations.
Such is the Ildefonso marble; and it may be said that its execu-
tion is hard and rough-the arms of both figures are carelessly
designed; the hands and fingers are especially angular, elon-
gated, and ill-formed. But there is a noble feeling in the whole
group, notwithstanding. F. Tieck, the sculptor and brother of
,
the poet, was the first to suggest that we have here Antinous,
the Genius of Hadrian, and Persephone. He also thought
that the self-immolation of Antinous was indicated by the
loving, leaning attitude of the younger man, and by his melan-
choly look of resolution. The same view, in all substantial
points, is taken by Friedrichs, author of a work on Græco-
a
1
See the article on Antinous, by Victor Rydberg, in the Svensk Tid-
skrift för Litteratur, Politik, och Ekonomi. 1875. Stockholm. Also Karl
Botticher, königliches Museum, Erklärendes Verzeichniss. Berlin, 1871.
86
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Roman sculpture. But Friedrichs, while admitting the iden-
tity of the younger figure with Antinous, and recognising
Persephone in the archaic image, is not prepared to accept the
elder as the Genius of Hadrian ; and it must be confessed that
this face does not bear any resemblance to the portraits of the
Emperor. According to his interpretation, the Dæmon is
kindling the fire upon the sacrificial altar with the depressed
torch ; and the second or lifted torch must be supposed to
have been needed for the performance of some obscure rite of
immolation. What Friedrichs fails to elucidate is the trustful
attitude of Antinous, who could scarcely have been conceived
as thus affectionately reclining on the shoulder of a merely
sacrificial dæmon; nor is there anything upon the altar to
kindle. It must, however, be conceded that the imperfection
of the marble at this point leaves the restoration of the altar
and the torch upon it doubtful.
Charles Bötticher started a new solution of the principal
problem. According to him, it was executed in the life-
time of Antinous; and it represents not a sacrifice of death,
but a sacrifice of fidelity on the part of the two friends,
Hadrian and Antinous, who have met together before Perse-
phone to ratify a vow of love till death. He suggests that
the wreaths are of stephanotis, that large-leaved myrtle,
which was sacred to the Chthonian goddesses after the
liberation of Semele from Hades by her son Dionysus. With
reference to such ceremonies between Greek comrades, Bötti-
cher cites a vase upon which Theseus and Peirithous are
sacrificing in the temple of Persephone ; and he assumes that
there may have existed Athenian groups in marble representing
similar vows of friendship, from which Hadrian had this marble
copied. He believes that the Genius of Hadrian is kindling
one torch at the sacred fire, which he will reach to Antincus,
while he holds the other in readiness to kindle for himself.
This explanation is both ingenious and beautiful. It has also
ANTINOUS,
87
a
the great merit of explaining the action of the right arm of
Antinous. Yet it is hardly satisfactory. It throws no light
upon the melancholy and solemnity of both figures, which
irresistibly suggest a funereal rather than a joyous rite. An-
tinous is not even looking at the altar, and the meditative
curves of his beautiful reclining form indicate anything rather
than the spirited alacrity with which a friend would respond to
his comrade's call at such a moment. Besides, why should
not the likeness of Hadrian have been preserved as well as
that of Antinous, if the group commemorated an act of their
joint will? On the other hand, we must admit that the altar
itself is not dressed for a funereal sacrifice.
a
It has been pointed out that in the British Museum there
exists a bas-relief of Homer's apotheosis where we notice a
figure holding two torches. Is it, then, possible that the
Ildefonso marble may express, not the sacrifice, but the
apotheosis of Antinous, and that the Genius who holds the
two torches is conferring on him immortality? The lifted
torch would symbolise his new life, and the depressed torch
would stand for the life he had devoted. According to this
explanation, the sorrowful expression of Antinous must indi-
cate the agony of death through which he passed into the
• company of the undying. Against this interpretation is the
fact that we have no precise authority for the symbolism of the
torches, except only the common inversion of the life-brand by
the Genius of Death.
Yet another solution may be suggested. Assuming that we
have before us a sacrificial ceremony, and that the group was
executed after the self-devotion of Antinous had passed into
the popular belief, we may regard the elder youth as either the
Genius of the Emperor, separate in spirit from Hadrian himself
and presiding over his destinies, who accepts the offer of
Antinous with solemn calmness suited to so great a gift ; or
else as the Genius of the Roman people, witnessing the same
88
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
1
act in the same majestic spirit. This view finds some support
in the abstract ideality of the torch-bearer, who is clearly no
historical personage as Antinous himself is, but rather a power
controlling his fate. The interpretation of the two torches
remains
very difficult. In the torch flung down upon the flame-
less and barren altar we might recognise a symbol of Hadrian's
life upon the point of extinction, but not yet extinguished; and
in the torch lifted aloft we might find a metaphor of life
resuscitated and exalted. Nor is it perhaps without significance
that the arm of the self-immolating youth meets the upraised
torch, as though to touch the life which he will purchase with
his death. There is, however, the objection stated above to
this bold use of symbolism.
In support of any explanation which ascribes this group to
a period later than the canonisation of Antinous, it may be
repeated that the execution is inferior to that of almost all the
other statues of the hero. Is it possible, then, that it belongs
to a subsequent date, when art was further on the wane, but
when the self-devotion of Antinous had become a dogma of his
cult?
After all is said, the Ildefonso marble, like the legend of
Antinous, remains a mystery. Only hypotheses, more or less
ingenious, more or less suited to our sympathies, varying
between Casaubon's coarse vilification and Rydberg's roseate
vision, are left us.
As a last note on the subject of Antinous let me refer to
Raphael's statue of Jonah in the Chigi Chapel of S. Maria del
Popolo at Rome. Raphael, who handled the myth of Cupid
and Psyche so magnificently in the Villa Farnesina of his
patron Agostino Chigi, dedicated a statue of Antinous—the
only statue he ever executed in marble-under the title of a
Hebrew prophet in a Christian sanctuary. The fact is no less
significant than strange. During the early centuries of
Christianity, as is amply proved by the sarcophagi in the
1
ANTINOUS.
89
Lateran Museum, Jonah symbolised self-sacrifice and immor-
tality. He was a type of Christ, an emblem of the Christian's
hope beyond the grave. During those same centuries Antinous
represented the same ideas, however inadequately, however
dimly, for the unlettered laity of Paganism. It could scarcely
have been by accident, or by mere admiration for the features
of Antinous, that Raphael, in his marble, blent the Christian
and the Pagan traditions. To unify and to transcend the
double views of Christianity and Paganism in a work of pure
art was Raphael's instinctive, if not his conscious, aim. Nor is
there a more striking instance of this purpose than the youth-
ful Jonah with the head of Hadrian's favourite. Lionardo's
Dionysus-John-the-Baptist seems but a careless jeu d'esprit com-
pared with this profound and studied symbol of renascent
humanism. Thus to regard the Jonah-Antinous of the Cappella
Chigi as a type of immortality and self-devotion, fusing
Christian and Græco-Roman symbolism in one work of
modern art, is the most natural interpretation; but it would
not be impossible to trace in it a metaphor of the resurgent
Pagan spirit also-as though, leaving Jonah and his Biblical
associations in the background, the artist had determined
that from the mouth of the monstrous grave should issue not a
bearded prophet, but the victorious youth who had captivated
with his beauty and his heroism the sunset age of the classic world.
At any rate, whatever may have been Raphael's intention, the
legend of Antinous, that last creation of antique mythology,
shines
upon us
in this marble, just as the tale of Hero and
Leander, that last blossom of antique literature, flowers afresh
in the verses of our Marlowe. It would appear as though the
Renaissance poets, hastening to meet the classic world with
arms of welcome, had embraced its latest saints, as nearest to
them, in the rapture of their first enthusiasm.
Over all these questions, over all that concerns Antinous,
there rests a cloud of darkness and impenetrable doubt. To
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
pierce that cloud is now impossible. The utmost we can do
is to indulge our fancy in dreams of greater or less probability,
and to mark out clearly the limitations of the subject. It is
indeed something to have shown that the stigma of slavery
and disgrace attaching to his name has no solid historical
justification, and something to have suggested plausible reasons
for conjecturing that his worship had a genuine spiritual basis.
Yet the sincere critic, at the end of the whole inquiry, will
confess that he has only cast a plummet into the unfathomable
sea of ignorance. What remains, immortal, indestructible,
victorious, is Antinous in art. Against the gloomy back-
ground of doubt, calumny, contention, terrible surmise, his
statues are illuminated with the dying glory of the classic
genius—even as the towers and domes of a marble city shine
forth from the purple banks of a thunder-cloud in sunset light.
Here and here only does reality emerge from the chaos of con-
flicting phantoms. Front to front with them, it is allowed us
to forget all else but the beauty of one who died young
because the gods loved him. But when we question those
wonderful mute features and beg them for their secret, they
return no answer. There is not even a smile upon the parted
lips. So profound is the mystery, so insoluble the enigma,
that from its most importunate interrogation we derive nothing
but an attitude of deeper reverence. This in itself, however, is
worth the pains of study.'
a
1 I must here express my indebtedness to my friend H. F. Brown for a
large portion of the materials used by me in this essay on Antinous, which
I had no means at Davos Platz of accumulating for myself, and which he
unearthed from the libraries of Florence in the course of his own work, and
generously placed at my disposal.
91
LUCRETIUS.
In seeking to distinguish the Roman from the Greek genius
we can find no surer guide than Virgil's famous lines in the
Sixth Æneid. Virgil lived to combine the traditions of both
races in a work of profoundly meditated art, and to their points
of divergence he was sensitive as none but a poet bent upon
resolving them could be. The real greatness of the Romans
consisted in their capacity for government, law, practical
administration. What they willed, they carried into effect
with an iron indifference to everything but the object in view.
What they acquired, they held with the firm grasp of force,
and by the might of organised authority. Their architecture,
in so far as it was original, subserved purposes of public utility.
Philosophy with them ceased to be speculative, and applied
itself to the ethics of conduct. Their religious conceptions-
in so far as these were not adopted together with general culture
from the Greeks, or together with sensual mysticism from the
East—were practical abstractions. The Latin ideal was to give v
form to the state by legislation, and to mould the citizen by moral
discipline. The Greek ideal was contained in the poetry of
Homer, the sculpture of Pheidias, the heroism of Harmodius,
the philosophy of Socrates. Hellas was held together by no
system, but by the Delphic oracle and the Olympian games.
The Greeks depended upon culture, as the Romans upon
law. The national character determined by culture, and that
determined by discipline, eventually broke down : but the
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
ruin in either case was different. The Greek became servile,
indolent, and slippery ; the Roman became arrogant, blood-
thirsty, tyrannous, and brutal. The Greeks in their best days
attained to ow poobin, their regulative virtue, by a kind of
instinct; and even in their worst debasement they never
exhibited the extravagance of lust and cruelty and pompous
prodigality displayed by Rome. The Romans, deficient in the
æsthetic instinct, whether applied to morals or to art, were
temperate upon compulsion; and when the strain of law relaxed,
they gave themselves unchecked to profligacy. The bad
taste of the Romans made them aspire to the huge and
monstrous. Nero's whim to cut through the isthmus, Caligula's
villa built upon the sea at Baiæ, the acres covered by imperial
palaces in Rome, are as Latin as the small scale of the Par-
thenon is Greek. Athens annihilates our notions of mere
magnitude by the predominance of harmony and beauty, to
which size is irrelevant. Rome dilates them to the full : it is
the colossal greatness, the mechanical pride, of her monuments
that win our admiration. By comparing the Dionysian theatre
at Athens, during a representation of the Antigone, with the
Flavian amphitheatre at Rome, while the gladiators sang their
Ave Cæsar! we gain at once a measure for the differences
between Greek and Latin taste. In spiritual matters, again,
Rome, as distinguished from Hellas, was omnivorous. The
cosmopolitan receptivity of Roman sympathies, absorbing Egypt
and the Orient wholesale, is as characteristic as the exclusiveness
of the Greeks, their sensitive anxiety about the 10us. We feel
that it was in a Roman rather than a Greek atmosphere, where
no middle term of art existed like a neutral ground between the
moral law and sin, where no delicate intellectual sensibilities
interfered with the assimilation of new creeds, that Christianity
was destined to strike root and flourish.
These remarks, familiar to students, form a proper prelude
to the criticism of Lucretius : for in Lucretius the Roman
V
a
LUCRETIUS.
93
o
character found its most perfect literary incarnation. He is at
all points a true Roman, gifted with the strength, the conquer-
ing temper, the uncompromising haughtiness, and the large
scale of his race. Holding, as it were, the thought of Greece
in fee, he administers the Epicurean philosophy as though it
were a province, marshalling his arguments like legionaries,
and spanning the chasms of speculative insecurity with the
masonry of hypotheses. As the arches of the Pont du Gard,
suspended in their power amid that solitude, produce an over-
mastering feeling of awe; so the huge fabric of the Lucretian
system, hung across the void of Nihilism, inspires a sense of
te.tor, not so much on its own account as for the Roman
sternness of the mind that made it. “Le retentissement de
mes pas dans ces immenses voûtes me faisait croire entendre
la forte voix de ceux qui les avait bâties. Je me perdais comme
un insecte dans cette immensité.' This is what Rousseau wrote
about the aqueduct of Nismes. This is what we feel in pacing
the corridors of the Lucretian poem. Sometimes it seems like
walking through resounding caves of night and death, where
unseen cataracts keep plunging down uncertain depths, and
winds thwarted and forlorn'swell from an unknown distance,
and rush by, and wail themselves to silence in the unexplored
beyond. At another time the impression left upon the memory
is different. We have been following a Roman road from the
gate of the Eternal City, through field and vineyard, by lake and
river-bed, across the broad intolerable plain and the barren tops
of Alps, down into forests where wild beasts and barbarian
tribes wander, along the marge of Rhine or Elbe, and over
frozen fens, in one perpetual straight line, until the sea is
reached and the road ends because it can go no further. All
the while, the iron wheel-rims of our chariot have jarred upon
imperishable paved work; there has been no stop nor stay;
the visions of things beautiful and strange and tedious have
flown past; at the climax we look forth across a waste of waves
94
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
and tumbling wilderness of surf and foam, where the storm
sweeps and hurrying mists drive eastward close above our
heads. The want of any respite, breathing-space, or intermis-
sion in the poem, helps to force this image of a Roman journey
а
on our mind. From the first line to the last there is no
turning-point, no pause of thought, scarcely a comma, and the
whole breaks off :
rixantes potius quam corpora desererentur :
as though a scythe-sweep from the arm of Death had cut the
thread of singing short.
Is, then, this poem truly song? Indeed it is. The brazen
voice of Rome becomes tunable ; a majestic rhythm sustains
the progress of the singer, who, like Milton's Satan,-
O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings or feet, pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.
It is only because, being so much a Roman, he insists on
moving ever onward with unwavering march, that Lucretius is
often wearisome and rough. He is too disdainful to care to
mould the whole stuff of his poem to one quality. He is too
truth-loving to condescend to rhetoric. The scoriæ, the grit,
the dross, the quartz, the gold, the jewels of his thought are
hurried onward in one mighty lava-flood, that has the force to
bear them all with equal ease—not altogether unlike that hurl-
ing torrent of the world painted by Tintoretto in his picture of
the Last Day, which carries on its breast cities and forests and
men with all their works, to plunge them in a bottomless abyss.
Poems of the perfect Hellenic type may be compared
to bronze statues, in the material of which many divers metals
have been fused. Silver and tin and copper and lead and gold
are there : each substance adds a quality to the mass ; yet the
whole is bronze. The furnace of the poet's will has so melted
and mingled all these ores, that they have run together and
:
LUCRETIUS.
95
filled the mould of his imagination. It is thus that Virgil
chose to work. He made it his glory to realise artistic
harmony, and to preserve a Greek balance in his style.
Not so Lucretius. In him the Roman spirit, disdainful, un-
compromising, and forceful, had full sway. We can fancy him
accosting the Greek masters of the lyre upon Parnassus, defer-
ring to none, conceding nought, and meeting their arguments
with proud indifference :
tu regere imperio populos Romane memento.
,
The Roman poet, swaying the people of his thoughts, will
stoop to no persuasion, adopt no middle course. It is not his
business to please, but to command; he will not wait upon the
knipoc, or court opportunity ; Greeks may surprise the Muses
in relenting moods, and seek out “mollia tempora fandi ;' all
times and seasons must serve him ; the terrible, the discordant,
the sublime, and the magnificent shall drag his thundering car-
wheels, as he lists, along the road of thought.
At the very cutset of the poem we feel ourselves within the
grasp of the Roman imagination. It is no Aphrodite, risen
from the waves and white as the sea-foam, that he invokes :-
Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas,
alma Venus.
This Venus is the mother of the brood of Rome, and at the
same time an abstraction as wide as the universe. See her in
the armıs of Mavors :-
qui saepe tuum se
reicit aeterno devictus volnere amoris,
atque ita suspiciens tereti cervice reposta
pascit amore avidos inhians in te, dea, visus,
eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore.
hunc tu, diva, tuo recubantem corpore sancto
circumfusa super, suavis ex ore loquelas
funde petens placidam Romanis, incluta, pacem.
In the whole Lucretian treatment of love there is nothing really
ҫ6
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Greek. We do not hear of Erôs, either as the mystic mania of
Plato, or as the winged boy of Meleager. Love in Lucretius is
something deeper, larger, and more elemental than the Greeks
conceived ; a fierce and overmastering force, a natural impulse
which men share in common with the world of things. Both
the pleasures and the pains of love are conceived on a gigantic
scale, and described with an irony that has the growl of a roused
lion mingled with its laughter :
ulcus enim vivescit et inveterascit alendo
inque dies gliscit furor atque aerumna gravescit.
The acts of love and the insanities of passion are viewed
from no standpoint of sentiment or soft emotion, but always in
relation to philosophical ideas, or as the manifestation of some.
thing terrible in human life. Yet they lose nothing thereby in
the voluptuous impression left upon the fancy :
sic in amore Venus simulacris ludit amantis,
nec satiare queunt spectando corpore coram
nec manibus quicquam teneris abradere membris
possunt errantes incerti corpore toto.
denique cum membris conlatis Aore fruuntur
aetatis, iam cum praesagit gaudia corpus
atque in eost Venus ut muliebria conserat arva,
adfigunt avide corpus iunguntque salivas
oris et inspirant pressantes dentibus ora,
nequiquam, quoniam nil inde abradere possunt
nec penetrare et abire in corpus corpore toto.
The master-word in this passage is nequiquam. "To desire
the impossible,' says the Greek proverb, “is a disease of the
soul.' Lucretius, who treats of physical desire as a torment,
asserts the impossibility of its perfect satisfaction. There is
A fragment preserved from the Danaides of Æschylus has the thought
of Aphrodite as the mistress of love in earth and sky and sea and cloud;
and this idea finds a philosophical expression in Empedocles. But the
tone of these Greek poets is as different from that of Lucretius as a Greek
Hera is from a Roman Juno.
LUCRETIUS.
97
something almost tragic in these sighs and pantings and
pleasure-throes, and incomplete fruitions of souls pent up within
their frames of Aesh. We seem to see a race of men and
women such as have never lived, except perhaps in Rome or
in the thought of Michael Angelo,' meeting in leonine embrace-
ments that yield pain, whereof the climax is, at best, relief from
rage and respite for a moment from consuming fire. There is
a life dæmonic rather than human in those mighty limbs ; and
the passion that bends them on the marriage bed has in it the
stress of storms, the rampings and the roarings of leopards at
play. Or, take again this single line :
et Venus in silvis iungebat corpora amantum,
What a picture of primeval breadth and vastness ! The vice
égrillard of Voltaire, the coarse animalism of Rabelais, even
the large comic sexuality of Aristophanes, are in another region :
for the forest is the world, and the bodies of the lovers are
things natural and unashamed, and Venus is the tyrannous
instinct that controls the blood in spring. Only a Roman poet
could have conceived of passion so mightily and so imperson-
ally, expanding its sensuality to suit the scale of Titanic
existences, and purging from it both sentiment and spirituality
as well as all that makes it mean.
In like manner, the Lucretian conception of Ennui is wholly
Roman :-
Si possent homines, proinde ac sentire videntur
pondus inesse animo quod se gravitate fatiget,
e quibus id fiat causis quoque noscere et unde
tanta mali tamquam moles in pectore constet,
haut ita vitam agerent, ut nunc plerumque videmus
quid sibi quisque velit nescire et quaerere semper
commutare locum quasi onus deponere possit.
exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille,
See, for instance, his meeting of Ixion with the phantom of Juno, or
his design for Leda and the Swan.
H
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SK’ETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
esse domi quem pertaesumst, subitoque revertit,
quippe foris nilo melius qui sentiat esse.
currit agens mannos ad villam praecipitanter,
auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans;
oscitat extemplo, tetigit cum limina villae,
aut abit in somnum gravis atque oblivia quaerit,
aut etiam properans urbem petit atque revisit.
hoc se quisque modo fugit (at quem scilicet, ut fit,
effugere haut potis est, ingratis haeret) et odit
propterea, morbi quia causam non tenet aeger;
quam bene si videat, iam rebus quisque relictis
naturam primum studeat cognoscere rerum,
temporis aeterni quoniam, non unius horae,
ambigitur status, in quo sit mortalibus omnis
aetas, post mortem quae restat cumque manenda.
Virgil would not have written these lines. A Greek poet could
not have conceived them : unless we imagine to ourselves what
Æschylus or Pindar, oppressed by long illness, and forgetful of
the gods, might possibly have felt. In its sense of spiritual
vacancy, when the world and all its uses have become flat,
stale, unprofitable, and the sentient soul oscillates like a pendu-
lum between weariful extremes, seeking repose in restless move-
ment, and hurling the ruins of a life into the gulf of its exhausted
cravings, we perceive already the symptoms of that unnamed
malady which was the plague of imperial Rome. The tyrants
and the suicides of the Empire expand before our eyes a pageant
of their lassitude, relieved in vain by festivals of blood and
orgies of unutterable lust. It is not that ennui was a specially
Roman disease. Under certain conditions it is sure to afflict
all overtaxed civilisation ; and for the modern world no one
has expressed its nature better than the slight and feminine
De Musset.' Indeed, the Latin language has no one phrase
denoting Ennui ;-livor and fastidium, and even tædium vita,
meaning something more specific and less all-pervasive as a
moral agency. This in itself is significant, since it shows the
See the prelude to Les Confessions d'un Enfant du Siècle and Les
Nuits.
LUCRETIUS.
99
Jniversity
ERAL LIBRAAN
unconsciousness of the race at large, and renders the intuition
of Lucretius all the more remarkable. But in Rome there
were the conditions favourable to its development-imperfect
culture, vehement passions unabsorbed by commerce or by
political life, the habituation to extravagant excitement in war
and in the circus, and the fermentation of an age foredestined to
give birth to new religious creeds. When the infinite but ill-
assured power of the Empire was conferred on semi-madmen,
Ennui in Rome assumed colossal proportions. Its victims
sought for palliatives in cruelty and crime elsewhere unknown,
except perhaps in Oriental courts. Lucretius, in the last days
of the Republic, had discovered its deep significance for human
nature. To all the pictures of Tacitus it forms a solemn tragic
background, enhancing, as it were, by spiritual gloom the car-
nival of passions which gleam so brilliantly upon his canvas.
In the person of Caligula, Ennui sat supreme upon the throne
of the terraqueous globe. The insane desires and the fantastic
deeds of the autocrat who wished one head for humanity that
he might cut it off, sufficiently reveal the extent to which his
spirit had been gangrened by this ulcer. There is a simple
paragraph in Suetonius which lifts the veil from his imperial
unrest more ruthlessly than any legend :- “Incitabatur insom-
niis maxime ; neque enim plus tribus horis nocturnis quiescebat,
ac ne his quidem placidâ quiete, at pavidâ miris rerum imagini-
bus . . . . ideoque magnâ parte noctis, vigiliæ cubandique
tædio, nunc toro residens, nunc per longissimas porticus vagus,
invocare identidem atque expectare lucem consueverat.' This
is the very picture of Ennui that has become mortal disease.
Nor was Nero different. Néron,' says Victor Hugo, 'cherche
tout simplement une distraction. Poëte, comédien, chanteur,
cocher, épuisant la férocité pour trouver la volupté, essayant le
changement de sexe, époux de l'eunuque Sporus et épouse de
l'esclave Pythagore, et se promenant dans les rues de Rome
entre sa femme et son mari ; ayant de..x plaisirs : voir le peuple
6
6
H 2
100
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
se jeter sur les pièces d'or, les diamants et les perles, et voir les
lions se jeter sur le peuple; incendiaire par curiosité et parricide
par désouvrement.' Nor need we stop at Nero. Over Vitellius
at his banquets, over Hadrian in his Tiburtine villa calling in
vain on Death, over Commodus in the arena, and Heliogabalus
among the rose-leaves, the same livid shadow of imperial Ennui
hangs. We can even see it looming behind the noble form of
Marcus Aurelius, who, amid the ruins of empire and the revolu-
tions of belief, penned in his tent among the Quadi those maxims
of endurance which were powerless to regenerate the world.
Roman again, in the true sense of the word, is the Lucretian
-, philosophy of Conscience. Christianity has claimed the cele-
brated imprecation of Persius upon tyrants for her own, as
though to her alone belonged the secret of the soul-tormenting
sense of guilt. Yet it is certain that we owe to the Romans
that conception of sin bearing its own fruit of torment which
the Latin Fathers—Augustine and Tertullian-imposed with
such terrific force upon the mediæval consciousness. There is
no need to conclude that Persius was a Christian because he
wrote
Magne pater divum, sævos punire tyrannos, etc.,
when we know that he had before his
eyes
that
passage
in the
third book of the 'De Rerum Naturâ’ (978-1023) which reduces
the myths of Tityos and Sisyphus and Cerberus and the Furies
to facts of the human soul :-
sed metus in vita poenarum pro male factis
est insignibus insignis, scelerisque luella,
carcer et horribilis de saxo jactu' deorsum,
verbera carnifices robur pix lammina taedae ;
quae tamen etsi absunt, at mens sibi conscia facti
praemetuens adhibet stimulos terretque flagellis
nec videt interea qui terminus esse malorum
possit nec quae sit poenarum denique finis
atque eadem metuit magis haec ne in morte gravescant.
The Greeks, by personifying those secret terrors, had removed
LUCRETIUS.
101
them into a region of existences separate from man. They
became dread goddesses, who might to some extent be pro-
pitiated by exorcisms or expiatory rites. This was in strict
accordance with the mythopæic and artistic quality of the
Greek intellect. The stern and somewhat prosaic rectitude of
the Roman broke through such figments of the fancy, and ex-
posed the sore places of the soul itself. The theory of the
Conscience, moreover, is part of the Lucretian polemic against
false notions of the gods and the pernicious belief in hell.
Positivism and Realism were qualities of Roman as distin-
guished from Greek culture. There was no self-delusion in
Lucretius - no attempt, however unconscious, to compromise
unpalatable truth, or to invest philosophy with the charm of
myth. A hundred illustrations might be chosen to prove his
method of setting forth thought with unadorned simplicity.
These, however, are familiar to any one who has but opened
the 'De Rerum Naturâ.' It is more profitable to trace this
Roman ruggedness in the poet's treatment of the subject
which more than any other seems to have preoccupied his
intellect and fascinated his imagination—that is Death. His
poem has been called by a great critic the 'poem of Death.'
Shakspeare's line-
r
And Death once dead, there's no more dying then,
might be written as a motto on the title-page of the book,
which is full of passages like this :-
scire licet nobis nil esse in morte timendum
nec miserum fieri qui non est posse neque hilum
differre anne ullo fuerit iam tempore natus,
mortalem vitam mors cum immortalis ademit.'
His whole mind was steeped in the thought of death; and
though he can hardly be said to have written the words that
shall make death exhilarating,' he devoted his genius, in all
its energy, to removing from before men the terror of the doom
102
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
that waits for all. Sometimes, in his attempt at consolation,
he adduces images which, like the Deiphian knife, are double-
handled, and cut both ways
hinc indignatur se mortalem esse creatum
nec videt in vera nullum fore morte alium se
qui possit vivus sibi se lugere peremptum
stansque iacentem se lacerari urive dolere.
This suggests, by way of contrast, Blake's picture of the soul
that has just left the body and laments her separation. As
we read, we are inclined to lay the book down, and wonder
whether the argument is, after all, conclusive. May not the
spirit, when she has quitted her old house, be forced to weep
and wring her hands, and stretch vain shadowy arms to the
limbs that were so dear? No one has felt more profoundly
than Lucretius the pathos of the dead. The intensity with
which he realised what we must lose in dying and what we
leave behind of grief to those who loved us, reaches a climax
of restrained passion in this well-known paragraph :-
.
6
‘iam iam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor
optima nec dulces occurrent oscula nati
praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent.
non poteris factis florentibus esse, tuisque
praesidium. misero misere' aiunt omnia ademit
una dies infesta tibi tot praemia vitae.'
illud in his rebus non addunt nec tibi earum
iam desiderium rerum super insidet una.'
quod bene si videant animo dictisque sequantur,
dissoluant animi magno se angore metuque.
'tu quidem ut es leto sopitus, sic eris aevi
quod superest cunctis privatu' doloribus aegris.
at nos horrifico cinefactum te prope busto
insatiabiliter deflevimus, aeternumque
nulla dies nobis maerorem e pectore demet.'
Images, again, of almost mediæval grotesqueness, rise in
his mind when he contemplates the universality of Death.
Simonides had dared to say : One horrible Charybdis waits
LUCRETIUS.
103
>
for all.' That was as near a discord as a Greek could venture
on. Lucretius describes the open gate and 'huge wide-gaping
maw' which must devour heaven, earth, and sea, and all that
they contain :-
haut igitur leti praeclusa est ianua caelo
nec soli terraeque neque altis aequoris undis,
sed patet immani et vasto respectat hiatu.
The ever-during battle of life and death haunts his imagina-
tion. Sometimes he sets it forth in philosophical array of
argument. Sometimes he touches on the theme with elegiac
pity :
miscetur funere vagor
quem pueri tollunt visentis luminis oras;
nec nox ulla diem neque noctem aurora secutast
quae non audierit mixtos vagitibus aegris
ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri.
>
Then again he returns, with obstinate persistence, to de-
scribe how the dread of death, fortified by false religion, hangs
like a pall over humanity, and how the whole world is a ceme-
tery overshadowed by cypresses. The most sustained, perhaps,
of these passages is at the beginning of the third book (lines
31 to 93). The most profoundly melancholy is the descrip-
tion of the new-born child (v. 221)
quare mors immatura vagatur?
tum porro puer, ut saevis proiectus ab undis
navita nudus humi iacet, infans, indigus omni
vitali auxilio, cum primum in luminis oras
nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit,
vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut aecumst
cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum.
Disease and old age, as akin to Death, touch his imagina-
tion with the same force. He rarely alludes to either without
some lines as terrible as these (iii. 472, 453) :
nam dolor ac morbus leti fabricator uterquest.
claudicat ingenium, delirat lingua, labat mens.
104
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Another kindred subject affects him with an equal pathos.
He sees the rising and decay of nations, age following after
age, like waves hurrying to dissolve upon a barren shore, and
writes (ii. 75)
sic rerum summa novatur
semper, et inter se mortales mutua vivunt,
augescunt aliae gentes, aliae minuuntur,
| inque brevi spatio mutantur saecla animantum
| et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt.
Although the theme is really the procession of life through
countless generations, it obtains a tone of sadness from the
sense of intervenient decay and change. No Greek had the
heart thus to dilate his imagination with the very element of
death. What the Greeks commemorated when they spoke of
Death was the loss of the lyre and the hymeneal chaunt, and
the passage across dim waves to a sunless land. Nor indeed
does Lucretius, like the modern poet of Democracy, ascend
into the regions of ecstatic trance :-
Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.
V
He keeps his reason cool, and sternly contemplates the thought
of the annihilation which awaits all perishable combinations of
eternal things. Like Milton, Lucretius delights in giving the
life of his imagination to abstractions. Time, with his retinue
of ages, sweeps before his vision, and he broods in fancy over
the illimitable ocean of the universe. The fascination of the
infinite is the quality which, more than any other, separates
Lucretius as a Roman poet from the Greeks.
Another distinctive feature of his poetry Lucretius in-
herited as part of his birthright. This is the sense of Roman
greatness. It pervades the poem, and may be felt in every
part ; although to Athens, and the Greek sages, Democritus,
Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, and Epicurus, as the
fountain-heads of soul-delivering culture, he reserves his most
LUCRETIUS.
105
magnificent periods of panegyric. Yet when he would fain
persuade his readers that the fear of death is nugatory, and
that the future will be to them even as the past, it is the shock
of Rome with Carthage that he dwells upon as the critical
event of the world's history (iii. 830) :-
Nil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum,
quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur.
et velut anteacto nil tempore sensimus aegri,
ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis,
omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu
horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris oris,
in dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum
omnibus humanis esset terraque marique,
sic:
The lines in italics could have been written by none but a
Roman conscious that the conflict with Carthage had decided
the absolute empire of the habitable world. In like manner
the description of a military review (ii. 323) is Roman : so,
too, is that of the amphitheatre (iv. 75) =
et volgo faciunt id lutea russaque vela
et ferrugina, cum magnis intenta theatris
per malos volgata trabesque trementia flutant.
namque ibi consessum caveai supter et omnem
scaenai speciem, patrum coetumque decorum
inficiunt coguntque suo fuitare colore.
The imagination of Lucretius, however, was habitually less
affected by the particular than by the universal. He loved to
dwell upon the large and general aspects of things-on the
procession of the seasons, for example, rather than upon the
landscape of the Campagna in spring or autumn. Therefore
it is only occasionally and by accident that we find in his
verse touches peculiarly characteristic of the manners of his
country. Therefore, again, it has happened that modern
critics have detected a lack of patriotic interest in this most
Roman of all Latin poets. Also may it here be remembered,
106
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
that the single line which sums up all the history of Rome in
one soul-shaking hexameter, is not Lucretian but Virgilian.
Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem.
The custode of the Baths of Titus, when he lifts his torch
to explore those ruined arches, throws the wan light upon one
place where a Roman hand has scratched that verse in gigantic
letters on the cement. The colossal genius of Rome seems
speaking to us, an oracle no lapse of time can render dumb.
a
But Lucretius is not only the poet par excellence of Rome.
He will always rank also among the first philosophical poets of
the world : and here we find a second standpoint for inquiry.
The question how far it is practicable to express philosophy in
verse, and to combine the accuracy of scientific language with
the charm of rhythm and the ornaments of the fancy, is one
which belongs rather to modern than to ancient criticism. In
the progress of culture there has been an ever-growing separa-
tion between the several spheres of intellectual activity. Wiat
Livy said about the Roman Empire is true now of knowledge ;
magnitudine laborat suâ : so that the labour of specialising and
distinguishing has for many centuries been all-important. Not
only do we disbelieve in the desirability of smearing honey
upon the lip of the medicine-glass through which the draught
of erudition has to be administered ; but we know for certain
that it is only at the meeting-points between science and emo-
tion that the philosophic poet finds a proper sphere. What-
ever subject matter can be permeated or penetrated with strong
human feeling is fit for verse. Then the rhythms and the
forms of poetry to which high passions naturally move, become
spontaneous. The emotion is paramount, and the knowledge
conveyed is valuable as supplying fuel to the fire of feeling.
There are, were, and always will be high imaginative points of
vantage commanding the broad fields of knowledge, upon
LUCRETIUS.
107
•
I
which the poet may take his station to survey the world and all
that it contains. But it has long ceased to be his function to
set forth, in any kind of metre, systems of speculative thought
or purely scientific truths. This was not the case in the old
world. There was a period in the development of the intellect
when the abstractions of logic appeared like intuitions, and
guesses about the structure of the universe still wore the garb
of fancy. When physics and metaphysics were scarcely dis-
tinguished from mythology, it was natural to address the
Muses at the outset of a treatise of ontology, and to cadence a
theory of elemental substances in hexameter verse. Thus the
philosophical poems of Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Empe-
docles belonged essentially to a transitional stage of human
culture.
There is a second species of poetry to which the name of
philosophical may be given, though it better deserves that of
mystical. Pantheism occupies a middle place between a
scientific theory of the universe and a form of religious enthu-
siasm. It supplies an element in which the poetic faculty can
move with freedom: for its conclusions, in so far as they
pretend to philosophy, are large and general, and the emotions
which it excites are co-extensive with the world. Therefore,
Pantheistic mysticism, from the Bhagavadgita of the far East,
through the Persian Soofis, down to the poets of our own
century, Goethe, and Shelley, and Wordsworth, and Whitman,
and many more whom it would be tedious to enumerate, has
generated a whole tribe of philosophic singers.
Yet a third class may be mentioned. Here we have to deal
with what are called didactic poems. These, like the metaphy-
sical epic, began to flourish in early Greece at the moment
when exact thought was dividing itself laboriously from myths
and fancies. Hesiod with his poem on the life of man leads
the way; and the writers of moral sentences in elegiac verse,
among whom Solon and Theognis occupy the first place,
a
108
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
!
follow. Latin literature contributes highly artificial specimens
of this kind in the 'Georgics' of Virgil, the stoical diatribes of
Persius, and the 'Ars Poetica' of Horace. Didactic verse had
a special charm for the genius of the Latin race. The name of
such poems in the Italian literature of the Renaissance is legion.
The French delighted in the same style under the same in-
fluences; nor can we fail to attribute the Essay on Man' and
the 'Essay on Criticism' of our own Pope to a similar revival
in England of Latin forms of art. The taste for didactic verse
has declined. Yet in its stead another sort of philosophical
poetry has grown up in this century, which, for the want of a
better term, may be called psychological. It deserves this
title, inasmuch as the motive-interest of the art in question is
less the passion or the action of humanity than the analysis of
the same.
The 'Faust' of Goethe, the 'Prelude' and 'Excur-
sion' of Wordsworth, Browning's 'Sordello' and Mrs. Brown-
ing's Aurora Leigh,' together with the 'Musings' of Coleridge
and the In Memoriam' of Tennyson, may be roughly reckoned
in this class. It will be noticed that nothing has been said
about professedly religious poetry, much of which attaches
itself to mysticism, while some, like the 'Divine Comedy' of
Dante, is philosophic in the truest sense of the word.
Where, then, are we to place Lucretius? He was a Roman,
imbued with the didactic predilections of the Latin race; and
the didactic quality of the 'De Rerum Naturâ' is unmistakable.
Yet it would be uncritical to place this poem in the class which
derives from Hesiod. It belongs really to the succession of
Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Empedocles. As such it was
an anachronism. The specific moment in the development of
thought at which the Parmenidean Epic was natural has been
already described. The Romans of the age of Lucretius had
advanced far beyond it. The idealistic metaphysics of the
Socratic school, the positive ethics of the Stoics, and the pro-
found materialism of Epicurus, had accustomed the mind to
1
LUCRETIUS.
109
habits of exact and subtle thinking, prolonged from generation
to generation upon the same lines of speculative inquiry.
Philosophy expressed in verse was out of date. Moreover, the
very myths had been rationalised Euhemerus had even been
translated into Latin' by Ennius, and his prosaic explanations
of Greek legend had found acceptance with the essentially
positive Roman intellect. Lucretius himself, it may be said
in passing, thought it worth while to offer a philosophical
explanation of the Greek mythology. The Cybele of the poets
is shown in one of his sublimest passages (ii. 600-645) to be
Earth. To call the sea Neptune, corn Ceres, and wine Bacchus,
seems to him a simple folly (ii. 652–657). We have already
seen how he reduces the fiends and spectres of the Greek
Hades to facts of moral subjectivity (iii. 978-1023). In
another place he attacks the worship of Phoebus and the stars
(v. 110); in yet another he upsets the belief in the Centaurs,
Scylla, and Chimæra (v. 877-924) with a gravity which is
almost comic. Such arguments formed a necessary element in
his polemic against foul religion (fæda religio-turpis religio);
to deliver men from which (i. 62–112), by establishing firmly
in their minds the conviction that the gods exist far away from
this world in unconcerned tranquillity (ii. 646), and by sub-
stituting the notion of Nature for that of deity (ii. 1090), was
the object of his scientific demonstration.
Lucretius, therefore, had outgrown mythology, was hostile
to religion, and burned with unsurpassable enthusiasm to in-
doctrinate his Roman readers with the weighty conclusions of
systematised materialism. Yet he chose the vehicle of hexa-
meter verse, and trammelled his genius with limitations which
Empedocles, four hundred years before, must have found
almost intolerable. It needed the most ardent intellectual
passion and the loftiest inspiration to sustain on his far flight a
poet who had forged a hoplite's panoply for singing robes.
Both passion and inspiration were granted to Lucretius in full
IIO
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
measure.
And just as there was something contradictory
between the scientific subject matter and the poetical form of
his masterpiece, so the very sources of his poetic strength were
such as are usually supposed to depress the soul. His passion
was for death, annihilation, godlessness. It was not the
eloquence, but the force of logic, in Epicurus that roused his
enthusiasm :-
ergo vivida vis animi pervicit et extra
processit longe Aammantia moenia mundi.
No other poet who ever lived in any age, or any shore, drew
inspiration from founts more passionless and more impersonal.
The · De Rerum Naturâ' is therefore an attempt, unique
in its kind, to combine philosophical exposition and poetry in
an age when the requirements of the former had already out-
grown the resources of the latter. Throughout the poem we
trace a discord between the matter and the form. The frost
of reason and the fire of fancy war in deadly conflict ; for the
Lucretian system destroyed nearly everything with which the
classical imagination loved to play. It was only in some high
ethereal region, before the majestic thought of Death or the
new Myth of Nature, that the two faculties of the poet's genius
met for mutual support. Only at rare intervals did he allow
himself to make artistic use of mere mythology, as in the cele-
brated exordium of the first book, or the description of the
Seasons in the fifth book (737-745). For the most part reason
and fancy worked separately : after long passages of scientific
explanation, Lucretius indulged his readers with those pictures
of unparalleled sublimity and grace which are the charm of
the whole poem; or dropping the phraseology of atoms, void,
motion, chance, he spoke at times of Nature as endowed with
reason and a will (v. 186, 811, 846).
It would be beyond the scope of this essay to discuss the
particular form given by Lucretius to the Democritean philo-
LUCRETIUS.
III
sophy. He believed the universe to be composed of atoms,
infinite in number, and variable, to a finite extent, in form,
which drift slantingly through an infinite void. Their combina-
tions under the conditions of what we call space and time are
transitory, while they remain themselves imperishable. Con-
sequently, as the soul itself is corporeally constituted, and as
thought and sensation depend on mere material idola, men
may divest themselves of any fear of the hereafter. There is
no such thing as providence, nor do the gods concern them-
selves with the kaleidoscopic medley of atoms in transient
combination which we call our world. The latter were points
of supreme interest to Lucretius. He seems to have cared
for the cosmology of Epicurus chiefly as it touched humanity
through ethics and religion. To impartial observers, the
identity or the divergence of the forms assumed by scientific
hypothesis at different periods of the world's history is not a
matter of much importance. Yet a peculiar interest has of
.
late been given to the Lucretian materialism by the fact that
physical speculation has returned to what is substantially the
same ground. The most modern theories of evolution and of
molecular structure may be stated in language which, allowing
for the progress made by exact thought during the last twenty
centuries, is singularly like that of Lucretius. The Roman
poet knew fewer facts than are familiar to our men of science,
and was far less able to analyse one puzzle into a whole group
of unexplained phenomena. He had besides but a feeble grasp
upon those discoveries which subserve the arts of life and
practical utility. But as regards absolute knowledge—knowledge,
that is to say, of what the universe really is, and of how it
became what it seems to us to be-Lucretius stood at the same
point of ignorance as we, after the labours of Darwin and of
Spencer, of Helmholtz and of Huxley, still do. Ontological
speculation is as barren now as then, and the problems of
existence still remain insoluble. The chief difference indeed
a
-
II2
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY,
between him and modern investigators is that they have been
lessoned by the experience of the last two thousand years to
know better the depths of human ignorance, and the direc-
tions in which it is possible to sound them.
It may not be uninteresting to collect a few passages in
which the Roman poet has expressed in his hexameters the
lines of thought adopted by our most advanced theorists.
Here is the general conception of Nature, working by her own
laws toward the achievement of that result which we apprehend
through the medium of the senses (ii. 1090).
Quae bene cognita si teneas, natura videtur
libera continuo dominis privata superbis
ipsa sua per se sponte omnia dis agere expers.
Here again is a demonstration of the absurdity of supposing
that the world was made for the use of men (v. 156) :-
dicere porro hominum causa voluisse parare
praeclaram mundi naturam proptereaque
adlaudabile opus divom laudare decere
aeternumque putare atque inmortale futurum
nec fas esse, deum quod sit ratione vetusta
gentibus humanis fundatum perpetuo aevo,
sollicitare suis ulla vi ex sedibus umquam
nec verbis vexare et ab imo evertere summa,
cetera de genere hoc adfingere et addere, Memmi,
desiperest.
A like cogent rhetoric is directed against the arguments of
teleology (iv. 823) :-
Illud in his rebus vitium vementer avessis
effugere, errorem vitareque praemetuenter,
lumina ne facias oculorum clara creata,
prospicere ut possemus, et ut proferre queamus
proceros passus, ideo fastigia posse
surarum ac feminum pedibus fundata plicari,
bracchia tum porro validis ex apta lacertis
esse manusque datas utraque ex parte ministras,
ut facere ad vitam possemus quae foret usus.
cetera de genere hoc inter quaecumque pretantur
omnia perversa praepostera sunt ratione,
LUCRETIUS.
113
nil ideo quoniam natumst in corpore ut uti
possemus, sed quod natumst id procreat usum.
nec fuit ante videre oculorum lumina nata
nec dictis orare prius quam lingua creatast,
sed potius longe linguae praecessit origo
sermonem multoque creatae sunt prius aures
quam sonus est auditus, et omnia denique membra
ante fuere, ut opinor, eorum quam foret usus.
haud igitur potuere utendi crescere causa.
The ultimate dissolution and the gradual decay of the ter-
restrial globe is set forth in the following luminous passage
(ii, 1148)
Sic igitur magni quoque circum moenia mundi
expugnata dabunt labem putrisque ruinas.
iamque adeo fracta est aetas effetaque tellus
vix animalia parva creat quae cuncta creavit
saecla deditque ferarum ingentia corpora partu.'
The same mind which recognised these probabilities knew
also that our globe is not single, but that it forms one among
an infinity of sister orbs (ii. 1084) 3
quapropter caelum simili ratione fatendumst
terramque et solem lunam mare, cetera quae sunt,
non esse unica, sed numero magis innumerali.?
When Lucretius takes upon himself to describe the process
of becoming which made the world what it now is, he seems to
incline to a theory not at all dissimilar to that of unassisted
evolution (v. 419) :
nam certe neque consilio primordia rerum
ordine se suo quaeque sagaci mente locarunt
nec quos quaeque darent motus pepigere profecto,
sed quia multa modis multis primordia rerum
ex infinito iam tempore percita plagis
ponderibusque suis consuerunt concita ferri
· Compare book v. 306-317 on the evidences of decay continually at
work in the fabric of the world.
? The same truth is insisted on with even greater force of language ir
vi. 649-652.
3
114
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
omnimodisque coire atque omnia pertemptare,
quaecumque inter se possent congressa creare,
propterea fit uti mägnum volgata per aevom
omne genus coetus et motus experiundo
tandem conveniant ea quae convecta repente
magnarum rerum fiunt exordia saepe,
terrai maris et caeli generisque animantum.
Entering into the details of the process, he describes the
many ill formed, amorphous beginnings of organised life upon
the globe, which came to nothing, "since nature set a ban
upon their increase' (v. 837-848); and then proceeds to ex-
plain how, in the struggle for existence, the stronger prevailed
over the weaker (v. 855-863). What is really interesting in
this exposition is that Lucretius ascribes to nature the volition
('convertebat ibi natura foramina terræ ; '.quoniam natura abs-
terruit auctum ') which has recently been attributed by material-
istic speculators to the same maternal power.
To press these points, and to neglect the gap which sepa-
rates Lucretius from thinkers fortified by the discoveries of
modern chemistry, astronomy, physiology, and so forth, would
be childish. All we can do is to point to the fact that the cir-
cumambient atmosphere of human ignorance, with reference to
the main matters of speculation, remains undissipated. The
mass of experience acquired since the age of Lucretius is enor-
mous, and is infinitely valuable ; while our power of tabulating,
methodising, and extending the sphere of experimental know-
ledge seems to be unlimited. Only ontological deductions,
whether negative or affirmative, remain pretty much where
they were then.
The fame of Lucretius, however, rests not on this founda-
tion of hypothesis. In his poetry lies the secret of a charm
which he will continue to exercise as long as humanity chooses
to read Latin verse. No poet has created a world of larger
and nobler images, designed with the sprezzatura of indifference
to mere gracefulness, but all the more fascinating because of
LUCRETIUS.
115
the artist's negligence. There is something monumental in the
effect produced by his large-sounding single epithets and
simple names. We are at home with the dæmonic life of
nature when he chooses to bring Pan and his following before
our eyes (iv. 580). Or, again, the Seasons pass like figures on
some frieze of Mantegna, to which, by divine accident, has
been added the glow of Titian's colouring (v. 737)
it ver et Venus, et veris praenuntius ante
pennatus graditur zephyrus, vestigia propter
Flora quibus mater praespargens ante viai
cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.
inde loci sequitur calor aridus et comes una
pulverulenta Ceres et etesia flabra aquilonum.
inde autumnus adit, graditur simul Euhius Euan.
inde aliae tempestates ventique secuntur,
altitonans Volturnus et auster fulmine pollens.
tandem bruma nives adfert pigrumque rigorem,
prodit hiemps, sequitur crepitans hanc dentibus algor.
With what a noble style too are the holidays of the primeval
pastoral folk described (v. 1379-1404). It is no mere celebra-
v
.
tion of the bell' età dell'oro: but we see the woodland glades,
and hear the songs of shepherds, and feel the hush of summer
among rustling forest trees, while at the same time all is far
away, in a better, simpler, larger age. The sympathy of
Lucretius for every form of country life was very noticeable.
It belonged to that which was most deeply and sincerely
poetic in the Latin genius, whence Virgil drew his sweetest
strain of melancholy, and Horace his most unaffected pictures,
and Catullus the tenderness of his best lines on Sirmio. No
Roman surpassed the pathos with which Lucretius described
the separation of a cow from her calf (ii. 352-365). The same
note indeed was touched by Virgil in his lines upon the forlorn
| The elaborate illustration of the first four lines of this passage, painted
by Botticelli (in the Florence Academy of Fine Arts), proves Botticelli's
incapacity or unwillingness to deal with the subject in the spirit of the
original. It is graceful and subtle' enough, but not Lucretian.
1
I 2
116
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
ness.
nightingale, and in the peroration to the third 'Georgic.' But
the style of Virgil is more studied, the feeling more artistically
elaborated. It would be difficult to parallel such Lucretian
passages in Greek poetry. The Greeks lacked an undefinable
- something of rusticity which dignified the Latin race. This
quality was not altogether different from what we call homeli-
Looking at the busts of Romans, and noticing their
resemblance to English country gentlemen, I have sometimes
wondered whether the Latin genius, just in those points where it
differed from the Greek, was not approximated to the English.
All subjects needing a large style, brief and rapid, but at
the same time luminous with imagination, were sure of the
right treatment from Lucretius. This is shown by his enume-
ration of the celestial signs (v. 1188)
:
in caeloque deum sedes et templa locarunt,
per caelum volvi quia nox et luna videtur,
luna dies et nox et noctis signa severa
noctivagaeque faces caeli flammaeque volantes,
nubila sol imbres nix venti fulmina grando
et rapidi fremitus et murmura magna minarum.
a
Again, he never failed to rise to an occasion which required
the display of fervid eloquence. The Roman eloquence,
which in its energetic volubility was the chief force of Juvenal,
added a tidal strength and stress of storm to the quick gather-
ing thoughts of the greater poet. The exordia to the first and
second books, the analysis of Love in the fourth, the praises of
Epicurus in the third and fifth, the praises of Empedocles and
Ennius in the first, the elaborate passage on the progress of
civilisation in the fifth, and the description of the plague at
Athens which closes the sixth, are noble instances of the sub-
limest poetry sustained and hurried onward by the volume of
impassioned improvisation. It is difficult to imagine that
.
Lucretius wrote slowly. The strange word vociferari, which
he uses so often, and which the Romans of the Augustan age
LUCRETIUS.
117
almost dropped from their poetic vocabulary, seems exactly
made to suit his utterance. Yet at times he tempers the full
torrent of resonant utterance with divine tranquillity, and
leaves upon our mind that sense of powerful aloofness from his
subject, which only belongs to the mightiest poets in their most
majestic moments. One instance of this rare felicity of style
shall end the list of our quotations (v. 1194) =
() genus infelix humanum, talia divis
cum tribuit facta atque iras adiunxit acerbas !
quantos tum gemitus ipsi sibi, quantaque nobis
volnera, quas lacrimas peperere minoribu' nostris !
nec pietas ullast velatum saepe videri
vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras
nec procumbere humi prostratum et pandere palmas
ante deum delubra nec aras sanguine multo
spargere quadrupedum nec votis nectere vota,
sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri.
nam cum suspicimus magni caelestia mundi
templa, super stellisque micantibus aethera fixum,
et venit in mentem solis lunaeque viarum,
tunc aliis oppressa malis in pectora cura
illa quoque expergefactum caput erigere infit,
ne quae forte deum nobis inmensa potestas
sit, vario motu quae candida sidera verset.
temptat enim dubiam mentem rationis egestas,
ecquaenam fuerit mundi genitalis origo,
et simul ecquae sit finis, quoad moenia mundi
solliciti motus hunc possint ferre laborem,
an divinitus aeterna donata salute
perpetuo possint aevi labentia tractu
immensi validas aevi contemnere viris.
It would be impossible to adduce from any other poet a pas-
sage in which the deepest doubts and darkest terrors and most
vexing questions that beset the soul, are touched with an elo-
quence more stately and a pathos more sublime. Without
losing the sense of humanity, we are carried off into the infinite.
Such poetry is as imperishable as the subject of which it treats.
118
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
Di Firenze in prima si divisono intra loro i nobili, dipoi i nobili e il
popolo, e in ultimo il popolo e la plebe ; e molte volte occorse che una di
queste parti rimasa superiore, si divise in due.-MACHIAVELLI.
I.
a
FLORENCE, like all Italian cities, owed her independence to the
duel of the Papacy and Empire. The transference of the
imperial authority beyond the Alps had enabled the burghs of
Lombardy and Tuscany to establish a form of self-government.
This government was based upon the old municipal organisa-
tion of duumvirs and decemvirs. It was, in fact, nothing more
or less than a survival from the ancient Roman system. The
proof of this was, that while vindicating their rights as towns,
the free cities never questioned the validity of the imperial
title. Even after the peace of Constance in 1183, when
Frederick Barbarossa acknowledged their autonomy, they
received within their walls a supreme magistrate, with power of
life and death and ultimate appeal in all decisive questions,
whose title of Potestà indicated that he represented the im-
perial power-Potestas. It was not by the assertion of any
—
right, so much as by the growth of custom, and by the weak.
ness of the Emperors, that in course of time each city became
a sovereign State. The theoretical supremacy of the Empire
prevented any other authority from taking the first place in
Italy. On the other hand, the practical inefficiency of the
!
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
119
Emperors to play their part encouraged the establishment of
numerous minor powers amenable to no controlling discipline.
The free cities derived their strength from industry, and
had nothing in common with the nobles of the surrounding
country Broadly speaking, the population of the towns
included what remained in Italy of the old Roman people.
This Roman stock was nowhere stronger than in Florence and
Venice—Florence defended from barbarian incursions by her
mountains and marshes, Venice by the isolation of her lagoons.
The nobles, on the contrary, were mostly of foreign origin-
Germans, Franks, and Lombards, who had established them-
selves as feudal lords in castles apart from the cities. The
force which the burghs acquired as industrial communities was
soon turned against these nobles. The larger cities, like Milan
and Florence, began to make war upon the lords of castles,
and to absorb into their own territory the small towns and
villages around them. Thus in the social economy of the
Italians there were two antagonistic elements ready to range
themselves beneath any banners that should give the form of
legitimate warfare to their mutual hostility. It was the policy
of the Church in the twelfth century to support the cause of
the cities, using them as a weapon against the Empire, and
stimulating the growing ambition of the burghers. In this way
Italy came to be divided into the two world-famous factions
known as Guelf and Ghibelline. The struggle between Guelf
and Ghibelline was the struggle of the Papacy for the depression
of the Empire, the struggle of the great burghs face to face
with feudalism, the struggle of the old Italic stock enclosed in
cities with the foreign nobles established in fortresses. When
the Church had finally triumphed by the extirpation of the
House of Hohenstaufen, this conflict of Guelf and Ghibelline
was really ended. Until the reign of Charles V. no Emperor
interfered to any purpose in Italian affairs. At the same time
the Popes ceased to wield a formidable power. Having won
I 20
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
the battle by calling in the French, they suffered the con-
sequences of this policy by losing their hold on Italy during
the long period of their exile at Avignon. The Italians, left
without either Pope or Emperor, were free to pursue their
course of internal development, and to prosecute their quarrels
among themselves.
But though the names of Guelf and Ghi-
belline lost their old significance after the year 1266 (the date
of King Manfred's death), these two factions had so divided
Italy that they continued to play a prominent part in her annals.
Guelf still meant constitutional autonomy, meant the burgher
as against the noble, meant industry as opposed to feudal lord-
ship. Ghibelline meant the rule of the few over the many,
meant tyranny, meant the interest of the noble as against the
merchant and the citizen. These broad distinctions must be
borne in mind, if we seek to understand how it was that a city
like Florence continued to be governed by parties, the
European force of which had passed away.
U.
Florence first rose into importance during the papacy of
Innocent III. Up to this date she had been a town of second-
rate distinction even in Tuscany. Pisa was more powerful by
arms and commerce. Lucca was the old seat of the dukes and
marquises of Tuscany. But between the years 1200 and 1250
Florence assumed the place she was to hold thenceforward, by
heading the league of Tuscan cities formed to support the
Guelf party against the Ghibellines. Formally adopting the
Guelf cause, the Florentines made themselves the champions
of municipal liberty in Central Italy; and while they declared
war against the Ghibelline cities, they endeavoured to stamp
out the very name of noble in their State. It is not needful to
describe the varying fortunes of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, the
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
121
burghers and the nobles, during the thirteenth and the first
half of the fourteenth centuries. Suffice it to say that through
all the vicissitudes of that stormy period the name Guelf
became more and more associated with republican freedom in
Florence. At last, after the final triumph of that party in 1233,
the Guelfs remained victors in the city. Associating the glory
of their independence with Guelf principles, the citizens of
Florence perpetuated within their State a faction that, in its
turn, was destined to prove perilous to liberty.
When it became clear that the republic was to rule itself
henceforth untrammelled by imperial interference, the people
divided themselves into six districts, and chose for each district
two Ancients, who administered the government in concert with
the Potestà and the Captain of the People. The Ancients were
.
a relic of the old Roman municipal organisation. The Potestà,
who was invariably a noble foreigner selected by the people,
represented the extinct imperial right, and exercised the power
of life and death within the city. The Captain of the People,
who was also a foreigner, headed the burghers in their military
capacity, for at that period the troops were levied from the
citizens themselves in twenty companies. The body of the
citizens, or the popolo, were ultimately sovereigns in the State.
Assembled under the banners of their several companies, they
formed a parlamento for delegating their own power to each
successive government. Their representatives, again, arranged
in two councils, called the Council of the People and the
Council of the Commune, under the presidency of the Captain
of the People and the Potestà, ratified the measures which had
previously been proposed and carried by the executive authority
or Signoria. Under this simple State system the Florentines
placed themselves at the head of the Tuscan League, fought
the battles of the Church, asserted their sovereignty by issuing
the golden florin of the republic, and flourished until 1266.
122
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN 17ALY.
III.
In that year an important change was effected in the Con-
stitution. The whole population of Florence consisted, on the
one hand, of nobles or Grandi, as they were called in Tuscany,
and on the other hand of working people. The latter, divided
into traders and handicraftsmen, were distributed in guilds called
Arti ; and at that time there were seven Greater and five Lesser
Arti, the most influential of all being the Guild of the Wool
Merchants. These guilds had their halls for meeting, their
colleges of chief officers, their heads, called Consoli or Priors,
and their flags. In 1266 it was decided that the administration
of the commonwealth should be placed simply and wholly in
the hands of the Arti, and the Priors of these industrial com-
panies became the lords or Signory of Florence. No inhabitant
of the city who had not enrolled himself as a craftsman in one
of the guilds could exercise any function of burghership. To
be scioperato, or without industry, was to be without power,
without rank or place of honour in the State. The revolution
which placed the Arts at the head of the republic had the
practical effect of excluding the Grandi altogether from the
government. Violent efforts were made by these noble families,
potent through their territorial possessions and foreign connec-
tions, and trained from boyhood in the use of arms, to recover
the place from which the new laws thrust them : but their
menacing attitude, instead of intimidating the burghers, roused
their anger and drove them to the passing of still more strin-
gent laws. In 1283, after the Ghibellines had been defeated
in the great battle of Campaldino, a series of severe enactments,
called the Ordinances of Justice, were decreed against the un-
ruly Grandi. All civic rights were taken from them; the severest
penalties were attached to their slightest infringement of muni-
cipal law; their titles to land were limited; the privilege of
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
123
living within the city walls was allowed them only under galling
restrictions ; and, last not least, a supreme magistrate, named
the Gonfalonier of Justice, was created for the special purpose
of watching them and carrying out the penal code against them.
Henceforward Florence was governed exclusively by merchants
and artisans. The Grandi hastened to enrol themselves in the
guilds, exchanging their former titles and dignities for the solid
privilege of burghership. The exact parallel to this industrial
constitution for a commonwealth, carrying on wars with
emperors and princes, holding haughty captains in its pay, and
dictating laws to subject cities, cannot, I think, be elsewhere
found in history. It is as unique as the Florence of Dante and
Giotto is unique. While the people was guarding itself thus
stringently against the Grandi, a separate body was created for
the special purpose of extirpating the Ghibellines. A perma-
nent committee of vigilance, called the College or the Captains
of the Guelf Party, was established. It was their function to
administer the forfeited possessions of Ghibelline rebels, to
hunt out suspected citizens, to prosecute them for Ghibellinism,
to judge them, and to punish them as traitors to the common-
wealth. This body, like a little State within the State, proved
formidable to the republic itself through the unlimited and un-
it exercised over burghers whom it chose to tax
with treason. In course of time it became the oligarchical
element within the Florentine democracy, and threatened to
change the free constitution of the city into a government con-
ducted by a few powerful families.
There is no need to dwell in detail on the internal difficulties
of Florence during the first half of the fourteenth century. Two
main circumstances, however, require to be briefly noticed.
These are (i.) the contest of the Blacks and Whites, so famous
through the part played in it by Dante ; and (ii.) the tyranny
of the Duke of Athens, Walter de Brienne. The feuds of the
Blacks and Whites broke up the city into factions, and produced
a
defined sway
124
SK'ETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
i
such anarchy that at last it was found necessary to place the
republic under the protection of foreign potentates. Charles
of Valois was first chosen, and after him the Duke of Athens,
who took up his residence in the city. Entrusted with dictatorial
authority, he used his power to form a military despotism.
Though his reign of violence lasted rather less than a year, it
bore important fruits ; for the tyrant, seeking to support him-
self upon the favour of the common people, gave political power
to the Lesser Arts at the expense of the Greater, and confused
the old State-system by enlarging the democracy. The net
result of these events for Florence was, first, that the city became
habituated to rancorous party-strife, involving exiles and pro-
scriptions; and, secondly, that it lost its primitive social hierarchy
of classes.
IV.
1
After the Guelfs had conquered the Ghibellines, and the
people had absorbed the Grandi in their guilds, the next chapter
in the troubled history of Florence was the division of the
Popolo against itself. Civil strife now declared itself as a con-
flict between labour and capital. The members of the Lesser
Arts, craftsmen who plied trades subordinate to those of the
Greater Arts, rose up against their social and political superiors,
demanding a larger share in the government, a more equal dis-
tribution of profits, higher wages, and privileges that should
place them on an absolute equality with the wealthy merchants.
It was in the year 1378 that the proletariate broke out into
rebellion. Previous events had prepared the way for this revolt.
First of all, the republic had been democratised through the
destruction of the Grandi and through the popular policy pur-
sued to gain his own ends by the Duke of Athens. Secondly,
society had been shaken to its very foundation by the great
plague of 1348. Both Boccaccio and Matteo Villani draw
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
125
lively pictures of the relaxed morality and loss of order conse-
quent upon this terrible disaster ; nor had thirty years sufficed
to restore their relative position to grades and ranks confounded
by an overwhelming calamity. We may therefore reckon the
great plague of 1348 among the causes which produced the
anarchy of 1378. Rising in a mass to claim their privileges,
the artisans ejected the Signory from the Public Palace,
and for awhile Florence was at the mercy of the mob. It is
worthy of notice that the Medici, whose name is scarcely known
before this epoch, now came for one moment to the front.
Salvestro de' Medici was Gonfalonier of Justice at the time
when the tumult first broke out. He followed the faction of the
handicraftsmen, and became the hero of the day. I cannot
discover that he did more than extend a sort of passive protec-
tion to their cause. Yet there is no doubt that the attachment
of the working classes to the house of Medici dates from this
period. The rebellion of 1378 is known in Florentine history
as the Tumult of the Ciompi. The name Ciompi strictly means
the Wool-Carders. One set of operatives in the city, and that
the largest, gave its title to the whole body of the labourers.
For some months these craftsmen governed the republic,
appointing their own Signory and passing laws in their own
interest ; but, as is usual, the proletariate found itself incapable
of sustained government. The ambition and discontent of the
Ciompi foamed themselves away, and industrious working men
began to see that trade was languishing and credit on the wane.
By their own act at last they restored the government to the
Priors of the Greater Arti. Still the movement had not been
without grave consequences. It completed the levelling of
classes, which had been steadily advancing from the first in
Florence. After the Ciompi riot there was no longer not only
any distinction between noble and burgher, but the distinction
between greater and lesser guilds was practically swept away.
The classes, parties, and degrees in the republic were so broken
126
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
up, ground down, and mingled, that thenceforth the true source
of power in the State was wealth combined with personal ability.
In other words, the proper political conditions had been formed
for unscrupulous adventurers. Florence had become a demo-
cracy without social organisation, which might fall a prey to
oligarchs or despots. What remained of deeply-rooted feuds
or factions-animosities against the Grandi, hatred for the
Ghibellines, jealousy of labour and capital-offered so many
points of leverage for stirring the passions of the people and
for covering personal ambition with a cloak of public zeal.
The time was come for the Albizzi to attempt an oligarchy, and
for the Medici to begin the enslavement of the State.
V.
The Constitution of Florence offered many points of weak-
ness to the attacks of such intriguers. In the first place it was
in its origin not a political but an industrial organisation-a
simple group of guilds invested with the sovereign authority.
Its two most powerful engines, the Gonfalonier of Justice and
the Guelf College, had been formed, not with a view to the
preservation of the government, but with the purpose of quelling
the nobles and excluding a detested faction. It had no per-
manent head, like the Doge of Venice ; no fixed senate like the
Venetian Grand Council ; its chief magistrates, the Signory,
were elected for short periods of two months, and their mode
of election was open to the gravest criticism. Supposed to be
chosen by lot, they were really selected from lists drawn up by
the factions in power from time to time. These factions con-
trived to exclude the names of all but their adherents from the
bags, or borse, in which the burghers eligible for election had to
be inscribed. Furthermore, it was not possible for this shifting
Signory to conduct affairs requiring sustained effort and secret
deliberation ; therefore recourse was being continually had to
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
127
dictatorial Commissions. The people, summoned in parlia-
ment upon the Great Square, were asked to confer plenipoten-
tiary authority upon a committee called Balia, who proceeded
to do what they chose in the State, and who retained power
after the emergency for which they were created passed away.
The same instability in the supreme magistracy led to the
appointment of special commissioners for war, and special
councils, or Pratiche, for the management of each department.
Such supplementary commissions not only proved the weakness
of the central authority, but they were always liable to be made
the instruments of party warfare. The Guelf College was
another and a different source of danger to the State. Not
acting under the control of the Signory, but using its own
initiative, this powerful body could proscribe and punish burghers
on the mere suspicion of Ghibellinism. Though the Ghibelline
faction had become an empty name, the Guelf College excluded
from the franchise all and every whom they chose on any
pretext to admonish. Under this mild phrase, to admonish, was
concealed a cruel exercise of tyranny-it meant to warn a man
that he was suspected of treason, and that he had better relin-
quish the exercise of his burghership. By free use of this
engine of Admonition, the Guelf College rendered their enemies
voiceless in the State, and were able to pack the Signory and
the councils with their own creatures. Another important
defect in the Florentine Constitution was the method of imposing
taxes. This was done by no regular system. The party in
power made what estimate it chose of a man's capacity to bear
taxation, and called upon him for extraordinary loans. In this
way citizens were frequently driven into bankruptcy and exile ;
and since to be a debtor to the State deprived a burgher of his
civic rights, severe taxation was one of the best ways of silencing
and neutralising a dissentient.
I have enumerated these several causes of weakness in the
Florentine State-system, partly because they show how irregu-
a
128
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
a
larly the Constitution had been formed by the patching and
extension of a simple industrial machine to suit the needs of a
great commonwealth ; partly because it was through these
defects that the democracy merged gradually into a despotism.
The art of the Medici consisted in a scientific comprehension
of these very imperfections, a methodic use of them for their
own purposes, and a steady opposition to any attempts made
to substitute a stricter system. The Florentines had determined
to be an industrial community, governing themselves on the co-
operative principle, dividing profits, sharing losses, and exposing
their magistrates to rigid scrutiny. All this in theory was ex-
cellent. Had they remained an unambitious and peaceful
commonwealth, engaged in the wool and silk trade, it might
have answered. Modern Europe might have admired the model
of a communistic and commercial democracy. But when they
engaged in aggressive wars, and sought to enslave sister-cities
like Pisa and Lucca, it was soon found that their simple trading
constitution would not serve. They had to piece it out with sub-
ordinate machinery, cumbrous, difficult to manage, ill-adapted
to the original structure. Each limb of this subordinate ma-
chinery, moreover, was a point d'appui for insidious and self-
seeking party leaders.
Florence, in the middle of the fourteenth century, was a
vast beehive of industry. Distinctions of rank among burghers,
qualified to vote and hold office, were theoretically unknown.
Highly educated men, of more than princely wealth, spent
their time in shops and counting-houses, and trained their
sons to follow trades. Military service at this period was
abandoned by the citizens; they preferred to pay mercenary
troops for the conduct of their wars. Nor was there, as in
Venice, any outlet for their energies upon the seas. Florence
had no navy, no great port—she only kept a small fleet for the
protection of her commerce. Thus the vigour of the common-
wealth was concentrated on itself ; while the influence of the
FLORENCE AND TIE MEDICI.
129
a
citizens, through their affiliated trading-houses, correspondents,
and agents, extended like a network over Europe. In a com-
munity of this kind it was natural that wealth-rank and titles
being absent-should alone confer distinction. Accordingly
we find that out of the very bosom of the people a new pluto-
cratic aristocracy begins to rise. The Grandi are no more ;
but certain families achieve distinction by their riches, their
numbers, their high spirit, and their ancient place of honour in
the State. These nobles of the purse obtained the name of
Popolani Nobili ; and it was they who now began to play at
high stakes for the supreme power. In all the subsequent
vicissitudes of Florence every change takes place by intrigue
and by clever manipulation of the political machine. Recourse
is rarely had to violence of any kind, and the leaders of revolu-
tions are men of the yard-measure, never of the sword. The
despotism to which the republic eventually succumbed was no
less commercial than the democracy had been. Florence in
the days of her slavery remained a Popolo.
VI.
The opening of the second half of the fourteenth century
had been signalised by the feuds of two great houses, both
risen from the people. These were the Albizzi and the Ricci.
At this epoch there had been a formal closing of the lists of
burghers ;-henceforth no new families who might settle in the
city could claim the franchise, vote in the assemblies, or hold
magistracies. The Guelf College used their old engine of
admonition to persecute novi homines, whom they dreaded
as opponents. At the head of this formidable organisation the
Albizzi placed themselves, and worked it with such skill that
they succeeded in driving the Ricci out of all participation in
the government. The tumult of the Ciompi formed but an
K
130
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
episode in their career toward oligarchy ; indeed, that revolu-
tion only rendered the political material of the Florentine
republic more plastic in the hands of intriguers, by removing
the last vestiges of class distinctions and by confusing the old
parties of the State.
When the Florentines in 1387 engaged in their long duel
with Gian Galeazzo Visconti, the difficulty of conducting this
war without some permanent central authority still further
confirmed the power of the rising oligarchs. The Albizzi
became daily more autocratic, until in 1393 their chief, Maso
degli Albizzi, a man of strong will and prudent policy, was
chosen Gonfalonier of Justice. Assuming the sway of a
dictator he revised the list of burghers capable of holding
office, struck out the private opponents of his house, and ex-
cluded all names but those of powerful families who were well
affected towards an aristocratic government. The great house
of the Alberti were exiled in a body, declared rebels, and
deprived of their possessions, for no reason except that they
seemed dangerous to the Albizzi. It was in vain that the
people murmured against these arbitrary acts. The new
rulers were omnipotent in the Signory, which they packed with
their own men, in the great guilds, and in the Guelf College.
All the machinery invented by the industrial community for
its self-management and self-defence was controlled and mani-
pulated by a close body of aristocrats, with the Albizzi at their
head. It seemed as though Florence, without any visible
alteration in her forms of government, was rapidly becoming
an oligarchy even less open than the Venetian republic. Mean-
while the affairs of the State were most flourishing. The
strong-handed masters of the city not only held the Duke of
Milan in check, and prevented him from turning Italy into a
kingdom ; they furthermore acquired the cities of Pisa, Livorno,
Arezzo, Montepulciano, and Cortona, for Florence, making her
the mistress of all Tuscany, with the exception of Siena, Lucca,
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
131
and Volterra. Maso degli Albizzi was the ruling spirit of the
commonwealth, spending the enormous sum of 11,500,000
golden florins on war, raising sumptuous edifices, protecting
the arts, and acting in general like a powerful and irresponsible
prince.
In spite of public prosperity there were signs, however,
that this rule of a few families could not last. Their government
was only maintained by continual revision of the lists of
burghers, by elimination of the disaffected, and by unremitting
personal industry. They introduced no new machinery into
the Constitution whereby the people might be deprived of its
titular sovereignty, or their own dictatorship might be continued
with a semblance of legality. Again, they neglected to win
over the new nobles (nobili popolani) in a body to their cause;
and thus they were surrounded by rivals ready to spring upon
them when a false step should be made. The Albizzi oligarchy
was a masterpiece of art, without any force to sustain it but
the craft and energy of its constructors.
It had not grown up,
like the Venetian oligarchy, by the gradual assimilation to itself
of all the vigour in the State. It was bound, sooner or later, to
yield to the renascent impulse of democracy inherent in Floren-
tine institutions.
VII.
Maso degli Albizzi died in 1417. He was succeeded in
the government by his old friend, Niccolo da Uzzano, a man
of great eloquence and wisdom, whose single word swayed the
councils of the people as he listed. Together with him acted
Maso's son, Rinaldo, a youth of even more brilliant talents
than his father, frank, noble, and high-spirited, but far less
cautious.
The oligarchy, which these two men undertook to manage,
had accumulated against itself the discontent of overtaxed,
K 2
132
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
disfranchised, jealous burghers. The times, too, were bad.
Pursuing the policy of Maso, the Albizzi engaged the city
in a tedious and unsuccessful war with Filippo Maria
Visconti, which cost 350,000 golden florins, and brought no
credit. In order to meet extraordinary expenses they raised
new public loans, thereby depreciating the value of the old
Florentine funds. What was worse, they imposed forced
subsidies with grievous inequality upon the burghers, passing
over their friends and adherents, and burdening their opponents
with more than could be borne. This imprudent financial
policy began the ruin of the Albizzi. It caused a clamour in
the city for a new system of more just taxation, which was too
powerful to be resisted. The voice of the people made itself
loudly heard ; and with the people on this occasion sided
Giovanni de' Medici.
This was in 1427.
It is here that the Medici appear upon that memorable
scene where in the future they are to play the first part.
Giovanni de' Medici did not belong to the same branch of his
family as the Salvestro who favoured the people at the time of
the Ciompi Tumult. But he adopted the same popular policy.
To his sons Cosimo and Lorenzo he bequeathed on his death-
bed the rule that they should invariably adhere to the cause of
the multitude, found their influence on that, and avoid the
arts of factious and ambitious leaders. In his own life he had
pursued this course of conduct, acquiring a reputation for civic
moderation and impartiality that endeared him to the people
and stood his children in good stead. Early in his youth
Giovanni found himself almost destitute by reason of the im-
posts charged upon him by the oligarchs. He possessed,
however, the genius for money-making to a rare degree, and
passed his manhood as a banker, amassing the largest fortune
of any private citizen in Italy. In his old age he devoted
himself to the organisation of his colossal trading business, and
abstained, as far as possible, from political intrigues. Men
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
133
observed that they rarely met him in the Public Palace or on
the Great Square.
Cosimo de' Medici was thirty years old when his father
Giovanni died, in 1429. During his youth he had devoted all
his time and energy to business, mastering the complicated
affairs of Giovanni's banking-house, and travelling far and wide
through Europe to extend its connections. This education
made him a consummate financier; and those who knew him
best were convinced that his ambition was set on great things.
However quietly he might begin, it was clear that he intended
to match himself, as a leader of the plebeians, against the Albizzi.
The foundations he prepared for future action were equally
characteristic of the man, of Florence, and of the age. Com-
manding the enormous capital of the Medicean bank he con-
trived, at any sacrifice of temporary convenience, to lend
money to the State for war expenses, engrossing in his own
hands a large portion of the public debt of Florence. At the
same time his agencies in various European capitals enabled
him to keep his own wealth floating far beyond the reach of
foes within the city. A few years of this system ended in so
complete a confusion between Cosimo's trade and the finances
of Florence that the bankruptcy of the Medici, however
caused, would have compromised the credit of the State and
the fortunes of the fund-holders. Cosimo, in a word, made
himself necessary to Florence by the wise use of his riches.
Furthermore, he kept his eye upon the list of burghers, lending
money to needy citizens, putting good things in the way of
struggling traders, building up the fortunes of men who were
disposed to favour his party in the State, ruining his opponents
by the legitimate process of commercial competition, and,
when occasion offered, introducing new voters into the Floren-
tine Council by paying off the debts of those who were dis-
qualified by poverty from using the franchise. While his
capital was continually increasing he lived frugally, and em-.
134
SKETCIIES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
ployed his wealth solely for the consolidation of his political in-
fluence. By these arts Cosimo became formidable to the
oligarchs and beloved by the people. His supporters were
numerous, and held together by the bonds of immediate neces-
sity or personal cupidity. The plebeians and the merchants
were all on his side. The Grandi and the Ammoniti, excluded
from the State by the practices of the Albizzi, had more to
hope from the Medicean party than from the few families who
still contrived to hold the reins of government. It was clear
that a conflict to the death must soon commence between the
oligarchy and this new faction.
VIII.
At last, in 1433, war was declared. The first blow was
struck by Rinaldo degli Albizzi, who put himself in the
wrong by attacking a citizen indispensable to the people at
large, and guilty of no unconstitutional act.
On Sep-
tember 7th of that year, a year decisive for the future destinies
of Florence, he summoned Cosimo to the Public Palace,
which he had previously occupied with troops at his command.
There he declared him a rebel to the State, and had him im-
prisoned in a little square room in the central tower. The
tocsin was sounded ; the people were assembled in parliament
upon the piazza. The Albizzi held the main streets with
armed men, and forced the Florentines to place plenipoten-
tiary power for the administration of the commonwealth at
this crisis in the hands of a Balla, or committee selected by
themselves. It was always thus that acts of high tyranny were
effected in Florence. A show of legality was secured by gain-
ing the compulsory sanction of the people, driven by soldiery
into the public square, and hastily ordered to recognise the
authority of their oppressors.
1
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
135
The bill of indictment against the Medici accused them of
sedition in the year 1378, that is in the year of the Ciompi
Tumult, and of treasonable practice during the whole course
of the Albizzi administration. It also strove to fix upon them
the odium of the unsuccessful war against the town of Lucca.
As soon as the Albizzi had unmasked their batteries, Lorenzo
de' Medici managed to escape from the city, and took with
him his brother Cosimo's children to Venice.
Cosimo re-
mained shut up within the little room called Barberia in
Arnolfo's tower. From that high eagle's nest the sight can
range Valdarno far and wide. Florence with her towers and
domes lies below; and the blue peaks of Carrara close a pro-
spect westward than which, with its villa-jewelled slopes and
fertile gardens, there is nought more beautiful upon the face
of earth. The prisoner can have paid but little heed to this
fair landscape. He heard the frequent ringing of the great
bell that called the Florentines to council, the tramp of armed
men on the piazza, the coming and going of the burghers in
the palace halls beneath. On all sides lurked anxiety and fear
of death. Each mouthful he tasted might be poisoned. For
many days he partook of only bread and water, till his gaoler
restored his confidence by sharing all his meals. In this peril
he abode twenty-four days. The Albizzi, in concert with the
Balia they had formed, were consulting what they might ven-
ture to do with him. Some voted for his execution. Others
feared the popular favour, and thought that if they killed
Cosimo this act would ruin their own power. The nobler
natures among them determined to proceed by constitutional
At last, upon September 29th, it was settled that
Cosimo should be exiled to Padua for ten years. The Medici
were declared Grandi, by way of excluding them from political
rights. But their property remained untouched ; and on
October 3rd, Cosimo was released.
On the same day Cosimo took his departure. His journey
measures.
136
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
northward resembled a triumphant progress. He left Florence
a simple burgher; he entered Venice a powerful prince.
Though the Albizzi seemed to have gained the day, they had
really cut away the ground beneath their feet. They com-
mitted the fatal mistake of doing both too much and too little
—too much because they declared war against an innocent
man, and roused the sympathies of the whole people in his
behalf; too little, because they had not the nerve to complete
their act by killing him outright and extirpating his party.
Machiavelli, in one of his profoundest and most cynical
critiques, remarks that few men know how to be thoroughly
bad with honour to themselves. Their will is evil ; but the
grain of good in them--some fear of public opinion, some re-
pugnance to committing a signal crime-paralyses their arm at
the moment when it ought to have been raised to strike. He
instances Gian Paolo Baglioni's omission to murder Julius II.,
when that Pope placed himself within his clutches at Perugia.
He might also have instanced Rinaldo degli Albizzi's refusal to
push things to extremities by murdering Cosimo. It was the
combination of despotic violence in the exile of Cosimo with
constitutional moderation in the preservation of his life, that
betrayed the weakness of the oligarchs and restored confidence
to the Medicean party.
IX.
In the course of the year 1434 this party began to hold up
its head. Powerful as the Albizzi were, they only retained the
government by artifice ; and now they had done a deed which
put at nought their former arts and intrigues. A Signory
favourable to the Medici came into office, and on September
26, 1434, Rinaldo in his turn was summoned to the palace and
declared a rebel. He strove to raise the forces of his party,
and entered the piazza at the head of eight hundred men.
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
137
The menacing attitude of the people, however, made resistance
perilous. Rinaldo disbanded his troops, and placed himself
under the protection of Pope Eugenius IV., who was then
resident in Florence. This act of submission proved that
Rinaldo had not the courage or the cruelty to try the chance
of civil war.
Whatever his motives may have been, he lost
his hold upon the State beyond recovery. On September 29th,
a new parliament was summoned ; on October 2nd, Cosimo was
recalled from exile and the Albizzi were banished. The in-
tercession of the Pope procured for them nothing but the
liberty to leave Florence unmolested. Rinaldo turned his
back upon the city he had governed, never to set foot in it
again. On October 6th, Cosimo, having passed through Padua,
Ferrara, and Modena like a conqueror, re-entered the town
amid the plaudits of the people, and took up his dwelling as
an honoured guest in the Palace of the Republic. The subse.
quent history of Florence is the history of his family. In after
years the Medici loved to remember this return of Cosimo.
His triumphal reception was painted in fresco on the walls of
their villa at Cajano under the transparent allegory of Cicero's
entrance into Rome.
X.
By their brief exile the Medici had gained the credit of
injured innocence, the fame of martyrdom in the popular cause,
Their foes had struck the first blow, and in striking at them
had seemed to aim against the liberties of the republic. The
mere failure of their adversaries to hold the power they had
acquired, handed over this power to the Medici ; and the
reprisals which the Medici began to take had the show of
justice, not of personal hatred, or of petty vengeance. Cosimo
was a true Florentine. He disliked violence, because he knew
that blood spilt cries for blood. His passions, too, were cool
138
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
and temperate. No gust of anger, no intoxication of success,
destroyed his balance. His one object, the consolidation of
power for his family on the basis of popular favour, was kept
steadily in view; and he would do nothing that might com-
promise that end. Yet he was neither generous nor merciful.
We therefore find that from the first moment of his return to
Florence he instituted a system of pitiless and unforgiving
persecution against his old opponents.
The Albizzi were
banished, root and branch, with all their followers, consigned
to lonely and often to unwholesome stations through the length
and breadth of Italy. If they broke the bonds assigned them,
they were forthwith declared traitors and their property was
confiscated. After a long series of years, by merely keeping in
force the first sentence pronounced upon them, Cosimo had
the cruel satisfaction of seeing the whole of that proud oli-
garchy die out by slow degrees in the insufferable tedium of
solitude and exile. Even the high-souled Palla degli Strozzi,
who had striven to remain neutral, and whose wealth and
talents were devoted to the revival of classical studies, was
proscribed because to Cosimo he seemed too powerful. Sepa-
rated from his children, he died in banishment at Padua. In
this
way the return of the Medici involved the loss to Florence
of some noble citizens, who might perchance have checked the
Medicean tyranny if they had stayed to guide the State. The
plebeians, raised to wealth and influence by Cosimo before his
exile, now took the lead in the republic. He used these men
as cat's-paws, rarely putting himself forward or allowing his
own name to appear, but pulling the wires of government in
privacy by means of intermediate agents. The Medicean
party was called at first Puccini from a certain Puccio, whose
name was better known in caucus or committee than that of his
real master.
To rule through these creatures of his own making
taxed all the ingenuity of Cosimo; but his profound and
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
139
subtle intellect was suited to the task, and he found un-
limited pleasure in the exercise of his consummate craft. We
have already seen to what extent he used his riches for the
acquisition of political influence. Now that he had come to
power, he continued the same method, packing the Signory
and the Councils with men whom he could hold by debt be-
tween his thumb and finger. His command of the public
moneys enabled him to wink at peculation in State offices; it
was part of his system to bind magistrates and secretaries to
his interest by their consciousness of guilt condoned but not
forgotten. Not a few, moreover, owed their living to the ap-
pointments he procured for them. While he thus controlled
the wheel-work of the commonwealth by means of organised
corruption, he borrowed the arts of his old enemies to oppress
dissentient citizens. If a man took an independent line in
voting, and refused allegiance to the Medicean party, he was
niarked out for persecution. No violence was used ; but he
found himself hampered in his commerce-money, plentiful for
others, became scarce for him ; his competitors in trade were
1
subsidised to undersell him. And while the avenues of
industry were closed, his fortune was taxed above its value,
until he had to sell at a loss in order to discharge his public
obligations. In the first twenty years of the Medicean rule,
seventy families had to pay 4,875,000 golden florins of extra-
ordinary imposts, fixed by arbitrary assessment.
The more patriotic members of his party looked with dread
and loathing on this system of corruption and exclusion. To
their remonstrances Cosimo replied in four memorable sayings :
• Better the State spoiled than the State not ours. “Govern-
ments cannot be carried on with paternosters.' 'An ell of
scarlet makes a burgher.' 'I aim at finite ends.' These
maxims represent the whole man,-first, in his egotism, eager
to gain Florence for his family, at any risk of her ruin ; secondly,
in his cynical acceptance of base means to selfish ends ; thirdly
6
6
140
SK’ETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
in his bourgeois belief that money makes a man, and fine
clothes suffice for a citizen ; fourthly, in his worldly ambition
bent on positive success. It was, in fact, his policy to reduce
Florence to the condition of a rotten borough : nor did this
policy fail.
One notable sign of the influence he exercised was
the change which now came over the foreign relations of the
republic. Up to the date of his dictatorship Florence had
uniformly fought the ba:tle of freedom in Italy. It was the
chief merit of the Albizzi oligarchy that they continued the
traditions of the mediaval State, and by their vigorous action
checked the growth of the Visconti. Though they engrossed
the government they never forgot that they were first of all
things Florentines, and only in the second place men who
owed their power and influence to office. In a word, they
acted like patriotic Tories, like republican patricians. There-
fore they would not ally themselves with tyrants or countenance
the enslavement of free cities by armed despots. Their sub-
jugation of the Tuscan burghs to Florence was itself part of a
grand republican policy. Cosimo changed all this. When
the Visconti dynasty ended by the death of Filippo Maria in
1447, there was a chance of restoring the independence of
Lombardy. Milan in effect declared herself a republic, and
by the aid of Florence she might at this moment have main-
tained her liberty. Cosimo, however, entered into treaty with
Francesco Sforza, supplied him with money, guaranteed him
against Florentine interference, and saw with satisfaction how
he reduced the duchy to his military tyranny. The Medici
were conscious that they, selfishly, had most to gain by sup-
porting despots who in time of need might help them to con-
firm their own authority. With the same end in view, when
the legitimate line of the Bentivogli was extinguished, Cosimo
hunted out a bastard pretender of that family, presented him
to the chiefs of the Bentivogli faction, and had him placed
upon the seat of his supposed ancestors at Bologna. This
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
141
a
young man, a certain Santi da Cascese, presumed to be the son
of Ercole de' Bentivogli, was an artisan in a wool factory when
Cosimo set eyes upon him. At first Santi refused the dan.
gerous honour of governing a proud republic; but the intrigues
of Cosimo prevailed, and the obscure craftsman ended his
days a powerful prince.
By the arts I have attempted to describe, Cosimo in the
course of his long life absorbed the forces of the republic into
himself. While he shunned the external signs of despotic
power he made himself the master of the State.
His com-
plexion was of a pale olive; his stature short ; abstemious
;
and simple in his habits, affable in conversation, sparing of
speech, he knew how to combine that burgher-like civility for
which the Romans praised Augustus, with the reality of a des-
potism all the more difficult to combat because it seemed no-
where and was everywhere. When he died, at the age of
seventy-five, in 1464, the people whom he had enslaved, but
whom he had neither injured nor insulted, honoured lim with
the title of Pater Patrice. This was inscribed upon his tomb
in S. Lorenzo. He left to posterity the fame of a great and
generous patron,' the infamy of a cynical, self-seeking, bour-
geois tyrant. Such combinations of contradictory qualities
were common enough at the time of the Renaissance. Did
not Machiavelli spend his days in tavern-brawls and low
amours, his nights among the mighty spirits of the dead, with
whom, when he had changed his country suit of homespun for
the habit of the court, he found himself an honoured equal?
1 For an estimate of Cosimo's services to art and literature, his collection
of libraries, his great buildings, his generosity to scholars, and his promotion
of Greek studies, I may refer to my Renaissance in Italy: “The Revival
of Learning,' chap. iv.
>
142
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
XI.
Cosimo had shown consummate skill by governing Florence
through a party created and raised to influence by himself.
The jealousy of these adherents formed the chief difficulty with
which his son Piero had to contend. Unless the Medici could
manage to kick down the ladder whereby they had risen, they
ran the risk of losing all. As on a former occasion, so now
they profited by the mistakes of their antagonists. Three
chief men of their own party, Diotisalvi Neroni, Agnolo Ac-
ciaiuoli, and Luca Pitti, determined to shake off the yoke of
their masters, and to repay the Medici for what they owed by
leading them to ruin. Niccolo Soderini, a patriot, indignant
at the slow enslavement of his country, joined them. At first
they strove to undermine the credit of the Medici with the
Florentines by inducing Piero to call in the moneys placed at
interest by his father in the hands of private citizens. This act
was unpopular ; but it did not suffice to move a revolution.
To proceed by constitutional measures against the Medici was
judged impolitic. Therefore the conspirators decided to take,
if possible, Piero's life. The plot failed, chiefly owing to the
coolness and the cunning of the young Lorenzo, Piero's eldest
Public sympathy was strongly excited against the ag-
gressors. Neroni, Acciaiuoli, and Soderini were exiled. Pitti
was allowed to stay, dishonoured, powerless, and penniless, in
Florence. Meanwhile, the failure of their foes had only served
to strengthen the position of the Medici. The ladder had
saved them the trouble of kicking it down.
The congratulations addressed on this occasion to Piero
and Lorenzo by the ruling powers of Italy show that the
Medici were already regarded as princes outside Florence.
Lorenzo and Giuliano, the two sons of Piero, travelled abroad
to the courts of Milan and Ferrara with the style and state of
son.
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
143
more than simple citizens. At home they occupied the first
place on all occasions of public ceremony, receiving royal
visitors on terms of equality, and performing the hospitalities
of the republic like men who had been born to represent its dig-
nities. Lorenzo's marriage to Clarice Crsini, of the noble
Roman house, was another sign that the Medici were advanc-
ing on the way toward despotism. Cosimo had avoided
foreign alliances for his children. His descendants now
judged themselves firmly planted enough to risk the odium of
a princely match for the sake of the support outside the city
they might win.
XII.
His son
Piero de' Medici died in December 1469.
Lorenzo was then barely twenty-two years of age. The chiefs
of the Medicean party, all-powerful in the State, held a council,
in which they resolved to place him in the same position as
his father and grandfather. This resolve seems to have been
formed after mature deliberation, on the ground that the exist-
ing conditions of Italian politics rendered it impossible to con-
duct the government without a presidential head. Florence,
though still a democracy, required a permanent chief to treat
on an equality with the princes of the leading cities. Here we
may note the prudence of Cosimo's foreign policy. When he
helped to establish despots in Milan and Bologna he was
rendering the presidency of his own family in Florence necessary.
Lorenzo, having received this invitation, called attention
to his youth and inexperience. Yet he did not refuse it; and,
after a graceful display of diffidence, he accepted the charge,
entering thus upon that famous political career, in the course
of which he not only established and maintained a balance of
power in Italy, with Florence for the central city, but also con-
144
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
trived to remodel the government of the republic in the interest
of his own family and to strengthen the Medici by relations
with the Papal See.
The extraordinary versatility of this man's intellectual and
social gifts, his participation in all the literary and philosophical
interests of his century, his large and liberal patronage of art, and
the gaiety with which he joined the people of Florence in their
pastimes—Mayday games and Carnival festivities--strength-
ened his hold upon the city in an age devoted to culture and
refined pleasure. Whatever was most brilliant in the spirit of
the Italian Renaissance seemed to be incarnate in Lorenzo.
Not merely as a patron and a dilettante, but as a poet and a
critic, a philosopher and scholar, he proved himself adequate
to the varied intellectual ambitions of his country. Penetrated
with the passion for erudition which distinguished Florence in
the fifteenth century, familiar with her painters and her sculp-
tors, deeply read in the works of her great poets, he conceived
the ideal of infusing the spirit of antique civility into modern
life, and of effecting for society what the artists were performing
in their own sphere. To preserve the native character of the
Florentine genius, while he added the grace of classic ſorm,
was the aim to which his tastes and instincts led him. At the
same time, while he made himself the master of Floren-
tine revels and the Augustus of Renaissance literature, he
took care that beneath his carnival masks and ball-dress
should be concealed the chains which he was forging for the
republic.
What he lacked, with so much mental brilliancy, was moral
greatness. The age he lived in was an age of selfish despots,
.
treacherous generals, godless priests. It was an age of intel-
lectual vigour and artistic creativeness; but it was also an age of
mean ambition, sordid policy, and vitiated principles. Lorenzo
remained true in all respects to the genius of this age : true to
its enthusiasm for antique culture, true to its passion for art,
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
145
true to its refined love of pleasure ; but true also to its petty
political intrigues, to its cynical selfishness, to its lack of heroism.
For Florence he looked no higher and saw no further than
Cosimo had done. If culture was his pastime, the enslavement
of the city by bribery and corruption was the hard work of his
manhood. As is the case with much Renaissance art, his life
was worth more for its decorative detail than for its constructive
design. In richness, versatility, variety, and exquisiteness of
execution, it left little to be desired; yet, viewed at a distance,
and as a whole, it does not inspire us with a sense of architec-
tonic majesty.
XIII.
Lorenzo's chief difficulties arose from the necessity under
which, like Cosimo, he laboured of governing the city through
its old institutions by means of a party. To keep the members
of this party in good temper, and to gain their approval for the
alterations he effected in the State-machinery of Florence, was
the problem of his life. The successful solution of this problem
was easier now, after two generations of the Medicean
ascendency, than it had been at first. Meanwhile the people
were maintained in good humour by public shows, ease, plenty,
and a general laxity of discipline. The splendour of Lorenzo's
foreign alliances and the consideration he received from all
the Courts of Italy contributed in no small measure to his
popularity and security at home. By using his authority over
Florence to inspire respect abroad, and by using his foreign
credit to impose upon the burghers, Lorenzo displayed the
tact of a true Italian diplomatist. His genius for statecraft, as
then understood, was indeed of a rare order, equally adapted to
the conduct of a complicated foreign policy and to the control
of a suspicious and variable Commonwealth. In one point
alone he was inferior to his grandfather. He neglected
L
146
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
coinmerce, and allowed his banking business to fall into dis-
order so hopeless that in course of time he ceased to be solvent.
Meanwhile his personal expenses, both as a prince in his own
palace, and as the representative of majesty in Florence, con-
tinually increased. The bankruptcy of the Medici, it had long
,
been foreseen, would involve the public finances in serious
confusion. And now, in order to retrieve his fortunes, Lorenzo
was not only obliged to repudiate his debts to the exchequer,
but had also to gain complete disposal of the State-purse. It
was this necessity that drove him to effect the constitutional
revolution of 1480, by which he substituted a Privy Council of
seventy members for the old Councils of the State, absorbing
the chief functions of the commonwealth into this single body,
whom he practically nominated at pleasure. The same want
of money led to the great scandal of his reign-the plundering
of the Monte delle Doti, or State Insurance-Office Fund for
securing dowers to the children of its creditors.
XIV.
While tracing the salient points of Lorenzo de' Medici's
administration I have omitted to mention the important events
which followed shortly after his accession to power in 1469.
What happened between that date and 1480 was not only
decisive for the future fortunes of the Casa Medici, but it was
also eminently characteristic of the perils and the difficulties
which beset Italian despots. The year 1471 was signalised by
a visit by the Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan, and his
wife Bona of Savoy, to the Medici in Florence. They came
attended by their whole Court-body-guards on horse and
foot, ushers, pages, falconers, grooms, kennel-varlets, and
huntsmen. Omitting the mere baggage service, their train
counted two thousand horses. To mention this incident would
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
147
be superfluous, had not so acute an observer as Machiavelli
marked it out as a turning point in Florentine history. Now,
for the first time, the democratic commonwealth saw its streets
filled with a mob of courtiers. Masques, balls, and tourna-
ments succeeded each other with magnificent variety; and all
the arts of Florence were pressed into the service of these
festivals. Machiavelli says that the burghers lost the last
remnant of their old austerity of manners, and became, like the
degenerate Romans, ready to obey the masters who provided
them with brilliant spectacles. They gazed with admiration on
the pomp of Italian princes, their dissolute and godless living,
their luxury and prodigal expenditure; and when the Medici
affected similar habits in the next generation, the people had
no courage to resist the invasion of their pleasant vices.
In the same year, 1471, Volterra was reconquered for the
Florentines by Frederick of Urbino. The honours of this
victory, disgraced by a brutal sack of the conquered city, in
violation of its articles of capitulation, were reserved for
Lorenzo, who returned in triumph to Florence. More than
ever he assumed the prince, and in his person undertook to
represent the State.
In the same year, 1471, Francesco della Rovere was raised to
the papacy with the memorable name of Sixtus IV. Sixtus
was a man of violent temper and fierce passions, restless and
impatiently ambitious, bent on the aggrandisement of the
beautiful and wanton youths, his nephews. Of these the most
aspiring was Girolamo Riario, for whom Sixtus bought the
town of Imola from Taddeo Manfredi, in order that he might
possess the title of count and the nucleus of a tyranny in the
Romagna. This purchase thwarted the plans of Lorenzo, who
wished to secure the same advantages for Florence. Smarting
with the sense of disappointment, he forbade the Roman
banker, Francesco Pazzi, to guarantee the purchase-money.
By this act Lorenzo made two mortal foes-the Pope and
L 2
148
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Francesco Pazzi. Francesco was a thin, pale, atrabilious
fanatic, all nerve and passion, with a monomanaic intensity of
purpose, and a will inflamed and guided by imagination-a
man formed by nature for conspiracy, such a man, in fact,
as Snakspere drew in Cassius. Maddened by Lorenzo's
prohibition, he conceived the notion of overthrowing the
Medici in Florence by a violent blow. Girolamo Riario
entered into his views. So did Francesco Salviati, Archbishop
of Pisa, who had private reasons for hostility. These men
found no difficulty in winning over Sixtus to their plot ; nor is
it possible to purge the Pope of participation in what followed.
I need not describe by what means Francesco drew the other
members of his family into the scheme, and how he secured
the assistance of armed cutthroats. Suffice it to say that the
chief conspirators, with the exception of the Count Girolamo,
betook themselves to Florence, and there, after the failure of
other attempts, decided to murder Lorenzo and his brother
Giuliano in the cathedral on Sunday, the 26th of April, 1478.
The moment when the priest at the high altar finished the
mass, was fixed for the assassination. Everything was ready.
The conspirators, by Judas kisses and embracements, had
discovered that the young men wore no protective armour under
their silken doublets. Pacing the aisle behind the choir, they
feared no treason. And now the lives of both might easily
have been secured, if at the last moment the courage of the
hired assassins had not failed them. Murder, they said, was
well enough ; but they could not bring themselves to stab
men before the newly consecrated body of Christ. In this
extremity a priest was found, who,“ being accustomed to
churches,” had no scruples. He and another reprobate were
told off to Lorenzo. Francesco de' Pazzi himself undertook
Giuliano. The moment for attack arrived. Francesco plunged
his dagger into the heart of Giuliano. Then, not satisfied with
this death-blow, he struck again, and in his heat of passion
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
149
wounded his own thigh. Lorenzo escaped with a flesh-wound
from the poniard of the priest, and rushed into the sacristy,
where his friend Poliziano shut and held the brazen door.
The plot had failed ; for Giuliano, of the two brothers, was the
one whom the conspirators would the more willingly have
spared. The whole church was in an uproar. The city rose
in tumult. Rage and horror took possession of the people.
They flew to the Palazzo Pubblico and to the houses of the
Pazzi, hunted the conspirators from place to place, hung the
archbishop by the neck from the palace windows, and, as they
found fresh victims for their fury, strung them one by one in a
ghastly row at his side above the Square. About one hundred
in all were killed. None who had joined in the plot escaped ;
for Lorenzo had long arms, and one man, who fled to Con-
stantinople, was delivered over to his agents by the Sultan.
Out of the whole Pazzi family only Guglielmo, the husband
of Bianca de' Medici, was spared. When the tumult was over,
Andrea del Castagno painted the portraits of the traitors head.
downwards upon the walls of the Bargello Palace, in order that
all men might know what fate awaited the foes of the Medici
and of the State of Florence.! Meanwhile a bastard son of
Giuliano's was received into the Medicean household, to
perpetuate his lineage. This child, named Giulio, was destined
to be famous in the annals of Italy and Florence under the
title of Pope Clement VII.
XV.
As is usual when such plots miss their mark, the passions
excited redounded to the profit of the injured party. The
commonwealth felt that the blow struck at Lorenzo had been
· Giottino had painted the Duke of Athens, in like manner, on the
same walls.
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
aimed at their majesty. Sixtus, on the other hand, could not
contain his rage at the failure of so ably planned a coup de
main. Ignoring that he had sanctioned the treason, that a
priest had put his hand to the dagger, that the impious deed
had been attempted in a church before the very Sacrament of
Christ, whose vicar on earth he was, the Pope now excom-
municated the Republic. The reason he alleged was, that
the Florentines had dared to hang an archbishop.
Thus began a war to the death between Sixtus and Florence.
The Pope inflamed the whole of Italy, and carried on a ruinous
campaign in Tuscany. It seemed as though the republic
might lose her subject cities, always ready to revolt when
danger threatened the sovereign State. Lorenzo's position
became critical. Sixtus made no secret of the hatred he bore
him personally, declaring that he fought less with Florence
than with the Medici. To support the odium of this long war
and this heavy interdict alone, was more than he could do. His
allies forsook him. Naples was enlisted on the Pope's side.
Milan and the other States of Lombardy were occupied with
their own affairs, and held aloof. In this extremity he saw that
nothing but a bold step could save him. The league formed
by Sixtus must be broken up at any risk, and, if possible, by
his own ability. On the 6th of December, 1479, Lorenzo left
Florence, unarmed and unattended, took ship at Leghorn, and
proceeded to the court of the enemy, King Ferdinand, at
Naples. Ferdinand was a cruel and treacherous sovereign,
who had murdered his guest, Jacopo Piccinino, at a banquet
given in his honour. But Ferdinand was the son of Alfonso,
who, by address and eloquence, had gained a kingdom from
his foe and jailor, Filippo Maria Visconti. Lorenzo calculated
that he too, following Alfonso's policy, might prove to Ferdinand
how little there was to gain from an alliance with Rome, how
much Naples and Florence, firmly united together for offence
and defence, might effect in Italy.
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
151
Only a student of those perilous times can appreciate the
courage and the genius, the audacity combined with diplomatic
penetration, displayed by Lorenzo at this crisis. He calmly
walked into the lion's den, trusting he could tame the lion and
teach it, and all in a few days. Nor did his expectation fail.
Though Lorenzo was rather ugly than handsome, with a dark
skin, heavy brows, powerful jaws, and nose sharp in the bridge
and broad at the nostrils, without grace of carriage or melody
of voice, he possessed what makes up for personal defects-
the winning charm of eloquence in conversation, a subtle wit,
profound knowledge of men, and tact allied to sympathy,
which placed him always at the centre of the situation. Fer-
dinand received him kindly. The Neapolitan nobles admired
his courage and were fascinated by his social talents. On
March 1, 1480, he left Naples again, having won over the
King by his arguments. When he reached Florence he was
able to declare that he brought home a treaty of peace and
alliance signed by the most powerful foe of the republic. The
success of this bold enterprise endeared Lorenzo more than
ever to his countrymen. In the same year they concluded a
treaty with Sixtus, who was forced against his will to lay down
arms by the capture of Otranto and the extreme peril of
Turkish invasion. After the year 1480 Lorenzo remained
sole master in Florence, the arbiter and peacemaker of the
rest of Italy.
XVI.
The conjuration of the Pazzi was only one in a long series
of similar conspiracies. Italian despots gained their power by
.
violence and wielded it with craft. Violence and craft were
therefore used against them. When the study of the ciassics
had penetrated the nation with antique ideas of heroism, tyran-
nicide became a virtue. Princes were murdered with frightful
152
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
in
frequency. Thus Gian Maria Visconti was put to death at
Milan in 1412 ; Galeazzo Maria Sforza in 1484 ; the Chiarelli
of Fabriano were massacred in 1435; the Baglioni of Perugia
1500 ; Girolamo Gentile planned the assassination of Gale-
azzo Sforza at Genoa in 1476; Niccolo d'Este conspired
against his uncle Ercole in 1476; Stefano Porcari attempted
the life of Nicholas V. at Rome in 1453 ; Lodovico Sforza
narrowly escaped a violent death in 1453. I might multiply
these instances beyond satiety. As it is, I have selected but a
few examples falling, all but one, within the second half of the
fifteenth century. Nearly all these attempts upon the lives of
princes were made in church during the celebration of sacred
offices. There was no superfluity of naughtiness, no wilful
sacrilege, in this choice of an occasion. It only testified to the
continual suspicion and guarded watchfulness maintained by
tyrants. To strike at them except in church was almost impos-
sible. Meanwhile the fate of the tyrannicides was uniform.
Successful or not, they perished. Yet so grievous was the
pressure of Italian despotism, so glorious was the ideal of
Greek and Roman heroism, so passionate the temper of the
people, that to kill a prince at any cost to self appeared the
crown of manliness. This bloodshed exercised a delirious fas-
cination : pure and base, personal and patriotic motives com-
bined to add intensity of fixed and fiery purpose to the mur-
derous impulse. Those then who, like the Medici, aspired to
tyranny and sought to found a dynasty of princes, entered the
arena against a host of unknown and unseen gladiators.
XVII.
On his death-bed, in 1492, Lorenzo lay between two men-
Angelo Poliziano and Girolamo Savonarola. Polizia:10 incar-
nated the genial, radiant, godless spirit of fifteenth-century
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
153
humanism. Savonarola represented the conscience of Italy,
self-convicted, amid all her greatness, of crimes that called for
punishment. It is said that when Lorenzo asked the monk
for absolution, Savonarola bade him first restore freedom to
Florence. Lorenzo turned his face to the wall and was silent.
How indeed could he make this city in a moment free, after
sixty years of slow and systematic corruption ? Savonarola left
him, and he died unshriven. This legend is doubtful, though
it rests on excellent if somewhat partial authority. It has, at
any rate, the value of a mythus, since it epitomises the attitude
assumed by the great preacher to the prince. Florence en-
slaved, the soul of Lorenzo cannot lay its burden down, but
must go with all its sins upon it to the throne of God.
The year 1492 was a memorable year for Italy. In this
year Lorenzo's death removed the keystone of the arch that had
sustained the fabric of Italian federation. In this
year
Roderigo Borgia was elected Pope. In this year Columbus
discovered America; Vasco de Gama soon after opened a new
way to the Indies, and thus the commerce of the world passed
from Italy to other nations. In this year the conquest of
Granada gave unity to the Spanish nation. In this year
France, through the life-long craft of Louis XI., was for the
first time united under a young hot-headed sovereign. On
every side of the political horizon storms threatened. It was
clear that a new chapter of European history had been opened.
Then Savonarola raised his voice, and cried that the crimes of
Italy, the abominations of the Church, would speedily be
punished. Events led rapidly to the fulfilment of this prophecy.
Lorenzo's successor, Piero de' Medici, was a vain, irresolute,
and hasty princeling, fond of display, proud of his skill in
fencing and football-playing, with too much of the Orsini
blood in his hot veins, with too little of the Medicean craft in
his weak head. The Italian despots felt they could not trust
Piero, and this want of confidence was probably the first
154
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
motive that impelled Lodovico Sforza to call Charles VIII.
into Italy in 1494.
It will not be necessary to dwell upon this invasion of the
French, except in so far as it affected Florence. Charles
passed rapidly through Lombardy, engaged his army in the
passes of the Apennines, and debouched upon the coast
where the Magra divided Tuscany from Liguria. Here the
fortresses of Sarzana and Pietra Santa, between the marble
bulwark of Carrara and the Tuscan sea, stopped his further
progress. The keys were held by the Florentines. To force
these strong positions and to pass beyond them seemed impos-
sible. It might have been impossible if Piero de' Medici had
possessed a firmer will. As it was, he rode off to the French
camp, delivered up the forts to Charles, bound the King by no
engagements, and returned not otherwise than proud of his
folly to Florence. A terrible reception awaited him. The
Florentines, in their fury, had risen and sacked the Medicean
palace. It was as much as Piero, with his brothers, could do
to escape beyond the hills to Venice. The despotism of the
Medici, so carefully built up, so artfully sustained and strength-
ened, was overthrown in a single day.
XVIII.
Before considering what happened in Florence after the
expulsion of the Medici, it will be well to pause a moment and
review the state in which Lorenzo had left his family. Piero,
his eldest son, recognised as chief of the republic after his
father's death, was married to Alfonsina Orsini, and was in his
twenty-second year. Giovanni, his second son, a youth of
seventeen, had just been made cardinal. This honour, of vast
importance for the Casa Medici in the future, he owed to his
sister Maddalena's marriage to Franceschetto Cybo, son of
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
155
Innocent VIII. The third of Lorenzo's sons, named Giuliano,
was a boy of thirteen. Giulio, the bastard son of the elder
Giuliano, was fourteen. These four princes formed the effi-
cient strength of the Medici, the hope of the house ; and for
each of them, with the exception of Piero, who died in exile,
and of whom no more notice need be taken, a brilliant destiny
was still in store. In the year 1495, however, they now wan-
dered, homeless and helpless, through the cities of Italy, each
of which was shaken to its foundations by the French invasion.
XIX.
Florence, left without the Medici, deprived of Pisa and
other subject cities by the passage of the French army, with no
leader but the monk Savonarola, now sought to reconstitute
her liberties. During the domination of the Albizzi and the
Medici the old order of the commonwealth had been com-
pletely broken up. The Arti had lost their primitive impor-
tance. The distinctions between the Grandi and the Popolani
had practically passed away. In a democracy that has sub-
mitted to a lengthened course of tyranny, such extinction of its
old life is inevitable. Yet the passion for liberty was still
powerful ; and the busy brains of the Florentines were stored
with experience gained from their previous vicissitudes, from
the study of antique history, and from the observation of exist-
ing constitutions in the towns of Italy. They now determined
to reorganise the State upon the model of the Venetian re-
public. The Signory was to remain, with its old institution of
Priors, Gonfalonier, and College, elected for brief periods.
These magistrates were to take the initiative in debate, to pro-
pose measures, and to consider plans of action. The real
power of the State, for voting supplies and ratifying the measures
of the Signory, was vested in a senate of one thousand members,
156
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
called the Grand Council, from whom a smaller body of forty,
acting as intermediates' between the Council and the Signory,
were elected. It is said that the plan of this constitution
originated with Savonarola ; nor is there any doubt that he
used all his influence in the pulpit of the Duomo to render it
acceptable to the people. Whoever may have been responsible
for its formation, the new government was carried in 1495, and
a large hall for the assembly of the Grand Council was opened
in the Public Palace.
Savonarola, meanwhile, had become the ruling spirit of
Florence. He gained his great power as a preacher : he used
it like a monk. The motive principle of his action was the
passion for reform. To bring the Church back to its pristine
state of purity, without altering its doctrine or suggesting any
new form of creed; to purge Italy of ungodly customs; to
overthrow the tyrants who encouraged evil living, and to place
the power of the State in the hands of sober citizens : these
were his objects. Though he set himself in bold opposition to
the reigning Pope, he had no desire to destroy the spiritual
supremacy of S. Peter's see. Though he burned with an en-
thusiastic zeal for liberty, and displayed rare genius for ad-
ministration, he had no ambition to rule Florence like a
dictator. Savonarola was neither a reformer in the northern
sense of the word, nor yet a political demagogue. His sole
wish was to see purity of manners and freedom of self-govern-
ment re-established. With this end in view he bade the
Florentines elect Christ as their supreme chief; and they did
so. For the same end he abstained from appearing in the
State Councils, and left the Constitution to work by its own
laws. His personal influence he reserved for the pulpit ; and
here he was omnipotent. The people believed in him as a
prophet. They turned to him as the man who knew what he
wanted—as the voice of liberty, the soul of the new régime, the
genius who could breathe into the commonwealth a breath of
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
157
fresh vitality. When, therefore, Savonarola preached a reform
of manners, he was at once obeyed. Strict laws were passed
enforcing sobriety, condemning trades of pleasure, reducing
the gay customs of Florence to puritanical austerity,
Great stress has been laid upon this reaction of the monk-
led populace against the vices of the past. Yet the historian
is bound to pronounce that the reform effected by Savonarola
was rather picturesque than vital. Like all violent revivals of
pietism, it produced a no less violent reaction. The parties
within the city who resented the interference of a preaching
friar, joined with the Pope in Rome, who hated a contumacious
schismatic in Savonarola. Assailed by these two forces at the
same moment, and driven upon perilous ground by his own
febrile enthusiasm, Savonarola succumbed. He was imprisoned,
tortured, and burned upon the public square in 1498.
What Savonarola really achieved for Florence was not a
permanent reform of morality, but a resuscitation of the spirit
of freedom. His followers, called in contempt I Piagnoni, or
the Weepers, formed the pith of the commonwealth in future ;
and the memory of their martyr served as a common bond of
sympathy to unite them in times of trial. It was a necessary
consequence of the peculiar part he played that the city was
henceforth divided into factions representing mutually antago-
nistic principles. These factions were not created by Savona-
rola ; but his extraordinary influence accentuated, as it were,
the humours that lay dormant in the State. Families favourable
to the Medici took the name of Palleschi. Men who chafed
against puritanical reform, and who were eager for any govern-
ment that should secure them their old licence, were known as
Compagnacci. Meanwhile the oligarchs, who disliked a demo-
cratic Constitution, and thought it possible to found an aristo-
cracy without the intervention of the Medici, came to be known
as Gli Ottimati. Florence held within itself, from this epoch
forward to the final extinction of liberty, four great parties : the
a
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Piagnoni, passionate for political freedom and austerity of
life; the Palleschi, favourable to the Medicean cause, and
regretful of Lorenzo's pleasant rule ; the Compagnacci, in-
tolerant of the reformed republic, neither hostile nor loyal
to the Medici, but desirous of personal licence; the Ottimati,
astute and selfish, watching their own advantage, ever-mindful
to form a narrow government of privileged families, disinclined
to the Medici, except when they thought the Medici might be
employed as instruments in their intrigues.
XX.
During the short period of Savonarola's ascendency,
Florence was in form at least a Theocracy, without any titular
head but Christ; and as long as the enthusiasm inspired by
the monk lasted, as long as his personal influence endured, the
Constitution of the Grand Council worked well. After his
death it was found that the machinery was too cumbrous.
While adopting the Venetian form of government, the Floren-
tines had omitted one essential element—the Doge. By
referring measures of immediate necessity to the Grand Council,
the republic lost precious time. Dangerous publicity, more-
over, was incurred ; and so large a body often came to no firm
resolution. There was no permanent authority in the State ;
no security that what had been deliberated would be carried
out with energy ; no titular chief, who could transact affairs
with foreign potentates and their ambassadors. Accordingly,
in 1502, it was decreed that the Gonfalonier should hold office
for life-should be in fact a Doge. To this important post of
permanent president Piero Soderini was appointed ; and in his
hands were placed the chief affairs of the republic.
At this point Florence, after all her vicissitudes, had won
her way to soinething really similar to the Venetian Constitu-
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
159
tion. Yet the similarity existed more in form than in fact.
The government of burghers in a Grand Council, with a Senate
of forty, and a Gonfalonier for life, had not grown up gradually
and absorbed into itself the vital forces of the commonwealth,
It was a creation of inventive intelligence, not of national
development, in Florence. It had against it the jealousy of
the Ottimati, who felt themselves overshadowed by the Gon-
falonier ; the hatred of the Palleschi, who yearned for the
Medici; the discontent of the working classes, who thought
the presence of a Court in Florence would improve trade ;
last, but not least, the disaffection of the Compagnacci, who
felt they could not fourish to their heart's content in a free
commonwealth. Moreover, though the name of liberty was on
every lip, though the Florentines talked, wrote, and speculated
more about constitutional independence than they had ever
done, the true energy of free institutions had passed from the
city. The corrupt government of Cosimo and Lorenzo bore its
natural fruit now. Egotistic ambition and avarice supplanted
patriotism and industry. It is necessary to comprehend these
circumstances, in order that the next revolution may be clearly
understood.
XXI.
During the ten years which elapsed between 1502 and 1512,
Piero Soderini administered Florence with an outward show of
great prosperity. He regained Pisa, and maintained an
honourable foreign policy in the midst of the wars stirred up
by the League of Cambray. Meanwhile the young princes of
the house of Medici had grown to manhood in exile. The
Cardinal Giovanni was thirty-seven in 1512. His brother
Giuliano was thirty-three. Both of these men were better fitted
than their brother Piero to fight the battles of the family.
Giovanni, in particular, had inherited no small portion of the
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SKETCIIES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Medicean craft. During the troubled reign of Julius II. he
kept very quiet, cementing his connections with powerful men
in Rome, but making no effort to regain his hold on Florence.
Now the moment for striking a decisive blow had come. After
the battle of Ravenna in 1512, the French were driven out of
Italy, and the Sforzas returned to Milan; the Spanish troops,
under the Viceroy Cardona, remained masters of the country.
Following the camp of these Spaniards, Giovanni de' Medici
entered Tuscany in August, and caused the restoration of the
Medici to be announced in Florence. The people, assembled
by Soderini, resolved to resist to the uttermost. No foreign
army should force them to receive the masters whom they had
expelled. Yet their courage failed on August 29th, when news
reached them of the capture and the sack of Prato. Prato is a
sunny little city a few miles distant from the walls of Florence,
famous for the beauty of its women, the richness of its gardens,
and the grace of its buildings. Into this gem of cities the
savage soldiery of Spain marched in the bright autumnal
weather, and turned the paradise into a hell. It is even now
impossible to read of what they did in Prato without shudder-
ing. Cruelty and lust, sordid greed for gold, and cold delight
in bloodshed, could go no further. Giovanni de' Medici, by
nature mild and voluptuous, averse to violence of all kinds,
had to smile approval, while the Spanish Viceroy knocked thus
with mailed hand for him at the door of Florence. The Floren-
tines were paralysed with terror. They deposed Soderini and
received the Medici. Giovanni and Giuliano entered their
devastated palace in the Via Larga, abolished the Grand
Council, and dealt with the republic as they listed.
I See Archivio Storico.
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
161
XXII.
There was no longer any medium in Florence possible
between either tyranny or some such government as the Medici
had now destroyed. The State was too rotten to recover even
the modified despotism of Lorenzo's days. Each transformation
had impaired some portion of its framework, broken down
some of its traditions, and sowed new seeds of egotism in
citizens who saw all things round them change but self-advan-
tage.
Therefore Giovanni and Giuliano felt themselves secure
in flattering the popular vanity by an empty parade of the
old institutions. They restored the Signory and the Gonfalo-
nier, elected for intervals of two months by officers appointed
for this purpose by the Medici. Florence had the show of a
free government. But the Medici managed all things; and
soldiers, commanded by their creature, Paolo Vettori, held the
Palace and the Public Square. The tyranny thus established
was less secure, inasmuch as it openly rested upon violence,
than Lorenzo's power had been ; nor were there signs wanting
that the burghers could ill brook their servitude. The con-
spiracy of Pietro Paolo Boscoli and Agostino Capponi proved
that the Medicean brothers ran daily risk of life. Indeed, it is
not likely that they would have succeeded in maintaining their
authority--for they were poor and ill-supported by friends
outside the city-except for one most lucky circumstance:
that was the election of Giovanni de' Medici to the Papacy
in 1513
The creation of Leo X. spread satisfaction throughout Italy.
Politicians trusted that he would display some portion of his
father's ability, and restore peace to the nation. Men of arts
and letters expected everything from a Medicean Pope, who
had already acquired the reputation of polite culture and open-
handed generosity. They at any rate were not deceived.
M
162
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Leo's first words on taking his place in the Vatican were
addressed to his brother Giuliano : ‘Let us enjoy the Papacy,
now that God has given it to us ;' and his notion of enjoyment
was to surround himself with court-poets, jesters, and musicians,
to adorn his Roman palaces with frescoes, to collect statues
and inscriptions, to listen to Latin speeches, and to pass judg-
ment upon scholarly compositions. Any one and every one
who
gave
him sensual or intellectual pleasure, found his purse
always open. He lived in the utmost magnificence, and made
Rome the Paris of the Renaissance for brilliance, immorality,
and self-indulgent ease. The politiciars had less reason to be
satisfied. Instead of uniting the Italians and keeping the great
powers of Europe in check, Leo carried on a series of disastrous
petty wars, chiefly with the purpose of establishing the Medici
as princes. He squandered the revenues of the Church, and
left enormous debts behind him-an exchequer ruined and a
foreign policy so confused that peace for Italy could only be
obtained by servitude.
Florence shared in the general rejoicing which greeted Leo's
accession to the Papacy. He was the first Florentine citizen
who had received the tiara, and the popular vanity was flattered
by this honour to the Republic. Political theorists, meanwhile,
began to speculate what greatness Florence, in combination
with Rome, might rise to. The Pope was young; he ruled a
large territory, reduced to order by his warlike predecessors.
It seemed as though the Republic, swayed by him, might make
herself the first city in Italy, and restore the glories of her
Guelf ascendency upon the platform of Renaissance statecraft.
There was now no overt opposition to the Medici in Florence.
How to govern the city from Rome, and how to advance the
fortunes of his brother Giuliano and his nephew Lorenzo
(Piero's son, a young man of twenty-one), occupied the Pope's
most serious attention. For Lorenzo Leo obtained the Duchy
of Urbino and the hand of a French princess. Giuliano was
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
163
named Gonfalonier of the Church. He also received the
French title of Duke of Nemours and the hand of Filiberta,
Princess of Savoy. Leo entertained a further project of
acquiring the crown of Southern Italy for his brother, and thus
of uniting Rome, Florence, and Naples under the headship of
his house. Nor were the Medicean interests neglected in the
Church. Giulio, the Pope's bastard cousin, was made cardinal.
He remained in Rome, acting as vice-chancellor and doing the
hard work of the Papal Government for the pleasure-loving
pontiff.
To Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, the titular head of the family,
was committed the government of Florence. During their
exile, wandering from court to court in Italy, the Medici had
forgotten what it was to be burghers, and had acquired the
manners of princes. Leo alone retained enough of caution to
warn his nephew that the Florentines must still be treated as
free people. He confirmed the constitution of the Signory
and the Privy Council of seventy established by his father.
bidding Lorenzo, while he ruled this sham republic, to avoid
the outer signs of tyranny. The young duke at first behaved
with moderation, but he could not cast aside his habits of a
Florence now for the first time saw a regular court
established in her midst, with a prince, who, though he bore a
foreign title, was in fact her master. The joyous days of
Lorenzo the Magnificent returned. Masquerades and triumphs
filled the public squares. Two clubs of pleasure, called the
Diamond and the Branch-badges adopted by the Medici to
signify their firmness in disaster and their power of self-
recovery-were formed to lead the revels. The best sculptors
and painters devoted their genius to the invention of costumes
and cars.
The city affected to believe that the age of gold had
come again.
great lord.
M 2
164
SK’ETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
XXIII.
a
Fortune had been very favourable to the Medici. They had
returned as princes to Florence. Giovanni was Pope. Giu-
liano was Gonfalonier of the Church. Giulio was Cardinal and
Archbishop of Florence. Lorenzo ruled the city like a sovereign.
But this prosperity was no less brief than it was brilliant. A
few years sufficed to sweep off all the chiefs of the great house.
Giuliano died in 1516, leaving only a bastard son Ippolito.
Lorenzo died in 1519, leaving a bastard son Alessandro,
and a daughter, six days old, who lived to be the Queen of
France. Leo died in 1521. There remained now no legiti-
mate male descendants from the stock of Cosimo. The
honours and pretensions of the Medici devolved upon three
bastards-on the Cardinal Giulio, and the two boys, Ales-
sandro and Ippolito. Of these, Alessandro was a mulatto, his
mother having been a Moorish slave in the Palace of Urbino ;
and whether his father was Giulio, or Giuliano, or a base groom,
was not known for certain. To such extremities were the
Medici reduced. In order to keep their house alive, they were
obliged to adopt this foundling. It is true that the younger
branch of the family, descended from Lorenzo, the brother of
Cosimo, still flourished. At this epoch it was represented by
Giovanni, the great general known as the Invincible, whose
hust so strikingly resembles that of Napoleon. But between
this line of the Medici and the elder branch there had never
been true cordiality. The Cardinal mistrusted Giovanni. It
may, moreover, be added, that Giovanni was himself doomed
to death in the year 1526.
Giulio de' Medici was left in 1521 to administer the State of
Florence single-handed. He was archbishop, and he resided
in the city, holding it with the grasp of an absolute ruler. Yet
he felt his position insecure. The republic had no longer any
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
165
forms of self government; nor was there a magistracy to whom
the despot could delegate his power in his absence. Giulio's
ambition was fixed upon the Papal crown. The bastards he
was rearing were but children. Florence had, therefore, to be
furnished with some political machinery that should work of
itself. The Cardinal did not wish to give freedom to the city,
but clockwork. He was in the perilous situation of having to
rule a commonwealth without life, without elasticity, without
capacity of self-movement, yet full of such material as, left
alone, might ferment, and breed a revolution. In this per-
plexity, he had recourse to advisers. The most experienced
politicians, philosophical theorists, practical diplomatists, and
students of antique history were requested to furnish him with
plans for a new constitution, just as you ask an architect to
give you the plan of a new house. This was the field-day of
the doctrinaires. Now was seen how much political sagacity
the Florentines had gained while they were losing liberty. We
possess these several drafts of constitutions. Some recommend
tyranny ; some incline to aristocracy, or what Italians called
Governo Stretto; some to democracy, or Governo Largo ; some
to an eclectic compound of the other forms, or Governo Misto.
More consummate masterpieces of constructize ingenuity can
hardly be imagined. What is omitted in all, is just what no
doctrinaire, no nostrum can communicate—the breath of life,
the principle of organic growth. Things had come, indeed, to a
melancholy pass for Florence when her tyrant, in order to con-
firm his hold upon her, had to devise these springs and irons to
support her tottering limbs.
XXIV.
While the Archbishop and the doctors were debating, a plot
was hatching in the Rucellai Gardens. It was here that the
Florentine Academy now held their meetings. For this society
166
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Machiavelli wrote his ‘Treatise on the Art of War,' and his
‘Discourses upon Livy.' The former was an exposition of
1
Machiavelli's scheme for creating a national militia, as the only
safeguard for Italy, exposed at this period to the invasions of
great foreign armies. The latter is one of the three or four
masterpieces produced by the Florentine school of critical
historians. Stimulated by the daring speculations of Machia-
velli, and fired to enthusiasm by their study of antiquity, the
younger academicians formed a conspiracy for murdering
Giulio de' Medici, and restoring the republic on a Roman
model. An irtercepted letter betrayed their plans. Two
of the conspirators were taken and beheaded. Others
escaped. But the discovery of this conjuration put a stop to
Giulio's scheme of reforming the State. Henceforth he ruled
cautious ?
Florence like a despot, mild in manners, cautions in the
exercise of arbitrary power, but firm in his autocracy.
The
Condottiere, Alessandro Vitelli, with a company of soldiers,
was taken into service for the protection of his person and the
intimidation of the citizens.
In 1523, the Pope, Adrian VI., expired after a short papacy,
from which he gained no honour and Italy no profit. Giulio
hurried to Rome, and, by the clever use of his large influence,
caused himself to be elected with the title of Clement VII.
In Florence he left Silvio Passerini, Cardinal of Cortona, as his
vicegerent and the guardian of the two boys Alessandro and
Ippolito. The discipline of many years had accustomed the
Florentines to a government of priests. Still the burghers,
mindful of their ancient liberties, were galled by the yoke of
a Cortonese, sprung up from one of their subject cities ; nor
could they bear the bastards who were being reared to rule
them. Foreigners threw it in their teeth that Florence, the
city glorious of art and freedom, was become a stable for mules
-stalla da muli, in the expressive language of popular sarcasm.
Bastardy, it may be said in passing, carried with it small dis-
a
a
a
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
167
a
honour among the Italians. The Estensi were all illegitimate ;
the Aragonese house in Naples sprang from Alfonso's natural
son; and children of Popes ranked among the princes. Yet the
uncertainty of Alessandro's birth and the base condition of his
mother made the prospect of this tyrant peculiarly odious ;
while the primacy of a foreign cardinal in the midst of citizens
whose spirit was still unbroken, embittered the cup of humilia-
tion. The Casa Medici held its authority by a slender thread,
and depended more upon the disunion of the burghers than on
any power of its own. It could always reckon on the favour
of the lower populace, who gained profit and amusement
from the presence of a court. The Ottimati again hoped more
from a weak despotism than from a commonwealth, where
their privileges would have been merged in the mass of the
Grand Council. Thus the sympathies of the plebeians and the
selfishness of the rich patricians prevented the republic from
asserting itself. On this meagre basis of personal cupidity the
Medici sustained themselves. What made the situation still
more delicate, and at the same time protracted the feeble rule
of Clement, was that neither the Florentines nor the Medici
had any army. Face to face with a potentate so considerable
as the Pope, a free State could not be established without
military force. On the other hand, the Medici, supported by a
mere handful of mercenaries, had no power to resist a popular
rising if any external event should inspire the middle classes
with a hope of liberty.
XXV.
Clement aşsumed the tiara at a moment of great difficulty.
Leo had ruined the finance of Rome. France and Spain were
still contending for the possession of Italy. While acting as
Vice-Chancellor, Giulio de' Medici had seemed to hold the
reins with a firm grasp, and men expected that he would
168
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
a
prove a powerful Pope ; but in those days he had Leo to help
him; and Leo, though indolent, was an abler man than his
cousin. He planned, and Giulio executed. Obliged to act
now for himself, Clement revealed the weakness of his nature.
That weakness was irresolution, craft without wisdom, diplo-
macy without knowledge of men. He raised the storm, and
showed himself incapable of guiding it. This is not the place
to tell by what a series of crooked schemes and cross purposes
he brought upon himself the ruin of the Church and Rome, to
relate his disagreement with the Emperor, or to describe again
the sack of the Eternal City by the rabble of the Constable de
Bourbon's army. That wreck of Rome in 1527 was the closing
scene of the Italian Renaissance, the last of the Apocalyptic
tragedies foretold by Savonarola – the death of the old age.
When the Florentines knew what was happening in Rome,
they rose and forced the Cardinal Passerini to depart with the
Medicean bastards from the city. The youth clemanded arms
for the defence of the town, and they received them. The
whole male population was enrolled in a militia. The Grand
Council was reformed, and the republic was restored upon the
basis of 1495.
Niccolo Capponi was elected Gonfalonier.
The name of Christ was again registered as chief of the
commonwealth-to such an extent did the memory of Savo-
narola still sway the popular imagination. The new State
hastened to form an alliance with France, and Malatesta
Baglioni was chosen as military Commander-in-Chief. Mean-
while the city armed itself for siege-Michel Angelo Buon-
arroti and Francesco da San Gallo undertaking the construction
of new forts and ramparts. These measures were adopted with
sudden decision, because it was soon known that Clement had
made peace with the Emperor, and that the army which had
sacked Rome was going to be marched on Florence.
FLORE.VCE AVD THE MEDICI.
169
XXVI.
In the month of August 1529, the Prince of Orange
assembled his forces at Terni, and thence advanced by easy
stages into Tuscany. As he approached, the Florentines laid
waste their suburbs, and threw down their wreath of towers, in
order that the enemy might have no harbourage or points of
vantage for attack. Their troops were concentrated within the
city, where a new Gonfalonier, Francesco Carducci, furiously
opposed to the Medici, and attached to the Piagnoni party, now
ruled. On September 4, the Prince of Orange appeared before
the walls, and opened the memorable siege. It lasted eight
months, at the end of which time, betrayed by their generals,
divided among themselves, and worn out with delays, the
Florentines capitulated. Florence was paid as compensation
for the insult offered to the pontiff in the sack of Rome.
The long yoke of the Medici had undermined the character
of the Florentines. This, their last glorious struggle for liberty,
was but a flash in the pan—a final flare up of the dying
lamp. The city was not satisfied with slavery ; but it had
no capacity for united action. The Ottimati were egotistic
and jealous of the people. The Palleschi desired to restore
the Medici at any price- some of them frankly wishing for a
principality, others trusting that the old quasi-republican
government might still be reinstated. The Red Republicans,
styled Libertini and Arrabbiati, clung together in blind hatred
of the Medicean party ; but they had no further policy to
guide them. The Piagnoni, or Frateschi, stuck to the memory
of Savonarola, and believed that angels would descend to
guard the battlements when human help had failed. These
enthusiasts still formed the true nerve of the nation—the class
that might have saved the State, if salvation had been possible.
Even as it was, the energy of their fanaticism prolonged the
170
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
siege until resistance seemed no longer physically possible.
The hero developed by the crisis was Francesco Ferrucci, a
plebeian who had passed his youth in manual labour, and who
now displayed rare military genius. He fell fighting outside
the walls of Florence. Had he commanded the troops from
the beginning, and remained inside the city, it is just possible
that the fate of the war might have been less disastrous. As it
was, Malatesta Baglioni, the Commander-in-Chief, turned out
an arrant scoundrel. He held secret correspondence with
Clement and the Prince of Orange. It was he who finally sold
Florence to her foes, putting on his head,' as the Doge of
Venice said before the Senate, 'the cap of the biggest traitor
upon record.'
XXVII.
a
a
What remains of Florentine history may be briefly told.
Clement, now the undisputed arbiter of power and honour in
the city, chose Alessandro de' Medici to be prince. Alessandro
was created Duke of Cività di Penna, and married to a natural
daughter of Charles V. Ippolito was made a cardinal. Ippolito
would have preferred a secular to a priestly kingdom ; nor did he
conceal his jealousy for his cousin. Therefore Alessandro had
him poisoned. Alessandro in his turn was murdered by his kins-
man, Lorenzino de' Medici. Lorenzino paid the usual penalty of
tyrannicide some years later. When Alessandro was killed in
1539, Clement had himself been dead five years. Thus the whole
posterity of Cosimo de' Medici, with the exception of Catherine,
Queen of France, was utterly extinguished. But the Medici
had struck root so firmly in the State, and had so remodelled it
upon the type of tyranny, that the Florentines were no longer
able to do without them. The chiefs of the Ottimati selected
Cosimo, the representative of Giovanni the Invincible, for their
prince, and thus the line of the elder Lorenzo came at last to
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI.
171
power. This Cosimo was a boy of eighteen, fond of field-
sports, and unused to party intrigues. When Francesco Guicciar-
dini offered him a privy purse of one hundred and twenty
thousand ducats annually, together with the presidency of
Florence, this wily politician hoped that he would rule the
State through Cosimo, and realise at last that dream of the
Ottimati, a Governo Stretto or di Pochi. He was notably mis-
taken in his calculations. The first days of Cosimo's adminis-
tration showed that he possessed the craft of his family and
the vigour ct his immediate progenitors, and that he meant to
be sole master in Florence. He it was who obtained the title
of Grand Duke of Tuscany from the Pope-a title confirmed
by the Emperor, fortified by Austrian alliances, and trans-
mitted through his heirs to the present century.
XXVIII.
In this sketch of Florentine history, I have purposely
omitted all details that did not bear upon the constitutional
history of the republic, or on the growth of the Medici as
despots ; because I wanted to present a picture of the process
whereby that family contrived to fasten itself upon the freest
and most cultivated State in Italy. This success the Medici
owed mainly to their own obstinacy, and to the weakness of
republican institutions in Florence. Their power was founded
upon wealth in the first instance, and upon the ingenuity with
which they turned the favour of the proletariate to use.
confirmed by the mistakes and failures of their enemies, by
Rinaldo degli Albizzi's attack on Cosimo, by the conspiracy of
Neroni and Pitti against Piero, and by Francesco de' Pazzi's
attempt to assassinate Lorenzo. It was still further strengthened
by the Medicean sympathy for arts and letters—a sympathy
which placed both Cosimo and Lorenzo at the head of the
It was
172
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Renaissance movement, and made them worthy to represent
Florence, the city of genius, in the fifteenth century. While
thus founding and cementing their dynastic influence upon the
basis of a wide-spread popularity, the Medici employed per-
sistent cunning in the enfeeblement of the Republic. It was
their policy not to plant themselves by force or acts of overt
tyranny, but to corrupt ambitious citizens, to secure the patron-
age of public officers, and to render the spontaneous working
of the State machinery impossible. By pursuing this policy
over a long series of years they made the revival of liberty in
1494, and again in 1527, ineffectual. While exiled from
Florence, they never lost the hope of returning as masters, so
long as the passions they had excited, and they alone could
gratify, remained in full activity. These passions were avarice
and egotism, the greed of the grasping Ottimati, the jealousy
of the nobles, the self-indulgence of the proletariate. Yet it is
probable they might have failed to recover Florence, on one or
other of these two occasions, but for the accident which placed
Giovanni de' Medici on the Papal chair, and enabled him to
put Giulio in the way of the same dignity. From the accession
of Leo in 1513 to the year 1527 the Medici ruled Florence
from Rome, and brought the power of the Church into the
service of their despotism. After that date they were still
further aided by the imperial policy of Charles V., who chose
to govern Italy through subject princes, bound to himself by
domestic alliances and powerſul interests. One of these was
Cosimo, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany.
173
THE DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN
LITERATURE.
To an Englishman one of the chief interests of the study of
Italian literature is derived from the fact that, between Eng-
land and Italy, an almost uninterrupted current of intellectual
intercourse has been maintained throughout the last five
centuries. The English have never, indeed, at any time been
slavish imitators of the Italians ; but Italy has formed the
dream-land of the English fancy, inspiring poets with their
most delightful thoughts, supplying them with subjects, and
implanting in their minds that sentiment of Southern beauty
which, engrafted on our more passionately imaginative Northern
nature, has borne rich fruit in the works of Chaucer, Spenser,
Marlowe, Shakspere, Milton, and the poets of this century.
It is not strange that Italy should thus in matters of culture
have been the guide and mistress of England. Italy, of all
the European nations, was the first to produce high art and
literature in the dawn of modern civilisation. Italy was the
first to display refinement in domestic life, polish of manners,
civilities of intercourse. In Italy the commerce of courts first
developed a society of men and women, educated by the same
traditions of humanistic culture. In Italy the principles of
government were first discussed and reduced to theory. In
Italy the zeal for the classics took its origin ; and scholarship,
to which we owe our mental training, was at first the possession
of none almost but Italians. It therefore followed that during
174
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
the age of the Renaissance any man of taste or genius, who
desired to share the newly discovered privileges of learning,
had to seek Italy. Every one who wished to be initiated into
the secrets of science or philosophy, had to converse with
Italians in person or through books. Every one who was
eager to polish his native language, and to render it the proper
vehicle of poetic thought, had to consult the masterpieces of
Italian literature. To Italians the courtier, the diplomatist, the
artist, the student of statecraft and of military tactics, the
political theorist, the merchant, the man of laws, the man of
arms, and the churchman turned for precedents and precepts.
The nations of the North, still torpid and somnolent in their
semi-barbarism, needed the magnetic touch of Italy before they
could awake to intellectual life. Nor was this all. Long
before the thirst for culture possessed the English mind, Italy
had appropriated and assimilated all that Latin literature con.
tained of strong or splendid to arouse the thought and fancy
of the modern world ; Greek, too, was rapidly becoming the
possession of the scholars of Florence and Rome; so that
English men of letters found the spirit of the ancients infused
into a modern literature ; models of correct and elegant com-
position existed for them in a language easy, harmonious, and
not dissimilar in usage to their own.
The importance of this service, rendered by Italians to the
rest of Europe, cannot be exaggerated. By exploring, digest-
ing, and reproducing the classics, Italy made the labour of
scholarship comparatively light for the Northern nations, and
extended to us the privilege of culture without the peril of
losing originality in the enthusiasm for erudition. Our great
poets could handle lightly, and yet profitably, those master-
pieces of Greece and Rome, beneath the weight of which,
when first discovered, the genius of the Italians had wavered.
To the originality of Shakspere an accession of wealth without
weakness was brought by the perusal of Italian works, in which
DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE. 175
the spirit of the antique was seen as in a modern mirror.
Then, in addition to this benefit of instruction, Italy gave to
England a gift of pure beauty, the influence of which, in re-
fining our national taste, harmonising the roughness of our
manners and our language, and stimulating our imagination,
has been incalculable. It was a not unfrequent custom for
young men of ability to study at the Italian universities, or at
least to undertake a journey to the principal Italian cities.
From their sojourn in that land of loveliness and intellectual
life they returned with their Northern brains most powerfully
stimulated. To produce, by masterpieces of the imagination,
some work of style that should remain as a memento of that
glorious country, and should vie on English soil with the art of
Italy, was their generous ambition. Consequently the sub-
stance of the stories versified by our poets, the forms of our
metres, and the cadences of our prose periods reveal a close
attention to Italian originals.
This debt of England to Italy in the matter of our literature
began with Chaucer. Truly original and national as was the
framework of the Canterbury Tales,' we can hardly doubt but
that Chaucer was determined in the form adopted for his
poem by the example of Boccaccio. The subject-matter, also,
of many of his tales was taken from Boccaccio's prose or verse.
For example, the story of Patient Grizzel is founded upon one
of the legends of the 'Decameron,' while the Knight's Tale is
almost translated from the 'Teseide' of Boccaccio, and Troilus
and Creseide is derived from the 'Filostrato' of the same
author. The Franklin's Tale and the Reeve's Tale are also
based either on stories of Boccaccio or else on French 'Fabli-
aux,' to which Chaucer, as well as Boccaccio, had access. I
do not wish to lay too much stress upon Chaucer's direct
obligations to Boccaccio, because it is incontestable that the
French 'Fabliaux,' which supplied them both with subjects,
were the common property of the mediæval nations. But his
176
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IV ITALY.
indirect debt in all that concerns elegant handling of material,
and in the fusion of the romantic with the classic spirit, which
forms the chief charm of such tales as the Palamon and Arcite,
can hardly be exaggerated. Lastly, the seven-lined stanza,
called rime royal, which Chaucer used with so much effect in
narrative poetry, was probably borrowed from the earlier
Florentine ‘Ballata,' the last line rhyming with its predecessor
being substituted for the recurrent refrain. Indeed, the
stanza itself, as used by our earliest poets, may be found in
Guido Cavalcanti's 'Ballatetta,' beginning, Posso degli occhi mici.
Between Chaucer and Surrey the Muse of England fell
asleep ; but when in the latter half of the reign of Henry VIII.
she awoke again, it was as a conscious pupil of the Italian that
she attempted new strains and essayed fresh metres. In the
'
latter end of Henry VIII.'s reign,' says Puttenham,: sprang up
a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir T. Wyatt the
elder, and Henry Earl of Surrey, were the two chieftains, who,
having travelled into Italy, and there tasted the sweet and
stately measures and style of the Italian poesy, as novices
newly crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch,
they greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar
poesy, from that it had been before, and for that cause may
justly be said the first reformers of our English metre and style.'
The chief point in which Surrey imitated his master, Francis
Petrarcha,' was in the use of the sonnet. He introduced this
elaborate form of poetry into our literature; and how it has
thriven with us, the masterpieces of Spenser, Shakspere, Milton,
Wordsworth, Keats, Rossetti attest. As practised by Dante and
Petrarch, the sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines, divided into
two quatrains and two triplets, so arranged that the two quatrains
repeat one pair of rhymes, while the two triplets repeat another
pair. Thus an Italian sonnet of the strictest form is composed
upon four rhymes, interlaced with great art. But much diver-
gence from this rigiel scheme of rhyming was admitted even by
DEBT OF E.VGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE. 177
Petrarch, who not unfrequently divided the six final lines of
the sonnet into three couplets, interwoven in such a way that ?
the two last lines never rhymed.'
It has been necessary to say thus much about the structure
of the Italian sonnet, in order to make clear the task which lay
before Surrey and Wyatt, when they sought to transplant it into
English. Surrey did not adhere to the strict fashion of
Petrarch : his sonnets consist either of three regular quatrains
concluded with a couplet, or else of twelve lines rhyming
alternately and concluded with a couplet. Wyatt attempted to
follow the order and interlacement of the Italian rhymes more
closely, but he too concluded his sonnet with a couplet. This
introduction of the final couplet was a violation of the Italian
rule, which may be fairly considered as prejudicial to the
harmony of the whole structure, and which has insensibly
caused the English sonnet to terminate in an epigram. The
famous sonnet of Surrey on his love, Geraldine, is an excellent
example of the metrical structure as adapted to the supposed
necessities of English rhyming, and as afterwards adhered to by
Shakspere in his long series of love-poems. Surrey, while
adopting the form of the sonnet, kept quite clear of the
Petrarchist's mannerism. His language is simple and direct :
there is no subtilising upon far-fetched conceits, no wire-drawing
of exquisite sentimentalism, although he celebrates in this, as
in his other sonnets, a lady for whom he appears to have
entertained no more than a Platonic or imaginary passion.
Surrey was a great experimentalist in metre. Besides the
sonnet, he introduced into England blank verse, which he
borrowed from the Italian versi sciolti, fixing that decasyllable
iambic rhythm for English versification in which our greatest
poetical triumphs have been achieved. 2
1 The order of rhymes runs thus : a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, c, d, c, d, c, d ;
or in the terzets, c, d, e, c, d, r, or c, d, c, d, c, e, and so forth.
? See Appendix on Blank Verse.
:
:
N
178
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Before quitting the subject of the sonnet it would, however,
be well to mention the changes which were wrought in its
structure by early poets desirous of emulating the Italians.
Shakspere, as already hinted, adhered to the simple form intro-
duced by Surrey : his stanzas invariably consist of thee
separate quatrains followed by a couplet. But Sir Philip
Sidney, whose familiarity with Italian literature was intimate,
and who had resided long in Italy, perceived that without a
greater complexity and interweaving of rhymes the beauty of
the poem was considerably impaired. He therefore combined
the rhymes of the two quatrains, as the Italians had done,
leaving himself free to follow the Italian fashion in the con-
clusion, or else to wind up after English usage with a couplet.
Spenser and Drummond follow the rule of Sidney ; Drayton
and Daniel, that of Surrey and Shakspere. It was not until
Milton that an English poet preserved the form of the Italian
sonnet in its strictness; but, after Milton, the greatest sonnet-
;
writers-Wordsworth, Keats, and Rossetti–have aimed at
producing stanzas as regular as those of Petrarch.
The great age of our literature—the age of Elizabeth-was
essentially one of Italian influence. In Italy the Renaissance
had reached its height : England, feeling the new life which
had been infused into arts and letters, turned instinctively to
Italy, and adopted her canons of taste. • Euphues' has a
distinct connection with the Italian discourses of polite culture.
Sidney's Arcadia' is a copy of what Boccaccio had attempted
in his classical romances, and Sanazzaro in his pastorals.'
Spenser approached the subject of the 'Faery Queen’ with his
"It has extraordinary interest for the student of our literary develop-
ment, inasmuch as it is full of experiments in metres, which have never
thriven on English soil. Not to mention the attempt to write in asclepiads
and other classical rhythms, we might point to Sidney's terza rima poems
with sdrucciolo or treble rhymes. This peculiar and painful form he borrowed
from Ariosto and Sanazzaro ; but even in Italian it cannot be handled
without sacrifice of variety, without impeding the metrical movement and
marring the sense.
DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE.
179
head full of Ariosto and the romantic poets of Italy. His L
sonnets are Italian ; his odes embody the Platonic philosophy
of the Italians.' The extent of Spenser's deference to the
Italians in matters of poetic art may be gathered from this
passage in the dedication to Sir Walter Raleigh of the Faery
Queen:
I have followed all the antique poets historical : first Homer, who in
the persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governor
and a virtuous man, the one in his Ilias, the other in his Odysseis; then
Virgil, whose like intention was to do in the person of Æneas; after him
Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando ; and lately Tasso dissevered
them again, and formed both parts in two persons, namely, that part which
they in Philosophy call Ethice, or virtues of a private man, coloured in his
Rinaldo, the other named Politice in his Goffredo,
From this it is clear that, to the mind of Spenser, both Ariosto
and Tasso were authorities of hardly less gravity than Homer
and Virgil. Raleigh, in the splendid sonnet with which he
responds to this dedication, enhances the fame of Spenser by
affecting to believe that the great Italian, Petrarch, will be
jealous of him in the grave. To such an extent were the thoughts
of the English poets occupied with their Italian masters in the
art of song.
It was at this time, again, that English literature was en-
riched by translations of Ariosto and Tasso—the one from the
pen of Sir John Harrington, the other from that of Fairfax.
Both were produced in the metre of the original—the octave
stanza, which, however, did not at that period take root in
England. At the same period the works of many of the Italian
novelists, especially Bandello and Cinthio and Boccaccio, were
translated into English ; Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure' being
a treasure-house of Italian works of fiction. Thomas Hoby
translated Castiglione's Courtier'in 1561. As a proof of the
7
6
6
1 The stately structure of the Prothalamion' and 'Epithalamion' is a
rebuilding of the Italian Canzone. His Eclogues, with their allegories,
repeat the manner of Petrarch's minor Latin poems.
N 2
180
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
extent to which Italian books were read in England at the end
of the sixteenth century, we may take a stray sentence from a
letter of Harvey, in which he disparages the works of Robert
Greene :- Even Guicciardine's silver histories and Ariosto's
golden cantos grow out of request : and the Countess of Pem-
broke's “ Arcadia” is not green enough for queasy stomachs;
but they must have seen Greene's “ Arcadia,” and I believe
most eagerly longed for Greene's "Faery Queen.”
Still more may be gathered on the same topic from the
indignant protest uttered by Roger Ascham in his ‘School-
master'(pp. 78-91, date 1570) against the prevalence of Italian
customs, the habit of Italian travel, and the reading of Italian
books translated into English. Selections of Italian stories
rendered into English were extremely popular ; and Greene's
tales, which had such vogue that Nash says of them, 'glad was
that printer that might be so blest to pay him dear for the very
dregs of his wit,' were all modelled on the Italian. The educa-
tion of a young man of good family was not thought complete
unless he had spent some time in Italy, studied its literature,
admired its arts, and caught at least some tincture of its
Our rude ancestors brought back with them from
these journeys many Southern vices, together with the culture
they had gone to seek. The contrast between the plain
dealing of the North and the refined Machiavellism of the
South, between Protestant earnestness in religion and Popish
scepticism, between the homely virtues of England and the
courtly libertinism of Venice or Florence, blunted the moral
sense, while it stimulated the intellectual activity of the English
travellers, and too often communicated a fatal shock to their
principles. Inglese Italianato è un diavolo incarnato passed
into a proverb : we find it on the lips of Parker, of Howell, of
Sidney, of Greene, and of Ascham ; while Italy itself was
styled by severe moralists the court of Circe.
In James
Howell's 'Instructions for forreine travell’ we find this pregnant
manners.
DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE.
181
sentence : And being now in Italy, that great limbique of
working braines, he must be very circumspect in his carriage,
for she is able to turne a Saint into a devill, and deprave the
best natures, if one will abandon himselfe, and become a prey
to dissolut courses and wantonesse.' Italy, in truth, had
already become corrupt, and the fruit of her contact with the
nations of the North was seen in the lives of such scholars as
Robert Greene, who confessed that he returned from his travels
instructed in all the villanies under the sun.' Many of the
scandals of the court of James might be ascribed to this aping
of Southern manners.
Yet, together with the evil of depraved morality, the advan-
tage of improved culture was imported from Italy into England;
and the constitution of the English genius was young and
healthy enough to purge off the mischief, while it assimilated
what was beneficial. This is very manifest in the history of our
drama, which, taking it altogether, is at the same time the
purest and the most varied that exists in literature ; while it
may be affirmed without exaggeration that one of the main
impulses to free dramatic composition in England was com-
municated by the attraction everything Italian possessed for
the English fancy. It was in the drama that the English
displayed the richness and the splendour of the Renaissance,
which had blazed so gorgeously and at times so balefully below
the Alps. The Italy of the Renaissance fascinated our drama-
tists with a strange wild glamour—the contrast of external
pageant and internal tragedy, the alternations of radiance and
gloom, the terrible examples of bloodshed, treason, and heroism
emergent from ghastly crimes. Our drama began with a
translation of Ariosto’s ‘Suppositi' and ended with Davenant's
* Just Italian.' In the very dawn of tragic composition Greene
versified a portion of the Orlando Furioso,' and Marlowe
devoted one of his most brilliant studies to the villanies of a
Maltese Jew. Of Shakspere's plays five are incontestably |
182
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
:
Italian several of the rest are furnished with Italian names to
suit the popular taste. Ben Jonson laid the scene of his most
subtle comedy of manners, 'Volpone,' in Venice, and sketched
the first cast of 'Every Man in his Humour' for Italian
characters. Tourneur, Ford, and Webster were so dazzled by
the tragic lustre of the wickedness of Italy that their finest
dramas, without exception, are minute and carefully studied
psychological analyses of great Italian tales of crime. The
same, in a less degree, is true of Middleton and Dekker.
Massinger makes a story of the Sforza family the subject of one
of his best plays. Beaumont and Fletcher draw the subjects
of comedies and tragedies alike from the Italian novelists.
Fletcher in his 'Faithful Shepherdess' transfers the pastoral
style of Tasso and Guarini to the North. So close is the
connection between our tragedy and Italian novels that
Marston and Ford think fit to introduce passages of Italian
dialogue into the plays of 'Giovanni and Annabella' and
'Antonio and Mellida.' But the best proof of the extent to
which Italian life and literature had influenced our dramatists,
may be easily obtained by taking down Halliwell's 'Dictionary
of Old Plays,' and noticing that about every third drama has
an Italian title. Meanwhile the poems composed by the chief
dramatists-Shakspere's 'Venus and Adonis,' Marlowe's 'Hero
and Leander,' Marston's 'Pygmalion,' and Beaumont's 'Her-
maphrodite are all of them conceived in the Italian style, by
men who had either studied Southern literature, or had sub-
mitted to its powerful æsthetic influences. The Masques,
moreover, of Jonson, of Lyly, of Fletcher, and of Chapman are
exact reproductions upon the English court theatres of such
festival pageants as were presented to the Medici at Florence
or to the Este family at Ferrara.¹ Throughout our drama the
¹ Marlowe makes Gaveston talk of Italian masques.' At the same
time in the prologue to Tamburlaine, he shows that he was conscious of
the new and nobler direction followed by the drama in England.
DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE. 183
influence of Italy, direct or indirect, either as supplying our
playwrights with subjects or as stimulating their imagination,
may thus be traced. Yet the Elizabethan drama is in the
highest sense original. As a work of art pregnant with deepest
wisdom, and splendidly illustrative of the age which gave it
birth, it far transcends anything that Italy produced in the
same department. Our poets have a more masculine judg-
ment, more fiery fancy, nobler sentiment, than the Italians of
any age but that of Dante. What Italy gave, was the impulse
toward creation, not patterns to be imitated—the excitement of
the imagination by a spectacle of so much grandeur, not rules
and precepts for production—the keen sense of tragic beauty,
not any tradition of accomplished art.
The Elizabethan period of our literature was, in fact, the
period during which we derived most from the Italian nation.
The study of the Italian language went hand in hand with the
study of Greek and Latin, so that the three together contributed
to form the English taste. Between us and the ancient world
stood the genius of Italy as an interpreter. Nor was this con-
nection broken until far on into the reign of Charles II. What
Milton owed to Italy is clear not only from his Italian sonnets,
but also from the frequent mention of Dante and Petrarch in
his prose works, from his allusions to Boiardo and Ariosto in the
'Paradise Lost,' and from the hints which he probably derived
from Pulci, Tasso and Andreini. It would, indeed, be easy
throughout his works to trace a continuous vein of Italian
influence in detail. But, more than this, Milton's poetical taste
in general seems to have been formed and ripened by fami-
liarity with the harmonies of the Italian language. In his
Tractate on Education addressed to Mr. Hartlib, he recom-
mends that boys should be instructed in the Italian pronuncia-
tion of vowel sounds, in order to give sonorousness and dignity
to elocution. This slight indication supplies us with a key to
the method of melodious structure employed by Milton in his
184
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
6
blank verse.
Those who have carefully studied the harmonies
of the 'Paradise Lost,' know how all-important are the asson-
ances of the vowel sounds of o and a in its most musical
passages. It is just this attention to the liquid and sonorous
recurrences of open vowels that we should expect from a
poet who proposed to assimilate his diction to that of the
Italians.
After the age of Milton the connection between Italy and
England is interrupted. In the seventeenth century Italy her-
self had sunk into comparative stupor, and her literature was
trivial. France not only swayed the political destinies of
Europe, but also took the lead in intellectual culture. Con-
sequently, our poets turned from Italy to France, and the
French spirit pervaded English literature throughout the
period of the Restoration and the reigns of William and Queen
Anne. Yet during this prolonged reaction against the earlier
movement of English literature, as manifested in Elizabethan-
ism, the influence of Italy was not wholly extinct. Dryden's
“Tales from Boccaccio' are no insignificant contribution to our
poetry, and his Palamon and Arcite,' through Chaucer, returns
to the same source. But when, at the beginning of this
century, the Elizabethan tradition was revived, then the Italian
influence reappeared more vigorous than ever. The metre of
· Don Juan,' first practised by Frere and then adopted by Lord
Byron, is Pulci's octave stanza ; the manner is that of Berni,
Folengo, and the Abbé Casti, fused and heightened by the
brilliance of Byron's genius into a new form. The subject of
Shelley's strongest work of art is Beatrice Cenci. Rogers's
poem is styled Italy.'
styled 'Italy.' Byron's dramas are chiefly Italian.
.
Leigh Hunt repeats the tale of Francesca da Rimini. Keats
versifies Boccaccio's Isabella.' Passing to contemporary
poets, Rossetti has acclimatised in English the metres and the
manner of the earliest Italian lyrists. Swinburne dedicates his
noblest song to the spirit of liberty in Italy. Even George
6
DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE.
185
6
Eliot and Tennyson have each of them turned stories of Boc-
caccio into verse. The best of Mrs. Browning's poems, ‘Casa
Guidi Windows' and 'Aurora Leigh,' are steeped in Italian
thought and Italian imagery. Browning's longest poem is a !
tale of Italian crime; his finest studies in the Men and
Women’are portraits of Italian character of the Renaissance
period. But there is more than any mere enumeration of poets
and their work can set forth, in the connection between Italy
and England. That connection, so far as the poetical imagina-
tion is concerned, is vital. As poets in the truest sense of the
word, we English live and breathe through sympathy with the
Italians. The magnetic touch which is required to inflame the
imagination of the North, is derived from Italy. The nightin-
gales of English song who make our oak and beech copses
resonant in spring with purest melody, are migratory birds,
who have charged their souls in the South with the spirit of
beauty, and who return to warble native wood-notes in a
tongue which is their own.
What has hitherto been said about the debt of the English
poets to Italy, may seem to imply that our literature can be
regarded as to some extent a parasite on that of the Italians.
Against such a conclusion no protest too energetic could be
uttered. What we have derived directly from the Italian poets
are, first, some metres—especially the sonnet and the octave
stanza, though the latter has never taken firm root in England.
“Terza rima,' attempted by Shelley, Byron, Morris, and Mrs.
Browning, has not yet become acclimatised. Blank verse,
although originally remodelled by Surrey upon the versi sciolti
of the Italians, has departed widely from Italian precedent,
first by its decasyllabic structure, whereas Italian verse consists
of hendecasyllables; and, secondly, by its greater force, plas-
ticity, and freedom. The Spenserian stanza, again, is a new
and original metre peculiar to our literature ; though it is
possible that but for the complex structures of Italian lyric
186
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
verse, it might not have been fashioned for the 'Faery Queen.'
Lastly, the so-called heroic couplet is native to England; at
any rate, it is in no way related to Italian metre. Therefore
the only true Italian exotic adopted without modification into
our literature is the sonnet.
•
In the next place, we owe to the Italians the subject-matter
of many of our most famous dramas and our most delightful
tales in verse. But the English treatment of these histories
and fables has been uniformly independent and original.
Comparing Shakspere's 'Romeo and Juliet' with Bandello's
tale, Webster's 'Duchess of Malfy' with the version given
from the Italian in Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure,' and Chaucer's
Knight's Tale with the Teseide' of Boccaccio, we perceive at
once that the English poets have used their Italian models
merely as outlines to be filled in with freedom, as the canvas
to be embroidered with a tapestry of vivid groups. Nothing is
more manifest than the superiority of the English genius over
the Italian in all dramatic qualities of intense passion, profound
analysis, and living portrayal of character in action. The mere
rough detail of Shakspere's 'Othello' is to be found in Cinthio's
Collection of Novelle; but let an unprejudiced reader peruse
the original, and he will be no more deeply affected by it than
by any touching story of treachery, jealousy, and hapless inno-
The wily subtleties of Iago, the soldierly frankness of
Cassio, the turbulent and volcanic passions of Othello, the
charm of Desdemona, and the whole tissue of vivid incidents
which make 'Othello' one of the most tremendous extant
tragedies of characters in combat, are Shakspere's, and only
Shakespere's. This instance, indeed, enables us exactly to
indicate what the English owed to Italy and what was essenti-
ally their own. From that Southern land of Circe about which
they dreamed, and which now and then they visited, came to
their imaginations a spirit-stirring breath of inspiration. It
was to them the country of marvels, of mysterious crimes, of
cence.
DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE. 187
luxurious gardens and splendid skies, where love was more
passionate and life more picturesque, and hate more bloody
and treachery more black, than in our Northern climes. Italy
was a spacious grove of wizardry, which mighty poets, on the
quest of fanciful adventure, trod with fascinated senses and
quickened pulses. But the strong brain which converted what
they heard and read and saw of that charmed land into the
stuff of golden romance or sable tragedy, was their own.
English literature has been defined a literature of genius.
Our greatest work in art has been achieved not so much by
inspiration, subordinate to sentiments of exquisite good taste or
guided by observance of classical models, as by audacious
sallies of pure inventive power. This is true as a judgment of
that constellation which we call our drama, of the meteor
Byron, of Milton and Dryden, who are the Jupiter and Mars of
our poetic system, and of the stars which stud our literary
firmament under the names of Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth,
Chatterton, Scott, Coleridge, Clough, Blake, Browning, Swin-
burne, Tennyson. There are only a very few of the English
poets, Pope and Gray, for example, in whom the free instincts
of genius are kept systematically in check by the laws of the
reflective understanding. Now Italian literature is in this
respect all unlike our own. It began, indeed, with Dante, as
a literature pre-eminently of genius ; but the spirit of scholar-
ship assumed the sway as early as the days of Petrarch and
Boccaccio, and after them Italian has been consistently a
literature of taste. By this I mean that even the greatest
Italian poets have sought to render their style correct, have
endeavoured to subordinate their inspiration to what they con-
sidered the rules of sound criticism, and have paid serious
attention to their manner as independent of the matter they
wished to express. The passion for antiquity, so early deve-
loped in Italy, delivered the later Italian poets bound hand
and foot into the hands of Horace. Poliziano was content to
188
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
reproduce the classic authors in a mosaic work of exquisite
translations. Tasso was essentially a man of talent, producing
work of chastened beauty by diligent attention to the rule and
method of his art. Even Ariosto submitted the liberty of his
swift spirit to canons of prescribed elegance. While our
English poets have conceived and executed without regard for
the opinion of the learned and without obedience to the usages
of language--Shakspere, for example, producing tragedies
which set Aristotle at defiance, and Milton engrafting Latinisms
on the native idiom—the Italian poets thought and wrote with
the fear of Academies before their eyes, and studied before all
things to maintain the purity of the Tuscan tongue. The
consequence is that the Italian and English literatures are
eminent for very different excellences. All that is forcible in
the dramatic presentation of life and character and action, all
that is audacious in imagination and capricious in fancy, what-
ever strength style can gain from the sallies of original and
untrammelled eloquence, whatever beauty is derived from
spontaneity and native grace, belong in abundant richness to
the English. On the other hand, the Italian poets present us
with masterpieces of correct and studied diction, with carefully
elaborated machinery, and with a style maintained at a
uniform level of dignified correctness. The weakness of the
English proceeds from inequality and extravagance ; it is the
weakness of self-confident vigour, intolerant of rule, rejoicing
in its own exuberant resources. The weakness of the Italian is
due to timidity and moderation ; it is the weakness that springs
not so much from a lack of native strength as from the over-
anxious expenditure of strength upon the attainment of finish,
polish, and correctness. · Hence the two nations have every-
thing to learn from one another. Modern Italian poets may
seek by contact with Shakspere and Milton to gain a freedom
from the trammels imposed upon them by the slavish followers
of Petrarch; while the attentive perusal of Tasso should be
DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE. 189
recommended to all English people who have no ready access
to the masterpieces of Greek and Latin literature.
Another point of view may be gained by noticing the pre-
dominant tone of the two literatures. Whenever English
poetry is really great, it approximates to the tragic and the
stately ; whereas the Italians are peculiarly felicitous in the
smooth and pleasant style, which combines pathos with
amusement, and which does not trespass beyond the region
of beauty into the domain of sublimity or terror. Italian
poetry is analogous to Italian painting and Italian music : it
bathes the soul in a plenitude of charms, investing even the
most solemn subjects with loveliness. Rembrandt and Albert
Dürer depict the tragedies of the Sacred History with a serious
and awful reality : Italian painters, with a few rare but illustrious
exceptions, shrink from approaching them from any point of
view but that of harmonious melancholy. Even so the English
poets stir the soul to its very depths by their profound and
earnest delineations of the stern and bitter truths of the world :
Italian poets environ all things with the golden haze of an
artistic harmony; so that the soul is agitated by no pain at
strife with the persuasions of pure beauty.
a
a
190
SKETCHES AND STUdies in ITALY.
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE
RENAISSANCE.
THE semi-popular poetry of the Italians in the fifteenth century
formed an important branch of their national literature, and
flourished independently of the courtly and scholastic studies
which gave a special character to the golden age of the revival.
While the latter tended to separate the people from the culti-
vated classes, the former established a new link of connection
between them, different indeed from that which existed when
smiths and carters repeated the Canzoni of Dante by heart in
the fourteenth century, but still sufficiently real to exercise a
weighty influence over the national development. Scholars
like Angelo Poliziano, princes like Lorenzo de' Medici, men of
letters like Feo Belcari and Benivieni, borrowed from the
people forms of poetry, which they handled with refined
taste, and appropriated to the uses of polite literature. The
most important of these forms, native to the people but assimi-
lated by the learned classes, were the Miracle Play or 'Sacra
Rappresentazione;' the Ballata' or lyric to be sung while
dancing; the 'Canto Carnascialesco' or Carnival Chorus ;
the 'Rispetto' or short love-ditty; the 'Lauda' or hymn;
the 'Maggio' or May-song; and the Madrigale' or little part-
song.
At Florence, where even under the despotism of the
Medici a show of republican life still lingered, all classes
joined in the amusements of carnival and spring time; and
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 191
6
this poetry of the dance, the pageant, and the villa flourished
side by side with the more serious efforts of the humanistic
muse. It is not my purpose in this place to inquire into the
origins of each lyrical type, to discuss the alterations they may
have undergone at the hands of educated versifiers, or to
define their several characteristics; but only to offer translations
of such as seem to me best suited to represent the genius of the
people and the age.
In the composition of the poetry in question, Angelo
Poliziano was indubitably the most successful. This giant of
learning, who filled the lecture-rooms of Florence with students
of all nations, and whose critical and rhetorical labours marked
an epoch in the history of scholarship, was by temperament a
poet, and a poet of the people. Nothing was easier for him
than to throw aside his professor's mantle, and to improvise
'Ballate' for the girls to sing as they danced their “Carola'
upon the Piazza di Santa Trinità in summer evenings. The
peculiarity of this lyric is that it starts with a couplet, which
also serves as refrain, supplying the rhyme to each successive
stanza. The stanza itself is identical with our rime royal, if
we count the couplet in the place of the seventh line. The
form is in itself so graceful and is so beautifully treated by
Poliziano that I cannot content myself with fewer that four of
his Ballate. The first is written on the world-old theme of
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.'
I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.
Violets and lilies grew on every side
Mid the green grass, and young flowers wonderful,
Golden and white and red and azure-eyed ;
Toward which I stretched my hands, eager to pull
Plenty to make my fair curls beautiful,
To crown my rippling curls with garlands gay.
"I need hardly guard myself against being supposed to mean that the
form of Ballata in question was the only one of its kind in Italy.
192
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.
But when my lap was full of flowers I spied
Roses at last, roses of every hue;
Therefore I ran to pluck their ruddy pride,
Because their perfume was so sweet and true
That all my soul went forth with pleasure new,
With yearning and desire too soft to say.
I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.
I gazed and gazed. Hard task it were to tell
How lovely were the roses in that hour :
One was but peeping from her verdant shell,
And some were faded, some were scarce in flower :
Then Love said : Go, pluck from the blooming bower
Those that thou seest ripe upon the spray.
I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.
For when the full rose quits her tender sheath,
When she is sweetest and most fair to see,
Then is the time to place her in thy wreath,
Before her beauty and her freshness flee.
Gather ye therefore roses with great glee,
Sweet girls, or ere their perfume pass away.
I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.
а
The next Ballata is less simple, but is composed with the
same intention. It may here be parenthetically mentioned
that the courtly poet, when he applied himself to this species of
composition, invented a certain rusticity of incident, scarcely in
keeping with the spirit of his art. It was in fact a conventional
feature of this species of verse that the scene should be laid in
the country, where the burgher, on a visit to his villa, is sup-
posed to meet with a rustic beauty who captivates his eyes and
heart. Guido Cavalcanti, in his celebrated Ballata, “In un
boschetto trovai pastorella,' struck the keynote of this music,
a
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 193
a
which, it may be reasonably conjectured, was imported into
Italy through Provençal literature from the pastorals of Northern
France. The lady so quaintly imaged by a bird in the follow-
ing Ballata of Poliziano is supposed to have been Monna
Ippolita Leoncina of Prato, white-throated, golden-haired, and
dressed in crimson silk.
I found myself one day all, all alone,
For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.
I do not think the world a field could show
With herbs of perfume so surpassing rare ;
But when I passed beyond the green hedge-row,
A thousand flowers around me flourished fair,
White, pied and crimson, in the summer air ;
Among the which I heard a sweet bird's tone.
I found myself one day all, all alone,
For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.
Her song it was so tender and so clear
That all the world listened with love; then I
With stealthy feet a-tiptoe drawing near,
Her golden head and golden wings could spy,
Her plumes that flashed like rubies neath the sky,
Her crystal beak and throat and bosom's zone.
I found myself one day all, all alone,
For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.
Fain would I snare her, smit with mighty love ;
But arrow-like she soared, and through the air
Fled to her nest upon the boughs above;
Wherefore to follow her is all my care,
For haply I might lure her by some snare
Forth from the woodland wild where she is flown.
I found myself one day all, all alone,
For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.
Yea, I might spread some net or woven wile;
But since of singing she doth take such pleasure,
Without or other art or other guile
I seek to win her with a tuneful measure;
Therefore in singing spend I all my leisure,
To make by singing this sweet bird my own.
I found myself one day all, all alone,
For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.
o
194
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
The same lady is more directly celebrated in the next
Ballata, where Poliziano calls her by her name, Ippolita. I
have taken the liberty of substituting Myrrha for this somewhat
unmanageable word.
He who knows not what thing is Paradise,
Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.
From Myrrha's eyes there fieth, girt with fire,
An angel of our lord, a laughing boy,
Who lights in frozen hearts a Aaming pyre,
And with such sweetness doth the soul destroy,
That while it dies, it murmurs forth its joy:
Oh blessed am I to dwell in Paradise !
He who knows not what thing is Paradise,
Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.
From Myrrha's eyes a virtue still doth move,
So swift and with so fierce and strong a flight,
That it is like the lightning of high Jove,
Riving of iron and adamant the might;
Nathless the wound doth carry such delight
That he who suffers dwells in Paradise.
He who knows not what thing is Paradise,
Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.
From Myrrha's eyes a lovely messenger
Of joy so grave, so virtuous, doth flee,
That all proud souls are bound to bend to her
So sweet her countenance, it turns the key
Of hard hearts locked in cold security :
Forth flies the prisoned soul to Paradise.,
He who knows not what thing is Paradise,
Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.
In Myrrha's eyes beauty doth make her throne,
And sweetly smile and sweetly speak her mind ;
Such grace in her fair eyes a man hath known
As in the whole wide world he scarce may find:
Yet if she slay him with a glance too kind,
He lives again beneath her gazing eyes.
He who knows not what thing is Paradise,
Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.
The fourth Ballata sets forth the fifteenth-century Italian
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 195
code of love, the code of the Novelle, very different in its
avowed laxity from the high ideal of the trecentisti poets.
I ask no pardon if I follow Love;
Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.
From those who feel the fire I feel, what use
Is there in asking pardon? These are so
Gentle, kind-hearted, tender, piteous,
That they will have compassion, well I know,
From such as never felt that honeyed woe,
I seek no pardon : nought they know of Love.
I ask no pardon if I follow Love;
Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof,
Honour, pure love, and perfect gentleness,
Weighed in the scales of equity refined,
Are but one thing : beauty is nought or less,
Placed in a dame of proud and scornful mind.
Who can rebuke me then if I am kind
So far as honesty comports and Love?
I ask no pardon if I follow Love;
Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.
Let him rebuke me whose hard heart of stone
Ne'er felt of Love the summer in his vein!
I pray to Love that who hath never known
Love's power, may ne'er be blessed with Love's great gain;
But he who serves our lord with might and main,
May dwell for ever in the fire of Love!
I ask no pardon if I follow Love;
Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.
Let him rebuke me without cause who will;
For if he be not gentle, I fear nought :
My heart obedient to the same love still
Hath little heed of light words envy.fraught :
So long as life remains, it is my thought
To keep the laws of this so gentle Love.
I ask no pardon if I follow Love;
Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.
This Ballata is put into a woman's mouth. Another,
ascribed to Lorenzo de' Medici, expresses the sadness of a man
0 2
196
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
who has lost the favour of his lady. It illustrates the well-
known use of the word Signore for mistress in Florentine
poetry
How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free,
When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?
Dances and songs and merry wakes I leave
To lovers fair, more fortunate and gay;
Since to my heart so many sorrows cleave
That only doleful tears are mine for aye :
Who hath heart's ease, may carol, dance, and play;
While I am fain to weep continually.
How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free,
When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?
I too had heart's ease once, for so Love willed,
When my lord loved me with love strong and great :
But envious fortune my life's music stilled,
And turned to sadness all my gleeful state,
Ah me! Death surely were less desolate
Than thus to live and love-neglected be!
How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free,
When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?
One only comfort soothes my heart's despair,
And mid this sorrow lends my soul some cheer;
Unto my lord I ever yielded fair
Service of faith untainted pure and clear;
If then I die thus guiltless, on my bier
It may be she will shed one tear for me.
How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free,
When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?
m
The Florentine Rispetto was written for the most part in
octave stanzas, detached or continuous. The octave stanza in
Italian literature was an emphatically popular form ; and it is
still largely used in many parts of the peninsula for the lyrical
expression of emotion.' Poliziano did no more than treat it with
his own facility, sacrificing the unstudied raciness of his popular
models to literary elegance.
· See my Sketches in Italy and Greece, p. 114.
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 197
Here are a few of these detached stanzas or Rispetti
Spicciolati :-
Upon that day when first I saw thy face,
I vowed with loyal love to worship thee.
Move, and I move; stay, and I keep my place :
Whate'er thou dost, will I do equally.
In joy of thine I find most perfect grace,
And in thy sadness dwells my misery :
Laugh, and I laugh; weep, and I too will weep.
Thus Love commands, whose laws I loving keep.
Nay, be not over-proud of thy great grace,
Lady! for brief time is thy thief and mine.
White will he turn those golden curls, that lace
Thy forehead and thy neck so marble-fine.
Lo! while the flower still flourisheth apace,
Pluck it: for beauty but awhile doth shine.
Fair is the rose at dawn; but long ere night
Her freshness fades, her pride hath vanished quite.
Fire, fire! Ho, water.! for my heart's afire !
Ho, neighbours ! help me, or by God I die !
See, with his standard, that great lord, Desire!
He sets my heart aflame : in vain I cry.
Too late, alas ! The flames mount high and higher.
Alack, good friends! I faint, I fail, I die.
Ho! water, neighbours mine! no more delay!
My heart's a cinder if you do but stay.
Lo, may I prove to Christ a renegade,
And, dog-like, die in pagan Barbary;
Nor may God's mercy on my soul be laid,
If ere for aught I shall abandon thee :
Before all-seeing God this prayer be made-
When I desert thee, may death feed on me:
Now if thy hard heart scorn these vows, be sure
That without faith none may abide secure.
I ask not, Love, for any other pain
To make thy cruel foe and mine repent,
Only that thou shouldst yield her to the strain
Of these my arms, alone, for chastisement;
Then would I clasp her so with might and main,
That she should learn to pity and relent,
And, in revenge for scorn and proud despite,
A thousand times I'd kiss her forehead white.
a
198
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY. ,
a
Not always do fierce tempests vex the sea,
Nor always clinging clouds offend the sky;
Cold snows before the sunbeams haste to flee,
Disclosing flowers that neath their whiteness lie ;
The saints each one doth wait his day to see,
And time makes all things change; so, therefore, I
Ween that 'tis wise to wait my turn, and say,
That who subdues himself, deserves to sway.
It will be observed that the tone of these poems is not
passionate nor elevated. Love, as understood in Florence of
the fifteenth century, was neither ; nor was Poliziano the man to
have revived Platonic mysteries or chivalrous enthusiasms.
When the octave stanzas, written with this amorous intention,
were strung together into a continuous poem, this form of verse
took the title of Rispetto Continuato. In the collection of
Poliziano's poems there are several examples of the long
Rispetto, carelessly enough composed, as may be gathered from
the recurrence of the same stanzas in several poems. All
repeat the old arguments, the old enticements to a less than
lawful love. The one which I have chosen for translation,
styled Serenata ovvero Lettera in Istrambotti, might be selected
as an epitome of Florentine convention in the matter of love-
making
O thou of fairest fairs the first and queen,
Most courteous, kind, and honourable dame,
Thine ear unto thy servant's singing lean,
Who loves thee more than health, or wealth, or fame;
For thou his shining planet still hast been,
And day and night he calls on thy fair name:
First wishing thee all good the world can give,
Next praying in thy gentle thoughts to live.
He humbly prayeth that thou shouldst be kind
To think upon his pure and perfect faith,
And that such mercy in thy heart and mind
Should reign, as so much beauty argueth :
A thousand, thousand hints, or he were blind,
Of thy great courtesy he reckoneth:
Wherefore thy loyal subject now doth sue
Such gverdon only as shall prove them true.
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 199
He knows himself unmeet for love from thee,
Unmeet for merely gazing on thine eyes;
Seeing thy comely squires so plenteous be,
That there is none but ’neath thy beauty sighs :
Yet since thou seekest fame and bravery,
Nor carest aught for gauds that others prize,
And since he strives to honour thee alway,
He still hath hope to gain thy heart one day.
Virtue that dwells untold, unknown, unseen,
Still findeth none to love or value it;
Wherefore his faith, that hath so perfect been,
Not being known, can profit him no whit:
He would find pity in thine eyes,
I
ween,
If thou shouldst deign to make some proof of it;
The rest may flatter, gape, and stand agaze;
Him only faith above the crowd doth raise.
Suppose that he might meet thee once alone,
Face unto face, without or jealousy,
Or doubt or fear from false misgiving grown,
And tell his tale of grievous pain to thee,
Sure from thy breast he'd draw full many a moan,
And make thy fair eyes weep right plenteously:
Yea, if he had but skill his heart to show,
He scarce could fail to win thee by its woe.
Now art thou in thy beauty's blooming hour;
Thy youth is yet in pure perfection's prime :
Make it thy pride to yield thy fragile flower,
Or look to find it paled by envious time :
For none to stay the flight of years hath power,
And who culls roses caught by frosty rime ?
Give therefore to thy lover, give, for they
Too late repent who act not while they may.
Time flies : and lo! thou let'st it idly fly :
There is not in the world a thing more dear :
And if thou wait to see sweet May pass by,
Where find'st thou roses in the later year?
He never can, who lets occasion die :
Now that thou canst, stay not for doubt or fear;
.But by the forelock take the flying hour,
Ere change begins, and clouds above thee lower.
Too long 'twixt yea and nay he hath been wrung;
Whether he sleep or wake he little knows,
.
200
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Or free or in the bands of bondage strung :
Nay, lady, strike, and let thy lover loose !
What joy hast thou to keep a captive hung ?
Kill him at once, or cut the cruel noose :
No more, I prithee, stay; but take thy part :
Either relax the bow, or speed the dart.
Thou feedest him on words and windiness,
On smiles, and signs, and bladders light as air ;
Saying, thou fain wouldst comfort his distress,
But dar'st not, canst not: nay, dear lady fair,
All things are possible beneath the stress
Of will, that flames above the soul's despair !
Dally no longer : up, set to thy hand;
Or see his love unclothed and naked stand.
For he hath sworn, and by this oath will bide,
E'en though his life be lost in the endeavour,
To leave no way, nor art, nor wile untried,
Until he pluck the fruit he sighs for ever :
And, though he still would spare thy honest pride,
The knot that binds him he must loose or sever;
Thou too, O lady, shouldst make sharp thy knife,
If thou art fain to end this amorous strife.
Lo! if thou lingerest still in dubious dread,
Lest thou shouldst lose fair fame of honesty,
Here hast thou need of wile and warihead,
To test thy lover's strength in screening thee;
Indulge him, if thou find him well bestead,
Knowing that smothered love flames outwardly:
Therefore, seek means, search out some privy way;
Keep not the steed too long at idle play.
Or if thou heedest what those friars teach,
I cannot fail, lady, to call thee fool :
Well may they blame our private sins and preach;
But ill their acts match with their spoken rule;
The same pitch clings to all men, one and each.
There, I have spoken : set the world to school !
With this true proverb, too, be well acquainted :
The devil's ne'er so black as he is painted.
Nor did our good Lord give such grace to thee
That thou shouldst keep it buried in thy breast,
But to reward thy servant's constancy,
Whose love and loyal faith thou hast repressed :
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE.
201
Think it no sin to be some trifle free,
Because thou livest at a lord's behest;
For if he take enough to feed his fill,
To cast the rest away were surely ill.
They find most favour in the sight of heaven
Who to the poor and hungry are most kind;
A hundred-fold shall thus to thee be given
By God, who loves the free and generous mind;
Thrice strike thy breast, with pure contrition riven,
Crying : I sinned; my sin hath made me blind ! -
He wants not much : enough if he be able
To pick up crumbs that fall beneath thy table.
:
Wherefore, O lady, break the ice at length;
Make thou, too, trial of love's fruits and flowers :
When in thine arms thou feelst thy lover's strength,
Thou wilt repent of all these wasted hours :
Husbands, they know not love, its breadth and length,
Seeing their hearts are not on fire like ours :
Things longed for give most pleasure; this I tell thee;
If still thou doubtest let the proof compel thee.
What I have spoken is pure gospel sooth;
I have told all my mind, withholding nought :
And well, I ween, thou canst unhusk the truth,
And through the riddle read the hidden thought :
Perchance if heaven still smile upon my youth,
Some good effect for me may yet be wrought :
Then fare thee well; too many words offend :
She who is wise is quick to comprehend.
The levity of these love-declarations and the Auency of
their vows show them to be false as dicers' oaths,' mere verses
of the moment, made to please a facile mistress. One long
poem, which cannot be styled a Rispetto, but is rather a Canzone
of the legitimate type, stands out with distinctness from the
rest of Poliziano's love-verses. It was written by him for
Giuliano de' Medici, in praise of the fair Simonetta. The
following version attempts to repeat its metrical effects in some
measure:-
202
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
My task it is, since thus Love wills, who strains
And forces all the world beneath his sway,
In lowly verse to say
The great delight that in my bosom reigns.
For if perchance I took but little pains
To tell some part of all the joy I find,
I might be deem'd unkind
By one who knew my heart's deep happiness.
He feels but little bliss who hides his bliss;
Small joy hath he whose joy is never sung;
And he who curbs his tongue
Through cowardice, knows but of love the name.
Wherefore to succour and augment the fame
Of that pure, virtuous, wise, and lovely may,
Who like the star of day
Shines mid the stars, or like the rising sun,
Forth from my burning heart the words shall run.
Far, far be envy, far be jealous fear,
With discord dark and drear,
And all the choir that is of love the foe. —
The season had returned when soft winds blow,
The season friendly to young lovers coy,
Which bids them clothe their joy
In divers garbs and many a masked disguise.
Then I to track the game 'neath April skies
Went forth in raiment strange apparelled,
And by kind fate was led
Unto the spot were stayed my soul's desire.
The beauteous nymph who feeds my soul with fire,
I found in gentle, pure, and prudent mood,
In graceful attitude,
Loving and courteous, holy, wise, benign.
So sweet, so tender was her face divine,
So gladsome, that in those celestial eyes
Shone perfect paradise,
Yea, all the good that we poor mortals crave.
Around her was a band so nebly brave
Of beauteous dames, that as I gazed at these,
Methought heaven's goddesses
That day for once had deigned to visit earth.
But she who gives my soul sorrow and mirth,
Seemed Pallas in her gait, and in her face
Venus; for every grace
And beauty of the world in her combined.
Merely to think, far more to tell my mind
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 203
Of that most wondrous sight, confoundeth me,
For mid the maidens she
Who most resembled her was found most rare
Call ye another first among the fair ;
Not first, but sole before my lady set :
Lily and violet
And all the flowers below the rose must bow.
Down from her royal head and lustrous brow
The golden curls fell sportively unpent,
While through the choir she went
With feet well lessoned to the rhythmic sound.
Her eyes, though scarcely raised above the ground,
Sent me by stealth a ray divinely fair;
But still her jealous hair
Broke the bright beam, and veiled her from my gaze.
She, born and nursed in heaven for angels' praise,
No sooner saw this wrong, than back she drew,
With hand of purest hue,
Her truant curls with kind and gentle mien.
Then from her eyes a soul so fiery keen,
So sweet a soul of love she cast on mine,
That scarce can I divine
How then I 'scaped from burning utterly.
These are the first fair signs of love to be,
That bound my heart with adamant, and these
The matchless courtesies
Which, dreamlike, still before mine eyes must hover.
This is the honeyed food she gave her lover,
To make him, so it pleased her, half-divine;
Nectar is not so fine,
Nor ambrosy, the fabled feast of Jove.
Then, yielding proofs more clear and strong of love,
As though to show the faith within her heart,
She moved, with subtle art,
Her feet accordant to the amorous air.
But while I gaze and pray to God that ne'er
Might cease that happy dance angelical,
O, harsh, unkind recall !
Back to the banquet was she beckoned.
She, with her face at first with pallor spread,
Then tinted with a blush of coral dye,
“The ball is best !' did cry,
Gentle in tone and smiling as she spake.
But from her eyes celestial forth did break
204
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Favour at parting; and I well could see
Young love confusedly
Enclosed within the furtive fervent gaze,
Heating his arrows at their beauteous rays,
For war with Pallas and with Dian cold.
Fairer than mortal mould,
She moved majestic with celestial gait;
And with her hand her robe in royal state
Raised, as she went with pride ineffable.
Of me I cannot tell,
Whether alive or dead I there was left.
Nay, dead, methinks! since I of thee was reft,
Light of my life! and yet, perchance, alive -
Such virtue to revive
My lingering soul possessed thy beauteous face.
But if that powerful charm of thy great grace
Could then thy loyal lover so sustain,
Why comes there not again
More often or more soon the sweet delight?
Twice hath the wandering moon with borrowed light
Stored from her brother's rays her crescent horn,
Nor yet hath fortune borne
Me on the way to so much bliss again.
Earth smiles anew; fair spring renews her reign :
The grass and every shrub once inore is green ;
The amorous birds begin,
From winter loosed, to fill the field with song.
See how in loving pairs the cattle throng ;
The bull, the ram, their amorous jousts enjoy:
Thou maiden, I a boy,
Shall we prove traitors to love's law for aye?
Shall we these years that are so fair let fly?
Wilt thou not put thy flower of youth to use?
Or with thy beauty choose
To make him blest who loves thee best of all?
Haply I am some hind who guards the stall,
Or of vile lineage, or with years outworn,
Poor, or a cripple born,
Or faint of spirit that you spurn me so?
Nay, but my race is noble and doth grow
With honour to our land, with pomp and power ;
My youth is yet in flower,
And it may chance some maiden sighs for me.
My lot it is to deal right royally
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 203
With all the goods that fortune spreads around,
For still they more abound,
Shaken from her full lap, the more I waste.
My strength is such as whoso tries shall taste;
Circled with friends, with favours crowned am I :
Yet though I rank so high
Among the blest, as men may reckon bliss,
Still without thee, my hope, my happiness,
It seems a sad, and bitter thing to live!
Then stint me not, but give
That joy which holds all joys enclosed in one.
Let me pluck fruits at last, not flowers alone !
With much that is frigid, artificial, and tedious in this old-
fashioned love-song, there is a curious monotony of sweetness
which commends it to our ears; and he who reads it may
remember the profile portrait of Simonetta from the hand of
Piero della Francesca in the Pitti Palace at Florence.
It is worth comparing Poliziano's treatment of popular or
semi-popular verse-forms with his imitations of Petrarch's
manner. For this purpose I have chosen a Canzone, clearly
written in competition with the celebrated 'Chiare, fresche e
dolci acque,' of Laura's lover. While closely modelled upon
Petrarch's form and similar in motive, this Canzone preserves
Poliziano's special qualities of Auency and emptiness of
content.
6
Hills, valleys, caves and fells,
With flowers and leaves and herbage spread;
Green meadows; shadowy groves where light is low;
Lawns watered with the rills
That cruel Love hath made me shed,
Cast from these cloudy eyes so dark with woe;
Thou stream that still dost know
What fell pangs pierce my heart,
So dost thou murmur back my moan;
Lone bird that chauntest tone for tone,
While in our descant drear Love sings his part;
Nymphs, woodland wanderers, wind and air ;
List to the sound out-poured from my despair !
206
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Seven times and once more seven
The roseate dawn her beauteous brow
Enwreathed with orient jewels hath displayed ;
Cynthia once more in heaven
Hath orbed her horns with silver now;
While in sea waves her brother's light was laid;
Since this high mountain glade
Felt the white footstep fall
Of that proud lady, who to spring
Converts whatever woodland thing
She may o'ershadow, touch, or heed at all.
Here bloom the flowers, the grasses spring
From her bright eyes, and drink what mine must bring.
Yea, nourished with my tears
Is every little leaf I see,
And the stream rolls therewith a prouder wave.
Ah me! through what long years
Will she withhold her face from me,
Which stills the stormy skies howe'er they rave?
Speak! or in grove or cave
If one hath seen her stray,
Plucking amid those grasses green
Wreaths for her royal brows serene,
Flowers white and blue and red and golden gay!
Nay, prithee, speak, if pity dwell
Among these woods, within this leafy dell !
O Love! 'twas here we saw,
Beneath the new-fledged leaves that spring
From this old beech, her fair form lowly laid :-
The thought renews my awe!
How sweetly did her tresses fling
Waves of wreathed gold unto the winds that strayed !
Fire, frost within me played,
While I heheld the bloom
Of laughing flowers-0 day of bliss !
Around those tresses meet and kiss,
And roses in her lap of Love the home!
Her grace, her port divinely fair,
Describe it, Love! myself I do not dare.
In mute intent surprise
I gazed, as when a hind is seen
To dote upon its image in a rill;
Drinking those love-lit eyes,
Those hands, that face, those words serene,
a
a
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 207
That song which with delight the heaven did fill,
That smile which thralls me still,
Which melteth stones unkind,
Which in this woodland wilderness
Tames every beast and stills the stress
Of hurrying waters. Would that I could find
Her footprints upon field or grove !
I should not then be envious of Jove.
Thou cool stream rippling by,
Where oft it pleased her to dip
Her naked foot, how blest art thou !
Ye branching trees on high,
That spread your gnarled roots on the lip
Of yonder hanging rock to drink heaven's dew!
She often leaned on you,
She who is my life's bliss !
Thou ancient beech with moss o'ergrown,
How do I envy thee thy throne,
Found worthy to receive such happiness!
Ye winds, how blissful must ye be,
Since ye have borne to heaven her harmony !
The winds that music bore,
And wafted it to God on high,
That Paradise might have the joy thereof.
Flowers here she plucked, and wore
Wild roses from the thorn hard by :
This air she lightened with her look of love :
This running stream above,
She bent her face !-Ah me!
Where am I? What sweet makes me swoon?
What calm is in the kiss of noon?
Who brought me here? Who speaks ? What melody?
Whence came pure peace
into
my
soul?
What joy hath rapt me from my own control ?
Poliziano's refrain is always : 'Gather ye rosebuds while
ye may. It is spring-time now and youth. Winter and old
age are coming!' A Maggio, or May-day song, describing
the games, dances, and jousting matches of the Florentine lads
upon the morning of the first of May, expresses this facile philo-
sophy of life with a quaintness that recalls Herrick. It will be
noticed that the Maggio is built, so far as rhymes go, on the
208
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
same system as Poliziano's Ballata. It has considerable
historical interest, for the opening couplet is said to be Guido
Cavalcanti's, while the whole poem is claimed by Roscoe for
Lorenzo de' Medici, and by Carducci with better reason for
Poliziano.
Welcome in the May
And the woodland garland gay !
Welcome in the jocund spring
Which bids all men lovers be!
Maidens, up with carolling,
With your sweethearts stout and free,
With roses and with blossoms ye
Who deck yourselves this first of May !
Up, and forth into the pure
Meadows, mid the trees and flowers !
Every beauty is secure
With so many bachelors :
Beasts and birds amid the bowers
Burn with love this first of May.
Maidens, who are young and fair,
Be not harsh, I counsel you;
For your youth cannot repair
Her prime of spring, as meadows do :
None be proud, but all be true
To men who love, this first of May.
Dance and carol every one
Of our band so bright and gay!
See your sweethearts how they run
Through the jousts for you to-day!
She who saith her lover nay,
Will deflower the sweets of May.
Lads in love take sword and shield
To make pretty girls their prize :
Yield ye, merry maidens, yield
To your lovers' vows and sighs :
Give his heart back ere it dies:
Wage not war this first of May.
He who steals another's heart,
Let him give his own heart too:
Who's the robber? 'Tis the smart
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISS iNCE. 209
Little cherub Cupid, who
Homage comes to pay with you,
Damsels, to the first of May.
Love comes smiling; round his head
Lilies white and roses meet :
'Tis for you his flight is sped.
Fair one, haste our king to greet :
Who will fing him blossoms sweet
Soonest on this first of May?
Welcome, stranger! welcome, king!
Love, what hast thou to command ?
That each girl with wreaths should ring
Her lover's hair with loving hand,
That girls small and great should band
In Love's ranks this first of May.
The Canto Carnascialesco, for the final development, if
not for the invention of which all credit must be given to
Lorenzo de' Medici, does not greatly differ from the Maggio
in structure. It admitted, however, of great varieties, and was
generally more complex in its interweaving of rhymes. Yet the
essential principle of an exordium which should also serve for
a refrain, was rarely, if ever, departed from. Two specimens
of the Carnival Song will serve to bring into close contrast two
very different aspects of Florentine history. The earlier was
composed by Lorenzo de' Medici at the height of his power
and in the summer of Italian independence. It was sung by
masquers attired in classical costume, to represent Bacchus
and his crew.
Fair is youth and void of sorrow;
But it hourly flies away.-
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.
This is Bacchus and the bright
Ariadne, lovers true!
They, in flying time's despite,
Each with each find pleasure new;
These their Nymphs, and all their crew
P
210
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Keep perpetual holiday.--
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day ;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.
These blithe Satyrs, wanton-eyed,
Of the Nymphs are paramours :
Through the caves and forests wide
They have snared them mid the flowers;
Warmed with Bacchus, in his bowers,
Now they dance and leap alway. —
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.
These fair Nymphs, they are not loth
To entice their lovers' wiles.
None but thankless folk and rough
Can resist when Love beguiles.
Now enlaced, with wreathéd smiles,
All together dance and play. —
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.
See this load behind them plodding
On the ass! Silenus he,
Old and drunken, merry, nodding,
Full of years and jollity ;
Though he goes so swayingly,
Yet he laughs and quaffs alway. —
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.
Midas treads a wearier measure :
All he touches turns to gold :
If there be no taste of pleasure,
What's the use of wealth untold ?
What's the joy his fingers hold,
When he's forced to thirst for aye ?-
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.
Listen well to what we're saying;
Of to-morrow have no care !
Young and old together playing,
Bcys and girls, be blithe as air !
Every sorry thought forswear!
Keep perpetual holiday. –
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day
Nought ye know about to-morrow.
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE.
211
Ladies and gay lovers young!
Long live Bacchus, live Desire !
Dance and play; let songs be sung ;
Let sweet love your bosoms fire;
In the future come what may !-
Youth and maids, enjoy to-day!
Nought ye know about to-morrow.
Fair is youth and void of sorrow;
But it hourly flies away.
The next, composed by Antonio Alamanni, after Lorenzo's
death and the ominous passage of Charles VIII., was sung by
masquers habited as skeletons. The car they rode on, was a
Car of Death designed by Piero di Cosimo, and their music
was purposely gloomy. If in the jovial days of the Medici the
streets of Florence had rung to the thoughtless refrain, 'Nought
ye know about to-morrow,' they now re-echoed with a cry of
Penitence;' for times had strangely altered, and the heedless
past had brought forth a doleful present. The last stanza of
Alamanni's chorus is a somewhat clumsy attempt to adapt the
too real moral of his subject to the customary mood of the
Carnival.
6
a
Sorrow, tears, and penitence
Are our doom of pain for aye:
This dead concourse riding by
Hath no cry but penitence!
E’en as you are, once were we:
You shall be as now we are :
We are dead men, as you see:
We shall see you dead men,
where
Nought avails to take great care,
After sins, of penitence.
We too in the Carnival
Sang our love-songs through the town;
Thus from sin to sin we all
Headlong, heedless, tumbled down :-
Now we cry, the world around,
Penitence! oh, Penitence !
P 2
212
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Senseless, blind, and stubborn fools !
Time steals all things as he rides :
Honours, glories, states, and schools,
Pass away, and nought abides;
Till the tomb our carcase hides,
And compels this penitence.
This sharp scythe you see us bear,
Brings the world at length to woe :
But from life to life we fare;
And that life is joy or woe :
All heaven's bliss on him doth flow
Who on earth does penitence.
Living here, we all must die ;
Dying, every soul shall live :
For the King of kings on high
This fixed ordinance doth give :
Lo, you all are fugitive !
Penitence! Cry Penitence!
Torment great and grievous dole
Hath the thankless heart mid you :
But the man of piteous soul
Finds much honour in our crew :
Love for loving is the due
That prevents this penitence.
Sorrow, tears, and penitence
Are our doom of pain for aye:
This dead concourse riding by
Hath no cry but Penitence!
One song for dancing, composed less upon the type of the
Ballata than on that of the Carnival Song, may here be intro-
duced, not only in illustration of the varied forms assumed by this
style of poetry, but also because it is highly characteristic of
Tuscan town-life. This poem in the vulgar style has been
ascribed to Lorenzo de' Medici, but probably without due
It describes the manners and customs of female street
gossips.
Since you beg with such a grace,
How can I refuse a song,
Wholesome, honest, void of wrong,
On the follies of the place ?
reason.
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 213
Courteously on you I call;
Listen well to what I sing:
For my roundelay to all
May perchance instruction bring,
And of life good lessoning.—
When in company you meet,
Or sit spinning, all the street
Clamours like a market-place.
Thirty of you there may be;
Twenty-nine are sure to buzz,
And the single silent she
Racks her brains about her coz:-
Mrs. Buzz and Mrs. Huzz,
Mind your work, my ditty saith;
Do not gossip till your breath
Fails and leaves you black of face!
Governments go out and in :-
You the truth must needs discover.
Is a girl about to win
A brave husband in her lover?-
Straight you set to talk him over :
'Is he wealthy?' 'Does his coat
And has he got a vote?'
Fit?'
'Who's his father?' What's his race?'
Out of window one head pokes ;
Twenty others do the same:—
Chatter, clatter!-creaks and croaks
All the year the same old game !—
⚫ See my spinning!' cries one dame,
'Five long ells of cloth, I trow!'
Cries another, 'Mine must go,
Drat it, to the bleaching base!'
'Devil take the fowl!' says one :
'Mine are all bewitched, I guess;
Cocks and hens with vermin run,
Mangy, filthy, featherless.'
Says another: 'I confess
Every hair I drop, I keep-
Plague upon it, in a heap
Falling off to my disgrace!'
If you see a fellow walk
Up or down the street and back,
How you nod and wink and talk,
214
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Hurry-skurry, cluck and clack !
• What, I wonder, does he lack
Here about ?'-—There's something wrong!'
Till the poor man's made a song
For the female populace.
It were well you gave no thought
To such idle company;
Shun these gossips, care for nought
But the business that you ply.
You who chatter, you who cry,
Heed my words; be wise, I pray:
Fewer, shorter stories say:
Bide at home, and mind your place.
Since you beg with such a grace,
How can I refuse a song,
Wholesome, honest, void of wrong,
On the follies of the place ?
The Madrigale, intended to be sung in parts, was another
species of popular poetry cultivated by the greatest of Italian
writers. Without seeking examples from such men as Petrarch,
Michel Angelo, or Tasso, who used it as a purely literary form,
I will content myself with a few Madrigals by anonymous
composers, more truly popular in style, and more immediately
intended for music. The similarity both of manner and
matter, between these little poems and the Ballate, is obvious.
There is the same affectation of rusticity in both.
a
Cogliendo per un prato,
Plucking white lilies in a field I saw
Fair women, laden with young Love's delight:
Some sang, some danced; but all were fresh and bright.
Then by the margin of a fount they leaned,
And of those flowers made garlands for their hair--
Wreaths for their golden tresses quaint and rare.
Forth from the field I passed, and gazed upon
Their loveliness, and lost my heart to one.
| The originals will be found in Carducci's Studi Letterari p. 273 et
seg. I have preserved their rhyming structure.
FOPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 213
Togliendo l'una all' altra.
One from the other borrowing leaves and flowers,
I saw fair maidens neath the summer trees,
Weaving bright garlands with low love-ditties.
Mid that sweet sisterhood the loveliest
Turned her soft eyes to me, and whispered, “Take!'
Love-lost I stood, and not a word I spake.
My heart she read, and her fair garland gave :
Therefore I am her servant to the grave.
Appress' un fiume chiaro.
Hard by a crystal stream
Girls and maids were dancing round
A lilac with fair blossoms crowned.
Mid these I spied out one
So tender-sweet, so love-laden,
She stole my heart with singing then :
Love in her face so lovely-kind
And eyes and hands my soul did bind.
Di riva in riva.
From lawn to lea Love led me down the valley,
Seeking my hawk, where neath a pleasant hill
I spied fair maidens bathing in a rill.
Lina was there all loveliness excelling;
The pleasure of her beauty made me sad,
And yet at sight of her my soul was glad.
Downward I cast mine eyes with modest seeming,
And all atremble from the fountain fled :
For each was naked as her maidenhead.
Thence singing fared I through a flowery plain,
Where bye and bye I found my hawk again!
Nel chiaro fiume.
Down a fair streamlet crystal-clear and pleasant
I went a fishing all alone one day,
And spied three maidens bathing there at play.
Of love they told each other honeyed stories,
While with white hands they smote the stream, to wet
Their sunbright hair in the pure rivulet.
Gazing I crouched among thick flowering leafage,
216
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Till one who spied a rustling branch on high,
Turned to her comrades with a sudden cry,
And • Go! Nay, prithee go!' she called to me:
"To stay were surely but scant courtesy.'
Quel sole che nutrica.
The sun which makes a lily bloom,
Leans down at times on her to gaze-
Fairer, he deems, than his fair rays :
Then, having looked a little while,
He turns and tells the saints in bliss
How marvellous her beauty is.
Thus up in heaven with flute and string
Thy loveliness the angels sing.
Di novo è giunt.
Lo! here hath come an errant knight
On a barbed charger clothed in mail :
His archers scatter iron hail.
At brow and breast his mace he aims;
Who therefore hath not arms of proof,
Let him live locked by door and roof;
Until Dame Summer on a day
That grisly knight return to slay.
Poliziano's treatment of the octave stanza for Rispetti was
comparatively popular. But in his poem of 'La Giostra,
written to commemorate the victory of Giuliano de' Medici
in a tournament and to celebrate his mistress, he gave
a new and richer form to the metre which Boccaccio had
already used for epic verse. The slight and uninteresting
framework of this poem, which opened a new sphere for Italian
literature, and prepared the way for Ariosto's golden cantos,
might be compared to one of those wire-baskets which children
steep in alum-water, and incrust with crystals, sparkling, arti-
ficial, beautiful with colours not their own. The mind of
Poliziano held, as it were, in solution all the images and thoughts
of antiquity, all the riches of his native literature. In that vast
reservoir of poems and mythologies and phrases, so patiently
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 217
accumulated, so tenaciously preserved, so thoroughly assimi-
lated, he plunged the trivial subject he had chosen, and trium-
phantly presented to the world the spolia opima of scholarship
and taste. What mattered it that the theme was slight? The
art was perfect, the result splendid. One canto of 125 stanzas
describes the youth of Giuliano, who sought to pass his life
among the woods, a hunter dead to love, but who was doomed
to be ensnared by Cupid. The chase, the beauty of Simonetta,
the palace of Venus, these are the three subjects of a book as
long as the first Iliad. The second canto begins with dreams
and prophecies of glory to be won by Giuliano in the tournament.
But it stops abruptly. The tragic catastrophe of the Pazzi
Conjuration cut short Poliziano's panegyric by the murder
of his hero. Meanwhile the poet had achieved his purpose.
His torso presented to Italy a model of style, a piece of written
art adequate to the great painting of the Renaissance period, a
double star of poetry which blent the splendours of the ancient
and the modern world. To render into worthy English the
harmonies of Poliziano is a difficult task. Yet this must be
attempted if an English reader is to gain any notion of the
scope and substance of the Italian poet's art. In the first part
of the poem we are placed, as it were, at the mid point between
the 'Hippolytus' of Euripides' and Shakspere's Venus and
Adonis.' The cold hunter Giuliano is to see Simonetta, and
seeing, is to love her. This is how he first discovers the trium-
phant beauty >
:-
White is the maid, and white the robe around her,
With buds and roses and thin grasses pied;
Enwreathed folds of golden tresses crowned her,
Shadowing her forehead fair with modest pride :
The wild wood smiled; the thicket where he found her,
To ease his anguish, bloomed on every side:
Serene she sits, with gesture queenly mild,
And with her brow tempers the tempests wild.
1 Stanza XLIII. All references are made to Carducci's excellent
218
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
4
After three stanzas of this sort, in which the poet's style is
more apparent than the object he describes, occurs this charm-
ing picture :-
Reclined he found her on the swarded grass
In jocund mood; and garlands she had made
Of every flower that in the meadow was,
Or on her robe of many hues displayed ;
But when she saw the youth before her pass,
Raising her timid head awhile she stayed ;
Then with her white hand gathered up her dress,
And stood, lap-full of flowers, in loveliness.
Then through the dewy field with footstep slow
The lingering maid began to take her
way,
Leaving her lover in great fear and woe,
For now he longs for nought but her alway:
The wretch, who cannot bear that she should go,
Strives with a whispered prayer her feet to stay;
And thus at last, all trembling, all afire,
In humble wise he breathes his soul's desire :
6
• Whoe'er thou art, maid among maidens queen,
Goddess, or nymph—nay, goddess seems most clear-
If goddess, sure my Dian I have seen;
If mortal, let thy proper self appear!
Beyond terrestrial beauty is thy mien ;
I have no merit that I should be here !
What grace of heaven, what lucky star benign
Yields me the sight of beauty so divine?'
A conversation ensues, after which Giuliano departs utterly
lovesick, and Cupid takes wing exultingly for Cyprus, where his
mother's palace stands. In the following picture of the house
of Venus, who shall say how much of Ariosto's Alcina and
Tasso's Armida is contained ? Cupid arrives, and the family
of Love is filled with joy at Giuliano's conquest. From the
plan of the poem it is clear that its beauties are chiefly those
of detail. They are, however, very great. How perfect, for
1
edition, Le Stanze, l'Orfeo e le Rime di Messer Angelo Ambrogini Poliziiino.
Firenze, G. Barbéra, 1863.
:
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 219
example, is the richness combined with delicacy of the following
description of a country life :-
Book I. Stanzas 17-21.
How far more safe it is, how far more fair,
To chase the flying deer along the lea;
Through ancient woods to track their hidden lair,
Far from the town, with long-drawn subtlety :
To scan the vales, the hills, the limpid air,
The grass and flowers, clear ice, and streams so free;
To hear the birds wake from their winter trance,
The wind-stirred leaves and murmuring waters dance,
How sweet it were to watch the young goats hung
From toppling crags, cropping the tender shoot,
While in thick pleachèd shade the shepherd sung
His uncouth rural lay and woke his flute;
To mark, mid dewy grass, red apples flung,
And every bough thick set with ripening fruit,
The butting rams, kine lowing o'er the lea,
And cornfields waving like the windy sea.
Lo! how the rugged master of the berd
Before his flock unbars the wattled cote;
Then with his rod and many a rustic word
He rules their going : or 'tis sweet to note
The delver, when his toothèd rake hath stirred
The stubborn clod, his hoe the glebe bath smote;
Barefoot the country girl, with loosened zone,
Spins, while she keeps her geese neath yonder stone.
After such happy wise, in ancient years,
Dwelt the old nations in the age of gold;
Nor had the fount been stirred of mothers' tears
For sons in war's fell labour stark and cold;
Nor trusted they to ships the wild wind steers,
Nor yet had oxen groaning ploughed the wold;
Their houses were huge oaks, whose trunks had store
Of honey, and whose boughs thick acorns bore.
Nor yet, in that glad time, the accursed thirst
Of cruel gold had fallen on this fair earth :
Joyous in liberty they lived at first;
Unploughed the fields sent forth their teeming birth;
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Till fortune, envious of such concord, burst
The bond of law, and pity banned and worth ;
Within their breasts sprang luxury and that rage
Which men call love in our degenerate age.
1
We need not be reminded that these stanzas are almost a
cento from Virgil, Hesiod, and Ovid. The merits of the trans-
lator, adapter, and combiner, who knew so well how to cull
their beauties and adorn them with a perfect dress of modern
diction, are so eminent that we cannot deny him the title of a
great poet. It is always in picture-painting more than in
dramatic presentation that Poliziano excels. Here is a bas-
relief of Venus rising from the Ocean foam :-
:
Stanzas 99-107.
In Thetis' lap, upon the vexed Egean,
The seed deific from Olympus sown,
Beneath dim stars and cycling empyrean
Driſts like white foam across the salt waves blown;
Thence, born at last by movements hymenean,
Rises a maid more fair than man hath known;
Upon her shell the wanton breezes waſt her;
She nears the shore, while heaven looks down with laughter.
Seeing the carved work you would cry that real
Were shell and sea, and real the winds that blow;
The lightning of the goddess' eyes you feel,
The smiling heavens, the elemental glow :
White-vested Hours across the smooth sands steal,
With loosened curls that to the breezes flow;
Like, yet unlike, are all their beauteous faces,
E'en as befits a choir of sister Graces.
Well might you swear that on those waves were riding
The goddess with her right hand on her hair,
And with the other the sweet apple hiding;
And that beneath her feet, divinely fair,
Fresh flowers sprang forth, the barren sands dividing;
Then that, with glad smiles and enticements rare,
The three nymphs round their queen, embosoming her,
Threw the starred mantle soft as gossamer.
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 221
The one, with hands above her head upraised,
Upon her dewy tresses fits a wreath,
With ruddy gold and orient gems emblazed;
The second hangs pure pearls her ears beneath;
The third round shoulders white and breast hath placed
Such wealth of gleaming carcanets as sheathe
Their own fair bosoms, when the Graces sing
Among the gods with dance and carolling.
Thence might you see them rising toward the spheres,
Seated upon a cloud of silvery white;
The trembling of the cloven air appears
Wrought in the stone, and heaven serenely bright;
The gods drink in with open eyes and ears
Her beauty, and desire her bed's delight;
Each seems to marvel with a mute amaze-
Their brows and foreheads wrinkle as they gaze.
The next quotation shows Venus in the lap of Mars, and
visited by Cupid -
Stanzas 122-124.
Stretched on a couch, outside the coverlid,
Love found her, scarce unloosed from Mars' embrace;
He, lying back within her bosom, fed
His eager eyes on nought but her fair face;
Roses above them like a cloud were shed,
To reinforce them in the amorous chace;
While Venus, quick with longings unsuppressed,
A thousand times his eyes and forehead kissed.
Above, around, young Loves on every side
Played naked, darting birdlike to and fro;
And one, whose plumes a thousand colours dyed,
Fanned the shed roses as they lay arow;
One filled his quiver with fresh flowers, and hied
To pour them on the couch that lay below;
Another, poised upon his pinions, through
The falling shower soared shaking rosy dew :
For, as he quivered with his tremulous wing,
The wandering roses in their drift were stayed ;
Thus none was weary of glad gambolling;
Till Cupid came, with dazzling plumes displayed,
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SKETCHESS AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Breathless; and round his mother's neck did Aing
His languid arms, and with his winnowing made
Her heart burn :-very glad and bright of face,
But, with his flight, too tired to speak apace.
These pictures have in them the very glow of Italian painting.
Sometimes we seem to see a quaint design of Piero di Cosimo,
with bright tints and multitudinous small figures in a spacious
landscape. Sometimes it is the languid grace of Botticelli,
whose soul became possessed of classic inspiration as it were in
dreams, and who has painted the birth of Venus almost exactly
as Poliziano imagined it. Again, we seize the broader beauties
of the Venetian masters, or the vehemence of Giulio Romano's
pencil. To the last class belong the two next extracts :-
Stanzas 104-107.
:
In the last square the great artificer
Had wrought himself crowned with Love's perfect palm;
Black from his forge and rough, he runs to her,
Leaving all labour for her bosom's calm ::
Lips joined to lips with deep love-longing stir
Fire in his heart, and in his spirit balm ;
Far fiercer fames through breast and marrow fly
Than those which heat his forge in Sicily.
Jove, on the other side, becomes a bull,
Goodly and white, at Love's behest, and rears,
His neck beneath his rich freight beautiful:
She turns toward the shore that disappears,
With frightened gesture; and the wonderful
Gold curls about her bosom and her ears
Float in the wind; her veil waves, backward borne;
This hand still clasps his back, and that his horn.
With naked feet close-tucked beneath her dress,
She seems to fear the sea that dares not rise :
So, imaged in a shape of drear distress,
In vain unto her comrades sweet she cries;
They left amid the meadow-flowers, no less
For lost Europa wail with weeping eyes :
Europa, sounds the shore, bring back our bliss !
But the bull swims and turns her feet to kiss.
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 223
Here Jove is made a swan, a golden shower,
Or seems a serpent, or a shepherd-swain,
To work his amorous will in secret hour;
Here, like an eagle, soars he o'er the plain,
Love-led, and bears his Ganymede, the flower
Of beauty, mid celestial peers to reign;
The boy with cypress hath his fair locks crowned,
Naked, with ivy wreathed his waist around.
Stanzas 110-112.
Lo! here again fair Ariadne lies,
And to the deaf winds of false Theseus plains,
And of the air and slumber's treacheries;
Trembling with fear even as a reed that strains
And quivers by the mere neath breezy skies :
Her very speechless attitude complains-
No beast there is so cruel as thou art,
No beast less loyal to my broken heart.
Throned on a car, with ivy crowned and vine,
Rides Bacchus, by two champing tigers driven :
Around him on the sand deep-soaked with brine
Satyrs and Bacchantes rush ; the skies are riven
With shouts and laughter; Fauns quaff bubbling wine
From horns and cymbals; Nymphs, to madness driven,
Trip, skip, and stumble; mixed in wild enlacements,
Laughing they roll or meet for glad embracements.
Upon his ass Silenus, never sated,
With thick, black veins, wherethrough the must is soaking,
Nods his dull forehead with deep sleep belated;
His eyes are wine-inflamed, and red, and smoking :
Bold Mänads goad the ass so sorely weighted,
With stinging thyrsi ; he sways feebly poking
The mane with bloated fingers; Fauns behind him,
E'en as he falls, upon the crupper bind him.
We almost seem to be looking at the frescoes in some
Trasteverine palace, or at the canvas of one of the sensual
Genoese painters. The description of the garden of Venus has
the charm of somewhat artificial elegance, the exotic grace of
style, which attracts us in the earlier Renaissance work :-
224
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
The leafy tresses of that timeless garden
Nor fragile brine nor fresh snow dares to whiten ;
Frore winter never comes the rills to harden,
Nor winds the tender shrubs and herbs to frighten;
Glad Spring is always here, a laughing warden;
Nor do the seasons wane, but ever brighten;
Here to the breeze young May, her curls unbinding,
With thousand flowers her wreath is ever winding.
Indeed it may be said with truth that Poliziano's most eminent
faculty as a descriptive poet corresponded exactly to the genius
of the painters of his day. To produce pictures radiant with
Renaissance colouring, and vigorous with Renaissance passion,
was the function of his art, not to express profound thought or
dramatic situations. This remark might be extended with
justice to Ariosto, and Tasso, and Boiardo. The great narra-
tive poets of the Renaissance in Italy were not dramatists ;
nor were their poems epics : their forte lay in the inexhaustible
variety and beauty of their pictures.
Of Poliziano's plagiarism-if this be the right word to apply
to the process of assimilation and selection, by means of which
the poet-scholar of Florence taught the Italians how to use the
riches of the ancient languages and their own literature-here
are some specimens. In stanza 42 of the ‘Giostra'he
says
of
Simonetta:
E 'n lei discerne un non so che divino.
Dante has the line :-
Vostri risplende un non so che divino.
In the 44th he speaks about the birds :-
E canta ogni augеlletto in suo latino.
This comes from Cavalcanti's :-
E cantinne gli augeili
Ciascuno in suo latino.
POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 225
Stanza 45 is taken bodily from Claudian, Dante, and Cavalcanti.
It would seem as though Poliziano wished to show that the
classic and mediæval literature of Italy was all one, and that a
poet of the Renaissance could carry on the continuous tradition
in his own style, A line in stanza 54 seems perfectly
original :
E già dall'alte ville il fumo esala.
It comes straight from Virgil :-
Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant.
In the next stanza the line-
Tal che 'l ciel tutto rasserenò d' intorno,
6
is Petrarch's. So in the 56th, is the phrase "il dolce andar
celeste. In stanza 57, —
Par che 'l cor del petto se gli schianti,
belongs to Boccaccio. In stanza 60 the first line :
La notte che le cose ci nasconde,
together with its rhyme, sotto le amate fronde,' is borrowed
from the 23rd canto of the Paradiso. In the second line,
'Stellato ammanto,' is Claudian's 'stellantes sinus' applied to
the heaven. When we reach the garden of Venus we find
whole passages translated from Claudian's 'Marriage of
Honorius,' and from the Metamorphoses of Ovid.'
Poliziano's second poem of importance, which indeed may
historically be said to take precedence of ‘La Giostra,' was the
so-called tragedy of Orfeo.' The English version of this
lyrical drama must be reserved for a separate study: yet it
belongs to the subject of this, inasmuch as the “Orfeo’is a
classical legend treated in a form already familiar to the Italian
people. Nearly all the popular kinds of poetry of which
specimens have been translated in this chapter, will be found
combined in its six short scenes.
Q
226
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
ORFEO.
<
The 'Orfeo' of Messer Angelo Poliziano ranks amongst the
most important poems of the fifteenth century. It was com-
posed at Mantua in the short space of two days, on the occasion
of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga's visit to his native town in
1472. But, though so hastily put together, the Orfeo' marks
.
an epoch in the evolution of Italian poetry. It is the earliest
example of a secular drama, containing within the compass of
its brief scenes the germ of the opera, the tragedy, and the
pastoral play. In form it does not greatly differ from the Sacre
Rappresentazioni' of the fifteenth century, as those miracle
plays were handled by popular poets of the earlier Renais-
But while the traditional octave stanza is used for the
main movement of the piece, Poliziano has introduced episodes
of terza rima, madrigals, a carnival song, a ballata, and, above
all, choral passages which have in them the future melodrama
of the musical Italian stage. The lyrical treatment of the fable,
its capacity for brilliant and varied scenic effects, its combina-
tion of singing with action, and the whole artistic keeping of
the piece, which never passes into genuine tragedy, but stays
within the limits of romantic pathos, distinguish the ‘Orfeo'as
a typical production of Italian genius. Thus, though little
better than an improvisation, it combines the many forms of
verse developed by the Tuscans at the close of the Middle
sance.
ORFEO.
227
Ages, and fixes the limits beyond which their dramatic poets,
with a few exceptions, were not destined to advance. Nor
was the choice of the fable without significance. Quitting the
Bible stories and the Legends of Saints, which supplied the
mediæral playwright with material. Poliziano selects a classic
story : and this story might pass for an allegory of Italy, whose
intellectual development the scholar-poet ruled. Orpheus is
the power of poetry and art, softening stubborn nature, civilis-
ing men, and prevailing over Hades for a season. He is
the right hero of humanism, the genius of the Renaissance, the
tutelary god of Italy, who thought she could resist the laws of
fate by verse and elegant accomplishments. To press this
kind of allegory is unwise ; for at a certain moment it breaks
in our hands. And yet in Eurydice the fancy might discover
Freedom, the true spouse of poetry and art; Orfeo's last resolve
too vividly depicts the vice of the Renaissance; and the
Mænads are those barbarous armies destined to lay waste the
plains of Italy, inebriate with wine and blood, obeying a new
lord of life on whom the poet's harp exerts no charm. But a
truce to this spinning of pedantic cobwebs. Let Mercury
appear, and let the play begin.
THE FABLE OF ORPHEUS.
MERCURY announces the show.
Ho, silence! Listen! There was once a hind,
Son of Apollo, Aristaeus hight,
Who loved with so untamed and fierce a mind
Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus wight,
That chasing her one day with will unkind
He wrought her cruel death in love's despite;
For, as she fled toward the mere hard by,
A serpent stung her, and she had to die.
Q2
228
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Now Orpheus, singing, brought her back from hell,
But could not keep the law the fates ordain :
Poor wretch, he backward turned and broke the spell;
So that once more from him his love was ta'en.
Therefore he would no more with women dwell,
And in the end by women he was slain,
Enter A SHEPHERD, who says-
Nay, listen, friends! Fair auspices are given,
Since Mercury to earth hath come from heaven.
SCENE I.
MOPSUS, an old shepherd.
Say, hast thou seen a calf of mine, all white
Save for a spot of black upon her front,
Two feet, one flank, and one knee ruddy-bright?
!
ARISTAEUS, a young shepherd.
Friend Mopsus, to the margin of this fount
No herds have come to drink since break of day;
Yet may'st thou hear them low on yonder mount.
Go, Thyrsis, search the upland lawn, I pray !
Thou Mopsus shalt with me the while abide;
For I would have thee listen to my lay. [Exit THYRSIS.
'Twas yester morn where trees yon cavern hide,
I saw a nymph more fair than Dian, who
Had a young lusty lover at her side:
But when that more than woman met my view,
The heart within my bosom leapt outright,
And straight the madness of wild Love I knew.
Since then, dear Mopsus, I have no delight ;
But weep and weep : of food and drink I tire,
And without slumber pass the weary night.
MOPSUS.
Friend Aristaeus, if this amorous fire
Thou dost not seek to quench as best may be,
Thy peace of soul will vanish in desire.
ORFEO.
229
Thou knowist that love is no new thing to me:
I've proved how love grown old brings bitter pain :
Cure it at once, or hope no remedy;
For if thou find thee in Love's cruel chain,
Thy bees, thy blossoms will be out of mind,
Thy fields, thy vines, thy flocks, thy cotes, thy grain.
ARISTAEUS.
Mopsus, thou speakest to the deaf and blind :
Waste not on me these wingèd words, I pray,
Lest they be scattered to the inconstant wind.
I love, and cannot wish to say love nay;
Nor seek to cure so charming a disease :
They praise Love best who most against him say.
Yet if thou fain wouldst give my heart some ease,
Forth from thy wallet take thy pipe, and we
Will sing awhile beneath the leafy trees;
For well my nymph is pleased with melody.
THE SONG.
Listen, ye wild woods, to my roundelay;
Since the fair nymph will hear not, though I pray.
The lovely nymph is deaf to my lament,
Nor heeds the music of this rustic reed;
Wherefore my flocks and herds are ill content,
Nor bathe their hoof where grows the water weed,
Nor touch the tender herbage on the mead;
So sad, because their shepherd grieves, are they.
Listen, ye wild woods, to my roundelay;
Since the fair nymph will hear not, though I pray.
The herds are sorry for their master's moan ;
The nymph heeds not her lover though he die,
The lovely nymph, whose heart is made of stone -
Nay steel, nay adamant! She still doth fly
Far, far before me, when she sees me nigh,
Even as a lamb flies from the wolf away.
Listen, ye wild woods to my roundelay;
Since the fair nymph will hear not, though I pray.
Nay, tell her, pipe of mine, how swift doth flee
Beauty together with our years amain ;
230
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Tell her how time destroys all rarity,
Nor youth once lost can be renewed again ;
Tell her to use the gifts that yet remain :
Roses and violets blossom not alway.
Listen, ye wild woods, to my roundelay ;
Since the fair nymph will hear not, though I pray.
Carry, ye winds, these sweet words to her ears,
Unto the ears of my loved nymph, and tell
How many tears I shed, what bitter tears !
Beg her to pity one who loves so well:
Say that my life is frail and mutable,
And melts like rime before the rising day.
Listen, ye wild woods, to my roundelay;
Since the fair nymph will hear not, though I pray.
MOPSUS.
Less sweet, methinks the voice of waters falling
From cliffs that echo back their murmurous song ;
Less sweet the summer sound of breezes calling
Through pine-tree tops sonorous all day long;
Than are thy rhymes, the soul of grief enthralling,
Thy rhymes o'er field and forest borne along :
If she but hear them, at thy feet she'll fawn.-
Lo, Thyrsis, hurrying homeward from the lawn !
[Re-enters THYRSIS.
ARISTAEUS.
What of the calf ? Say, hast thou seen her now?
THYRSIS, the cowherd.
I have, and I'd as lief her throat were cut !
She almost ripped my bowels up, I vow,
Running amuck with horns well set to butt :
Nathless I've locked her in the stall below :
She's blown with grass, I tell you, saucy slut !
ARISTAEUS.
Now, prithee, let me hear what made you stay
So long upon the upland lawns away?
ORFEO.
231
THYRSIS.
Walking, I spied a gentle maiden there,
Who plucked wild flowers upon the mountain side :
I scarcely think that Venus is more fair,
Of sweeter grace, most modest in her pride :
She speaks, she sings, with voice so soft and rare,
That listening streams would backward roll their tide :
Her face is snow and roses; gold her head;
All, all alone she goes, white-raimented.
3
ARISTAEUS.
Stay, Mopsus! I must follow : for 'tis she
Of whom I lately spoke. So, friend, farewell !
MOPSUS.
Hold, Aristaeus, lest for her or thee
Thy boldness be the cause of mischief fell !
ARISTAEUS.
Nay, death this day must be my destiny,
Unless I try my fate and break the spell.
Stay therefore, Mopsus, by the fountain stay !
I'll follow her, meanwhile, yon mountain way.
[Exit ARISTAEUS.
MOPSUS.
l'hyrsis, what thinkest thou of thy loved lord ?
See'st thou that all his senses are distraught ?
Couldst thou not speak some seasonable word,
Tell him what shame this idle love hath wrought ?
THYRSIS,
Free speech and servitude but ill accord,
Friend Mopsus, and the hind is folly-fraught
Who rates his lord! He's wiser far than I.
To tend these kine is all my mastery.
SCENE II.
ARISTAEUS, in pursuit of EURYDICE.
Flee not from me, maiden !
Lo, I am thy friend !
Dearer far than life I hold thee.
List, thou beauty-laden,
232
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
To these prayers attend :
Flee not, let my arms enfold thee !
Neither wolf nor bear will grasp thee :
That I am thy friend I've told thee :
Stay thy course then ; let me clasp thee !-
Since thou 'rt deaf and wilt not heed me,
Since thou 'rt still before me flying,
While I follow panting, dying,
Lend me wings, Love, wings to speed me!
[Exit ARISTAEUS, pursuing EURYDICE.
SCENE III.
A DRYAD.
Sad news of lamentation and of pain,
Dear sisters, hath my voice to bear to you:
I scarcely dare to raise the dolorous strain.
Eurydice by yonder stream lies low;
The flowers are fading round her stricken head,
And the complaining waters weep their woe.
The stranger soul from that fair house hath fled;
And she, like privet pale, or white May-bloom
Untimely plucked, lies on the meadow, dead.
Hear then the cause of her disastrous doom !
A snake stole forth and stung her suddenly.
I am so burdened with this weight of gloom
That, lo, I bid you all come weep with me!
CHORUS OF DRYADS.
Let the wide air with our complaint resound !
For all heaven's light is spent.
Let rivers break their bound,
Swollen with tears outpoured from our lament!
Fell death hath ta'en their splendour from the skies :
The stars are sunk in gloom.
Stern death hath plucked the bloom
Of nymphs :-Eurydice down-trodden lies.
Weep, Love! The woodland cries.
Weep, groves and founts;
Ye craggy mounts; you leafy dell,
Beneath whose boughs she fell,
Bend every branch in time with this sad sound.
ORFEO.
233
Let the wide air with our complaint resound !
Ah, fortune pitiless! Ah, cruel snake !
Ah, luckless doom of woes !
Like a cropped summer rose,
Or lily cut, she withers on the brake.
Her face, which once did make
Our age so bright
With beauty's light, is faint and pale;
And the clear lamp doth fail,
Which shed pure splendour all the world around.
Let the wide air with our complaint resound !
Who e'er will sing so sweetly, now she's gone?
Her gentle voice to hear,
The wild winds dared not stir;
And now they breathe but sorrow, moan for moan :
So many joys are flown,
Such jocund days
Doth Death erase with her sweet eyes !
Bid earth's lament arise,
And make our dirge through heaven and sea rebound !
Let the wide air with our complaint resound !
A DRYAD.
'Tis surely Orpheus, who hath reached the hill,
With harp in hand, glad-eyed and light of heart !
He thinks that his dear love is living still.
My news will stab him with a sudden smart :
An unforeseen and unexpected blow
Wounds worst and stings the bosom's tenderest part.
Death hath disjoined the truest love, I know,
That nature yet to this low world revealed,
And quenched the flame in its most charming glow.
Go, sisters, hasten ye to yonder field,
Where on the sward lies slain Eurydice;
Strew her with flowers and grasses ! I must yield
This man the measure of his misery.
[Exeunt DRYADS. Enter ORPHEUS, singing.
ORPHEUS,
Musa, triumphales titulos et gesta canamus
Herculis, et forti monstra subacta manu;
Ut timidae matri pressos ostenderit angues,
Intrepidusque fero riserit ore puer.
234
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
A DRYAD.
Orpheus, I bring thee bitter news. Alas!
Thy nymph who was so beautiful, is slain !
Flying from Aristaeus o'er the grass,
What time she reached yon stream that threads the plain,
A snake which lurked mid flowers where she did pass,
Pierced her fair foot with his envenomed bane :
So fierce, so potent was the sting, that she
Died in mid course. Ah, woe that this should be !
[ORPHEUS turns to go in silence.
MNESILLUS, the satyr.
Mark ye how sunk in woe
The poor wretch forth doth pass,
And may not answer, for his grief, one word ?
On some lone shore, unheard,
Far, far away, he'll go,
And pour his heart forth to the winds, alas !
I'll follow and observe if he
Moves with his moan the hills to sympathy.
[Follows ORPHEUS.
ORPHEUS.
Let us lament, O lyre disconsolate!
Our wonted music is in tune no more.
Lament we while the heavens revolve, and let
The nightingale be conquered on Love's shore !
O heaven, O earth, O sea, O cruel fate !
How shall I bear a pang so passing sore?
Eurydice, my love! O life of mine !
On earth I will no more without thee pine !
I will go down unto the doors of hell,
And see if mercy may be found below:
Perchance we shall reverse fate's spoken spell
With tearful songs and words of honeyed woe :
Perchance will Death be pitiful; for well
With singing have we turned the streams that flow;
Moved stones, together hind and tiger drawn,
And made trees dance upon the forest lawn.
[Passes from sight on his way to Hades.
MNESILLUS.
The staff of Fate is strong
And will not lightly bend,
ORFEO.
235
Nor yet the stubborn gates of steely Hell.
Nay, I can see full well
His life will not be long:
Those downward feet no more will earthward wend.
What marvel if they lose the light,
Who make blind Love their guide by day and night!
SCENE IV.
a
ORPHEUS, at the gate of Hell.
Pity, nay pity for a lover's moan !
Ye Powers of Hell, let pity reign in you !
To your dark regions led me Love alone :
Downward upon his wings of light I few.
Hush, Cerberus! Howl not by Pluto's throne !
For when you hear my tale of misery, you,
Nor you alone, but all who here abide
In this blind world, will weep by Lethe's tide.
There is no need, ye Furies, thus to rage ;
To dart those snakes that in your tresses twine :
Knew ye the cause of this my pilgrimage,
Ye would lie down and join your moans with mine.
Let this poor wretch but pass, who war doth wage
With heaven, the elements, the powers divine !
I beg for pily or for death. No more!
But open, ope Hell's adamantine door!
[ORPHEUS enters Hell.
PLUTO.
What man is he who with his golden lyre
Hath moved the gates that never move,
While the dead folk repeat his dirge of love ?
The rolling stone no more doth tire
Swart Sisyphus on yonder hill;
And Tantalus with water slakes his fire :
The groans of mangled Tityos are still;
Ixion's wheel forgets to fly;
The Danaids their urns can fill :
I hear no more the tortured spirits cry;
But all find rest in that sweet harmony.
236
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
PROSER PINE.
Dear consort, since, compelled by love of thee,
I left the light of heaven serene,
And came to reign in hell, a sombre queen;
The chårm of tenderest sympathy
Hath never yet had power to turn
My stubborn heart, or draw forth tears from me.
Now with desire for yon sweet voice I yearn ;
Nor is there aught so dear
As that delight. Nay, be not stern
To this one prayer ! Relax thy brows severe,
And rest awhile with me that song to hear !
[ORPHEUS stands before the throne,
ORPHEUS.
Ye rulers of the people lost in gloom,
Who see no more the jocund light of day!
Ye who inherit all things that the womb
Of Nature and the elements display!
Hear ye the grief that draws me to the tomb !
Love, cruel Love, hath led me on this way:
Not to chain Cerberus I hither come,
But to bring back my mistress to her home.
A serpent hidden among flowers and leaves
Stole my fair mistress-nay, my heart—from me:
Wherefore my wounded life for ever grieves,
Nor can I stand against this agony.
Still, if some fragrance lingers yet and cleaves
Of your famed love unto your memory,
If of that ancient rape you think at all,
Give back Eurydice !-On you I call.
All things ere long unto this bourne descend :
All mortal lives to you return at last :
Whate'er the moon hath circled, in the end
Must fade and perish in your empire vast :
Some sooner and some later hither wend;
Yet all upon this pathway shall have passed :
This of our footsteps is the final goal;
And then we dwell for aye in your control.
Therefore the nymph I love is left for you
When nature leads her deathward in due time :
But now you've cropped the tendrils as they grew,
The grapes unripe, while yet the sap did climb:
ORFEO,
237
Who reaps the young blades wet with April dew,
Nor waits till summer hath o'erpassed her prime ?
Give back, give back my hope one little day!
Not for a gift, but for a loan I pray.
I pray not to you by the waves forlorn
Of marshy Styx or dismal Acheron,
By Chaos where the mighty world was born,
Or by the sounding flames of Phlegethon;
But by the fruit which charmed thee on that morn
When thou didst leave our world for this dread throne !
O queen! if thou reject this pleading breath,
I will no more return, but ask for death!
PROSERPINE.
Husband, I never guessed
That in our realm oppressed
Pity could find a home to dwell :
But now I know that mercy teems in hell,
I see Death weep; her breast
Is shaken by those tears that faultless fell.
Let then thy laws severe for him be swayed
By love, by song, by the just prayers he prayed !
PLUTO.
She's thine, but at this price:
Bend not on her thine eyes,
Till mid the souls that live she stay.
See that thou turn not back upon the way!
Check all fond thoughts that rise !
Else will thy love be torn from thee away.
I am well pleased that song so rare as thine
The might of my dread sceptre should incline.
SCENE V.
ORPHEUS, sings.
Ite triumphales circum mea tempora lauri.
Vicimus Eurydicen: reddita vita mihi est.
Haec mea praecipue victoria digna corona.
Credimus? an lateri juncta puella meo?
238
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
EURYDICE.
Ah me! Thy love too great
Hath lost not thee alone!
I am torn from thee by strong Fate.
No more I am thine own.
In vain I stretch these arms. Back, back to Hell
I'm drawn, I'm drawn. My Orpheus, fare thee well !
[EURYDICE disappears.
ORPHEUS.
Who hath laid laws on Love?
Will pity not be given
For one short look so full thereof?
Since I am robbed of heaven,
Since all my joy so great is turned to pain,
I will go back and plead with Death again!
[TISIPhone blocks his way.
TISIPHONE.
Nay, seek not back to turn !
Vain is thy weeping, all thy words are vain.
Eurydice may not complain
Of aught but thee—albeit her grief is great.
Vain are thy verses 'gainst the voice of Fate !
How vain thy song! For Death is stern!
Try not the backward path : thy feet refrain !
The laws of the abyss are fixed and firm remain.
SCENE VI.
ORPHEUS.
What sorrow-laden song shall e'er be found
To match the burden of my matchless woe?
How shall I make the fount of tears abound,
To weep apace with grief's unmeasured flow?
Salt tears I'll waste upon the barren ground,
So long as life delays me here below;
And since my fate hath wrought me wrong so sore,
I swear I'll never love a woman more!
Henceforth I'll pluck the buds of opening spring,
The bloom of youth when life is loveliest,
Ere years have spoiled the beauty which they bring :
ORFEO.
239
m
This love, I swear, is sweetest, softest, best !
Of female charms let no one speak or sing;
Since she is slain who ruled within my breast.
He who would seek my converse, let him see
That ne'er he talk of woman's love to me!
How pitiful is he who changes mind
For woman ! for her love laments or grieves !
Who suffers her in chains his will to bind,
Or trusts her words lighter than withered leaves,
Her loving looks more treacherous than the wind !
A thousand times she veers; to nothing cleaves :
Follows who fies; from him who follows, flees;
And comes and goes like waves on stormy seas !
High Jove confirms the truth of what I said,
Who, caught and bound in love's delightful snare,
Enjoys in heaven his own bright Ganymed :
Phoebus on earth had Hyacinth the fair :
Hercules, conqueror of the world, was led
Captive to Hylas by this love so rare. —
Advice for husbands! Seek divorce, and fly
Far, far away from female company !
[Enter a MAENAD leading a train of BACCHANTES.
A MAENAD.
Ho! Sisters! Up! Alive!
See him who doth our sex deride!
Hunt him to death, the slave !
Thou snatch the thyrsus! Thou this oak-tree rive!
Cast down this doeskin and that hide !
We'll wreak our fury on the knave !
Yea, he shall feel our wrath, the knave !
He shall yield up his hide
Torn as woodmen pine-trees rive !
No power his life can save;
Since women he hath dared deride!
Ho! To him, sisters! Ho! Alive!
[ORPHEUS is chased off the scene and slain: the MAENADS
then return,
A MAENAD.
Ho! Bacchus! Ho! I yield thee thanks for this !
Through all the woodland we the wretch have borne:
So that each root is slaked with blood of his :
Yea, limb from limb his body have we torn
240
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Through the wild forest with a fearful bliss:
His gore hath bathed the earth by ash and thorn!—
Go then! thy blame on lawful wedlock fling!
Ho! Bacchus! Take the victim that we bring!
CHORUS OF MAENADS.
Bacchus we all must follow thee!
Bacchus Bacchus! Ohé! Ohé!
With ivy coronals, bunch and berry,
Crown we our heads to worship thee!
Thou hast bidden us to make merry
Day and night with jollity!
Drink then! Bacchus is here! Drink free,
And hand ye the drinking-cup to me!
Bacchus we all must follow thee!
Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohé! Ohé!
See, I have emptied my horn already :
Stretch hither your beaker to me, I pray:
Are the hills and the lawns where we roam unsteady?
Or is it my brain that reels away?
Let every one run to and fro through the hay,
As ye see me run! Ho! after me!
Bacchus we all must follow thee!
Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohé! Ohé!
Methinks I am dropping in swoon or slumber :
Am I drunken or sober, yes or no?
What are these weights my feet encumber?
You too are tipsy, well I know!
Let every one do as ye see me do,
Let every one drink and quaff like me!
Bacchus
Bacchus!
Cry Bacchus !
we all must follow thee!
Bacchus! Ohé! Ohé!
Cry Bacchus! Be blithe and merry,
Tossing wine down your throats away!
Let sleep then come and our gladness bury:
Drink you, and you, and you, while ye may!
Dancing is over for me to-day.
Let everyone cry aloud Evohé!
Bacchus we all must follow thee!
Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohé! Ohé!
Though an English translation can do little toward render-
ing the facile graces of Poliziano's style, that 'roseate fluency'
ORFEO.
241
>
for which it has been praised by his Italian admirers, the main
qualities of the 'Orfeo' as a composition may be traced in this
rough copy. Of dramatic power, of that mastery over the
deeper springs of human nature which distinguished the
first effort of the English muse in Marlowe's plays, there is but
little. A certain adaptation of the language to the characters,
as in the rudeness of Thyrsis when contrasted with the rustic
elegance of Aristæus, a touch of simple feeling in Eurydice's
lyrical outcry of farewell, a discrimination between the tender
sympathy of Proserpine and Pluto's stern relenting, a spirited
presentation of the Bacchanalian furore in the Mænads, an
attempt to model the Satyr Mnesillus as apart from human
nature and yet sympathetic to its anguish, these points consti-
tute the chief dramatic features of the melodrama. Orpheus
himself is a purely lyrical personage. Of character, he can
scarcely be said to have anything marked , and his part rises to
its height precisely in that passage where the lyrist has to be
displayed. Before the gates of Hades and the "throne of
Proserpine he sings, and his singing is the right outpouring of
a poet's soul ; each octave resumes the theme of the last
stanza with a swell of utterance, a crescendo of intonation that
recalls the passionate and unpremeditated descant of a bird
upon the boughs alone. To this true quality of music is added
the persuasiveness of pleading. That the violin melody of his
incomparable song is lost, must be reckoned a great misfortune.
We have good reason to believe that the part of Orpheus
was taken by Messer Baccio Ugolini, singing to the viol. Here
too it may be mentioned tha a tondo in monochrome, painted
by Signorelli among the arabesques at Orvieto, shows Orpheus
at the throne of Pluto, habited as a poet with the laurel crown
and playing on a violin of antique form. It would be inter-
esting to know whether a rumour of the Mantuan pageant had
reached the ears of the Cortonese painter.
If the whole of the Orfeo' had been conceived and executed
a
R
242
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
1
with the same artistic feeling as the chief act, it would have
been a really fine poem independently of its historical interest.
But we have only to turn the page and read the lament uttered
for the loss of Euridice, in order to perceive Poliziano's inca-
pacity for dealing with his hero in a situation of greater diffi-
culty. The pathos which might have made us sympathise
with Orpheus in his misery, the passion, approaching to mad-
ness, which might have justified his misogyny, are absent. It
is difficult not to feel that in this climax of his anguish he
was a poor creature, and that the Mænads served him right.
Nothing illustrates the defect of real dramatic imagination
better than this failure to dignify the catastrophe. Gifted with
a fine lyrical inspiration, Poliziano seems to have already felt
the Bacchic chorus which forms so brilliant a termination to
his play, and to have forgotten his duty to the unfortunate
Orpheus, whose sorrow for Eurydice is stultified and made un-
meanirg by the prosaic expression of a base resolve.
indeed be said in general that the ‘Orfeo’ is a good poem only
where the situation is not so much dramatic as lyrical, and that
its finest passage—the scene in Hades-was fortunately for its
author one in which the dramatic motive had to be lyrically
expressed. In this respect, as in many others, the “Orfeo'
combines the faults and merits of the Italian attempts at melo-
tragedy. To break a butterfly upon the wheel is, however, no
fit function of criticism : and probably no one would have
smiled more than the author of this improvisation, at the thought
of its being gravely dissected just four hundred years after the
occasion it was meant to serve had long been given over to
oblivion.'
It may
| For the text of the Orfeo' and for my method of dealing with it, see
Appendix.
243
CANOSSA.
ITALY is less the land of what is venerable in antiquity, than of
beauty, by divine right young eternally in spite of age. This is
due partly to her history and art and literature, partly to the
temper of the races who have made her what she is, and partly
to her natural advantages. Her oldest architectual remains,
the temples of Pæstum and Girgenti, or the gates of Perugia
and Volterra, are so adapted to Italian landscape and so graceful
in their massive strength, that we forget the centuries which
have passed over them. We leap as by a single bound from
the times of Roman greatness to the new birth of humanity in
the fourteenth century, forgetting the many years during which
Italy, like the rest of Europe, was buried in what our ancestors
called Gothic barbarism. The illumination cast upon the
classic period by the literature of Rome and by the memory of
her great men is so vivid, that we feel the days of the Republic
and the Empire to be near us; while the Italian Renaissance
is so truly a revival of that former splendour, a resumption of
the music interrupted for a season, that it is extremely difficult
to form any conception of the five long centuries which elapsed
between the Lombard invasion in 568 and the accession of
Hildebrand to the Pontificate in 1073. So true is it that
nothing lives and has reality for us but what is spiritual,
intellectual, self-possessed in personality and consciousness.
When the Egyptian priest said to Solon, 'You Greeks are
always children,' he intended a gentle sarcasm, but he implied
a compliment; for the quality of imperishable youth belonged
to the Hellenic spirit, and has become the heritage of every
6
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244
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
It was
race which partook of it. And this spirit in no common degree
has been shared by the Italians of the earlier and the later
classic epoch. The land is full of monuments pertaining to those
two brilliant periods; and whenever the voice of poet has spoken
or the hand of artist has been at work, that spirit, as dis-
tinguished from the spirit of mediævalism, has found expression.
Yet it must be remembered that during the five centuries
above mentioned Italy was given over to Lombards, Franks,
and Germans. Feudal institutions, alien to the social and
political ideals of the classic world, took a tolerably firm hold on
the country. The Latin element remained silent, passive, in
abeyance, undergoing an important transformation.
in the course of those five hundred years that the Italians as a
modern people, separable from their Roman ancestors, were
formed. At the close of this obscure passage in Italian
history, their communes, the foundation of Italy's future
independence, and the source of her peculiar national
development, appeared in all the vigour and audacity of youth.
At its close the Italian genius presented Europe with its greatest
triumph of constructive ability, the Papacy. At its close again
the series of supreme artistic achievements, starting with the
architecture of churches and public palaces, passing on to
sculpture and painting, and culminating in music, which only
ended with the temporary extinction of national vitality in the
seventeenth century, was simultaneously begun in all the
provinces of the peninsula.
So important were these five centuries of incubation for
Italy, and so little is there left of them to arrest the attention
of the student, dazzled as he is by the ever-living glories of
Greece, Rome, and the Renaissance, that a visit to the ruins of
Canossa is almost a duty. There, in spite of himself, by the
very isolation and forlorn abandonment of what was once so
formidable a seat of feudal despotism and ecclesiastical tyranny,
he is forced to confront the obscure but mighty spirit of the
a
CANOSSA.
245
middle ages. There, if anywhere, the men of those iron-
hearted times anterior to the Crusades will acquire distinctness
for his imagination, when he recalls the three main actors in
the drama enacted on the summit of Canossa's rock in the
bitter winter of 1077.
Canossa lies almost due south of Reggio d'Emilia, upon
the slopes of the Apennines. Starting from Reggio, the
carriage-road keeps to the plain for some while in a westerly
direction and then bends away towards the mountains. As
we approach their spurs, the ground begins to rise. The rich
Lombard tilth of maize and vine gives place to English-looking
hedgerows, lined with oaks, and studded with handsome dark
tufts of green hellebore. The hills descend in melancholy
earth-heaps on the plain, crowned here and there with ruined
castles. Four of these mediaval strongholds, called Bianello,
Montevetro, Monteluzzo, and Montezano, give the name of
Quattro Castelli to the commune. The most important of
them, Bianello, which, next to Canossa, was the strongest
fortress possessed by the Countess Matilda and her ancestors,
still presents a considerable mass of masonry, roofed, and
habitable. The group formed a kind of advance-guard for
Canossa against attack from Lombardy. After passing
Quattro Castelli we enter the hills, climbing gently upwards
between barren slopes of ashy grey earth-the débris of most
ancient Apennines-crested at favourable points with lonely
towers. In truth the whole country bristles with ruined forts,
making it clear that during the middle ages Canossa was but
the centre of a great military system, the core and kernel of a
fortified position which covered an area to be measured by
scores of square miles, reaching far into the mountains, and
buttressed on the plain. As yet, however, after nearly two
hours' driving, Canossa has not come in sight. At last a turn in
the road discloses an opening in the valley of the Enza to the
left : up this lateral gorge we see first the Castle of Rossena
a
246
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
on its knoll of solid red rock, flaming in the sunlight ; and
then, further withdrawn, detached from all surrounding objects,
and reared aloft as though to sweep the sea of waved and
broken hills around it, a sharp horn of hard white stone. That
is Canossa—the alba Canossa, the candida petra of its rhyming
chronicler. There is no mistaking the commanding value of
its situation. At the same time the brilliant whiteness of
Canossa's rocky hill, contrasted with the red gleam of Rossena,
and outlined against the prevailing dulness of these earthy
Apennines, secures a picturesque individuality concordant with
its unique history and unrivalled strength.
There is still a journey of two hours before the castle can
be reached : and this may be performed on foot or horseback.
The path winds upward over broken ground ; following the
arête of curiously jumbled and thwarted hill-slopes; passing
beneath the battlements of Rossena, whence the unfortunate
Everelina threw herself in order to escape the savage love of her
lord and jailor; and then skirting those horrid earthen balze
which are so common and so unattractive a feature of Apennine
scenery. The most hideous balze to be found in the length
and breadth of Italy are probably those of Volterra, from
which the citizens themselves recoil with a kind of terror, and
which lure melancholy men by intolerable fascination on to
suicide. For ever crumbling, altering with frost and rain,
discharging gloomy glaciers of slow-crawling mud, and
,
scarring the hillside with tracts of barrenness, these earth-
precipices are among the most ruinous and discomfortable
failures of nature. They have not even so much of wildness or
grandeur as forms the saving merit of nearly all wasteful things
in the world, and can only be classed with the desolate ghiare
of Italian river-beds.
Such as they are, these balze form an appropriate preface
to the gloomy and repellent isolation of Canossa. The rock
towers from a narrow platform to the height of rather more
a
a
CANOSSA.
217
than 160 feet from its base. The top is fairly level, forming
an irregular triangle, of which the greatest length is about 260
feet, and the width about 100 feet. Scarcely a vestige of any
building can be traced either upon the platform or the summit,
with the exception of a broken wall and windows supposed to
belong to the end of the sixteenth century. The ancient castle,
with its triple circuit of walls, enclosing barracks for the garrison,
lodgings for the lord and his retainers, a stately church, a
sumptuous monastery, storehouses, stables, workshops, and all
the various buildings of a fortified stronghold, have utterly dis-
appeared. The very passage of approach cannot be ascertained;
for it is doubtful whether the present irregular path that scales
the western face of the rock be really the remains of some
old staircase, corresponding to that by which Mont S. Michel
in Normandy is ascended. One thing is tolerably certain—that
the three walls of which we hear so much from the chroniclers,
and which played so picturesque a part in the drama of Henry
IV.'s penance, surrounded the cliff at its base, and embraced a
large acreage of ground. The citadel itself must have been
but the acropolis or keep of an extensive fortress.
There has been plenty of time since the year 1255, when
the people of Reggio sacked and destroyed Canossa, for
Nature to resume her undisputed sway by obliterating the
handiwork of men; and at present Nature forms the chief
charm of Canossa. Lying one afternoon of May on the crisp
short grass at the edge of a precipice purple with iris in full
blossom, I surveyed, from what were once the battlements of
I
Matilda's castle, a prospect than which there is none more
spirit-stirring by reason of its beauty and its manifold associations
in Europe. The lower castle-crowded hills have sunk. Reggio
lies at our feet, shut in between the crests of Monte Carboniano
and Monte delle Celle. Beyond Reggio stretches Lombardy-
the fairest and most memorable battle-field of nations, the richest
and most highly cultivated garden of civilised industry. Nearly
248
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
all the Lombard cities may be seen, some of them faint like
bluish films of vapour, some clear with dome and spire. There
is Modena and her Ghirlandina. Carpi, Parma, Mirandola,
Verona, Mantua, lie well-defined and russet on the flat green
map ; and there flashes a bend of lordly Po; and there the
Euganeans rise like islands, telling us where Padua and
Ferrara nestle in the amethystine haze. Beyond and above all
to the northward sweep the Alps, tossing their silvery crests up
into the cloudless sky from the violet mist that girds their
fanks and drowns their basements. Monte Adamello and
the Ortler, the cleft of the Brenner, and the sharp peaks of the
Venetian Alps are all distinctly visible. An eagle flying
straight from our eyrie might traverse Lombardy and light
among the snow-fields of the Valtelline between sunrise and
sundown. Nor is the prospect tame to southward. Here the
Apennines roll, billow above billow, in majestic desolation,
soaring to snow summits in the Pellegrino region. As our
eye attempts to thread that labyrinth of hill and vale, we tell
ourselves that those roads wind to Tuscany, and yonder
stretches Garfagnana, where Ariosto lived and mused in
honourable exile from the world he loved.
It was by one of the mountain passes that lead from Lucca
northward that the first founder of Canossa is said to have
travelled early in the tenth century. Sigifredo, if the tradition
may be trusted, was very wealthy ; and with his money he
bought lands and signorial rights at Reggio, bequeathing to his
children, when he died about 945, a patrimony which they
developed into a petty kingdom. Azzo, his second son, forti-
fied Canossa, and made it his principal place of residence.
When Lothair, King of Italy, died in 950, leaving his beautiful
widow to the ill-treatment of his successor, Berenger, Adelaide
found a protector in this Azzo. She had been imprisoned on
the Lake of Garda; but managing to escape in man's clothes
to Mantua, she thence sent news of her misfortunes to Canossa.
CANOSSA.
249
Azzo lost no time in riding with his knights to her relief, and
brought her back in safety to his mountain fastness. It is
related that Azzo was afterwards instrumental in calling Otho
into Italy and procuring his marriage with Adelaide, in conse-
quence of which events Italy became a fief of the Empire.
Owing to the part he played at this time, the Lord of Canossa
was recognised as one of the most powerful vassals of the
German Emperor in Lombardy. Honours were heaped upon
him ; and he grew so rich and formidable that Berenger, the
titular King of Italy, laid siege to his fortress of Canossa. The
memory of this siege, which lasted for three years and a half, is
said still to linger in the popular traditions of the place. When
Azzo died at the end of the tenth century, he left to his son
Tedaldo the title of Count of Reggio and Modena ; and this
title was soon after raised to that of Marquis. The Marches
governed as Vicar of the Empire by Tedaldo included Reggio,
Modena, Ferrara, Brescia, and probably Mantua.
They
stretched, in fact, across the north of Italy, forming a quadri.
lateral between the Alps and Apennines. Like his father,
Tedaldo adhered consistently to the Imperial party; and when
he died and was buried at Canossa, he in his turn bequeathed
to his son Bonifazio a power and jurisdiction increased by his
own abilities. Bonifazio held the state of a sovereign at
Canossa, adding the duchy of Tuscany to his father's fiefs, and
meeting the allied forces of the Lombard barons in the field of
Coviolo like an independent potentate. His power and
splendour were great enough to rouse the jealousy of the
Emperor ; but Henry III. seems to have thought it more
prudent to propitiate this proud vassal, and to secure his kind-
ness, than to attempt his humiliation, Bonifazio married
Beatrice, daughter of Frederick, Duke of Lorraine-her whose
marble sarcophagus in the Campo Santo at Pisa is said to have
inspired Niccola Pisano with his new style of sculpture. Their
only child, Matilda, was born, probably at Lucca, in 1046; and
250
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
1
1
six years after her birth, Bonifazio, who had swayed his subjects
like an iron-handed tyrant, was murdered. To the great house
of Canossa, the rulers of one-third of Italy, there now remained
only two women, Bonifazio's widow Beatrice, and his daughter
Matilda. Beatrice married Godfrey, Duke of Lorraine, who
was recognised by Henry IV. as her husband and as feudatory
of the Empire in the full place of Boniface. He died about
1070; and in this year Matilda was married by proxy to his
son, Godfrey the Hunchback, whom, however, she did not see
till the year 1072. The marriage was not a happy one ; and
the question has even been disputed among Matilda's biogra-
phers whether it was ever consummated. At any rate it did
not last long; for Godfrey was killed at Antwerp in 1076. In
this year Matilda also lost her mother, Beatrice, who died at
Pisa, and was buried in the cathedral.
By this rapid enumeration of events it will be seen how the
power and honours of the house of Canossa, including Tuscany,
Spoleto, and the fairest portions of Lombardy, had devolved
upon a single woman of the age of thirty at the moment when
the fierce quarrel between Pope and Emperor began in the
year 1076. Matilda was destined to play a great, a striking,
and a tragic part in the opening drama of Italian history. Her
decided character and uncompromising course of action have
won for her the name of ‘la gran donna d'Italia,' and have
caused her memory to be blessed or execrated, according as the
temporal pretensions and spiritual tyranny of the Papacy may
have found supporters or opponents in posterity. She was
reared from childhood in habits of austerity and unquestioning
piety. Submission to the Church became for her not merely a
rule of conduct, but a passionate enthusiasm. She identified
herself with the cause of four successive Popes, protected her
idol, the terrible and iron-hearted Hildebrand, in the time of
his adversity ; remained faithful to his principles after his death;
and having served the Holy See with all her force and all that
1
CANOSSA.
251
she possessed through all her life-time, she bequeathed her vast
dominions to it on her death bed. Like some of the greatest
mediæval characters-like Hildebrand himself—Matilda was so
thoroughly of one piece, that she towers above the mists of
ages with the massive grandeur of an incarnated idea. She is
for us the living statue of a single thought, an undivided im-
pulse, the more than woman born to represent her age. Nor
was it without reason that Dante symbolised in her the love of
Holy Church; though students of the 'Purgatory' will hardly
recognise the lovely maiden, singing and plucking flowers
beside the stream of Lethe, in the stern and warlike chatelaine
of Canossa. Unfortunately we know but little of Matilda's
personal appearance. Her health was not strong; and it is
said to have been weakened, especially in her last illness, by
ascetic observances. Yet she headed her own troops, armed
with sword and cuirass, avoiding neither peril nor fatigue in the
quarrels of her master Gregory. Up to the year 1622 two
strong suits of mail were preserved at Quattro Castelli, which
were said to have been worn by her in battle, and which were
afterwards sold on the market-place at Reggio. This habit of
donning armour does not, however, prove that Matilda was
exceptionally vigorous; for in those savage times she could
hardly have played the part of heroine without participating
personally in the dangers of warfare.
No less monumental in the plastic unity of his character
was the monk Hildebrand, who for twenty years before his
elevation to the Papacy had been the maker of Popes and the
creator of the policy of Rome. When he was himself elected
in the year 1073, and had assumed the name of Gregory VII.,
he immediately began to put in practice the plans for Church
aggrandisement he had slowly matured during the previous
quarter of a century. To free the Church from its subservience
to the Empire, to assert the Pope's right to ratify the election
of the Emperor and to exercise the right of jurisdiction over
252
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
him, to place ecclesiastical appointments in the sole power of
the Roman See, and to render the celibacy of the clergy
obligatory, were the points he had resolved to carry. Taken
singly and together, these chief aims of Hildebrand's policy
had but one object-the magnification of the Church at the
expense both of the people and of secular authorities, and the
further separation of the Church from the ties and sympathies
of common life that bound it to humanity. To accuse Hilde-
brand of personal ambition would be but shallow criticism,
though it is clear that his inflexible and puissant nature found
a savage selfish pleasure in trampling upon power and humbling
pride at warfare with his own. Yet his was in no sense an
egotistic purpose like that which moved the Popes of the
Renaissance to dismember Italy for their bastards. Hildebrand,
like Matilda, was himself the creature of a great idea. These
two potent personalities completely understood each other, and
worked towards a single end. The mythopoeic fancy might
conceive of them as the male and female manifestations of one
dominant faculty, the spirit of ecclesiastical dominion incarnate
in a man and woman of almost superhuman mould.
Opposed to them, as the third actor in the drama of
Canossa, was a nian of feebler mould. Henry IV., King of
Italy, but not yet crowned Emperor, had none of his opponents'
linity of purpose or monumental dignity of character. At war
with his German feudatories, browbeaten by rebellious sons,
unfaithful and cruel to his wife, vacillating in the measures he
adopted to meet his divers difficulties, at one time tormented
by his conscience into cowardly submission, and at another
treasonably neglectful of the most solemn obligations, Henry
was no match for the stern wills against which he was destined
to break in unavailing passion. Early disagreements with
Gregory had culminated in his excommunication. The German
nobles abandoned his cause; and Henry found it expedient
to summon a council in Augsburg for the settlement of matters
CANOSSA.
253
in dispute between the Empire and the Papacy. Gregory ex-
pressed his willingness to attend this council, and set forth from
Rome accompanied by the Countess Matilda in December,
1076. He did not, however, travel further than Vercelli, for
news here reached him that Henry was about to enter Italy at
the head of a powerful army. Matilda hereupon persuaded
the Holy Father to place himself in safety among her strong-
holds of Canossa. Thither accordingly Gregory retired before
the ending of that year; and bitter were the sarcasms uttered
by the imperial partisans in Italy upon this protection offered
by a fair countess to the monk who had been made a Pope.
The foul calumnies of that bygone age would be unworthy of
even so much as this notice, if we did not trace in them the
ineradicable Italian tendency to cynical insinuation-a tendency
which has involved the history of the Renaissance Popes in an
almost impenetrable mist of lies and exaggerations.
Henry was in truth upon his road to Italy, but with a very
different attendance from that which Gregory expected. Ac-
companied by Bertha, his wife, and his boy son Conrad, the
Emperor elect left Spires in the condition of a fugitive, crossed
Burgundy, spent Christmas at Besançon, and journeyed to the
foot of Mont Cenis. It is said that he was followed by a single
male servant of mean birth ; and if the tale of his adventures
during the passage of the Alps can be credited, history presents
fewer spectacles more picturesque than the straits to which this
representative of the Cæsars, this supreme chief of feudal
civility, this ruler destined still to be the leader of mighty
armies and the father of a line of monarchs, was exposed.
Concealing his real name and state, he induced some shepherds
to lead him and his escort through the thick snows to the
sunmit of Mont Cenis; and by the help of these men the
imperial party were afterwards let down the snow-slopes on the
further side by means of ropes. Bertha and her women were
sewn up in hides and dragged across the frozen surface of the
254
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
cause.
winter drifts. It was a year memorable for its severity. Heavy
snow had fallen in October, which continued ice-bound and
unyielding till the following April.
No sooner had Henry reached Turin, than he set forward
again in the direction of Canossa. The fame of his arrival had
preceded him, and he found that his party was far stronger in
Italy than he had ventured to expect. Proximity to the
Church of Romne divests its fulminations of half their terrors.
The Italian bishops and barons, less superstitious than the
Germans, and with greater reason to resent the domineering
graspingness of Gregory, were ready to espouse the Emperor's
Henry gathered a formidable force as he marched
onward across Lombardy; and some of the most illustrious
prelates and nobles of the South were in his suite. A more
determined leader than Henry proved himself to be, might
possibly have forced Gregory to some accommodation, in spite
of the strength of Canossa and the Pope's invincible obstinacy,
by proper use of these supporters. Meanwhile the adherents
of the Church were mustered in Matilda's fortress ; among
whom may be mentioned Azzo, the progenitor of Este and
Brunswick; Hugh, Abbot of Clugny; and the princely family
of Piedmont. 'I am becorne a second Rome,' exclaims Ca-
nossa, in the language of Matilda's rhyming chronicler ; "all
honours are mine ; I hold at once both Pope and King, the
princes of Italy and those of Gaul, those of Rome, and those
from far beyond the Alps.' The stage was ready ; the audience
had assembled ; and now the three great actors were about to
meet. Immediately upon his arrival at Canossa, Henry sent
for his cousin, the Countess Matilda, and besought her to
intercede for him with Gregory. He was prepared to make
any concessions or to undergo any humiliations, if only the ban
of excommunication might be removed ; nor, cowed as he was
by his own superstitious conscience, and by the memory of the
opposition he had met with from his German vassals, does he
CANOSSA.
255
seem to have once thought of meeting force with force, and of
returning to his northern kingdom triumphant in the overthrow
of Gregory's pride. Matilda undertook to plead his cause
before the Pontiff. But Gregory was not to be moved so soon
to mercy. 'If Henry has in truth repented,' he replied, 'let
him lay down crown and sceptre, and declare himself unworthy
of the name of king.' The only point conceded to the sup-
pliant was that he should be admitted in the garb of a penitent
within the precincts of the castle. Leaving his retinue outside
the walls, Henry entered the first series of outworks, and was
thence conducted to the second, so that between him and the
citadel itself there still remained the third of the surrounding
bastions. Here he was bidden to wait the Pope's pleasure ;
and here, in the midst of that bitter winter weather, while the
fierce winds of the Apennines were sweeping sleet upon him in
their passage from Monte Pellegrino to the plain, he knelt
barefoot, clothed in sackcloth, fasting from dawn till eve, for
three whole days. On the morning of the fourth day, judging
that Gregory was inexorable, and that his suit would not be
granted, Henry retired to the Chapel of S. Nicholas, which
stood within this second precinct. There he called to his aid
the Abbot of Clugny and the Countess, both of whom were his
relations, and who, much as they might sympathise with
Gregory, could hardly be supposed to look with satisfaction on
their royal kinsman's outrage. The Abbot told Henry that
nothing in the world could move the Pope ; but Matilda, when
in turn he fell before her knees and wept, engaged to do for
him the utmost. She probably knew that the moment for un-
bending had arrived, and that her imperious guest could no:
with either decency or prudence prolong the outrage offered to
the civil chief of Christendom. It was January 25 when the
Emperor elect was brought, half dead with cold and misery,
into the Pope's presence. There he prostrated himself in the
dust, crying aloud for pardon. It is said that Gregory first
256
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
placed his foot upon Henry's neck, uttering these words of
Scripture : 'Super aspidem et basiliscum ambulabis, et con-
culcabis leonem et draconem,' and that then he raised him
from the earth and formally pronounced his pardon. The
prelates and nobles who took part in this scene were compelled
to guarantee with their own oaths the vows of obedience pro-
nounced by Henry ; so that in the very act of reconciliation a
new insult was offered to him. After this Gregory said mass,
and permitted Henry to communicate ; and at the close of the
day a banquet was served, at which the King sat down to meat
with the Pope and the Countess.
It is probable that, while Henry's penance was performed
in the castle courts beneath the rock, his reception by the
Pope, and all that subsequently happened, took place in the
citadel itself. But of this we have no positive information.
Indeed the silence of the chronicles as to the topography of
Canossa is peculiarly unfortunate for lovers of the picturesque
in historic detail, now that there is no possibility of tracing the
outlines of the ancient building. Had the author of the Vita
Mathildis' (Muratori, vol. v.) foreseen that his beloved Canossa
would one day be nothing but a mass of native rock, he would
undoubtedly have been more explicit on these points; and
much that is vague about an event only paralleled by our
Henry II.'s penance before Becket's shrine at Canterbury,
might now be clear.
Very little remains to be told about Canossa. During the
same year, 1077, Matilda made the celebrated donation of her
fiefs to Holy Church. This was accepted by Gregory in the
name of S. Peter, and it was confirmed by a second deed
during the pontificate of Urban IV. in 1102. Though Matilda
subsequently married Guelfo d'Este, son of the Duke of
Bavaria, she was speedily divorced from him ; nor was there
any heir to a marriage ridiculous by reason of disparity of age,
the bridegroom being but eighteen, while the bride was forty-
CANOSSA.
257
three in the year of her second nuptials. During one of
Henry's descents into Italy, he made an unsuccessful attack
upon Canossa, assailing it at the head of a considerable force
one October morning in 1092. Matilda's biographer informs
us that the mists of autumn veiled his beloved fortress from the
eyes of the beleaguerers. They had not even the satisfaction
of beholding the unvanquished citadel; and, what was more,
the banner of the Emperor was seized and dedicated as a
trophy in the Church of S. Apollonio. In the following year
the Countess opened her gates of Canossa to an illustrious
fugitive, Adelaide, the wife of her old foeman, Henry, who had
escaped with difficulty from the insults and the cruelty of her
husband. After Henry's death, his son, the Emperor Henry V.,
paid Matilda a visit in her castle of Bianello, addressed her by
the name of mother, and conferred upon her the vice-regency of
Liguria. At the age of sixty-nine she died, in 115, at Bondeno
de' Roncori, and was buried, not among her kinsmen at
Canossa, but in an abbey of S. Benedict near Mantua. With
her expired the main line of the noble house she represented ;
though Canossa, now made a fief of the Empire in spite of
Matilda's donation, was given to a family which claimed
descent from Bonifazio's brother Conrad-a young man killed
in the battle of Coviolo. This family, in its turn, was extin-
guished in the year 1570 ; but a junior branch still exists at
Verona. It will be remembered that Michelangelo Buonarroti
claimed kinship with the Count of Canossa ; and a letter from
the Count is extant acknowledging the validity of his pre-
tension.
As far back as 1255 the people of Reggio destroyed the
castle ; nor did the nobles of Canossa distinguish themselves
in subsequent history among those families who based their
despotisms on the débris of the Imperial power in Lombardy.
It seemed destined that Canossa and all belonging to it should
remain as a mere name and memory of the outgrown middle
S
258
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
ages. Estensi, Carraresi, Visconti, Bentivogli, and Gonzaghi,
belong to a later period of Lombard history, and mark the
dawn of the Renaissance.
As I lay and mused that afternoon of May upon the short
grass, cropped by two grey goats, whom a little boy was tending,
it occurred to me to ask the woman who had served me as
guide, whether any legend remained in the country concerning
the Countess Matilda. She had often, probably, been asked
this question by other travellers. Therefore she was more
than usually ready with an answer, which, as far as I could
understand her dialect, was this. Matilda was a great and
potent witch, whose summons the devil was bound to obey.
One day she aspired, alone of all her sex, to say mass; but
when the moment came for sacring the elements, a thunderbolt
fell from the clear sky, and reduced her to ashes.' That the
most single-hearted handmaid of the Holy Church, whose life
was one long devotion to its ordinances, should survive in this
grotesque myth, might serve to point a satire upon the vanity
of earthly farne. The legend in its very extravagance is a
fanciful distortion of the truth.
? I find that this story is common in the country round Canossa. It is
mentioned by Professor A. Ferretti in his monograph entitled Canossa,
Studi e Ricerche, Reggio, 1876, a work to which I am indebted, and which
will repay careful study,
259
FORNOVO.
In the town of Parma there is one surpassingly strange relic of
the past. The palace of the Farnesi, like many a haunt of
upstart tyranny and beggared pride on these Italian plains,
rises misshapen and disconsolate above the stream that bears
the city's name. The squalor of this grey-brown edifice of
formless brick, left naked like the palace of the same Farnesi
at Piacenza, has something even horrid in it now that only
vague memory survives of its former uses. The princely
sprezzatura of its ancient occupants, careless of these unfinished
courts and unroofed galleries amid the splendour of their purfled
silks and the glitter of their torchlight pageantry, has yielded to
sullen cynicism—the cynicism of arrested ruin and unreverend
age. All that was satisfying to the senses and distracting to the
eyesight in their transitory pomp has passed away, leaving a
sinister and naked shell. Remembrance can but summon up
the crimes, the madness, the trivialities of those dead palace.
builders. An atmosphere of evil clings to the dilapidated walls,
as though the tainted spirit of the infamous Pier Luigi still
possessed the spot, on which his toadstool brood of princelings
sprouted in the mud of their misdeeds. Enclosed in this huge
labyrinth of brickwork is the relic of which I spoke. It is the
once world-famous Teatro Farnese, raised in the year 1618 by
Ranunzio Farnese for the marriage of Odoardo Farnese with
Margaret of Austria. Giambattista Aleotti, a native of pageant-
loving Ferrara, traced the stately curves and noble orders of the
S 2
260
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
galleries, designed the columns that support the raſtered roof,
marked out the orchestra, arranged the stage, and breathed into
the whole the spirit of Palladio's most heroic neo-Latin style.
Vast, built of wood, dishevelled, with broken statues and blurred
coats of arms, with its empty scene, its uncurling frescoes, its
hangings all in rags, its cobwebs of two centuries, its dust and
mildew and discoloured gold—this theatre, a sham in its best
days, and now that ugliest of things, a sham unmasked and
naked to the light of day, is yet sublime, because of its propor-
tioned harmony, because of its grand Roman manner. The
sight and feeling of it fasten upon the mind and abide in the
memory like a nightmare,—like one of Piranesi's weirdest and
most passion-haunted etchings for the Carceri. Idling there at
noon in the twilight of the dust-bedarkened windows, we fill the
tiers of those high galleries with ladies, the space below with
grooms and pages; the stage is ablaze with torches, and an
;
Italian Masque, such as our Marlowe dreamed of, fills the scene.
But it is impossible to dower these fancies with even such life
as in healthier, happier ruins phantasy may lend to imagination's
figments. This theatre is like a maniac's skull, empty of all
but unrealities and mockeries of things that are. The ghosts
we raise here could never have been living men and women :
questi sciaurati non fur mai vivi. So clinging is the sense of
instability that appertains to every fragment of that dry-rot
tyranny which seized by evil fortune in the sunset of her golden
day on Italy.
In this theatre I mused one morning after visiting Fornovo;
and the thoughts suggested by the battlefield found their proper
atmosphere in the dilapidated place. What, indeed, is the
Teatro Farnese but a symbol of those hollow principalities
which the despot and the stranger built in Italy after the fatal
date of 1494, when national enthusiasm and political energy
were expiring in a blaze of art, and when the Italians as a people
had ceased to be ; but when the phantom of their former liſe,
a
FORNOVO.
261
surviving in high works of beauty, was still superb by reason of
imperishable style! How much in Italy of the Renaissance
was, like this plank-built plastered theatre, a glorious sham!
The sham was seen through then ; and now it stands unmasked:
;
and yet, strange to say, so perfect is its form that we respect
the sham and yield our spirits to the incantation of its music.
The battle of Fornovo, as modern battles go, was a paltry
affair ; and even at the time it seemed sufficiently without
result. Yet the trumpets which rang on July 6, 1495, for the
onset, sounded the réveillé of the modern world; and in the
inconclusive termination of the struggle of that day, the Italians
were already judged and sentenced as a nation. The armies
who met that morning represented Italy and France, Italy,
the Sibyl of Renaissance; France, the Sibyl of Revolution. At
the fall of evening Europe was already looking northward ; and
the last years of the fifteenth century were opening an act which
closed in blood at Paris on the ending of the eighteenth.
If it were not for thoughts like these, no one, I suppose,
would take the trouble to drive for two hours out of Parma to
the little village of Fornovo,-a score of bare grey hovels on
the margin of a pebbly river-bed beneath the Apennines. The
fields on either side, as far as eye can see, are beautiful indeed
in May sunlight, painted here with flax, like shallow sheets of
water reflecting a pale sky, and there with clover red as blood.
Scarce unfolded leaves sparkle like flamelets of bright green
upon the knotted vines, and the young corn is bending all one
way beneath a western breeze. But not less beautiful than this
is the whole broad plain of Lombardy ; nor are the nightingales
louder here than in the acacia trees around Pavia. As we drive,
the fields become less fertile, and the hills encroach upon the
level, sending down their spurs upon that waveless plain like
blunt rocks jutting out into a tranquil sea. When we reach the
bed of the Taro, these hills begin to narrow on either hand, and
the road rises. Soon they open out again with gradual curving
262
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN 17'ALY.
lines, forming a kind of amphitheatre filled up from flank to
filank with the ghiara or pebbly bottom of the Taro. The Taro
is not less wasteful than any other of the brotherhood of streams
that pour from Alp or Apennine to swell the Po. It wanders,
an impatient rivulet, through a wilderness of boulders, uncertain
of its aim, shifting its course with the season of the year, unless
the jaws of some deep-cloven gully hold it tight and show how
insignificant it is. As we advance, the hills approach again ;
between their skirts there is nothing but the river-bed ; and
now on rising ground above the stream, at the point of juncture
between the Ceno and the Taro, we find Fornovo. Beyond
the village the valley broadens out once more, disclosing Apen-
nines capped with winter snow. To the right descends the
Ceno. To the left foams the Taro, following whose rocky
channel we should come at last to Pontremoli and the Tyr.
rhenian sea beside Sarzana. On a May-day of sunshine like the
present, the Taro is a gentle stream. A waggon drawn by two
white oxen has just entered its channel, guided by a contadino
with goat-skin leggings, wielding a long goad. The patient
creatures stem the water, which rises to the peasant's thighs and
ripples round the creaking wheels. Swaying to and fro, as the
shingles shift upon the river bed, they make their way across ;
and now they have emerged upon the stones; and now we lose
them in a flood of sunlight.
It was by this pass that Charles VIII. in 1495 returned from
Tuscany, when the army of the League was drawn up waiting
to intercept and crush him in the mousetrap of Fornovo. No
road remained for Charles and his troops but the rocky bed of
the Taro, running, as I have described it, between the spurs of
steep hills. It is true that the valley of the Baganza leads, from
a little higher up among the mountains, into Lombardy. But
this pass runs straight to Parma ; and to follow it would have
brought the French upon the walls of a strong city. Charles
could not do otherwise than descend upon the village of
FORNOVO.
263
Fornovo, and cut his way thence in the teeth of the Italian
army over stream and boulder between the gorges of throttling
mountain. The failure of the Italians to achieve what here
upon the ground appears so simple, delivered Italy hand-bound
to strangers. Had they but succeeded in arresting Charles and
destroying his forces at Fornovo, it is just possible that then-
even then, at the eleventh hour-Italy might have gained the
sense of national coherence, or at least have proved herself
capable of holding by her leagues the foreigner at bay. As it
was, the battle of Fornovo, in spite of Venetian bonfires and
Mantuan Madonnas of Victory, made her conscious of incom-
petence and convicted her of cowardice. After Fornovo, her
sons scarcely dared to hold their heads up in the field against
invaders ; and the battles fought upon her soil were duels among
aliens for the prize of Italy.
In order to comprehend the battle of Fornovo in its bearings
on Italian history, we must go back to the year 1492, and
understand the conditions of the various States of Italy at that
date. On April 8 in that year, Lorenzo de' Medici, who had
succeeded in maintaining a political equilibrium in the peninsula,
expired, and was succeeded by his son Piero, a vain and fool-
hardy young man, from whom no guidance could be expected.
On July 25, Innocent VIII. died, and was succeeded by the
very worst Pope who has ever occupied S. Peter's chair,
Roderigo Borgia, Alexander VI. It was felt at once that the
old order of things had somehow ended, and that a new era,
the destinies of which as yet remained incalculable, was opening
for Italy. The chief Italian powers, hitherto kept in equipoise
by the diplomacy of Lorenzo de' Medici, were these—the Duchy
of Milan, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Florence,
the Papacy, and the kingdom of Naples. Minor States, such as
the Republics of Genoa and Siena, the Duchies of Urbino and
Ferrara, the Marquisate of Mantua, the petty tyrannies of
Roinagna, and the wealthy city of Bologna, were sufficiently
264
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
important to affect the balance of power, and to produce new
combinations. For the present purpose it is, however, enough
to consider the five great Powers.
After the peace of Constance, which freed the Lombard
Communes from Imperial interference in the year 1183, Milan,
by her geographical position, rose rapidly to be the first city of
North Italy. Without narrating the changes by which she lost
her freedom as a Commune, it is enough to state that, earliest
of all Italian cities, Milan passed into the hands of a single
family. The Visconti managed to convert this flourishing
commonwealth, with all its dependencies, into their private
property, ruling it exclusively for their own profit, using its
municipal institutions as the machinery of administration, and
employing the taxes which they raised upon its wealth for
purely selfish ends. When the line of the Visconti ended in
the year 1447, their tyranny was continued by Francesco
Sforza, the son of a poor soldier of adventure, who had raised
himself by his military genius, and had married Bianca, the
illegitimate daughter of the last Visconti. On the death of
Francesco Sforza in 1466, he left two sons, Galeazzo Maria
and Lodovico, surnamed Il Moro, both of whom were destined
to play a prominent part in history. Galeazzo Maria, dissolute,
vicious, and cruel to the core, was murdered by his injured
subjects in the year 1476. His son, Giovanni Galeazzo, aged
eight, would in course of time have succeeded to the Duchy,
had it not been for the ambition of his uncle Lodovico. Lodo-
vico contrived to name himself as Regent for his nephew,
whom he kept, long after he had come of age, in a kind of
honourable prison. Virtual master in Milan, but without a
legal title to the throne, unrecognised in his authority by the
Italian powers, and holding it from day to day by craft and
fraud, Lodovico at last found his situation untenable ; and it
was this difficulty of an usurper to maintain himself in his des-
putism which, as we shall see, brought the French into Italy.
1
FORNOVO.
265
a
Venice, the neighbour and constant foe of Milan, had be-
come a close oligarchy by a process of gradual constitutional
development, which threw her government into the hands of a
few nobles. She was practically ruled by the hereditary
members of the Grand Council. Ever since the year 1453,
when Constantinople fell beneath the Turk, the Venetians had
been more and more straitened in their Oriental commerce,
and were thrown back upon the policy of territorial aggrandise-
ment in Italy, from which they had hitherto refrained as alien
to the temperament of the Republic. At the end of the
fifteenth century Venice therefore became an object of envy
and terror to the Italian States. They envied her because she
alone was tranquil, wealthy, powerful, and free. They feared
her because they had good reason to suspect her of encroach-
ment; and it was foreseen that if she got the upper hand in
Italy, all Italy would be the property of the families inscribed
upon the Golden Book. It was thus alone that the Italians
comprehended government. The principle of representation
being utterly unknown, and the privileged burghers in each
city being regarded as absolute and lawful owners of the city
and of everything belonging to it, the conquest of a town by a
republic implied the political extinction of that town and the
disfranchisement of its inhabitants in favour of the conquerors.
Florence at this epoch still called itself a Republic ; and of
all Italian commonwealths it was by far the most democratic.
Its history, unlike that of Venice, had been the history of con-
tinual and brusque changes, resulting in the destruction of the
old nobility, in the equalisation of the burghers, and in the
formation of a new aristocracy of wealth. Froin this class of
bourgeois nobles sprang the Medici, who, by careful manipula-
tion of the State machinery, by the creation of a powerful
party devoted to their interests, by flattery of the people, by
corruption, by taxation, and by constant scheming, raised them-
selves to the airst place in the commonwealth, and became its
a
266
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
virtual masters. In the year 1492, Lorenzo de' Medici, the
most remarkable chief of this despotic family, died, bequeath-
ing his supremacy in the Republic to a son of marked incom-
petence.
Since the Pontificate of Nicholas V. the See of Rome had
entered upon a new period of existence. The Popes no longer
dreaded to reside in Rome, but were bent upon making the
metropolis of Christendom both splendid as a seat of art and
learning, and also potent as the capital of a secular kingdom.
Though their fiefs in Romagna and the March were still held
but loosely, though their provinces swarmed with petty despots
who defied the Papal authority, and though the princely
Roman houses of Colonna and Orsini were still strong enough
to terrorise the Holy Father in the Vatican, it was now clear
that the Papal See must in the end get the better of its adver-
saries, and consolidate itself into a first-rate power.
The
internal spirit of the Papacy at this time corresponded to its
external policy. It was thoroughly secularised by a series of
worldly and vicious pontiffs, who had clean forgotten what
their title, Vicar of Christ, implied. They consistently used
their religious prestige to enforce their secular authority, while
by their temporal power they caused their religious claims to
be respected. Corrupt and shameless, they indulged them-
selves in every vice, openly acknowledged their children, and
turned Italy upside down in order to establish favourites and
bastards in the principalities they seized as spoils of war.
The kingdom of Naples differed from any other state of
Italy. Subject continually to foreign rulers since the decay of
the Greek Empire, governed in succession by the Normans,
the Hohenstauffens, and the House of Anjou, it had never
enjoyed the real independence, or the free institutions, of the
northern provinces ; nor had it been Italianised in the same
sense as the rest of the peninsula. Despotism, which assumed
so many forms in Italy, was here neither the tyranny of a noble
FORNOVO.
267
house, nor the masked autocracy of a burgher, nor yet the
forceful sway of a condottiere. It had a dynastic character,
resembling the monarchy of one of the great European nations,
but modified by the peculiar conditions of Italian statecraft.
Owing to this dynastic and monarchical complexion of the
Neapolitan kingdom, semi-feudal customs flourished in the
south far more than in the north of Italy. The barons were
more powerful ; and the destinies of the Regno often turned
upon their feuds and quarrels with the Crown. At the same
time the Neapolitan despots shared the uneasy circumstances
of all Italian potentates, owing to the uncertainty of their
tenure, both as conquerors and aliens, and also as the nominal
vassals of the Holy See. The rights of suzerainty which the
Normans had yielded to the Papacy over their southern
conquests, and which the Popes had arbitrarily exercised in
favour of the Angevine princes, proved a constant source of
peril to the rest of Italy by rendering the succession to the
crown of Naples doubtful. On the extinction of the Angevine
line, however, the throne was occupied by a prince who had no
valid title but that of the sword to its possession. Alfonso of
Aragon conquered Naples in 1442, and neglecting his heredi-
tary dominion, settled in his Italian capital. Possessed with
the enthusiasm for literature which was then the ruling passion
of the Italians, and very liberal to men of learning, Alfonso
won for himself the surname of Magnanimous. On his death,
in 1458, he bequeathed his Spanish kingdom, together with
Sicily and Sardinia, to his brother, and left the fruits of his
Italian conquest to his bastard, Ferdinand. This Ferdinand,
whose birth was buried in profound obscurity, was the reigning
sovereign in the year 1492.
Of a cruel and sombre tempera-
ment, traitorous and tyrannical, Ferdinand was hated by his
subjects as much as Alfonso had been loved. He possessed,
however, to a remarkable degree, the qualities which at that
epoch constituted a consummate statesman; and though the
а
26
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
history of his reign is the history of plots and conspiracies, of
judicial murders and forcible assassinations, of famines pro-
duced by iniquitous taxation, and of every kind of diabolical
tyranny, Ferdinand contrived to hold his own, in the teeth of a
rebellious baronage or a maddened population. His political
sagacity amounted almost to a prophetic instinct in the last
years of his life, when he became aware that the old order was
breaking up in Italy, and had cause to dread that Charles VIII.
of France would prove his title to the kingdom of Naples by
force of arms.
Such were the component parts of the Italian body politic,
with the addition of numerous petty principalities and powers,
adhering more or less consistently to one or other of the greater
States. The whole complex machine was bound together by
no sense of common interest, animated by no common purpose,
amenable to no central authority. Even such community of
feeling as one spoken language gives, was lacking. And yet
Italy distinguished herself clearly from the rest of Europe, not
merely as a geographical fact, but also as a people intellectually
and spiritually one. The rapid rise of humanism had aided in
producing this national self-consciousness. Every State and
every city was absorbed in the recovery of culture and in the
development of art and literature. Far in advance of the other
European nations, the Italians regarded the rest of the world
as barbarous, priding themselves the while, in spite of mutual
jealousies and hatreds, on their Italic civilisation. They were
enormously wealthy. The resources of the Papal treasury, the
private fortunes of the Florentine bankers, the riches of the
Venetian merchants might have purchased all that France or
Germany possessed of value. The single Duchy of Milan
yielded to its masters 700,000 golden florins of revenue, ac-
1
i Charles claimed under the will of René of Anjou, who in turn claimed
under the will of Joan II.
FOR VOVO.
269
cording to the computation of De Comines. In default of a
confederative system, the several States were held in equili-
brium by diplomacy. By far the most important people, next
to the despots and the captains of adventure, were ambassadors
and orators.
War itself had become a matter of arrangement,
bargain, and diplomacy. The game of stratagem was played
by generals who had been friends yesterday and might be
friends again to-morrow, with troops who felt no loyalty what-
ever for the standards under which they listed. To avoid
slaughter and to achieve the ends of warfare by parade and
demonstration was the interest of every one concerned. Look-
ing back upon Italy of the fifteenth century, taking account of
her religious deadness and moral corruption, estimating the
absence of political vigour in the republics and the noxious
tyranny of the despots, analysing her lack of national spirit, and
comparing her splendid life of cultivated ease with the want of
martial energy, we can see but too plainly that contact with a
simpler and stronger people could not but produce a terrible
catastrophe. The Italians themselves, however, were far from
comprehending this. Centuries of undisturbed internal in-
trigue had accustomed them to play the game of forfeits with
each other, and nothing warned them that the time was come at
which diplomacy, finesse, and craft would stand them in ill
stead against rapacious conquerors.
The storm which began to gather over Italy in the year
1492 had its first beginning in the North. Lodovico Sforza's
position in the Duchy of Milan was becoming every day more
difficult, when a slight and to all appearances insignificant
incident converted his apprehension of danger into panic. It
was customary for the States of Italy to congratulate a new
Pope on his election by their ambassadors; and this ceremony
had now to be performed for Roderigo Borgia. Lodovico pro-
posed that his envoys should go to Rome together with those
of Venice, Naples, and Florence; but Piero de' Medici, whose
270
SKETCIES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
vanity made him wish to send an embassy in his own name,
contrived that Lodovico's proposal should be rejected both by
Florence and the King of Naples. So strained was the situa-
tion of Italian affairs that Lodovico saw in this repulse a
menace to his own usurped authority. Feeling himself
isolated among the princes of his country, rebuffed by the
Medici, and coldly treated by the King of Naples, he turned
in his anxiety to France, and advised the young king, Charles
VIII., to make good his claim upon the Regno. It was a bold
move to bring the foreigner thus into Italy ; and even Lodo.
vico, who prided himself upon his sagacity, could not see how
things would end. He thought his situation so hazardous,
however, that any change must be for the better. Moreover,
a French invasion of Naples would tie the hands of his natural
foe, King Ferdinand, whose granddaughter, Isabella of Aragon,
had married Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza, and was now the rightful
Duchess of Milan. When the Florentine ambassador at Milan
asked him how he had the courage to expose Italy to such
peril, his reply betrayed the egotism of his policy : “You talk
to me of Italy; but when have I looked Italy in the face? No
one ever gave a thought to my affairs. I have, therefore, had
to give them such security as I could.'
Charles VIII. was young, light-brained, romantic, and ruled
by parvenus, who had an interest in disturbing the old order of
the monarchy. He lent a willing ear to Lodovico's invitation,
backed as this was by the eloquence and passion of nu-
merous Italian refugees and exiles. Against the advice of
his more prudent counsellors, he taxed all the resources of his
kingdom, and concluded treaties on disadvantageous terms with
England, Germany, and Spain, in order that he might be able
to concentrate all his attention upon the Italian expedition.
At the end of the year 1493, it was known that the invasion
was resolved upon. Gentile Becchi, the Florentine envoy at
the Court of France, wrote to Piero de' Medici : ‘If the King
FORNOVO.
271
6
6
succeeds, it is all over with Italy- tutta a bordello.' The
extraordinary selfishness of the several Italian States at this
critical moment deserves to be noticed. The Venetians, as
Paolo Antonio Soderini described them to Piero de' Medici,
* are of opinion that to keep quiet, and to see other potentates
of Italy spending and suffering, cannot but be to their advan-
tage. They trust no one, and feel sure they have enough
money to be able at any moment to raise sufficient troops, and
so to guide events according to their inclinations.' As the
invasion was directed against Naples, Ferdinand of Aragon dis-
played the acutest sense of the situation. * Frenchmen,' he
exclaimed, in what appears like a prophetic passion when con-
trasted with the cold indifference of others no less really
menaced, ‘have never come into Italy without inflicting ruin ;
and this invasion, if rightly considered, cannot but bring uni-
versal ruin, although it seems to manace us alone.' In his
agony Ferdinand applied to Alexander VI. But the Pope looked
coldly upon him, because the King of Naples, with rare per-
spicacity, had predicted that his elevation to the Papacy would
prove disastrous to Christendom. Alexander preferred to ally
himself with Venice and Milan. Upon this Ferdinand wrote
as follows : It seems fated that the Popes should leave no
peace in Italy. We are compelled to fight ; but the Duke of
Bari (i.e. Lodovico Sforza) should think what may ensue from
the tumult he is stirring up. He who raises this wind will not
be able to lay the tempest when he likes. Let him look to the
past, and he will see how every time that our internal quarrels
have brought Powers from beyond the Alps into Italy, these
have oppressed and lorded over her.'
Terribly verified as these words were destined to be,-and
they were no less prophetic in their political sagacity than
Savonarola's prediction of the Sword and bloody Scourge,-it
was now too late to avert the coming ruin. On March 1, 1494,
Charles was with his army at Lyons. Early in September he
272
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
<
had crossed the pass of Mont Genêvre and taken up his quarters
in the town of Asti. There is no need to describe in detail
the holiday march of the French troops through Lombardy,
Tuscany, and Rome, until, without having struck a blow of
consequence, the gates of Naples opened to receive the con-
queror upon February 22, 1495. Philippe de Comines, who
parted from the king at Asti and passed the winter as his envoy
at Venice, has more than once recorded his belief that nothing
but the direct interposition of Providence could have brought
so mad an expedition to so successful a conclusion. “Dieu
monstroit conduire l'entreprise.' No sooner, however, was
Charles installed in Naples than the States of Italy began to
combine against him. Lodovico Sforza had availed himself of
the general confusion consequent upon the first appearance of
the French, to poison his nephew. He was, therefore, now the
titular, as well as virtual, Lord of Milan. So far, he had
achieved what he desired, and had no further need of Charles.
The overtures he now made to the Venetians and the Pope
terminated in a League between these Powers for the expulsion
of the French from Italy. Germany and Spain entered into
the same alliance; and De Comines, finding himself treated
with marked coldness by the Signory of Venice, despatched a
courier to warn Charles in Naples of the coming danger. After
a stay of only fifty days in his new capital, the French King
hurried northward. Moving quickly through the Papal States
and Tuscany, he engaged his troops in the passes of the
Apennines near Pontremoli, and on July 5, 1495, took up his
quarters in the village of Fornovo. De Comines reckons that
his whole fighting force at this time did not exceed 9,000 men,
with fourteen pieces of artillery. Against him at the opening
of the valley was the army of the League, numbering some
35,000 men, of whom three-fourths were supplied by Venice,
the rest by Lodovico Sforza and the German Emperor.
Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, was the general of the
FORNOVO.
273
Venetian forces; and on him, therefore, fell the real responsi-
bility of the battle.
De Comines remarks on the imprudence of the allies, who
allowed Charles to advance as far as Fornovo, when it was
their obvious policy to have established themselves in the
village and so have caught the French troops in a trap. It
was a Sunday when the French marched down upon Fornovo.
Before them spread the plain of Lombardy, and beyond it
the white crests of the Alps. We were,' says De
Comines, in a valley between two little mountain flanks,
and in that valley ran a river which could easily be
forded on foot, except when it is swelled with sudden rains.
The whole valley was a bed of gravel and big stones, very
difficult for horses, about a quarter of a league in breadth, and
on the right bank lodged our enemies. Any one who has
visited Fornovo can understand the situation of the two
armies. Charles occupied the village on the right bank of the
Taro. On the same bank, extending downward toward the
plain, lay the host of the allies; and in order that Charles should
escape them, it was necessary that he should cross the Taro,
just below its junction with the Ceno, and reach Lombardy by
marching in a parallel line with his foes.
All through the night of Sunday it thundered and rained
incessantly ; so that on the Monday morning the Taro was
considerably swollen. At seven o'clock the king sent for De
Comines, who found him already armed and mounted on the
finest horse he had ever seen. The name of this charger was
Savoy. He was black, one-eyed, and of middling height; and
to his great courage, as we shall see, Charles owed life upon
that day. The French army, ready for the march, now took
to the gravelly bed of the Taro, passing the river at a distance
of about a quarter of a league from the allies. As the French
left Fornovo, the light cavalry of their enemies entered the
village and began to attack the baggage. At the same time
ز
T
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
the Marquis of Mantua, with the flower of his men-at-arms,
crossed the Taro and harassed the rear of the French host;
while raids from the right bank to the left were constantly
being made by sharp-shooters and flying squadrons. "At this
moment,' says De Comines, 'not a single man of us could have
escaped if our ranks had once been broken.' The French
army was divided into three main bodies. The vanguard con-
sisted of some 350 men-at-arms, 3,000 Switzers, 300 archers of
the Guard, a few mounted crossbow-men, and the artillery.
Next came the Battle, and after this the rearguard. At the
time when the Marquis of Mantua made his attack, the French
rearguard had not yet crossed the river. Charles quitted the
van, put himself at the head of his chivalry, and charged the
Italian horsemen, driving them back, some to the village and
others to their camp. De Comines observes, that had the
Italian knights been supported in this passage of arms by the
light cavalry of the Venetian force, called Stradiots, the French
must have been outnumbered, thrown into confusion, and
defeated. As it was, these Stradiots were engaged in plunder-
ing the baggage of the French; and the Italians, accustomed
to bloodless encounters, did not venture, in spite of their
immense superiority of numbers, to renew the charge. In the
pursuit of Gonzaga's horsemen Charles outstripped his staff,
and was left almost alone to grapple with a little band of
mounted foemen. It was here that his noble horse, Savoy,
saved his person by plunging and charging till assistance came
up from the French, and enabled the King to regain his van.
It is incredible, considering the nature of the ground and
the number of the troops engaged, that the allies should not
have returned to the attack and have made the passage of the
French into the plain impossible. De Comines, however,
assures us that the actual engagement only lasted a quarter of
an hour, and the pursuit of the Italians three quarters of an
hour. After they had once resolved to fly, they threw away their
FORNOVO.
275
lances and betook themselves to Reggio and Parma. So com-
plete was their discomfiture, that De Comines gravely blames the
want of military genius and adventure in the French host. If,
instead of advancing along the left bank of the Taro and there
taking up his quarters for the night, Charles had recrossed the
stream and pursued the army of the allies, he would have had
the whole of Lombardy at his discretion. As it was, the
French army encamped not far from the scene of the action in
great discomfort and anxiety. De Comines had to bivouac in
a vineyard, without even a mantle to wrap round him, having
lent his cloak to the King in the morning ; and as it had been
pouring all day, the ground could not have afforded very
luxurious quarters. The same extraordinary luck which had
attended the French in their whole expedition, now favoured
their retreat ; and the same pusillanimity which the allies had
shown at Fornovo, prevented them from re-forming and
engaging with the army of Charles upon the plain. One hour
before daybreak on Tuesday morning, the French broke up
their camp and succeeded in clearing the valley. That night
they lodged at Fiorenzuola, the next at Piacenza, and so on;
till on the eighth day they arrived at Asti without having been
so much as incommoded by the army of the allies in their rear.
Although the field of Fornovo was in reality so disgraceful to
the Italians, they reckoned it a victory upon the technical pre-
tence that the camp and baggage of the French had been seized.
Illuminations and rejoicings made the piazza of S. Mark in
Venice gay, and Francesco da Gonzaga had the glorious Ma-
donna della Vittoria painted for him by Mantegna, in commemo-
ration of what ought only to have been remembered with shame.
A fitting conclusion to this sketch, connecting its close with
the commencement, may be found in some remarks upon the
manner of warfare to which the Italians of the Renaissance had
become accustomed, and which proved so futile on the field
of Fornovo. During the middle ages, and in the days of the
а
T2
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Communes, the whole male population of Italy had fought
light-armed on foot. Merchant and artisan left the counting-
house and the workshop, took shield and pike, and sallied
forth to attack the barons in their castles, or to meet the
Emperor's troops upon the field. It was with this national
militia that the citizens of Florence freed their Contado of
the nobles, and the burghers of Lombardy gained the battle of
Legnano. In course of time, by a process of change which it
is not very easy to trace, heavily-armed cavalry began to take
the place of infantry in mediæval warfare. Men-at-arms, as
they were called, encased from head to foot in iron, and
mounted upon chargers no less solidly caparisoned, drove the
foot-soldiers before them at the points of their long lances.
Nowhere in Italy do they seem to have met with the fierce
resistance which the bears of the Swiss Oberland and the bulls
of Uri offered to the knights of Burgundy. No Tuscan Arnold
von Winkelried clasped a dozen lances to his bosom that the
foeman's ranks might thus be broken at the cost of his own life ;
nor did it occur to the Italian burghers to meet the charge of
the horsemen with squares protected by bristling spears. They
seem, on the contrary, to have abandoned military service with
the readiness of men whose energies were already absorbed in
the affairs of peace. To become a practised and efficient man-
at-arms required long training and a life's devotion. So much
time the burghers of the free towns could not spare to military
service, while the petty nobles were only too glad to devote
themselves to so honourable a calling. Thus it came to pass
that a class of professional fighting-men was gradually formed
in Italy, whose services the burghers and the princes bought,
and by whom the wars of the peninsula were regularly farmed
by contract Wealth and luxury in the great cities continued
to increase ; and as the burghers grew more comfortable, they
were less inclined to take the field in their own persons, and
more disposed to vote large sums of money for the purchase of
FORNOV'O.
277
necessary aid. At the same time this system suited the despots,
since it spared them the peril of arming their own subjects,
while they taxed them to pay the services of foreign captains.
War thus became a commerce. Romagna, the Marches of
Ancona, and other parts of the Papal dominions, supplied a
number of petty nobles whose whole business in life it was to
form companies of trained horsemen, and with these bands to
hire themselves out to the republics and the despots. Gain
was the sole purpose of these captains. They sold their
service to the highest bidder, fighting irrespectively of principle
or patriotism, and passing with the coldest equanimity from the
camp of one master to that of his worst foe. It was impos-
sible that true military spirit should survive this prostitution of
the art of war. A species of mock warfare prevailed in Italy.
Battles were fought with a view to booty more than victory;
prisoners were taken for the sake of ransom ; bloodshed was
carefully avoided, for the men who fought on either side in any
pitched field had been comrades with their present foemen in
the last encounter, and who could tell how soon the general of
the one host might not need his rivals troops to recruit his
own ranks? Like every genuine institution of the Italian
Renaissance, warfare was thus a work of fine art, a masterpiece
of intellectual subtlety; and like the Renaissance itself, this
peculiar form of warfare was essentially transitional. The
cannon and the musket were already in use; and it only
required one blast of gunpowder to turn the sham-fight of
courtly, traitorous, finessing captains of adventure into some-
thing terribly more real. To men like the Marquis of Mantua
war had been a highly profitable game of skill; to men like
the Maréchal de Gié it was a murderous horse-play; and this
difference the Italians were not slow to perceive. When they
cast away their lances at Fornovo, and fled—in spite of their
superior numbers-never to return, one fair-seeming sham of
the fifteenth century became a vision of the past.
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
TWO DRAMATISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY.
THERE are few contrasts more striking than that which is
presented by the memoirs of Goldoni and Alfieri. Both of
these men bore names highly distinguished in the history of
Italian literature. Both of them were framed by nature with
strongly marked characters, and fitted to perform a special
work in the world. Both have left behind them records of their
lives and literary labours, singularly illustrative of their peculiar
differences. There is no instance in which we see more clearly
the philosophical value of autobiographies, than in these vivid
pictures which the great Italian tragedian and comic author
have delineated. Some of the most interesting works of
Lionardo da Vinci, Giorgione, Albert Dürer, Rembrandt,
Rubens, and Andrea del Sarto, are their portraits painted by
themselves. These pictures exhibit not only the lineaments of
the masters, but also their art. The hand which drew them
was the hand which drew the ‘Last Supper,' or the 'Madonna
of the Tribune :' colour, method, chiaroscuro, all that makes
up manner in painting, may be studied on the same canvas as
that which faithfully represents the features of the man whose
genius gave his style its special character. We seem to under-
stand the clear calm majesty of Lionardo's manner, the silver-
gray harmonies and smooth facility of Andrea's Madonnas, the
better for looking at their faces drawn by their own hands at
Florence. And if this be the case with a dumb picture, how
far higher must be the interest and importance of the written
TWO DRAMATISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY.
279
life of a known author. Not only do we recognise in its com-
position the style and temper and habits of thought which are
familiar to us in his other writings; but we also hear from his
own lips how these were formed, how his tastes took their
peculiar direction, what circumstar.ces acted on his character,
what hopes he had, and where he failed. Even should his
autobiography not bear the marks of uniform candour, it
probably reveals more of the actual truth, more of the man's
real nature in its height and depth, than any memoir written
by friend or foe. Its unconscious admissions, its general spirit,
and the inferences which we draw from its perusal, are far more
valuable than any mere statement of facts or external analysis,
however scientific. When we become acquainted with the
series of events which led to the conception or attended the
production of some masterpiece of literature, a new light is
thrown upon its beauties, fresh life bursts forth from every
chapter, and we seem to have a nearer and more personal
interest in its success. What a powerful sensation, for instance,
is that which we experience when, after studying the 'Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire,' Gibbon tells us how the thought
of writing it came to him upon the Capitol, among the ruins of
dead Rome, and within hearing of the mutter of the monks of
Ara Cali, and how he finished it one night by Lake Geneva,
and laid his pen down and walked forth and saw the stars
above his terrace at Lausanne.
The memoirs of Alfieri and Goldoni are not deficient in any
of the characteristics of good autobiography. They seem to
bear upon their face the stamp of truthfulness, they illustrate
their authors' lives with marvellous lucidity, and they are full of
interest as stories. But it is to the contrast which they present
that our attention should be chiefly drawn. Other biographies
may be as interesting and amusing. None show in a more
marked manner two distinct natures endowed with genius for
one art, and yet designed in every possible particular for
a
280
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
different branches of that art. Alfieri embodies Tragedy ;
Goldoni is the spirit of Comedy. They are both Italians: their
tragedies and comedies are by no means cosmopolitan; but
this national identity of character only renders more remarkable
the individual divergences by which they were impelled into
their different paths. Thalia seems to have made the one,
body, soul, and spirit ; and Melpomene the other ; each goddess
;
launched her favourite into circumstances suited to the evolu-
tion of his genius, and presided over his development, so that
at his death she might exclaim,-Behold the living model of
my Art !
6
Goldoni was born at Venice in the year 1707; he had already
reached celebrity when Alfieri saw the light for the first time, in
1749, at Asti. Goldoni's grandfather was a native of Modena,
who had settled in Venice, and there lived with the prodigality
of a rich and ostentatious' bourgeois.' 'Amid riot and luxury
did I enter the world,' says the poet, after enumerating the
banquets and theatrical displays with which the old Goldoni
entertained his guests in his Venetian palace and country-house.
Venice at that date was certainly the proper birthplace for a
comic poet. The splendour of the Renaissance had thoroughly
habituated her nobles to pleasures of the sense, and had
enervated their proud, maritime character, while the great name
of the republic robbed them of the caution for which they used
to be conspicuous. Yet the real strength of Venice was almost
spent, and nothing remained but outward insolence and prestige.
Everything was gay about Goldoni in his earliest childhood.
Puppet-shows were built to amuse him by his grandfather.
My mother,' he says, 'took charge of my education, and my
father of my amusements.'
Let us turn to the opening scene in Alfieri's life, and mark
the difference. A father above sixty, ‘noble, wealthy, and
respectable,' who died before his son had reached the age of
one year old. A mother devoted to religion, the widow of one
TWO DRAMATISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY.
281
a
a
marquis, and after the death of a second husband, Alfieri's
father, married for the third time to a nobleman of ancient
birth. These were Alfieri's parents. He was born in a solemn
palazzo in the country town of Asti, and at the age of five
already longed for death as an escape from disease and other
earthly troubles. So noble and so wealthy was the youthful
poet that an abbé was engaged to carry out his education, but
not to teach him more than a count should know. Except
this worthy man he had no companions whatever. Strange
ideas possessed the boy. He ruminated on his melancholy,
and when eight years old attempted suicide. At this age he
was sent to the academy at Turin, attended, as befitted a lad of
his rank, by a man-servant, who was to remain and wait on him
at school. Alfieri stayed here several years without revisiting his
home, tyrannised over by the valet who added to his grandeur,
constantly subject to sickness, and kept in almost total ignor-
ance by his incompetent preceptors. The gloom and pride
and stoicism of his temperament were augmented by this
unnatural discipline. His spirit did not break, but took a
haughtier and more disdainful tone. He became familiar with
misfortunes. He learned to brood over and intensify his
passions. Every circumstance of his life seemed strung up to
a tragic pitch. This at least is the impression which remains
upon our mind after reading in his memoirs the narrative of
what must in many of its details have been a common schoolboy's
life at that time.
Meanwhile, what had become of young Goldoni ? His
boyhood was as thoroughly plebeian, various, and comic, as
Alfieri's had been patrician, monotonous, and tragical. Instead
of one place of residence, we read of twenty. Scrape succeeds
to scrape, adventure to adventure. Knowledge of the world,
and some book learning also, flow in upon the boy, and are
eagerly caught up by him and heterogeneously amalgamated in
his mind. Alfieri learned nothing, wrote nothing, in his youth,
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
a
and heard his parents say—“A nobleman need never strive to
be a doctor of the faculties.' Goldoni had a little medicine
and much law thrust upon him. At eight he wrote a comedy,
and ere long began to read the plays of Plautus, Terence,
Aristophanes, and Machiavelli. Between the nature of the
two poets there was a marked and characteristic difference as
to their mode of labour and of acquiring knowledge. Both of
them loved fame, and wrought for it ; but Alfieri did so from a
sense of pride and a, determination to excel ; while Goldoni
loved the approbation of his fellows, sought their compliments,
and basked in the sunshine of smiles. Alfieri wrote with
labour. Each tragedy he composed went through a triple
process of composition, and received frequent polishing when
finished. Goldoni dashed off his pieces with the greatest ease
on every possible subject. He once produced sixteen comedies
in one theatrical season. Alfieri's were like lion's whelps-
brought forth with difficulty, and at long intervals; Goldoni's,
like the brood of a hare—many, frequent, and as agile as their
parent. Alfieri amassed knowledge scrupulously, but with
infinite toil. He mastered Greek and Hebrew when he was
past forty. Goldoni never gave himself the least trouble to
learn anything, but trusted to the ready wit, good memory, and
natural powers, which helped him in a hundred strange emer-
gencies. Power of will and pride sustained the one; facility
and a good-humoured vanity the other. This contrast was
apparent at a very early age. We have seen how Alfieri passed
his time at Turin, in a kind of aristocratic prison of educational
ignorance. Goldoni's grandfather died when he was five years
old, and left his family in great embarrassment. The poet's
father went off to practise medicine at Perugia. His son
followed him, acquired the rudiments of knowledge in that
town, and then proceeded to study philosophy alone at Rimini.
There was no man-servant or academy in his case. He was far
too plebeian and too free. The boy lodged with a merchant,
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TWO DRAMATISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY.
283
6
and got some smattering of Thomas Aquinas and the Peripate-
tics into his small brain, while he contrived to form a friendship
with an acting company. They were on the wing for Venice
in a coasting boat, which would touch at Chiozza, where
Goldoni's mother then resided. The boy pleased them.
Would he like the voyage ? This offer seemed too tempting, and
away he rushed, concealed himself on board, and made one of
a merry motley shipload. “Twelve persons, actors as well as
actresses, a prompter, a machinist, a storekeeper, eight domestics,
four chambermaids, two nurses, children of every age, cats,
dogs, monkeys, parrots, birds, pigeons, and a lamb ; it was
another Noah's ark. The young poet felt at home; how could
a comic poet feel otherwise? They laughed, they sang, they
danced ; they ate and drank, and played at cards. “Macaroni !
Every one fell on it, and three dishes were devoured. We had
also alamode beef, cold fowl, a loin of veal, a dessert, and
excellent wine. What a charming dinner! No cheer like a
good appetite.' Their harmony, however, was disturbed. The
*première amoureuse,' who, in spite of her rank and title, was
ugly and cross, and required to be coaxed with cups of choco-
late, lost her cat. She tried to kill the whole boat-load of
beasts-cats, dogs, monkeys, parrots, pigeons, even the lamb
stood in danger of her wrath. A regular quarrel ensued, was
somehow set at peace, and all began to laugh again. This is a
sample of Goldoni's youth. Comic pleasures, comic dangers ;
nothing deep or lasting, but light and shadow cheerfully dis-
tributed, clouds lowering with storm, a distant growl of thunder,
then a gleam of light and sunshine breaking overhead. He
gets articled to an attorney at Venice, then goes to study law at
Pavia ; studies society instead, and flirts, and finally is expelled
for writing satires. Then he takes a turn at medicine with his
father in Friuli, and acts as clerk to the criminal chancellor at
Chiozza.
Every employment seems easy to him, but he really cares
284
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
a
for none but literature. He spends all his spare time in read-
ing and in amusements, and begins to write a tragic opera.
This proves, however, eminently unsuccessful, and he burns it
in a comic fit of anger. One laughable love-affair in which he
engaged at Udine exhibits his adventures in their truly comic
aspect. It reminds us of the scene in ‘Don Giovanni,' where
Leporello personates the Don and deceives Donna Elvira.
Goldoni had often noticed a beautiful young lady at church
and on the public drives: she was attended by a waiting-maid,
who soon perceived that her mistress had excited the young
man's admiration, and who promised to befriend him in his
suit. Goldoni was told to repair at night to the palace of his
mistress, and to pour his passion forth beneath her window.
Impatiently he waited for the trysting hour, conned his love-
sentences, and gloried in the romance of the adventure. When
night came, he found the window, and a veiled figure of a lady
in the moonlight, whom he supposed at once to be his mistress.
Her he eloquently addressed in the true style of Romeo's
rapture, and she answered him. Night after night this hap-
pened, but sometimes he was a little troubled by a sound of
ill-suppressed laughter interrupting the tête-à-tête. Meanwhile
Teresa, the waiting-maid, received from his hands costly
presents for her mistress, and made him promises on her part
in exchange. As she proved unable to fulfil them, Goldoni
grew suspicious, and at last discovered that the veiled figure to
whom he had poured out his tale of love was none other than
Teresa, and that the laughter had proceeded from her mistress,
whom the faithless waiting-maid regaled at her lover's expense.
Thus ended this ridiculous matter. Goldoni was not, however,
cured by his experience. One other love-affair rendered
Udine too hot to hold him, and in consequence of a third he
had to fly from Venice just when he was beginning to
flourish there. At length he married comfortably and
suitably, settling down into a quiet life with a woman whom, if
TWO DRAMATISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY.
285
sorrow.
he did not love her with passion, he at least respected and ad-
mired. Goldoni, in fact, had no real passion in his nature.
Alfieri, on the other hand, was given over to volcanic ebul-
litions of the most ungovernable hate and affection, joy and
The chains of love which Goldoni courted so willingly,
Alfieri regarded with the greatest shyness. But while Goldoni
healed his heart of all its bruises in a week or so, the tragic
poet bore about him wounds that would not close. He
enumerates three serious passions which possessed his whole
nature, and at times deprived him almost of his reason. A
Dutch lady first won his heart, and when he had to leave her,
Alfieri suffered so intensely that he never opened his lips
during the course of a long journey through Germany, Switzer-
land, and Piedmont. Fevers, and suicides attempted but
interrupted, marked the termination of this tragic amour. His
second passion had for its object an English lady, with whose
injured husband he fought a duel, although his collar-bone was
broken at the time. The lady proved unworthy of Alfieri as
well as of her husband, and the poet left her in a most deplor-
able state of hopelessness and intellectual prostration. At last
he formed a permanent affection for the wife of Prince Charles
Edward, the Countess of Albany, in close friendship with
whom he lived after her husband's death. The society of this
lady gave him perfect happiness; but it was founded on her
lofty beauty, the pathos of her situation, and her intellectual
qualities. Melpomene presided at this union, while Thalia
blessed the nuptials of Goldoni. How characteristic also were
the adventures which these two pairs of lovers encountered !
Goldoni once carried his wife upon his back across two rivers
in their flight from the Spanish to the Austrian camp at Rimini,
laughing and groaning, and perceiving the humour of his
situation all the time. Alfieri, on an occasion of even greater
difficulty, was stopped with his illustrious friend at the gates of
Paris in 1792. They were flying in post-chaises, with their
286
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
servants and their baggage, from the devoted city, when a troop of
sansculottes rushed on them, surged around the carriage, called
them aristocrats, and tried to drag them off to prison. Alfieri
with his tall gaunt figure, pallid face, and red voluminous hair,
stormed, raged, and raised his deep bass voice above the
tumult. For half an hour he fought with them, then made his
coachmen gallop through the gates, and scarcely halted till
they got to Gravelines. By this prompt movement they
escaped arrest and death at Paris. These two scenes would
make agreeable companion pictures : Goldoni staggering be-
neath his wife across the muddy bed of an Italian stream—the
smiling writer of agreeable plays, with his half-tearful helpmate
ludicrous in her disasters; Alfieri mad with rage among
Parisian Manads, his princess quaking in her carriage, the air
hoarse with cries, and death and safety trembling in the
balance. It is no wonder that the one man wrote ‘La Donna
di Garbo' and the ‘Cortese Veneziano,' while the other was in-
diting essays on Tyranny and dramas of Antigone,'' Timoleon,'
and · Brutus.'
The difference between the men is seen no less remarkably
in regard to courage. Alfieri was a reckless rider, and asto-
nished even English huntsmen by his desperate leaps. In one
of them he fell and broke his collar-bone, but not the less he
held his tryst with a fair lady, climbed her park gates, and
fought a duel with her husband. Goldoni was a pantaloon for
cowardice. In the room of an inn at Desenzano which he
occupied together with a female fellow-traveller, an attempt
was made to rob them by a thief at night. All Goldoni was
able to do consisted in crying out for help, and the lady called
him M. l'Abbé' ever after for his want of pluck. Goldoni
must have been by far the more agreeable of the two. In all
his changes from town to town of Italy he found amusement
and brought gaiety. The sights, the theatres, the society.
aroused his curiosity. He trembled with excitement at t'ne
6
TWO DRAMATISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY.
287.
performance of his pieces, made friends with the actors, taught
them, and wrote parts to suit their qualities. At Pisa he
attended as a stranger the meeting of the Arcadian Academy,
and at its close attracted all attention to himself by his clever
improvisation. He was in truth a ready-witted man, pliable,
full of resource, bred half a valet, half a Roman græculus.
Alfieri saw more of Europe than Goldoni. France, Germany,
Holland, Switzerland, England, Spain, all parts of Italy he
visited with restless haste. From land to land he flew, seeking
no society, enjoying nothing, dashing from one inn door to
another with his servants and his carriages, and thinking chiefly
of the splendid stud of horses which he took about with him
upon his travels. He was a lonely, stiff, self-engrossed, indo-
mitable man. He could not rest at home: he could not bear
to be the vassal of a king and breathe the air of courts. So he
lived always on the wing, and ended by exiling himself from
Sardinia in order to escape the trammels of paternal govern-
ment. As for his tragedies, he wrote them to win laurels from
posterity. He never cared to see them acted; he bullied
even his printers and correctors; he cast a glove down in
defiance of his critics. Goldoni sought the smallest meed of
approbation. It pleased him hugely in his old age to be
Italian master to a French princess. Alfieri openly despised
the public. Goldoni wrote because he liked to write ; Alfieri,
for the sake of proving his superior powers. Against Alfieri's
hatred of Turin and its trivial solemnities, we have to set
Goldoni's love of Venice and its petty pleasures. He would
willingly have drunk chocolate and played at dominoes or
picquet all his life on the Piazza di San Marco, when Alfieri
was crossing the sierras on his Andalusian horse, and devouring
a frugal meal of rice in solitude. Goldoni glided through life
an easy man, with genial, venial thoughts; with a clear, gay,
gentle temper; a true sense of what is good and just; and a
heurt that loved diffusively, if not too warmly. Many were the
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
checks and obstacles thrown on his path ; but round them or
above them he passed nimbly, without scar or scathe. Poverty
went close behind him, but he kept her off, and never felt the
pinch of need. Alfieri strained and strove against the barriers
of fate ; a sombre, rugged man, proud, candid, and self-
confident, who broke or bent all opposition ; now moving
solemnly with tragic pomp, now dashing passionately
forward by the might of will. Goldoni drew his inspirations
from the moment and surrounding circumstances. Alfieri pur-
sued an ideal, slowly formed, but strongly fashioned and
resolutely followed. Of wealth he had plenty and to spare, but
he disregarded it, and was a Stoic in his mode of life. He was
an unworldly man, and hated worldliness. Goldoni, but for
his auchorship, would certainly have grown a prosperous
advocate, and died of gout in Venice. Goldoni liked smart
clothes ; Alfieri went always in black. Goldoni's fits of spleen
--for he was melancholy now and then-lasted a day or two,
and disappeared before a change of place. Alfieri dragged his
discontent about with him all over Europe, and let it interrupt
his work and mar his intellect for many months together.
Alfieri was a patriot, and hated France. Goldoni never speaks
of politics, and praises Paris as a heaven on earth. The genial
moralising of the latter appears childish by the side of Alfieri's
terse philosophy and pregnant remarks on the development of
character. What suits the page of Plautus would look poor in
Edipus or Agamemnon. Goldoni's memoirs are diffuse and
flippant in their light French dress. They seem written to
please. Alfieri's Italian style marches with dignity and Latin
terseness. He rarely condescends to smile. He writes to
instruct the world and to satisfy himself. Grim humour some-
times flashes out, as when he tells the story of the Order of
Homer, which he founded. How different from Goldoni's
naïve account of his little ovation in the theatre at Paris !
But it would be idle to carry on this comparison, already
TIVO DRAMATISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY.
289
tedious. The life of Goldoni was one long scene of shifts and
jests, of frequent triumphs and some failures, of lessons hard at
times, but kindly. Passions and ennui, flashes of heroic
patriotism, constant suffering and stoical endurance, art and
love idealised, fill up the life of Alfieri. Goldoni clung much
to his fellow-men, and shared their pains and pleasures.
Alfieri spent many of his years in almost absolute solitude.
On the whole character and deeds of the one man was stamped
Comedy: the other was own son of Tragedy.
If, after reading the autobiographies of Alfieri and Goldoni,
we turn to the perusal of their plays, we shall perceive that
there is no better commentary on the works of an artist than
his life, and no better life than one written by himself. The
old style of criticism, which strove to separate an author's pro-
ductions from his life, and even from the age in which he lived,
to set up an arbitrary canon of taste, and to select one or two
great painters or poets as ideals because they seemed to illus-
trate that canon, has passed away. We are beginning to feel
that art is a part of history and of physiology. That is to say,
the artist's work can only be rightly understood by studying his
age and temperament. Goldoni's versatility and want of depth
induced him to write sparkling comedies. The merry life men
passed at Venice in its years of decadence proved favourable to
his genius. Alfieri’s melancholy and passionate qualities, fostered
in solitude, and aggravated by a tyranny he could not bear,
led him irresistibly to tragic composition. Though a noble, his
nobility only added to his pride, and insensibly his intellect
had been imbued with the democratic sentiments which were
destined to shake Europe in his lifetime. This, in itself, was a
tragic circumstance, bringing him into close sympathy with the
Brutus, the Prometheus, the Timoleon of ancient history.
Goldoni's bourgeoisie, in the atmosphere of which he was born and
bred, was essentially comic. The true comedy of manners, which
is quite distinct from Shakspere's fancy or from Aristophanic
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
satire, is always laid in middle life. Though Goldoni tried to
write tragedies, they were unimpassioned, dull, and tame. He
lacked altogether the fire, high-wrought nobility of sentiment,
and sense of form essential for tragic art. On the other hand,
Alfieri composed some comedies before his death which were
devoid of humour, grace, and lightness. A strange elephantine
eccentricity is their utmost claim to comic character. Indeed,
the temper of Alfieri, ever in extremes, led him even to exag-
gerate the qualities of tragedy. He carried its severity to a
pitch of dulness and monotony. His chiaroscuro was too strong;
virtue and villany appearing in pure black and white upon his
pages. His hatred of tyrants induced him to transgress the
rules of probability, so that it has been well said that if his
wicked kings had really had such words of scorn and hatred
thrown at them by their victims, they were greatly to be pitied.
On the other hand, his pithy laconisms have often a splendidly
tragical effect. There is nothing in the modern drama more
rhetorically impressive, though spasmodic, than the well-known
dialogue between Antigone and Creon :-
• Cr. Scegliesti?
Ho scelto.
Emon ?
"Ant.
Morte.
L'avrai!'
Goldoni's comedies, again, have not enough of serious thought
or of true creative imagination to be works of high art. They
lean too much to the side of farce ; they have none of the
tragic salt which gives a dignity to Tartuffe. They are, in a
word, almost too euethistically comic.
The contrast between these authors might lead us to raise
the question long ago discussed by Socrates at Agathon's
banquet-Can the same man write both comedies and trage-
dies? We in England are accustomed to read the serious and
comic plays of Shakspere, Fletcher, Jonson, and to think that
6
. Ant.
• Cr.
· Cr.
TWO DRAMATISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY.
291
one poet could excel in either branch. The custom of the
Elizabethan theatre obliged this double authorship ; yet it
must be confessed that Shakspere's comedies are not such
comedies as Greek or Roman or French critics would admit.
They are works of the purest imagination, wholly free from the
laws of this world; while the tragedies of Fletcher have a
melodramatic air equally at variance with the classical Melpo-
mene. It may very seriously be doubted whether the same
mind could produce, with equal power, a comedy like the
'Cortese Veneziano' and a tragedy like Alfieri's ' Brutus.' At
any rate, returning to our old position, we find in these two
men the very opposite conditions of dramatic genius. They
are, as it were, specimens prepared by Nature for the instruc-
tion of those who analyse genius in its relations to temperament,
to life, and to external circumstances.
6
U 2
292
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX.
Few people visit Crema. It is a little country town of Lom-
bardy, between Cremona and Treviglio, with no historic
memories but very misty ones belonging to the days of the
Visconti dynasty. On every side around the city walls stretch
smiling vineyards and rich meadows, where the elms are
married to the mulberry-trees by long festoons of foliage hiding
purple grapes, where the sunflowers droop their heavy golden
heads among tall stems of millet and gigantic maize, and here
and there a rice-crop ripens in the marshy loam. In vintage
time the carts, drawn by their white oxen, come creaking town-
ward in the evening, laden with blue bunches. Down the long
straight roads, between rows of poplars, they creep on; and on
the shafts beneath the pyramid of fruit lie contadini stained
with lees of wine. Far off across that 'waveless sea' of Lom-
bardy, which has been the battle-field of countless generations,
rise the dim grey Alps, or else pearled domes of thunder-clouds
in gleaming masses over some tall solitary tower. Such back-
grounds, full of peace, suggestive of almost infinite distance,
and dignified with colours of incomparable depth and breadth,
the Venetian painters loved. No landscape in Europe is more
wonderful than this thrice wonderful in the vastness of its
arching heavens, in the stillness of its level plain, and in the
bulwark of huge crested mountains, reared afar like bastions
against the northern sky,
The little town is all alive in this September weather. At
CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX.
293
wine-press
every corner of the street, under rustling abeles and thick-
foliaged planes, at the doors of palaces and in the yards of inns,
men, naked from the thighs downward, are treading the red
must into vats and tuns ; while their mild-eyed oxen lie be
neath them in the road, peaceably chewing the cud between one
journey to the vineyard and another. It must not be imagined
that the scene of Alma Tadema’s ‘Roman Vintage,' or what
we fondly picture to our fancy of the Athenian Lenæa, is re-
peated in the streets of Crema. This modern treading of the
is a very prosaic affair. The town reeks with a sour
smell of old casks and crushed grape-skins, and the men and
women at work bear no resemblance whatever to Bacchus and
his crew.
Yet even as it is, the Lombard vintage, beneath
floods of sunlight and a pure blue sky, is beautiful ; and he
who wouid fain make acquaintance with Crema, should time
his entry into the old town, if possible, on some still golden
afternoon of autumn. It is then, if ever, that he will learn to
love the glowing brickwork of its churches and the quaint terra-
cotta traceries that form its chief artistic charm.
How the unique brick architecture of the Lombard cities
took its origin-whether from the precepts of Byzantine aliens
in the earliest middle ages, or from the native instincts of a
mixed race composed of Gallic, Ligurian, Roman, and Teu-
tonic elements, under the leadership of Longobardic rulers-is
a question for antiquarians to decide. There can, however, be
no doubt that the monuments of the Lombard style, as they
now exist, are no less genuinely local, no less characteristic of
the country they adorn, no less indigenous to the soil they
sprang from, than the Attic colonnades of Mnesicles and
Ictinus. What the marble quarries of Pentelicus were to the
Athenian builders, the clay beneath their feet was to those
Lombard craftsmen. From it they fashioned structures as
enduring, towers as majestic, and cathedral aisles as solemn, as
were ever wrought from chiselled stone. There is a true sym-
294
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
pathy between those buildings and the Lombard landscape,
which by itself might suffice to prove the originality of their
almost unknown architects. The rich colour of the baked
clay-finely modulated from a purplish red, through russet,
crimson, pink, and orange, to pale yellow and dull grey-har-
monises with the brilliant greenery of Lombard vegetation and
with the deep azure of the distant Alpine range. Reared aloft
above the flat expanse of plain, those square torroni, tapering
into octagons and crowned with slender cones, break the long
sweeping lines and infinite horizons with a contrast that affords
relief, and yields a resting place to tired eyes; while, far away,
seen haply from some bridge above Ticino, or some high-built
palace loggia, they gleam like columns of pale rosy fire against
the front of mustering storm-clouds blue with rain. In that
happy orchard of Italy, a pergola of vines in leaf, a clump of
green acacias, and a campanile soaring above its church roof,
brought into chance combination with the reaches of the plain
and the dim mountain range, make up a picture eloquent in its
suggestive beauty.
Those ancient builders wrought cunningly with their
material. The bricks are fashioned and fixed to last for all
time. Exposed to the icy winds of a Lombard winter, to the
fierce fire of a Lombard summer, and to the moist vapours of a
Lombard autumn; neglected by unheeding generations ; with
flowers clustering in their crannies, and birds nesting in their
eaves, and mason-bees filling the delicate network of their
traceries—they still present angles as sharp as when they were
but finished, and joints as nice as when the mortar dried in the
first months of their building. This immunity from age and
injury they owe partly to the imperishable nature of baked
clay; partly to the care of the artists who selected and mingled
the right sorts of earth, burned them with scrupulous attention,
and fitted them together with a patience born of loving service.
Each member of the edifice was designed with a view to its
CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX.
295
ultimate place. The proper curve was ascertained for cylin-
drical columns and for rounded arches. Larger bricks were
moulded for the supporting walls, and lesser pieces were
adapted to the airy vaults and lanterns. In the brickfield and
the kiln the whole church was planned and wrought out in its
details, before the hands that made a unity of all these scattered
elements were set to the work of raising it in air. When they
came to put the puzzle together, they laid each brick against
its neighbour, filling up the almost imperceptible interstices
with liquid cement composed of quick-lime and fine sand in
water. After five centuries the seams between the layers of
bricks that make the bell-tower of S. Gottardo at Milan, yield
no point of vantage to the penknife or the chisel.
Nor was it in their welding of the bricks alone that these
craftsmen showed their science. They were wont to enrich
the surface with marble, sparingly but effectively employed—as
in those slender detached columns, which add such beauty
to the octagon of S. Gottardo, or in the string-courses of
strange beasts and reptiles that adorn the church fronts of
Pavia. They called to their aid the mandorlato of Verona,
supporting their porch pillars on the backs of couchant lions,
inserting polished slabs on their façades, and building huge
sarcophagi into their cloister alleys. Between terra-cotta and
this marble of Verona there exists a deep and delicate affinity.
It took the name of mandorlato, I suppose, from a resemblance
Ι
to almond blossoms. But it is far from having the simple beauty
of a single hue. Like all noble veined stones, it passes by a
series of modulations and gradations through a gamut of
associated rather than contrasted tints. Not the pink of the
almond blossom only, but the creamy whiteness of the almond
kernel, and the dull yellow of the almond nut may be found in
it; and yet these colours are so blent and blurred to all-
pervading mellowness, that nowhere is there any shock of
contrast or violence of a preponderating tone. The veins
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
which run in labyrinths of crossing, curving, and contorted lines
all over its smooth surface add, no doubt, to this effect of unity.
The polish, lastly, which it takes, makes the mandorlato shine
like a smile upon the sober face of the brickwork : for, service-
able as terra-cotta is for nearly all artistic purposes, it cannot
reflect light or gain the illumination which comes from surface
brightness.
What the clay can do almost better than any crystalline
material, may be seen in the mouldings so characteristic of
Lombard architecture. Geometrical patterns of the rarest and
most fanciful device; scrolls of acanthus foliage, and traceries
of tendrils; Cupids swinging in festoons of vines; angels join-
ing hands in dance, with fluttering skirts and windy hair, and
mouths that symbol singing ; grave faces of old men and
beautiful profiles of maidens leaning from medallions ; wide-
winged genii filling the spandrils of cloister arches, and cherubs
clustered in the rondure of rose-windows-ornaments like
these, wrought from the plastic clay, and adapted with true
taste to the requirements of the architecture, are familiar to
every one who has studied the church front of Crema, the
cloisters of the Certosa, the courts of the Ospedale Maggiore
at Milan, or the public palace of Cremona.
If the mandorlato gives a smile to those majestic Lombard
buildings, the terra-cotta decorations add the element of life
and movement. The thought of the artist in its first freshness
and vivacity is felt in them. They have all the spontaneity of
improvisation, the seductive melody of unpremeditated music.
Moulding the supple earth with hand obedient to the brain,
the plasticatore has impressed his most fugitive dreams of
beauty on it without effort; and what it cost him but a few
fatigueless hours to fashion, the steady heat of the furnace has
gifted with imperishable life. Such work, no doubt, has the
defects of its qualities. As there are few difficulties to over-
come, it suffers from a fatal facility-nec pluteum cædit nec
a
CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX.
297
demorsos sapit ungues. It is therefore apt to be unequal, touch-
ing at times the highest point of inspiration, as in the angels of
Guccio at Perugia, and sinking not unfrequently into the
commonplace of easy-going triviality, as in the common floral
traceries of Milanese windows. But it is never laboured, never
pedantic, never dulled by the painful effort to subdue an
obstinate material to the artist's will. If marble is required to
develop the strength of the few supreme sculptors, terra-cotta
saves intact the fancies of a crowd of lesser men.
When we reflect that all the force, solemnity, and beauty of
the Lombard buildings was evoked from clay, we learn from
them this lesson: that the thought of man needs neither
precious material nor yet stubborn substance for the production
of enduring masterpieces. The red earth was enough for God
when He made man in His own image; and mud dried in the
sun suffices for the artist, who is next to God in his creative
faculty—since non merita nome di creatore se non Iddio ed il
poeta. After all, what is more everlasting than terra-cotta?
The hobnails of the boys who ran across the brickfields in the
Roman town of Silchester, may still be seen, mingled with the
impress of the feet of dogs and hoofs of goats, in the tiles dis-
covered there. Such traces might serve as a metaphor for the
footfall of artistic genius, when the form-giver has stamped his
thought upon the moist clay, and fire has made that imprint
permanent.
Of all these Lombard edifices, none is more beautiful than
the Cathedral of Crema, with its delicately-finished campanile,
built of choicely-tinted yellow bricks, and ending in a lantern
of the gracefullest, most airily capricious fancy. This bell-
tower does not display the gigantic force of Cremona's famous
torrazzo, shooting 396 feet into blue ether from the city square;
nor can it rival the octagon of S. Gottardo for warmth of hue.
Yet it has a character of elegance, combined with boldness of
invention, that justisfies the citizens of Crema in their pride.
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
It is unique ; and he who has not seen it does not know the
whole resources of the Lombard style. The façade of the
Cathedral displays that peculiar blending of Byzantine or
Romanesque round arches with Gothic details in the windows,
and with the acute angle of the central pitch, which forms the
characteristic quality of the late trecento Lombard manner. In
its combination of purity and richness it corresponds to the
best age of decorated work in English Gothic. What, however,
strikes a Northern observer is the strange detachment of this
elaborate façade from the main structure of the church. Like
a frontispiece cut out of cardboard and pierced with ornamental
openings, it shoots far above the low roof of the nave ; so
that at night the moon, rising above the southern aisle, shines
through its topmost window, and casts the shadow of its
tracery upon the pavement of the square. This is a construc-
tive blemish to which the Italians in no part of the peninsula
were sensitive. They seem to have regarded their church-
fronts as independent of the edifice, capable of separate treat-
ment, and worthy in themselves of being made the subject of
decorative skill.
In the so-called Santuario of Crema-a circular church
dedicated to S. Maria della Croce, outside the walls—the
Lombard style has been adapted to the manner of the Mid
Renaissance. This church was raised in the last years of the
fifteenth century by Gian Battista Battagli, an architect of Lodi,
who followed the pure rules of taste, bequeathed to North
Italian builders by Bramante. The beauty of the edifice is due
entirely to its tranquil dignity and harmony of parts, the light-
circling loggia, and the just proportion maintained
between the central structure and the four projecting porticoes.
The sharp angles of these vestibules afford a contrast to the
simplicity of the main building, while their clustered cupolas
assist the general effect of roundness aimed at by the architect.
Such a church as this proves how much may be achieved by
CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX.
299
the happy distribution of architectural masses. It was the
triumph of the best Renaissance style to attain lucidity of
treatment, and to produce beauty by geometrical proportion.
When Leo Battista Alberti complained to his friend, Matteo
di Bastia, that a slight alteration of the curves in his design for
S. Francesco at Rimini would 'spoil his music,' ciò che tu muti
discorda tutta quella musica, this is what he meant. The
melody of lines and the harmony of parts made a symphony to
his eyes no less agreeable than a concert of tuned lutes and
voices to his ears; and to this concord he was so sensitive that
any deviation was a discord.
After visiting the churches of Crema and sauntering about
the streets awhile, there is nothing left to do but to take refuge
in the old Albergo del Pozzo. This is one of those queer
Italian inns, which carry you away at once into a scene of
Goldoni. It is part of some palace, where nobles housed their
bravi in the sixteenth century, and which the lesser people of
to-day have turned into a dozen habitations. Its great stone
staircase leads to a saloon upon which the various bed-
chambers open; and round its courtyard runs an open balcony,
and from the court grows up a fig-tree poking ripe fruit against
a bedroom window. Oleanders in tubs and red salvias in pots,
and kitchen herbs in boxes, flourish on the pavement, where
the ostler comes to wash his carriages, and where the barber
shaves the poodle of the house. Visitors to the Albergo del
Pozzo are invariably asked if they have seen the Museo ; and
when they answer in the negative, they are conducted with
some ceremony to a large room on the ground floor of the inn,
looking out upon the courtyard and the fig-tree. It was here
that I gained the acquaintance of Signor Folcioni, and became
possessor of an object that has made the memory of Crema
doubly interesting to me ever since.
When we entered the Museo, we found a little old man,
gentle, grave, and unobtrusive, varnishing the ugly portrait of
; ܝ
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
some Signor of the Cinque Cento. Round the walls hung
pictures, of mediocre value, in dingy frames; but all of them
bore sounding titles. Titians, Leonardos, Guido Renis, and
Luinis, looked down and waited for a purchraser. In truth this
museum was a bric-à-brac shop of a sort that is common
enough in Italy, where treasures of old lace, glass, armour,
furniture, and tapestry, may still be met with. Signor Folcioni
began by pointing out the merits of his pictures; and after
making due allowance for his zeal as amateur and dealer, it
was possible to join in some of his eulogiums. A would-be
Titian, for instance, bought in Verona from a noble house in
ruins, showed Venetian wealth of colour in its gemmy greens
and lucid crimsons shining from a background deep and glow-
ing. Then he led us to a walnut-wood bureau of late Renais-
sance work, profusely carved with nymphs and Cupids, and
armed men, among festoons of fruits embossed in high relief.
Deeply drilled worm-holes set a seal of antiquity upon the
blooming faces and luxuriant garlands like the touch of Time
who 'delves the parallels in beauty's brow.' On the shelves of
an ebony cabinet close by he showed us a row of cups cut out
of rock-crystal and mounted in gilt silver, with heaps of
engraved gems, old snuff-boxes, coins, medals, sprays of coral,
and all the indescribable lumber that one age flings aside as
worthless for the next to pick up from the dust-heap and regard
as precious. Surely the genius of culture in our century might
be compared to a chiffonnier of Paris, who, when the night has
fallen, goes into the streets, bag on back and lantern in hand,
to rake up the waifs and strays a day of whirling life has left
him.
The next curiosity was an ivory carving of S. Anthony
preaching to the fishes, so fine and small you held it on your
palm, and used a lens to look at it. Yet there stood the Santo
gesticulating, and there were the fishes in rows—the little fishes
first, and then the middle-sized, and last of all the great big
CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX.
301
fishes almost out at sea, with their heads above the water and
their mouths wide open, just as the Fioretti di San Francesco
describes them. After this came some original drawings of
doubtful interest, and then a case of fifty-two nielli. These
were of unquestionable value; for has not Cicognara engraved
them on a page of his classic monograph? The thin silver
plates, over which once passed the burin of Maso Finiguerra,
cutting lines finer than hairs, and setting here a shadow in dull
acid-eaten grey, and there a high light of exquisite polish, were
far more delicate than any proofs impressed from them.
These frail masterpieces of Florentine art--the first beginnings
of line engraving--we held in our hands while Signor Folcioni
read out Cicognara's commentary in a slow impressive voice,
breaking off now and then to point at the originals before us.
The sun had set, and the room was almost dark, when he
laid his book down, and said : 'I have not much left to show
- yet stay! Here are still some little things of interest.' He
then opened the door into his bedroom, and took down from a
nail above his bed a wooden Crucifix. Few things have fasci-
nated me more than this Crucifix-produced without parade,
half negligently, from the dregs of his collection by a dealer in
old curiosities at Crema. The cross was, or is—for it is lying
on the table now before me-twenty-one inches in length,
made of strong wood, covered with coarse yellow parchment,
and shod at the four ends with brass. The Christ is roughly
hewn in reddish wood, coloured scarlet, where the blood
streams from the five wounds. Over the head an oval medal-
lion, nailed into the cross, serves as framework to a miniature
of the Madonna, softly smiling with a Correggiesque simper.
The whole Crucifix is not a work of art, but such as may be
found in every convent. Its date cannot be earlier than the
beginning of the eighteenth century. As I held it in my hand,
I thought-perhaps this has been carried to the bedside of
the sick and dying ; preachers have brandished it from the
302
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
a
a
pulpit over conscience-stricken congregations; monks have
knelt before it on the brick floor of their cells, and novices have
kissed it in the vain desire to drown their yearnings after the
relinquished world; perhaps it has attended criminals to the
scaffold, and heard the secrets of repentant murderers ; but
why should it be shown me as a thing of rarity? These thoughts
passed through my mind, while Signor Folcioni quietly re-
marked : 'I bought this Cross from the Frati when their
convent was dissolved in Crema.' Then he bade me turn it
round, and showed a little steel knob fixed into the back between
the arms.
This was a spring. He pressed it, and the upper
and lower parts of the cross came asunder; and holding the
top like a handle, I drew out as from a scabbard a sharp steel
blade, concealed in the thickness of the wood, behind the very
body of the agonising Christ. What had been a Crucifix
became a deadly poniard in my grasp, and the rust upon it in
the twilight looked like blood. I have often wondered,' said
Signor Folcioni, that the Frati cared to sell me this.'
There is no need to raise the question of the genuineness of
this strange relic, though I confess to having had my doubts
about it, or to wonder for what nefarious purposes the impious
weapon was designed—whether the blade was inserted by some
rascal monk who never told the tale, or whether it was used on
secret service by the friars. On its surface the infernal engine
carries a dark certainty of treason, sacrilege, and violence.
Yet it would be wrong to incriminate the Order of S. Francis by
any suspicion, and idle to seek the actual history of this myste-
rious weapon. A writer of fiction could indeed produce some
dark tale in the style of De Stendhal's Nouvelles,' and christen
it ‘The Crucifix of Crema.' And how delighted would Webster
have been if he had chanced to hear of such a sword-sheath!
He might have placed it in the hands of Bosola for the keener
torment of his Duchess. Flamineo might have used it ; or the
disguised friars, who made the death-bed of Bracciano hideous,
6
CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX.
303
a
might have plunged it in the Duke's heart after mocking his
eyes with the figure of the suffering Christ. To imagine such
an instrument of moral terror mingled with material violence,
lay within the scope of Webster's sinister and powerful genius.
But unless he had seen it with his eyes, what poet would have
ventured to devise the thing and display it even in the dumb
show of a tragedy? Fact is more wonderful than romance.
No apocalypse of Antichrist matches what is told of Roderigo
Borgia ; and the crucifix of Crema exceeds the sombre fantasy
of Webster.
Whatever may be the truth about this cross, it has at any
rate the value of a symbol or a metaphor. The idea which it
materialises, the historical events of which it is a sign, may well
arrest attention. A sword concealed in the crucifix—what
emblem brings more forcibly to mind than this that two-edged
glaive of persecution which Dominic unsheathed to mow down
the populations of Provence and to make Spain destitute of
men? Looking upon the crucifix of Crema, we may seem to
see pestilence-stricken multitudes of Moors and Jews dying on
the coasts of Africa and Italy. The Spaniards enter Mexico ;
and this is the cross they carry in their hands. They take
possession of Peru ; and while the gentle people of the Incas
come to kiss the bleeding brows of Christ, they plunge this
dagger in their sides. What, again, was the temporal power of
the Papacy but a sword embedded in a cross ? Each Papa Rè,
when he ascended the Holy Chair, was forced to take the
crucifix of Crema and to bear it till his death.
A long proces-
sion of war-loving Pontiffs, levying armies and paying captains
with the
pence of S. Peter, in order to keep by arms the lands
they had acquired by fraud, defiles before our eyes. First goes
the terrible Sixtus IV., who died of grief when news was brought
him that the Italian princes had made peace. He it was who
sanctioned the conspiracy to murder the Medici in church, at
the moment of the elevation of the Host. The brigands hired
a
304
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
to do this work refused at the last moment. The sacrilege
appalled them. Then,' says the chronicler, was found a
priest, who, being used to churches, had no scruple.' The
poignard this priest carried was this crucifix of Crema. After
Sixtus came the blood-stained Borgia ; and after him Julius II.,
whom the Romans in triumphal songs proclaimed a second
Mars, and who turned, as Michelangelo expressed it, the
chalices of Rome into swords and helms. Leo X., who dis-
membered Italy for his brother and nephew; and Clement
VII., who broke the neck of Florence and delivered the
Eternal City to the spoiler, follow. Of the antinomy between
the Vicariate of Christ and an earthly kingdom, incarnated by
these and other Holy Fathers, what symbol could be found
more fitting than a dagger with a crucifix for case and cover-
ing?
It is not easy to think or write of these matters without
rhetoric. When I laid my head upon my pillow that night in
the Albergo del Pozzo at Crema, it was full of such thoughts ;
and when at last sleep came, it brought with it a dream begotten
doubtless by the perturbation of my fancy. For I thought that
a brown Franciscan, with hollow cheeks, and eyes aflame
beneath his heavy cowl, sat by my bed-side, and, as he raised
the crucifix in his lean quivering hands, whispered a tale of
deadly passion and of dastardly revenge. His confession
carried me away to a convent garden of Palermo ; and there
was love in the story, and hate that is stronger than love, and,
for the ending of the whole matter, remorse which dies not even
Each new possessor of the crucifix of Crema, he
told me, was forced to hear from him in dreams his dreadful
history. But, since it was a dream and nothing more, why
should I repeat it! I have wandered far enough already from
the vintage and the sunny churches of the little Lombard
town.
in the grave.
305
BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI.
From the new town of commerce to the old town of history upon
the hill, the road is carried along a rampart lined with horse-
chestnut trees--clumps of massy foliage, and snowy pyramids of
bloom, expanded in the rapture of a southern spring. Each pair
of trees between their stems and arch of intermingling leaves in-
cludes a space of plain, checkered with cloud-shadows, melting
blue and green in amethystine haze. To right and left the last
spurs of the Alps descend, jutting like promontories, heaving like
islands from the misty breadth below : and here and there are
towers, half-lost in airy azure ; and cities dwarfed to blots; and
silvery lines where rivers flow; and distant, vapour-drowned, dim
T
crests of Apennines. The city walls above us wave with snap-
dragons and iris among fig-trees sprouting from the riven stones.
There are terraces over-rioted with pergolas of vine, and houses
shooting forward into balconies and balustrades, from which a
Romeo might launch himself at daybreak, warned by the larks
song. A sudden angle in the road is turned, and we pass from
air-space and freedom into the old town, beneath walls of dark
brown masonry, where wild valerians light their torches of red
bloom in immemorial shade. Squalor and splendour live here
side by side. Grand Renaissance portals grinning with Satyr
masks are flanked by tawdry frescoes shamming stone-work,
or by doorways where the withered bush hangs out a promise
of bad wine.
The Cappella Colleoni is our destination, that masterpiece of
the sculptor-architect's craft, with its variegated marbles,- rosy
x
306
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
and white and creamy yellow and jet-black-in patterns,
basreliefs, pilasters, statuettes, encrusted on the fanciful domed
shrine. Upon the façade are mingled, in the true Renaissance
spirit of genial acceptance, motives Christian and Pagan with
supreme impartiality.
Medallions of emperors and gods
alternate with virtues, angels and cupids in a maze of loveliest
arabesque ; and round the base of the building are told two
stories—the one of Adam from his creation to his fall, the
other of Hercules and his labours. Italian craftsmen of the
‘quattro cento 'were not averse to setting thus together, in one
framework, the myths of our first parents and Alcmena's son:
partly perhaps because both subjects gave scope to the free
treatment of the nude ; but partly also, we may venture to
surmise, because the heroism of Hellas counterbalanced the
sin of Eden. Here then we see how Adarn and Eve were
made and tempted and expelled from Paradise and set to
labour, how Cain killed Abel, and Lamech slew a man to his
hurt, and Isaac was offered on the mountain. The tale of
human sin and the promise of redemption are epitomized in
twelve of the sixteen basreliefs. The remaining four show
Hercules wrestling with Antæus, taming the Nemean lion,
extirpating the Hydra, and bending to his will the bull of Crete.
Labour, appointed for a punishment to Adam, becomes a title
to immortality for the hero. The dignity of man is reconquered
by prowess for the Greek, as it is repurchased for the Christian
by vicarious suffering. Many may think this interpretation of
Amadeo's basreliefs far-fetched : yet, such as it is, it agrees
with
the spirit of Humanism, bent ever on harmonising the two great
traditions of the past. Of the workmanship little need be said,
except that it is wholly Lombard, distinguished from the
similar work of Della Quercia at Bologna and Siena by a
more imperfect feeling for composition, and a lack of monu-
mental gravity, yet graceful, rich in motives, and instinct with
a certain wayward improvvisatore charm.
a
BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI.
307
This Chapel was built by the great Condottiere Barto.
lommeo Colleoni, to be the monument of his puissance even
in the grave. It had been the Sacristy of S. Maria Maggiore,
which, when the Consiglio della Misericordia refused it to him
for his half proud, half pious purpose, he took and held by
force. The structure, of costliest materials, reared by Gian
Antonio Amadeo, cost him 50,000 golden florins. An eques-
trian statue of gilt wood, voted to him by the town of Bergamo,
surmounts his monument inside the Chapel. This was the
work of two German masters, called 'Sisto figlio di Enrico Syri
da Norimberga,' and ' Leonardo Tedesco.' The tomb itself is
of marble, executed for the most part in a Lombard style
resembling Amadeo's, but scarcely worthy of his genius. The
whole effect is disappointing. Five figures representing Mars,
Hercules, and three sons-in-law of Colleoni, who surround the
sarcophagus of the buried general, are indeed almost grotesque.
The angularity and crumpled draperies of the Milanese
manner, when so exaggerated, produce an impression of carica-
ture. Yet many subordinate details—a row of putti in a
Cinque Cento frieze, for instance-and much of the low
relief work—especially the Crucifixion with its characteristic
episodes of the fainting Maries and the soldiers casting dice-
are lovely in their unaffected Lombardism.
There is another portrait of Colleoni in a round above the
great door, executed with spirit, though in a bravura style that
curiously anticipates the decline of Italian sculpture. Gaunt,
hollow-eyed, with prominent cheek bones and strong jaws, this
animated, half-length statue of the hero, bears the stamp of a
good likeness : but when or by whom it was made, I do not
know.
Far more noteworthy than Colleoni's own monument is that
of his daughter Medea. She died young in 1470, and her
father caused her tomb, carved of Carrara marble, to be placed
in the Dominican Church of Basella, which he had previously
X 2
308
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
founded. It was not until 1842 that this most precious master-
piece of Antonio Amadeo's skill was transferred to Bergamo.
Hic jacet Medea virgo. Her hands are clasped across her
breast. A robe of rich brocade, gathered to the waist and
girdled, lies in simple folds upon the bier.
Her throat,
exceedingly long and slender, is circled with a string of pearls.
Her face is not beautiful, for the features, especially the nose,
are large and prominent; but it is pure and expressive of vivid
individuality. The hair curls in crisp short clusters, and the
ear, fine and shaped almost like a Faun's, reveals the scrupulous
fidelity of the sculptor. Italian art has, in truth, nothing
more exquisite than this still sleeping figure of the girl, who,
when she lived, must certainly have been so rare of type and
loveable in personality. If Busti's Lancinus Curtius be the
portrait of a humanist, careworn with study, burdened by the
laurel leaves that were so dry and dusty—if Gaston de Foix in
the Brera, smiling at death and beautiful in the cropped bloom of
youth, idealise the hero of romance—if Michelangelo's Pense-
roso translate in marble the dark broodings of a despot's soul
-if Della Porta's Julia Farnese be the Roman courtesan
magnificently throned in nonchalance at a Pope's foot-stool-
if Verocchio's Colleoni on his horse at Venice impersonate
the pomp and circumstance of scientific war-surely this
Medea exhales the flower-like graces, the sweet sanctities
of human life, that even in that turbid age were found among
high-bred Italian ladies. Such power have mighty sculptors,
even in our modern world, to make the mute stone speak in
poems and clasp the soul's life of a century in some five or six
transcendent forms.
The Colleoni, or Coglioni, family were of considerable
antiquity and well authenticated nobility in the town of
Bergamo. Two lions' heads conjoined formed one of their
canting ensigns; another was borrowed from the vulgar
meaning of their name. Many members of the house held
BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI.
309
important office during the three centuries preceding the birth
of the famous general, Bartolommeo. He was born in the
year 1400 at Solza, in the Bergamasque Contado. His father
Paolo, or Pùho as he was commonly called, was poor and
exiled from the city, together with the rest of the Guelf nobles,
by the Visconti. Being a man of daring spirit, and little
inclined to languish in a foreign state as the dependent on
some patron, Pùho formed the bold design of seizing the
Castle of Trezzo. This he achieved in 1405 by fraud, and
afterwards held it as his own by force. Partly with the view of
establishing himself more firmly in his acquired lordship, and
partly out of family affection, Puho associated four of his first-
cousins in the government of Trezzo. They repaid his kind-
ness with an act of treason and cruelty, only too characteristic
of those times in Italy. One day while he was playing at
draughts in a room of the Castle, they assaulted him and killed
him, seized his wife and the boy Bartolommeo, and Aung them
into prison. The murdered Puho had another son, Antonio,
who escaped and took refuge with Giorgio Benzone, the tyrant
of Crema. After a short time the Colleoni brothers found
means to assassinate him also ; therefore Bartolommeo alone,
;
a child of whom no heed was taken, remained to be his father's
avenger. He and his mother lived together in great indigence
at Solza, until the lad felt strong enough to enter the service of
one of the numerous petty Lombard princes, and to make him-
self if possible a captain of adventure. His name alone was a
sufficient introduction, and the Duchy of Milan, dismembered
upon the death of Gian Maria Visconti, was in such a state that
all the minor despots were increasing their forces and preparing
to defend by arms the fragments they had seized from the
Visconti heritage. Bartolommeo therefore had no difficulty in
recommending himself to Filippo d'Arcello, sometime general
in the pay of the Milanese, but now the new lord of Piacenza.
With this master he remained as page for two or three years,
310
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
learning the use of arms, riding, and training himself in the
physical exercises which were indispensable to a young Italian
soldier. Meanwhile Filippo Maria Visconti reacquired his
hereditary dominions; and at the age of twenty, Bartolommeo
found it prudent to seek a patron stronger than d'Arcello.
The two great Condottieri, Sforza Attendolo and Braccio,
divided the military glories of Italy at this period ; and any
youth who sought to rise in his profession, had to enroll himself
under the banners of the one or the other. Bartolommeo
chose Braccio for his master, and was enrolled among his men
as a simple trooper, or ragazzo, with no better prospects than
he could make for himself by the help of his talents and his
borrowed horse and armour. Braccio at this time was in
Apulia, prosecuting the war of the Neapolitan Succession dis-
puted between Alfonso of Aragon and Louis of Anjou under
the weak sovereignty of Queen Joan. On which side of a
quarrel a Condottiere fought, mattered but little : so great was
the confusion of Italian politics, and so complete was the
egotism of these fraudful, violent, and treacherous party leaders.
Yet it may be mentioned that Braccio had espoused Alfonso's
Bartolommeo Colleoni early distinguished himself
among the ranks of the Bracceschi. But he soon perceived
that he could better his position by deserting to another camp.
Accordingly he offered his services to Jacopo Caldora, one of
Joan's generals, and received from him a commission of
twenty men-at-arms. It may here be parenthetically said that
the rank and pay of an Italian captain varied with the number
of the men he brought into the field. His title “Condottiere'
was derived from the circumstance that he was said to have
received a Condotta di venti cavalli, and so forth. Each cavallo
was equal to one mounted man-at-arms and two attendants,
who were also called ragazzi. It was his business to provide
the stipulated number of men, to keep them in good discipline,
and to satisfy their just demands. Therefore an Italian army
cause.
BERGANIO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI.
311
а
at this epoch consisted of numerous small armies varying in
size, each held together by personal engagements to a captain,
and all dependent on the will of a general in chief, who had
made a bargain with some prince or republic for supplying a
fixed contingent of fighting-men. The Condottiere was in other
words a contractor or impresario, undertaking to do a certain
piece of work for a certain price, and to furnish the requisite
forces for the business in good working order. It will be
readily seen upon this system how important were the personal
qualities of the captain, and what great advantages those Con-
dottieri had, who, like the petty princes of Romagna and the
March, the Montefeltri, Ordelaffi, Malatesti, Manfredi, Orsini,
and Vitelli, could rely upon a race of hardy vassals for their
recruits.
It is not necessary to follow Colleoni's fortunes in the
Regno, at Aquila, Ancona, and Bologna. He continued in
the service of Caldora, who was now General of the Church,
and had his Condotta gradually increased. Meanwhile his
cousins, the murderers of his father, began to dread his rising
power, and determined, if possible, to ruin him. He was not
a man to be easily assassinated ; so they sent a hired ruffian to
Caldora's camp to say that Bartolommeo had taken his name
by fraud, and that he was himself the real son of Pùho Colleoni.
Bartolommeo defied the liar to a duel ; and this would have
taken place before the army, had not two witnesses appeared,
who knew the fathers of both Colleoni and the bravo, and who
gave such evidence that the captains of the army were enabled
to ascertain the truth. The impostor was stripped and
drummed out of the camp.
At the conclusion of a peace between the Pope and the
Bolognese, Bartolommeo found himself without occupation.
He now offered himself to the Venetians, and began to fight
again under the great Carmagnola against Filippo Visconti.
His engagement allowed him forty men, which, after the
312
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY,
a
judicial murder of Carmagnola at Venice in 1432, were in-
creased to eighty. Erasmo da Narni, better known as Gat-
tamelata, was now his general-in-chief-a man who had risen
from the lowest fortunes to one of the most splendid military
positions in Italy. Colleoni spent the next years of his life,
until 1443, in Lombardy, manoeuvring against Il Piccinino, and
gradually rising in the Venetian service, until his Condotta
reached the number of 8oo men. Upon Gattamelata's death
at Padua in 1440, Colleoni became the most important of the
generals who had fought with Caldora in the March. The
lordships of Romano in the Bergamasque and of Covo and
Antegnate in the Cremonese had been assigned to him; and he
was in a position to make independent engagements with
princes. What distinguished him as a general, was a combina-
tion of caution with audacity. He united the brilliant system
of his master Braccio with the more prudent tactics of the
Sforzeschi ; and thus, though he often surprised his foes by
daring stratagems and vigorous assaults, he rarely met with any
serious check. He was a captain who could be relied upon
for boldly seizing an advantage, no less than for using a success
with discretion. Moreover he had acquired an almost unique
reputation for honesty in dealing with his masters, and for
justice combined with humane indulgence to his men. His
company was popular, and he could always bring capital troops
into the field.
In the year 1443, Colleoni quitted the Venetian service on
account of a quarrel with Gherardo Dandolo, the Proveditore of
the Republic. He now took a commission from Filippo Maria
Visconti, who received him at Milan with great honour, be-
stowed on him the Castello Adorno at Pavia, and sent him into
the March of Ancona upon a military expedition. Of all
Italian tyrants this Visconti was the most difficult to serve.
Constitutionally timid, surrounded with a crowd of spies and
base informers, shrinking from the sight of men in the recesses
BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI.
313
man ; his
of his palace, and controlling the complicated affairs of his
Duchy by means of correspondents and intelligencers, this last
scion of the Milanese despots lived like a spider in an inscrut-
able network of suspicion and intrigue. His policy was one of
endless plot and counterplot.
He trusted no
servants were paid to act as spies on one another; his body-
guard consisted of mutually hostile mercenaries ; his captains
in the field were watched and thwarted by commissioners
appointed to check them at the point of successful ambition or
magnificent victory. The historian has a hard task when he
tries to fathom the Visconti's schemes, or to understand his
motives. Half the Duke's time seems to have been spent in
unravelling the webs that he had woven, in undoing his own
work, and weakening the hands of his chosen ministers.
Conscious that his power was artificial, that the least breath
might blow him back into the nothingness from which he had
arisen on the wrecks of his father's tyranny, he dreaded the
personal eminence of his generals above all things. His chief
object was to establish a system of checks, by means of which
no one whom he employed should at any moment be great
enough to threaten him. The most formidable of these
military adventurers, Francesco Sforza, had been secured by
marriage with Bianca Maria Visconti, his master's only
daughter, in 1441 ; but the Duke did not even trust his son-in-
law. The last six years of his life were spent in scheming to
deprive Sforza of his lordships ; and the war in the March, on
which he employed Colleoni, had the object of ruining the
principality acquired by this daring captain from Pope
Eugenius IV. in 1443.
Colleoni was by no means deficient in those foxlike quali-
ties which were necessary to save the lion from the toils spread
for him by Italian intriguers. He had already shown that he
knew how to push his own interests, by changing sides and
taking service with the highest bidder, as occasion prompted.
314
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Nor, though his character for probity and loyalty stood
exceptionally high among the men of his profession, was he
the slave to any questionable claims of honour or of duty.
In that age of confused politics and extinguished patriotism,
there was not indeed much scope for scrupulous honesty.
But Filippo Maria Visconti proved more than a match for
him in craft. While Colleoni was engaged in pacifying the
revolted population of Bologna, the Duke yielded to the sug-
gestion of his parasites at Milan, who whispered that the
general was becoming dangerously powerful. He recalled him,
and threw him without trial into the dungeons of the Forni at
Monza. Here Colleoni remained a prisoner more than a year,
until the Duke's death, in 1447, when he made his escape,
and
profited by the disturbance of the Duchy to reacquire his lord-
ships in he Bergamasque territory. The true motive for his
imprisonment remains still buried in obscure conjecture. Pro-
bably it was not even known to the Visconti, who acted on
this, as on so many other occasions, by a mere spasm of suspi-
cious jealousy, for which he could have given no account.
From the year 1447 to the year 1455, it is difficult to follow
Colleoni's movements, or to trace his policy. First, we find
him employed by the Milanese Republic, during its brief space
of independence ; then he is engaged by the Venetians, with a
commission for 1500 horse ; next, he is in the service of
;
Francesco Sforza ; once more in that of the Venetians, and yet
again in that of the Duke of Milan. His biographer relates
with pride that, during this period, he was three times success-
ful against French troops in Piedmont and Lombardy. It
appears
that he made short engagements, and changed his pay-
masters according to convenience. But all this time he rose
in personal importance, acquired fresh lordships in the Berga-
masque, and accumulated wealth.
He reached the highest
point of his prosperity in 1455, when the Republic of S. Mark
elected him General-in-Chief of their armies, with the fullest
BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI.
315
powers, and with a stipend of 100,000 florins. For nearly
twenty one years, until the day of his death, in 1475, Colleoni
held this honourable and lucrative office. In his will he
charged the Signory of Venice that they should never again
commit into the hands of a single Captain such unlimited con-
trol over their military resources. It was indeed no slight
tribute to Colleoni's reputation for integrity, that the jealous
Republic, which had signified its sense of Carmagnola's un-
trustworthiness by capital punishment, should have left him so
long in the undisturbed disposal of their army. The Standard
and the Baton of S. Mark were conveyed to Colleoni by two
ambassadors, and presented to him at Brescia on June 24, 1455.
Three years later he made a triumphal entry into Venice, and
received the same ensigns of military authority from the
hands of the new Doge, Pasquale Malipiero. On this occasion
his staff consisted of some two hundred officers, splendidly
armed, and followed by a train of serving-men. Noblemen
from Bergamo, Brescia, and other cities of the Venetian terri-
tory, swelled the cortége. When they embarked on the lagoons,
they found the water covered with boats and gondolas, bearing
the population of Venice in gala attire, to greet the illustrious
guest with instruments of music. Three great galleys of the
Republic, called Bucentaurs, issued from the crowd of smaller
craft. On the first was the Doge in his state robes, attended
by the government in office, or the Signoria of S. Mark. On
the second were members of the Senate and minor magistrates.
The third carried the ambassadors of foreign powers. Colleoni
was received into the first state-galley, and placed by the side
of the Doge. The oarsmen soon cleared the space between
the land and Venice, passed the small canals, and swept majes-
tically up the Canalozzo among the plaudits of the crowds
assembled on both sides to cheer their General. Thus they
reached the piazzetta, where Colleoni alighted between the two
great pillars, and, conducted by the Doge in person, walked to
.
316
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
6
the Church of S. Mark. Here, after Mass had been said,
and a sermon had been preached, kneeling before the high
altar he received the truncheon from the Doge's hands. The
words of his commission ran as follows :
By authority and decree of this most excellent City of
Venice, of us the Prince, and of the Senate, you are to be
Commander and Captain General of all our forces and arma-
ments on terra firma. Take from our hands this truncheon,
with good augury and fortune, as sign and warrant of your
power. Be it your care and effort, with dignity and splendour
to maintain and to defend the Majesty, the Loyalty, and the
Principles of this Empire. Neither provoking, nor yet pro-
voked, unless at our command, shall you break into open war-
fare with our enemies. Free jurisdiction and lordship over
each one of our soldiers, except in cases of treason, we hereby
commit to you.'
After the ceremony of his reception, Colleoni was conducted
with no less pomp to his lodgings, and the next ten days were
spent in festivities of all sorts.
The commandership-in-chief of the Venetian forces was
perhaps the highest military post in Italy. It placed Colleoni
on the pinnacle of his profession, and made his camp the
favourite school of young soldiers. Among his pupils or lieu-
tenants we read of Ercole d'Este, the future Duke of Ferrara ;
Alessandro Sforza, lord of Pesaro ; Boniface, Marquis of
Montferrat ; Cicco and Pino Ordelaffi, princes of Forli ; Astorre
Manfredi, the lord of Faenza ; three Counts of Mirandola ; two
princes of Carpi ; Deifobo, the Count of Anguillara ; Giovanni
Antonio Caldora, lord of Jesi in the March ; and many others
of less name.
Honours came thick upon him. When one of
the many ineffectual leagues against the infidel was formed in
1468, during the pontificate of Paul II., he was named Captain-
General for the Crusade. Pius II. designed him for the leader
of the expedition he had planned against the impious and
BERGANO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI.
317
savage despot, Sigismondo Malatesta. King René of Anjou,
by special patent, authorised him to bear his name and arms,
and made him a member of his family. The Duke of Bur-
gundy, by a similar heraldic fiction, conferred upon him his
name and armorial bearings. This will explain why Colleoni
is often styled 'di Andegavia e Borgogna. In the case of
René, the honour was but a barren show. But the patent of
Charles the Bold had more significance. In 1473 he enter-
tained the project of employing the great Italian General
against his Swiss foes ; nor does it seem reasonable to reject a
statement made by Colleoni's biographer, to the effect that a
secret compact had been drawn up between him and the Duke
of Burgundy, for the conquest and partition of the Duchy of
Milan The Venetians, in whose service Colleoni still re-
mained, when they became aware of this project, met it with
peaceful but irresistible opposition.
Colleoni had been engaged continually since his earliest
boyhood in the trade of war. It was not therefore possible
that he should have gained a great degree of literary culture.
Yet the fashion of the times made it necessary that a man in
his position should seek the society of scholars. Accordingly
his court and camp were crowded with students, in whose
wordy disputations he is said to have delighted. It will be
remembered that his contemporaries, Alfonso the Magnanimous,
Francesco Sforza, Federigo of Urbino, and Sigismondo Pan-
dolfo Malatesta, piqued themselves at least as much upon their
patronage of letters, as upon their prowess in the field.
Colleoni's court, like that of Urbino, was a model of good
As became a soldier, he was temperate in food
and moderate in slumber. It was recorded of him that he
had never sat more than one hour at meat in his own house,
and that he never overslept the sunrise. After dinner he
would converse with his friends, using commonly his native
dialect of Bergamo, and entertaining the company now with
manners.
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
stories of adventure, and now with pithy sayings. In another
essential point he resembled his illustrious contemporary, the
Duke of Urbino; for he was sincerely pious in an age which,
however it preserved the decencies of ceremonial religion, was
profoundly corrupt at heart. His principal lordships in the
Bergamasque territory owed to his munificence their fairest
churches and charitable institutions. At Martinengo, for
example, he rebuilt and re-endowed two monasteries, the one
dedicated to S. Chiara, the other to S. Francis. In Ber.
gamo itself he founded an establishment named 'La Pietà,' for
the good purpose of dowering and marrying poor girls. This
house he endowed with a yearly income of 3,000 ducats. The
Sulphur baths of Trescorio, at some distance from the city,
were improved and opened to poor patients by a hospital
which he provided. At Rumano he raised a church to S.
Peter, and erected buildings of public utility, which on his
death he bequeathed to the society of the Misericordia in that
town. All the places of his jurisdiction owed to him such
benefits as good water, new walls, and irrigation works. In
addition to these munificent foundations must be mentioned
the Basella, or Monastery of Dominican friars, which he esta-
blished not far from Bergamo, upon the river Serio, in memory
of his beloved daughter Medea. Last, not least, was the
Chapel of S. John the Baptist, attached to the Church of S.
Maria Maggiore, which he endowed with fitting maintenance
for two priests and deacons.
The one defect acknowledged by his biographer was his
partiality for women. Early in life he married Tisbe, of the
noble house of the Brescian Martinenghi, who bore him one
daughter, Caterina, wedded to Gasparre Martinengo. Two
illegitimate daughters, Ursina and Isotta, were recognised and
treated by him as legitimate. The first he gave in marriage to
Gherardo Martinengo, and the second to Jacopo of the same
family. Two other natural children, Doratina and Ricardona,
BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI.
319
were mentioned in his will : he left them four thousand ducats
a piece for dowry. Medea, the child of his old age (for she
was born to him when he was sixty), died before her father, and
was buried, as we have seen, in the Chapel of Basella.
Throughout his life he was distinguished for great physical
strength and agility. When he first joined the troop of Braccio,
he could race, with his corselet on, against the swiftest runner
of the army ; and when he was stripped, few horses could beat
him in speed. Far on into old age he was in the habit of
taking long walks every morning for the sake of exercise, and
delighted in feats of arms and jousting matches.
• He was
tall, straight, and full of flesh, well-proportioned, and excel-
lently made in all his limbs. His complexion inclined some-
what to brown, but was coloured with sanguine and lively car-
nation. His eyes were black ; in look and sharpness of light,
they were vivid, piercing and terrible. The outlines of his
nose and all his countenance expressed a certain manly noble-
ness, combined with goodness and prudence. Such is the
portrait drawn of Colleoni by his biographer; and it well accords
with the famous bronze statue of the general at Venice.
Colleoni lived with a magnificence that suited his rank.
His favourite place of abode was Malpaga, a castle built by him
at the distance of about an hour's drive from Bergamo. The
place is worth a visit, though its courts and gates and galleries
have now been turned into a monster farm, and the southern
rooms, where Colleoni entertained his guests, are given over to
the silkworms. Half a dozen families, employed upon a
vast estate of the Martinengo family, occupy the still substantial
house and stables. The moat is planted with mulberry-trees ;
the upper rooms are used as granaries for golden maize ; cows,
pigs, and horses litter in the spacious yard. Yet the walls of
the inner court and of the ancient state rooms are brilliant with
frescoes, executed by some good Venetian hand, which represent
the chief events of Colleoni's life-his battles, his reception by
a
320
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
the Signory of Venice, his tournaments and hawking parties,
and the great series of entertainments with which he welcomed
Christiern of Denmark. This king had made his pilgrimage to
Rome and was returning westward, when the fame of Colleoni
and his princely state at Malpaga induced him to turn aside
and spend some days as the general's guest. In order to do
him honour, Colleoni left his castle at the king's disposal and
established himself with all his staff and servants in a camp at
some distance from Malpaga. The camp was duly furnished
with tents and trenches, stockades, artillery, and all the other
furniture of war. On the king's approach, Colleoni issued with
trumpets blowing and banners flying to greet his guest, gratify-
ing him thus with a spectacle of the pomp and circumstance of
war as carried on in Italy. The visit was further enlivened
by sham fights, feats of arms, and trials of strength. When it
ended, Colleoni presented the king with one of his own suits of
armour, and gave to each of his servants a complete livery of
red and white, his colours. Among the frescoes at Malpaga
none are more interesting, and none, thanks to the silkworms
rather than to any other cause, are fortunately in a better state
of preservation, than those which represent this episode in the
history of the Castle.
Colleoni died in the year 1475, at the age of seventy-five.
Since he left no male epresentative, he constituted the
Republic of S. Mark his he.r in chief, after properly providing
for his daughters and his numerous foundations. The Venetians
received under this testament a sum of 100,000 ducats, together
with all arrears of pay due to him, and 10,000 ducats owed him
by the Duke of Ferrara. It set forth the testator's intention
that this money should be employed in defence of the Christian
faith against the Turk. One condition was attached to the
bequest. The legatees were to erect a statue to Colleoni on
the Piazza of S. Mark. This, however, involved some difficulty;
for the proud Republic had never accorded a similar honour,
BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI.
321
nor did they choose to encumber their splendid square with a
monument. They evaded the condition by assigning the
Campo in front of the Scuola di S. Marco, where also stands
the Church of S. Zanipolo, to the purpose. Here accordingly
the finest bronze equestrian statue in Italy, if we except the
Marcus Aurelius of the Capitol, was reared upon its marble
pedestal by Andrea Verocchio and Alessandro Leopardi.
Colleoni's liberal expenditure of wealth found its reward in
the immortality conferred by art. While the names of Braccio,
his master in the art of war, and of Piccinino, his great adversary,
are familiar to few but professed students, no one who has
visited either Bergamo or Venice can fail to have learned some-
thing about the founder of the Chapel of S. John and the
original of Leopardi's bronze. The annals of sculpture assign
to Verocchio, of Florence, the principal share in this statue :
but Verocchio died before it was cast ; and even granting
that he designed the model, its execution must be attributed to
his collaborator, the Venetian Leopardi. For my own part, I
am loth to admit that the chief credit of this masterpiece belongs
to a man whose undisputed work at Florence shows but little
of its living spirit and splendour of suggested motion. That
the Tuscan science of Verocchio secured conscientious model-
ling for man and horse may be assumed; but I am fain to
believe that the concentrated fire which animates them both is
due in no small measure to the handling of his northern fellow-
craftsman.
While immersed in the dreary records of crimes, treasons,
cruelties, and base ambitions, which constitute the bulk of
fifteenth-century Italian history, it is refreshing to meet with a
character so frank and manly, so simply pious and comparatively
free from stain, as Colleoni. The only general of his day who
can bear comparison with him for purity of public life and
decency in conduct, was Federigo di Montefeltro. Even here,
the comparison redounds to Colleoni's credit ; for he, unlike
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
the Duke of Urbino, rose to eminence by his own exertion in
a profession franght with peril to men of ambition and energy.
Federigo started with a principality sufficient to satisfy his just
desires for power. Nothing but his own sense of right and
prudence restrained Colleoni upon the path which brought
Francesco Sforza to a duchy by dishonourable dealings, and
Carmagnola to the scaffold by questionable practice against his
masters.
323
COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO.
.
To which of the Italian lakes should the palm of beauty be
accorded? This question may not unfrequently have moved
the idle minds of travellers, wandering through that loveliest
region from Orta to Garda—from little Orta, with her gem-
like island, rosy granite crags, and chestnut-covered swards above
the Colma ; to Garda, bluest of all waters, surveyed in majestic
length from Desenzano or poetic Sirmione, a silvery sleeping
haze of hill and cloud and heaven and clear waves bathed in
modulated azure. And between these extreme points what
varied lovelinesses lie in broad Maggiore, winding Como,
Varese with the laughing face upturned to heaven, Lugano
overshadowed by the crested crags of Monte Generoso, and
Iseo far withdrawn among the rocky Alps! He who loves
immense space, cloud shadows slowly sailing over purple
slopes, island gardens, distant glimpses of snow-capped
mountains, breadth, air, immensity, and flooding sunlight, will
choose Maggiore. But scarcely has he cast his vote for this,
the Juno of the divine rivals, when he remembers the triple
lovelinesses of the Larian Aphrodite, disclosed in all their
placid grace from Villa Serbelloni ;-the green blue of the
waters, clear as glass, opaque through depth; the millefleurs
roses clanbering into cypresses by Cadenabbia ; the laburnums
hanging their yellow clusters from the clefts of Sasso Rancio;
the oleander arcades of Varenna ; the wild white limestone
crags of San Martino, which he has climbed to feast his eyes
with the perspective, magical, serene, Lionardesquely perfect,
Y 2
324
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
a
of the distant gates of Adda. Then while this modern Paris
is yet doubting, perhaps a thought may cross his mind of
sterner, solitary Lake Iseo—the Pallas of the three. She
offers her own attractions. The sublimity of Monte Adamello,
dominating Lovere and all the lowland like Hesiod's hill of
Virtue reared aloft above the plain of common life, has charms
to tempt heroic lovers. Nor can Varese be neglected. In
some picturesque respects, Varese is the most perfect of the
lakes. Those long lines of swelling hills that lead into the
level, yield an infinite series of placid foregrounds, pleasant
to the eye by contrast with the dominant snow-summits, from
Monte Viso to Monte Leone : the sky is limitless to south-
ward; the low horizons are broken by bell-towers and farm-
houses ; while armaments of clouds are ever rolling in the
interval of Alps and plain.
Of a truth, to decide which is the queen of the Italian
lakes, is but an infinita quæstio ; and the mere raising of it is
folly. Still each lover of the beautiful may give his vote ; and
mine, like that of shepherd Paris, is already given to the
Larian goddess. Words fail in attempting to set forth charms.
which have to be enjoyed, or can at best but lightly be touched
with most consummate tact, even as great poets have already
touched on Como Lake-from Virgil with his “Lari maxume,'
to Tennyson and the Italian Manzoni. The threshold of the
shrine is, however, less consecrated ground; and the Cathedral
of Como may form a vestibule to the temple where silence is
more golden than the speech of a describer.
The Cathedral of Como is perhaps the most perfect build-
ing in Italy for illustrating the fusion of Gothic and Renaissance
styles, both of a good type and exquisite in their sobriety. The
Gothic ends with the nave. The noble transepts and the choir,
each terminating in a rounded tribune of the same dimensions,
are carried out in a simple and decorous Bramantesque manner.
The transition from the one style to the other is managed so
COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO.
325
felicitously, and the sympathies between them are so well
developed, that there is no discord. What we here call Gothic,
is conceived in a truly southern spirit, without fantastic efflores-
cence or imaginative complexity of multiplied parts; while the
Renaissance manner, as applied by Tommaso Rodari, has not
yet stiffened into the lifeless neo-Latinism of the later Cinque
Cento: it is still distinguished by delicate inventiveness, and
beautiful subordination of decorative detail to architectural
effect. Under these happy conditions we feel that the Gothic
of the nave, with its superior severity and sombreness, dilates
into the lucid harmonies of choir and transepts like a flower
unfolding. In the one the mind is tuned to inner meditation
and religious awe; in the other the worshipper passes into a
temple of the clear explicit faith—as an initiated neophyte
might be received into the meaning of the mysteries.
After the collapse of the Roman Empire the district of
Como seems to have maintained more vividly than the rest of
Northern Italy some memory of classic art. Magistri
Comacini is a title frequently inscribed upon deeds and
charters of the earlier middle ages, as synonymous with
sculptors and architects. This fact may help to account for
the purity and beauty of the Duomo. It is the work of a
race in which the tradition of delicate artistic invention had
never been wholly interrupted. To Tommaso Rodari and his
brothers, Bernardino and Jacopo, the world owes this sympathetic
fusion of the Gothic and the Bramantesque styles ; and theirs
too is the sculpture with which the Duomo is so richly
decorated. They were natives of Maroggia, a village near
Mendrisio, beneath the crests of Monte Generoso, close to
Campione, which sent so many able craftsmen out into the
world between the years 1300 and 1500. Indeed the name of
Campionesi would probably have been given to the Rodari,
had they left their native province for service in Eastern
Lombardy. The body of the Duomo had been finished when
326
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Tommaso Rodari was appointed master of the fabric in 1487.
To complete the work by the addition of a tribune was his
duty. He prepared a wooden model and exposed it, after the
fashion of those times, for criticism in his bottega ; and the
usual difference of opinion arose among the citizens of Como
concerning its merits. Cristoforo Solaro, surnamed Il Gobbo,
was called in to advise. It may be remembered that when
Michelangelo first placed his Pietà in S. Peter's, rumour gave
it to this celebrated Lombard sculptor, and the Florentine
was constrained to set his own signature upon the marble.
The same Solaro carved the monument of Beatrice Sforza in
the Certosa of Pavia. He was indeed in all points competent to
criticise or to confirm the design of his fellow-craftsman. Il
Gobbo disapproved of the proportions chosen by Rodari, and
ordered a new model to be made ; but after much discussion,
and some concessions on the part of Rodari, who is said to
have increased the number of the windows and lightened the
orders of his model, the work was finally entrusted to the master
of Maroggia.
Not less creditable than the general design of the tribune
is the sculpture executed by the brothers. The north side
door is a master-work of early Renaissance chiselling, combin-
ing mixed Christian and classical motives with a wealth of
floral ornament. Inside, over the same door, is a procession
of children seeming to represent the Triumph of Bacchus, with
perhaps some Christian symbolism. Opposite, above the south
door, is a frieze of fighting Tritons—horsed sea deities pound-
ing one another with bunches of fish and splashing the water,
in Mantegna's spirit. The doorways of the façade are
decorated with the same rare workmanship ; and the canopies,
supported by naked fauns and slender twisted figures, under
which the two Plinies are seated, may be reckoned among the
supreme achievements of delicate Renaissance sculpture.
The Plinies are not like the work of the same master. They
a
COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO.
327
are older, stiffer, and more Gothic. The chief interest
attaching to them is that they are habited and seated after the
fashion of Humanists. This consecration of the two Pagan
saints beside the portals of the Christian temple is truly charac-
teristic of the fifteenth century in Italy. Beneath, are little
basreliefs representing scenes from their respective lives, in
the style of carved predellas on the altars of saints.
The whole church is peopled with detached statues, among
which a Sebastian in the Chapel of the Madonna must be
mentioned as singularly beautiful. It is a finely modelled
figure, with the full life and exuberant adolescence of Venetian
inspiration. A peculiar feature of the external architecture is
the series of Atlantes, bearing on their shoulders urns, heads of
lions, and other devices, and standing on brackets round the
upper cornice just below the roof. They are of all sorts :
young and old, male and female ; classically nude, and boldly
outlined. These water-conduits, the work of Bernardo Bianco
.
and Francesco Rusca, illustrate the departure of the earlier
Renaissance from the Gothic style. They are gargoyles ; but
they have lost the grotesque element. At the same time the
sculptor, while discarding Gothic tradition, has not betaken
himself yet to a servile imitation of the antique. He has used
invention, and substituted for grinning dragons' heads some-
thing wild and bizarre of his own in harmony with classic taste.
The pictures in the chapels, chiefly by Luini and Ferrari--
an idyllic Nativity, with faun-like shepherds and choirs of angels
-a sumptuous adoration of the Magi-a jewelled Sposalizio
with abundance of golden hair flowing over draperies of green
and crimson-will interest those who are as yet unfamiliar with
Lombard painting. Yet their architectural setting, perhaps, is
superior to their intrinsic merit as works of art ; and their chief
value consists in adding rare dim flakes of colour to the cool
light of the lovely church. More curious, because less easily
matched, is the gilded woodwork above the altar of S. Abondio,
328
ŞK'ETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
attributed to a German carver, but executed for the most part
in the purest Luinesque manner. The pose of the enthroned
Madonna, the type and gesture of S. Catherine, and the treat-
ment of the Pietà above, are thoroughly Lombard, showing
how Luini's ideal of beauty could be expressed in carving.
Some of the choicest figures in the Monastero Maggiore at
Milan seem to have descended from the walls and stepped into
their tabernacles on this altar. Yet the style is not maintained
consistently. In the reliefs illustrating the life of S. Abondio
we miss Luini's childlike grace, and find instead a something
that reminds us of Donatello-a seeking after the classical in
dress, carriage, and grouping of accesssory figures. It may
have been that the carver, recognising Luini's defective com-
position, and finding nothing in that master's manner adapted
to the spirit of relief, had the good taste to render what was
Luinesquely lovely in his female figures, and to fall back on a
severer model for his bas-reliefs.
The building-fund for the Duomo was raised in Como and
its districts. Boxes were placed in all the churches to receive
the alms of those who wished to aid the work.
The clergy
begged in Lent, and preached the duty of contributing on special
days. Presents of lime and bricks and other materials were
thankfully received. Bishops, canons, and municipal magistrates
were expected to make costly gifts on taking office. Notaries,
under penalty of paying 100 soldi if they neglected their engage-
ment, were obliged to persuade testators, cum bonis modis dul-
citer, to inscribe the Duomo on their wills. Fines for various
offences were voted to the building by the city. Each new
burgher paid a certain sum ; while guilds and farme of the
taxes bought monopolies and privileges at the price of yearly
subsidies. A lottery was finally established for the benefit of
the fabric. Of course each payment to the good work carried
with it spiritual privileges; and so willingly did the people
respond to the call of the Church, that during the sixteenth
COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO.
329
crowns.
century the sums subscribed amounted to 200,000 golden
Among the most munificent donators are mentioned
the Marchese Giacomo Gallio, who bequeathed 290,000 lire,
and a Benzi, who gave 10,000 ducats.
While the people of Como were thus straining every nerve
to complete a pious work, which at the same time is one of the
most perfect masterpieces of Italian art, their lovely lake was
turned into a pirate's stronghold, and its green waves stained
with slaughter of conflicting navies. So curious is this episode
in the history of the Larian lake that it is worth while to treat
of it at some length. Moreover, the lives of few captains of
adventure offer matter more rich in picturesque details and
more illustrative of their times than that of Gian Giacomo de'
Medici, the Larian corsair, long known and still remembered as
11 Medeghino. He was born in Milan in 1498, at the beginning
of that darkest and most disastrous period of Italian history,
when the old fabric of social and political existence went to
ruin under the impact of conflicting foreign armies. He lived
on until the year 1555, witnessing and taking part in the dis-
memberment of the Milanese Duchy, playing a game of hazard
at high stakes for his own profit with the two last Sforzas, the
Empire, the French, and the Swiss. At the beginning of the
century, while he was still a youth, the rich valley of the Val-
telline, with Bormio and Chiavenna, had been assigned to the
Grisons. The Swiss Cantons at the same time had possessed
themselves of Lugano and Bellinzona. By these two acts of
robbery the mountaineers tore a portion of its fairest territory
from the Duchy ; and whoever ruled in Milan, whether a Sforza,
or a Spanish viceroy, or a French general, was impatient to
recover the lost jewel of the ducal crown. So much has to be
premised, because the scene of our hero's romantic adventures
was laid upon the borderland between the Duchy and the
Cantons. Intriguing at one time with the Duke of Milan, at
another with his foes the French or Spaniards, Il Medeghino
a
330
SK’ETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY,
found free scope for his peculiar genius in a guerilla warfare,
carried on with the avowed purpose of restoring the Valtelline
to Milan. To steer a plain course through that chaos of politics,
in which the modern student, aided by the calm clear lights of
history and meditation, cannot find a clue, was of course im-
possible for an adventurer whose one aim was to gratify his
passions and exalt himself at the expense of others. It is there-
fore of little use to seek motives of statecraft or of patriotism in
the conduct of Il Medeghino. He was a man shaped according
to Machiavelli's standard of political morality-self-reliant, using
craft and force with cold indifference to moral ends, bent only
upon wringing for himself the largest share of this world's power
from men who, like himself, identified virtue with unflinching
and immitigable egotism.
Il Medeghino's father was Bernardo de' Medici, a Lombard,
who neither claimed nor could have proved cousinship with the
great Medicean family of Florence. His mother was Cecilia
Serbelloni. The boy was educated in the fashionable human
istic studies, nourishing his young imagination with the tales of
Roman heroes. The first exploit by which he proved his virtù,
was the murder of a man he hated, at the age of sixteen. This
'virile act of vengeance,' as it was called, brought him into
trouble, and forced him to choose the congenial profession of
At a time when violence and vigour passed for manli-
ness, a spirited assassination formed the best of introductions
to the captains of mixed mercenary troops. Il Medeghino
rose in favour with his generals, helped to reinstate Francesco
Sforza in his capital, and, returning himself to Milan, inflicted
severe vengeance on the enemies who had driven him to exile.
It was his ambition, at this early period of his life, to be made
governor of the Castle of Musso, on the Lake of Como. While
fighting in the neighbourhood, he had observed the unrivalled
capacities for defence presented by its site ; and some prevision
of his future destinies now urged him to acquire it, as the basis
6
arms.
COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO.
331
for the free marauding life he planned. The headland of Musso
lies about half way between Gravedona and Menaggio, on the
right shore of the Lake of Como. Planted on a pedestal of
rock, and surmounted by a sheer cliff, there then stood a very
ancient tower, commanding this promontory on the side of the
land. Between it and the water the Visconti, in more recent
days, had built a square fort ; and the headland had been further
strengthened by the addition of connecting walls and bastions
pierced for cannon. Combining precipitous cliffs, strong
towers, and easy access from the lake below, this fortress of
Musso was exactly the fit station for a pirate. So long as he
kept the com mmand of the lake, he had little to fear from land
attacks, and had a splendid basis for aggressive operations.
Il Medeghino made his request to the Duke of Milan; but the
foxlike Sforza would not grant him a plain answer. At length
he hinted that if his suitor chose to rid him of a troublesome
subject, the noble and popular Astore Visconti, he should receive
Musso for payment. Crimes of bloodshed and treason sat
lightly on the adventurer's conscience. In a short time he
compassed the young Visconti's death, and claimed his reward.
The Duke despatched him thereupon to Musso, with open
letters to the governor, commanding him to yield the castle to
the bearer. Private advice, also entrusted to Il Medeghino,
bade the governor, on the contrary, cut the bearer's throat.
The young man, who had the sense to read the Duke's letter,
destroyed the secret document, and presented the other, or, as
one version of the story goes, forged a ducal order in his own
favour.' At any rate, the castle was placed in his hands; and
affecting to know nothing of the Duke's intended treachery,
Il Medeghino took possession of it as a trusted servant of the
ducal crown.
1 I cannot see clearly through these transactions, the muddy waters of
decadent Italian plot and counterplot being inscrutable to senses assisted
by nothing more luminous than mere tradition.
332
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
As soon as he was settled in his castle, the freebooter
devoted all his energies to rendering it still more impregnable
by strengthening the walls and breaking the cliffs into more
horrid precipices. In this work he was assisted by his numerous
friends and followers ; for Musso rapidly became, like ancient
Rome, an asylum for the ruffians and outlaws of neighbouring
provinces. It is even said that his sisters, Clarina and
Margherita, rendered efficient aid with manual labour. The
mention of Clarina's name justifies a parenthetical side-glance
at Il Medeghino's pedigree, which will serve to illustrate the
exceptional conditions of Italian society during this age. She
was married to the Count Giberto Borromeo, and became the
mother of the pious Carlo Borromeo, whose shrine is still adored
at Milan in the Duomo. Il Medeghino's brother, Giovan
Àngelo, rose to the Papacy, assuming the title of Pius IV.
Thus this murderous marauder was the brother of a Pope and
the uncle of a Saint ; and these three persons of one family
embraced the various degrees and typified the several characters
which flourished with peculiar lustre in Renaissance Italy,
the captain of adventure soaked in blood, the churchman
unrivalled for intrigue, and the saint aflame with holiest enthu-
siasm. Il Medeghino was short of stature, but well made and
powerful ; broad-chested; with a penetrating voice and winning
l
countenance. He dressed simply, like one of his own soldiers;
slept but little ; was insensible to carnal pleasure ; and though
he knew how to win the affection of his men by jovial speech,
he maintained strict discipline in his little army. In all points
he was an ideal bandit chief, never happy unless fighting or
planning campaigns, inflexible of purpose, bold and cunning in
the execution of his schemes, cruel to his enemies, generous to
his followers, sacrificing all considerations, human and divine,
to the one aim of his life, self-aggrandisement by force and
intrigue. He knew well how to make himself both feared and
respected. One instance of his dealing will suffice. A gentle-
COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO.
333
man of Bellano, Polidoro Boldoni, in return to his advances,
coldly replied that he cared for neither amity nor relationship
with thieves and robbers ; whereupon Il Medeghino extirpated
his family, almost to a man.
Soon after his settlement in Musso, Il Medeghino, wishing
to secure the gratitude of the Duke, his master, began war with
the Grisons. From Coire, from the Engadine, and from Davos,
the Alpine pikemen were now pouring down to swell the troops
of Francis I. ; and their road lay through the Lake of Como.
Il Medeghino burned all the boats upon the lake, except those
which he took into his own service, and thus made himself
master of the water passage. He then swept the length of
lordly Lario' from Colico to Lecco, harrying the villages upon
the shore, and cutting off the bands of journeying Switzers at
his pleasure. Not content with this guerilla, he made a descent
upon the territory of the Trepievi, and pushed far up towards
Chiavenna, forcing the Grisons to recall their troops from the
Milanese. These acts of prowess convinced the Duke that he
had found a strong ally in the pirate chief. When Francis I.
continued his attacks upon the Duchy, and the Grisons still
adhered to their French paymaster, the Sforza formally invested
Gian Giacomo de' Medici with the perpetual governorship of
Musso, the Lake of Como, and as much as he could wrest from
the Grisons above the lake. Furnished now with a just title
for his depredations, Il Medeghino undertook the siege of
Chiavenna. That town is the key to the valleys of the Splügen
and Bregaglia. Strongly fortified and well situated for defence,
the burghers of the Grisons well knew that upon its possession
depended their power in the Italian valleys. To take it by
assault was impossible. Il Medeghino used craft, entered the
castle, and soon had the city at his disposition. Nor did he
lose time in sweeping Val Bregaglia. The news of this con-
quest recalled the Switzers from the Duchy; and as they hurried
homeward just before the battle of Pavia, it may be affirmed
334
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
ز
that Gian Giacomo de' Medici was instrumental in the defeat
and capture of the French King. The mountaineers had no
great difficulty in dislodging their pirate enemy from Chiavenna,
the Valtelline, and Val Bregaglia. But he retained his hold on
the Trepievi, occupied the Valsassina, took Porlezza, and estab-
lished himself still more strongly in Musso as the corsair
monarch of the lake.
The tyranny of the Sforzas in Milan was fast going to pieces
between France and Spain ; and in 1526 the Marquis of Pescara
occupied the capital in the name of Charles V. The Duke,
meanwhile, remained a prisoner in his Castello. Il Medeghino
was now without a master ; for he refused to acknowledge the
Spaniards, preferring to watch events and build his own power
on the ruins of the dukedom. At the head of 4,000 men,
recruited from the lakes and neighbouring valleys, he swept
the country far and wide, and occupied the rich champaign of
the Brianza. He was now lord of the lakes of Como and
Lugano, and absolute in Lecco and the adjoining valleys. The
town of Como itself alone belonged to the Spaniards; and
even Como was blockaded by the navy of the corsair. Il
Medeghino had a force of seven big ships, with three sails and
forty-eight oars, bristling with guns and carrying marines. His
flagship was a large brigantine, manned by picked rowers, from
the mast of which floated the red banner with the golden palle
of the Medicean arms. Besides these larger vessels, he com-
manded a flotilla of countless small boats. It is clear that to
reckon with him was a necessity. If he could not be put down
with force, he might be bought over by concessions. The
Spaniards adopted the second course, and Il Medeghino,
judging that the cause of the Sforza family was desperate,
determined in 1528 to attach himself to the Empire. Charles
V. invested him with the Castle of Musso and the larger part
of Como Lake, including the town of Lecco. He now assumed
the titles of Marquis of Musso and Count of Lecco : and in
a
:
C0110 AND IL MEDEGHINO.
335
order to prove his sovereignty before the world, he coined
money with his own name and devices.
It will be observed that Gian Giacomo de' Medici had
hitherto acted with a single-hearted view to his own interests.
At the age of thirty he had raised himself from nothing to a
principality, which, though petty, might compare with many of
some name in Italy--with Carpi, for example, or Mirandola, or
Camerino. Nor did he mean to remain quiet in the prime of
life. He regarded Como Lake as the mere basis for more
arduous undertakings. Therefore, when the whirligig of events
restored Francesco Sforza to his duchy in 1529, Il Medeghino
refused to obey his old lord. Pretending to move under the
Duke's orders, but really acting for himself alone, he proceeded
to attack his ancient enemies, the Grisons. By fraud and
force he worked his way into their territory, seized Morbegno,
and overran the Valtelline. He was destined, however, to
receive a serious check. Twelve thousand Switzers rose
against him on the one hand, on the other the Duke of Milan
sent a force by land and water to subdue his rebel subject,
while Alessandro Gonzaga marched upon his castles in the
Brianza. He was thus assailed by formidable forces from
three quarters, converging upon the Lake of Como, and driving
him to his chosen element, the water. Hastily quitting the
Valtelline, he fell back to the Castle of Mandello on the lake,
collected his navy, and engaged the ducal ships in a battle off
Menaggio. In this battle he was worsted. But he did not lose
his courage. From Bellagio, from Varenna, from Bellano he
drove forth his enemies, roiled the cannon of the Switzers into
the lake, regained Lecco, defeated the troops of Alessandro
Gonzaga, and took the Duke of Mantua prisoner. Had he but
held Como, it is probable that he might have obtained such
terms at this time as would have consolidated his tyranny.
The town of Como, however, now belonged to the Duke of
Milan, and formed an excellent basis for operations against the
336
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
pirate. Overmatched, with an exhausted treasury and broken
forces, Il Medeghino was at last compelled to give in. Yet he
retired with all the honours of war. In exchange for Musso
and the lake, the Duke agreed to give him 35,000 golden
crowns, together with the feud and marquisate of Marignano.
A free pardon was promised not only to himself and his
brothers, but to all his followers ; and the Duke further under-
:
took to transport his artillery and munitions of war at his own
expense to Marignano. Having concluded this treaty under
the auspices of Charles V. and his lieutenant, Il Medeghino, in
March 1532, set sail from Musso, and turned his back upon
the lake for ever. The Switzers immediately destroyed the
towers, forts, walls, and bastions of the Musso promontory,
leaving in the midst of their ruins the little chapel of S.
Eufemia.
Gian Giacomo de' Medici, henceforth known to Europe as
the Marquis of Marignano, now took service under Spain ; and
through the favour of Anton de Leyva, Viceroy for the Duchy,
rose to the rank of Field Marshal. When the Marquis del
Vasto succeeded to the Spanish governorship of Milan in 1536,
he determined to gratify an old grudge against the ex-pirate,
and, having invited him to a banquet, made him prisoner. Il
Medeghino was not, however, destined to languish in a
dungeon. Princes and kings interested themselves in his fate.
He was released, and journeyed to the court of Charles V. in
Spain. The Emperor received him kindly, and employed him
first in the Low Countries, where he helped to repress the
burghers of Ghent, and at the siege of Landrecy commanded
the Spanish artillery against other Italian captains of adventure ;
for, Italy being now dismembered and enslaved, her sons sought
foreign service where they found best pay and widest scope for
martial science. Afterwards the Medici ruled Bohemia as
Spanish Viceroy; and then, as general of the league formed
by the Duke of Florence, the Emperor, and the Pope to repress
COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO.
337
*
the liberties of Tuscany, distinguished himself in that cruel war
of extermination, which turned the fair Contado of Siena into a
poisonous Maremma. To the last Il Medeghino preserved the
instincts and the passions of a brigand chief. It was at this
time that, acting for the Grand Duke of Tuscany, he first
claimed open kinship with the Medici of Florence. Heralds
and genealogists produced a pedigree, which seemed to authorise
this pretension; he was recognised, together with his brother,
Pius IV., as an offshoot of the great house which had already
given Dukes to Florence, Kings to France, and two Popes to
the Christian world. In the midst of all this foreign service he
never forgot his old dream of conquering the Valtelline; and
in 1547 he made proposals to the Emperor for a new campaign
against the Grisons. Charles V. did not choose to engage in
a war, the profits of which would have been inconsiderable for
the master of half the civilised world, and which might have
proved troublesome by stirring up the tameless Switzers. Il
Medeghino was obliged to abandon a project cherished from
the earliest dawn of his adventurous manhood.
When Gian Giacomo died in 1555, his brother Battista
succeeded to his claims upon Lecco and the Trepievi. His
monument, magnificent with five bronze figures, the masterpiece
of Leone Lioni, from Menaggio, Michelangelesque in style, and
of consummate workmanship, still adorns the Duomo of Milan.
It stands close by the door that leads to the roof. This
mausoleum, erected to the memory of Gian Giacomo and his
brother Gabrio, is said to have cost 7,800 golden crowns. On
the occasion of the pirate's funeral the Senate of Milan put on
mourning, and the whole city followed the great robber, the
hero of Renaissance virtù, to the grave.
Between the Cathedral of Como and the corsair Medeghino
there is but a slight link. Yet so extraordinary were the social
circumstances of Renaissance Italy, that almost at every turn,
on her sea-board, in her cities, from her hill-tops, we are com-
Z
338
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
pelled to blend our admiration for the loveliest and purest works
of art amid the choicest scenes of nature with memories of
execrable crimes and lawless characters. Sometimes, as at
Perugia, the nexus is but local. At others, one single figure,
like that of Cellini, unites both points of view in a romance of
unparalleled dramatic vividness. Or, again, beneath the vaults
of the Certosa, near Pavia, a masterpiece of the serenest beauty
carries our thoughts perforce back to the hideous cruelties and
snake-like frauds of its despotic founder. This is the excuse
for combining two such diverse subjects in one study.
339
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
ON THE SUPERGA.
This is the chord of Lombard colouring in May. Lowest in
the scale : bright green of varied tints, the meadow-grasses
mingling with willows and acacias, harmonised by air and
distance. Next, opaque blue-the blue of something between
amethyst and lapis-lazuli—that belongs alone to the basements
of Italian mountains. Higher, the roseate whiteness of ridged
snow on Alps or Apennines. Highest, the blue of the sky, ascend-
ing from pale turquoise to transparent sapphire filled with light.
A mediæval mystic might have likened this chord to the
spiritual world. For the lowest region is that of natural life,
of plant and bird and beast, and unregenerate man; it is the
place of faun and nymph and satyr, the plain where wars are
fought and cities built, and work is done. Thence we climb to
purified humanity, the mountains of purgation, the solitude
and simplicity of contemplative life not yet made perfect by
freedom from the flesh. Higher comes that thin white belt,
where are the resting places of angelic feet, the points whence
purged souls take their flight toward infinity. Above all is heaven,
the hierarchies ascending row on row to reach the light of God.
This fancy occurred to me as I climbed the slope of the
Superga, gazing over acacia hedges and poplars to the mountains
bare in morning light. The occasional occurrence of bars
across this chord-poplars shivering in sun and breeze,
stationary cypresses as black as night, and tall campanili with
Z 2
340
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
the hot red shafts of glowing brick-adds just enough of com-
position to the landscape. Without too much straining of the
allegory, the mystic might have recognised in these aspiring
bars the upward effort of souls rooted in the common life of
earth.
The panorama, unrolling as we ascend, is enough to over-
power a lover of beauty. There is nothing equal to it for
space and breadth and majesty. Monte Rosa, the masses of
Mont Blanc blent with the Grand Paradis, the airy pyramid of
Monte Viso, these are the battlements of that vast Alpine
rampart, in which the vale of Susa opens like a gate. To west
and south sweep the Maritime Alps and the Apennines.
Beneath, glides the infant Po; and where he leads our eyes,
the plain is only limited by pearly mist.
A BRONZE BUST OF CALIGULA AT TURIN.
The Albertina bronze is one of the most precious portraits
of antiquity, not merely because it confirms the testimony of
the green basalt bust in the Capitol, but also because it supplies
an even more emphatic and impressive illustration to the
narrative of Suetonius.
Caligula is here represented as young and singularly beau-
tiful. It is indeed an ideal Roman head, with the powerful
square modelling, the crisp short hair, low forehead and regular
firm features, proper to the noblest Roman type. The head is
thrown backward from the throat ; and there is a something of
menace or defiance or suffering in the suggestion of brusque
inovement given to the sinews of the neck. This attitude, to-
gether with the tension of the forehead, and the fixed expres-
sion of pain and strain communicated by the lines of the
mouth-strong muscles of the upper lip and abruptly chiselled
under lip-in relation to the small eyes, deep set beneath their
cavernous and level brows, renders the whole face a monument
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
341
of spiritual anguish. I remember that the green basalt bust of
the Capitol has the same anxious forehead, the same troubled
and overburdened eyes; but the agony of this fretful mouth,
comparable to nothing but the mouth of Pandolfo Sigismondo
Malatesta, and, like that, on the verge of breaking into the
spasms of delirium, is quite peculiar to the Albertina bronze.
It is just this which the portrait of the Capitol lacks for the
completion of Caligula. The man who could be so repre-
sented in art had nothing wholly vulgar in him. The brutality
of Caracalla, the overblown sensuality of Nero, the effeminacy
of Commodus or Heliogabalus, are all absent here. This face
idealises the torture of a morbid soul. It is withal so truly
beautiful that it might easily be made the poem of high suffer-
ing or noble passion. If the bronze were plastic, I see how a
great sculptor, hy but few strokes, could convert it into an
agonising Stephen or Sebastian. As it is, the unimaginable
touch of disease, the unrest of madness, made Caligula the
genius of insatiable appetite ; and his martyrdom was the tor-
ment of lust and ennui and everlasting agitation. The accident
of empire tantalised him with vain hopes of satisfying the
Charybdis of his soul's sick cravings. From point to point he
passed of empty pleasure and unsatisfying cruelty, for ever
hungry ; until the malady of his spirit, unrestrained by any
limitations, and with the right medium for its development,
became unique—the tragic type of pathological desire. What
more than all things must have plagued a man with that face
was probably the unavoidable meanness of his career. When
we study the chapters of Suetonius, we are forced to feel that,
though the situation and the madness of Caligula were dramati-
cally impressive, his crimes were trivial and small. In spite of
the vast scale on which he worked his devilish will, his life
presents a total picture of sordid vice, differing only from pot-
house dissipation and schoolboy cruelty in point of size. And
this of a truth is the Nemesis of evil. After a time, mere
342
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
tyrannous caprice must become commonplace and cloying,
tedious to the tyrant, and uninteresting to the student of
humanity : nor can I believe that Caligula failed to perceive
this to his own infinite disgust.
Suetonius asserts that he was hideously ugly. How are we
to square this testimony with the witness of the bronze before
us? What changed the face, so beautiful and terrible in youth,
to ugliness that shrank from sight in manhood? Did the
murderers find it blurred in its fine lineaments, furrowed with
lines of care, hollowed with the soul's hunger ? Unless a life
of vice and madness had succeeded in making Caligula's face
what the faces of some maniacs are the bloated ruin of what
was once a living witness to the soul within—I could fancy
that death may have sanctified it with even more beauty than
this bust of the self-tormented young man shows.
Have we
not all seen the anguish of thought-fretted faces smoothed out
by the hands of the Deliverer?
FERRARI AT VERCELLI.
It is possible that many visitors to the Cathedral of Como
have carried away the memory of stately women with abundant
yellow hair and draperies of green and crimson, in a picture
they connect thereafter with Gaudenzio Ferrari. And when
they come to Milan, they are probably both impressed and
disappointed by a Martyrdom of S. Catherine in the Brera,
bearing the same artist's name. If they wish to understand
this painter, they must seek him at Varallo, at Saronno, and at
Vercelli. In the Church of S. Cristoforo in Vercelli, Gaudenzio
Ferrari at the full height of his powers showed what he could
do to justify Lomazzo's title chosen for him of the Eagle. He
has indeed the strong wing and the swiftness of the king of
birds. And yet the works of few really great painters-and
among the really great we place Ferrari-leave upon the mind
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
343
a more distressing sense of imperfection. Extraordinary ferti-
lity of fancy, vehement dramatic passion, sincere study of
nature, and great command of technical resources are here (as
elsewhere in Ferrari's frescoes) neutralised by an incurable
defect of the combining and harmonising faculty, so essential
to a masterpiece. There is stuff enough of thought and vigour
and imagination to make a dozen artists. And yet we turn.
away disappointed from the crowded, dazzling, stupefying
wilderness of forms and faces on these mighty walls.
All that Ferrari derived from actual life-the heads of
single figures, the powerful movement of men and women in
excited action, the monumental pose of two praying nuns-is
admirably rendered. His angels too, in S. Cristoforo as else-
where, are quite original; not only in their type of beauty,
which is terrestrial and peculiar to Ferrari, without a touch of
Correggio's sensuality; but also in the intensity of their emo-
tion, the realisation of their vitality. Those which hover round
the Cross in the fresco of the 'Crucifixion' are as passionate
as any angels of the Giottesque masters in Assisi. Those
again which crowd the Stable of Bethlehem in the 'Nativity'
yield no point of idyllic charm to Gozzoli's in the Riccardi
Chapel.
6
The Crucifixion' and the 'Assumption of Madonna' are
very tall and narrow compositions, audacious in their attempt.
to fill almost unmanageable space with a connected action.
Of the two frescoes the Crucifixion,' which has points of strong
similarity to the same subject at Varallo, is by far the best.
Ferrari never painted anything at once truer to life and nobler
in tragic style than the fainting Virgin. Her face expresses
the very acme of martyrdom-not exaggerated nor spasmodic,
but real and sublime in the suffering of a stately matron.
In points like this Ferrari cannot be surpassed. Raphael
could scarcely have done better; besides, there is an air
of sincerity, a stamp of popular truth, in this episode, which
344
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
6
lies beyond Raphael's sphere. It reminds us rather of Tin-
toretto.
After the Crucifixion,' I place the 'Adoration of the Magi,'
full of fine mundane motives and gorgeous costumes ; then the
Sposalizio' (whose marriage, I am not certain), the only
grandly composed picture of the series, and marked by noble
heads ; then the 'Adoration of the Shepherds,' with two lovely
angels holding the bambino. The 'Assumption of the Mag-
dalen'-for which fresco there is a valuable cartoon in the
Albertina Collection at Turin-must have been a fine picture;
but it is ruined now. An oil altar-piece in the choir of the
same church struck me less than the frescoes. It represents
Madonna and a crowd of saints under an orchard of apple-
trees, with cherubs curiously flung about almost at random in
the air. The motive of the orchard is prettily conceived and
carried out with spirit.
What Ferrari possessed was rapidity of movement, fulness
and richness of reality, exuberance of invention, excellent por-
traiture, dramatic vehemence, and an almost unrivalled
sympathy with the swift and passionate world of angels. What
he lacked was power of composition, simplicity of total effect,
harmony in colouring, control over his own luxuriance, the
sense of tranquillity. He seems to have sought grandeur in
size and multitude, richness, éclat, contrast. Being the disciple
of Lionardo and Raphael, his defects are truly singular. As a
composer, the old leaven of Giovenone remained in him ; but
;
he felt the dramatic tendencies of a later age, and in occasional
episodes he realised them with a force and furia granted to
very few of the Italian painters.
a
LANINI AT VERCELLI.
The Casa Mariano is a palace which belonged to a family
of that name. Like many houses of the sort in Italy, it fell to
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
345
6
vile uses; and its hall of audience was turned into a lumber-
room. The Operai of Vercelli, I was told, bought the palace
a few years ago, restored the noble hall, and devoted a smaller
room to a collection of pictures valuable for students of the
early Vercellese style of painting. Of these there is no need to
speak. The great hall is the gem of the Casa Mariano. It
has a coved roof, with a large flat oblong space in the centre of
the ceiling. The whole of this vault and the lunettes beneath
were painted by Lanini ; so runs the tradition of the fresco-
painter's name; and though much injured by centuries of out-
rage, and somewhat marred by recent restoration, these frescoes
form a precious monument of Lombard art. The object of the
painter's design seems to have been the glorification of Music.
In the central compartment of the roof is an assembly of the
gods, obviously borrowed from Raphael's Marriage of Cupid
and Psyche' in the Farnesina at Rome. The fusion of Roman
composition with Lombard execution constitutes the chief
charm of this singular work, and makes it, so far as I am aware,
unique. Single figures of the goddesses, and the whole move-
ment of the scene upon Olympus, are transcribed without
attempt at concealment. And yet the fresco is not a barefaced
copy. The manner of feeling and of execution is quite dif-
ferent from that of Raphael's school. The poetry and senti-
ment are genuinely Lombard. None of Raphael's pupils could
have carried out his design with a delicacy of emotion and a
technical skill in colouring so consummate. What, we think,
as we gaze upward, would the Master have given for such a
craftsman ? The hardness, coarseness, and animal crudity of
the Roman School are absent : so also is their vigour. But
where the grace of form and colour is so soft and sweet, where
the high-bred calm of good company is so sympathetically
rendered, where the atmosphere of amorous languor and of
melody is so artistically diffused, we cannot miss the powerful
modelling and rather vulgar tours de force of Giulio Romano.
346
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
The scale of tone is silvery golden. There are no hard blues,
no coarse red flesh-tints, no black shadows. Mellow lights,
the morning hues of primrose, or of palest amber, pervade the
whole society. It is a court of gentle and harmonious souls ;
and though this style of beauty might cloy, at first sight there is
something ravishing in those yellow-haired, white-limbed,
blooming deities. No movement of lascivious grace as in
Correggio, no perturbation of the senses as in some of the
Venetians, disturbs the rhythm of their music ; nor is the plea-
sure of the flesh, though felt by the painter and communicated
to the spectator, an interruption to their divine calm. The
white, saffron-haired goddesses are grouped together like stars
seen in the topaz light of evening, like daffcdils half smothered
in snow-drops, and among them, Diana, with the crescent on
her forehead, is the fairest. Her dream-like beauty need fear
no comparison with the Diana of the Camera di S. Paolo.
Apollo and Bacchus are scarcely less lovely in their bloom of
earliest manhood ; honey-pale, as Greeks would say ; like
statues of living electron ; realising Simaetha's picture of her
lover and his friend :-
τοϊς δ' ήν ξανθοτέρα μεν ελιχρύσοιο γενειάς,
στήθεα δε στίλβοντα πολύ πλέον η τυ Σελάνα.
It was thus that the almost childlike spirit of the Milanese
painters felt the antique: how differently from their Roman
brethren! It was thus that they interpreted the lines of their
own poets :
Ei tuoi capei più volte ho somigliati
Di Cerere a le paglie secche o bionde
Dintorno crespi al tuo capo legati.?
1. The down upon their cheeks and chin was yellower than helichrysus,
anú their breasts gleamed whiter far than thou, O Moon.'
* Thy tresses have I oftentimes compared to Ceres' yellow autumn
sheaves, wreathed in curled bands around thy head.'
2
6
LOJIBARD VIGNETTES.
347
Yet the painter of this hall—whether we are to call him Lanini
or another—was not a composer. Where he has not robbed
the motives and the distribution of the figures from Raphael,
he has nothing left but grace of detail. The intellectual feeble-
ness of his style may be seen in many figures of women playing
upon instruments of music, ranged around the walls. One girl
at the organ is graceful; another with a tambourine has a sort
of Bassarid beauty. But the group of Apollo, Pegasus, and a
Muse upon Parnassus, is a failure in its meaningless frigidity,
while few of these subordinate compositions show power of
conception or vigour of design.
Lanini, like Sodoma, was a native of Vercelli; and though
he was Ferrari's pupil, there is more in him of Luini or of
Sodoma than of his master. He does not rise at any point to
the height of these three great masters, but he shares some of
Luini's and Sodoma's fine qualities, without having any of
Ferrari's force. A visit to the mangled remnants of his frescoes
in S. Caterina will repay the student of art. This was once,
apparently, a double church, or a church with the hall and
chapel of a confraternità appended to it. One portion of the
building was painted with the history of the Saint; and very
lovely must this work have been, to judge by the fragments
which have recently been rescued from whitewash, damp, and
ruthless mutilation. What wonderful Lombard faces, half
obliterated on the broken wall and mouldering plaster, smile
upon us like drowned memories swimming up from the depths
of oblivion! Wherever three or four are grouped together, we
find an exquisite little picture-an old woman and two young
women in a doorway, for example, telling no story, but touch-
ing us with simple harmony of form. Nothing further is
needed to render their grace intelligible. Indeed, knowing the
faults of the school, we may seek some consolation by telling
ourselves that these incomplete fragments yield Lanini's best.
In the coved compartments of the roof, above the windows,
a
348
SK'ETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
ran a row of dancing boys; and these are still most beautifully
modelled, though the pallor of recent whitewash is upon them.
All the boys have blonde hair. They are naked, with scrolls
or ribbons wreathed around them, adding to the airiness of
their continual dance. Some of the loveliest are in a room
used to stow away the lumber of the church-old boards and
curtains, broken lanterns, candle-ends in tin sconces, the musty
apparatus of festival adornments, and in the midst of all a
battered, weather-beaten bier.
THE PIAZZA OF PIACENZA.
The great feature of Piacenza is its famous piazza-a
romantically, picturesquely perfect square, surpassing the most
daring attempts of the scene-painter, and realising a poet's
dreams. The space is considerable, and many streets con-
verge upon it at irregular angles. Its finest architectural
feature is the antique Palace of the Commune: Gothic arcades
of stone below, surmounted by a brick building with wonder-
fully delicate and varied terra-cotta work in the round-arched
windows. Before this façade, on the marble pavement, prance
the bronze equestrian statues of two Farnesi-insignificant
men, exaggerated horses, flying drapery-as barocco as it is pos-
sible to be in style, but so splendidly toned with verdigris, so
superb in their bravura attitude, and so happily placed in the
line of two streets lending far vistas from the square into the
town beyond, that it is difficult to criticise them seriously.
They form, indeed, an important element in the pictorial effect,
and enhance the terra-cotta work of the façade by the contrast
of their colour.
The time to see this square is in evening twilight--that
wonderful hour after sunset-when the people are strolling on
the pavement, polished to a mirror by the pacing of successive
centuries, and when the cavalry soldiers group themselves at
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
349
the angles under the lamp-posts or beneath the dimly-lighted
Gothic arches of the Palace. This is the magical mellow hour
to be sought by lovers of the picturesque in all the towns of
Italy, the hour which, by its tender blendings of sallow western
lights with glimmering lamps, casts the veil of half shadow over
any crudeness and restores the injuries of Time ; the hour
when all the tints of these old buildings are intensified, ethe-
realised, and harmonised by one pervasive glow. When I last
saw Piacenza, it had been raining all day ; and ere sundown a
clearing had come from the Alps, followed by fresh threatenings
of thunderstorms. The air was very liquid. There was a tract
of yellow sunset sky to westward, a faint new moon half
swathed in mist above, and over all the north a huge towered
thundercloud kept flashing distant lightnings.
The pallid
primrose of the West, forced down and reflected back from
that vast bank of tempest, gave unearthly beauty to the hues of
church and palace—tender half-tones of violet and russet
paling into greys and yellows on what in daylight seemed
but dull red brick. Even the uncompromising façade of S.
Francesco helped; and the Dukes were like statues of the
“Gran Commendatore,' waiting for Don Giovanni's invitation.
<
MASOLINO AT CastigLIONE D'OLONA.
Through the loveliest Arcadian scenery of woods and fields
and rushing waters the road leads downward from Varese to
Castiglione. The Collegiate Church stands on a leafy hill
above the town, with fair prospect over groves and waterfalls
and distant mountains. Here in the choir is a series of frescoes
by Masolino da Panicale. the master of Masaccio, who painted
them about the year 1428. Masolinus de Florentia pinxit'
decides their authorship. The histories of the Virgin, S. Stephen
and S. Lawrence, are represented : but the injuries of time and
neglect have been so great that it is difficult to judge them
350
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
fairly. All we feel for certain is that Masolino had not yet
escaped from the traditional Giottesque mannerism. Only a
group of Jews stoning Stephen, and Lawrence before the
tribunal, remind us by dramatic energy of the Brancacci
Chapel.
The Baptistery frescoes, dealing with the legend of S. John,
show a remarkable advance; and they are luckily in better
preservation. A soldier lifting his two-handed sword to strike
off the Baptist's head is a vigorous figure, full of Florentine
realism. Also in the Baptism in Jordan we are reminded of
Masaccio by an excellent group of bathers—one man taking off
his hose, another putting them on again, a third standing naked
with his back turned, and a fourth shivering half-dressed with
a look of curious sadness on his face. The nude has been
carefully studied and well realised. The finest composition of
this series is a large panel representing a double action
Salome at Herod's table begging for the Baptist's head, and
then presenting it to her mother Herodias. The costumes are
quattrocento Florentine, exactly rendered. Salome is a
graceful slender creature; the two women who regard her
offering to Herodias with mingled curiosity and horror, are
well conceived. The background consists of a mountain
landscape in Masaccio's simple manner, a rich Renaissance
villa, and an open loggia. The architecture perspective is
scientifically accurate, and a frieze of boys with garlands on the
villa is in the best manner of Florentine sculpture. On the
mountain side, diminished in scale, is a group of elders,
burying the body of S. John. These are massed together and
robed in the style of Masaccio, and have his virile dignity of
form and action. Indeed this interesting wall-painting furnishes
an epitome of Florentine art, in its intentions and achievements,
during the first half of the fifteenth century. The colour is
strong and brilliant, and the execution solid.
The margin of the Salome panel has been used for scratching
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
351
6
the Chronicle of Castiglione. I read one date, 1568, several of
,
,
the next century, the record of a duel between two gentlemen,
and many inscriptions to this effect, ' Erodiana Regina''Omnia
praetereunt,' etc. A dirty one-eyed fellow keeps the place.
In my presence he swept the frescoes over with a scratchy
broom, flaying their upper surface in profound unconsciousness
of mischief. The armour of the executioner has had its steel
colours almost rubbed off by this infernal process. Damp and
cobwebs are far kinder.
THE CERTOSA.
The Certosa of Pavia leaves upon the mind an impression of
bewildering sumptuousness : nowhere else are costly materials
so combined with a lavish expenditure of the rarest art. Those
who have only once been driven round together with the crew
of sight-seers, can carry little away but the memory of lapis-
lazuli and bronze-work, inlaid agates and labyrinthine Sculpture,
cloisters tenantless in silence, fair painted faces smiling from
dark corners on the senseless crowd, trim gardens with rows of
pink primroses in spring, and of bigonia in autumn, blooming
beneath colonnades of glowing terra-cotta. The striking con-
trast between the Gothic of the interior and the Renaissance
façade, each in its own kind perfect, will also be remembered;
and thoughts of the two great houses, Visconti and Sforza, to
whose pride of power it is a monument, may be blended with
the recollection of art-treasures alien to their spirit.
Two great artists, Ambrogio Borgognone and Antonio
Amadeo, are the presiding genii of the Certosa. To minute
criticism, based upon the accurate investigation of records and
the comparison of styles, must be left the task of separating
their work from that of numerous collaborators. But it is
none the less certain that the keynote of the whole music is
struck by them. Amadeo, the master of the Colleoni chapel
352
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
a
at Bergamo, was both sculptor and architect. If the façade
of the Certosa be not absolutely his creation, he had a
hand in the distribution of its masses and the detail of its
ornaments. The only fault in this, otherwise faultless product
of the purest quattrocento inspiration, is that the façade is a
frontispiece, with hardly any structural relation to the Church
it masks : and this, though serious from the point of view of
architecture, is no abatement of its sculpturesque and picturesque
refinement. At first sight it seems a wilderness of loveliest re-
liefs and statues-of angel faces, fluttering raiment, flowing hair,
love-laden youths, and stationary figures of grave saints, mid
wayward tangles of acanthus and wild vine and cupid-laden
foliage ; but the subordination of these decorative details to the
main design, clear, rhythmical, and lucid, like a chaunt of
Pergolese or Stradella, will enrapture one who has the sense for
unity evoked from divers elements, for thought subduing all
caprices to the harmony of beauty. It is not possible elsewhere
in Italy to find the instinct of the earlier Renaissance, so amorous
in its expenditure of rare material, so lavish in its bestowal of
the costliest workmanship on ornamental episodes, brought into
truer keeping with a pure and simple structural effect.
All the great sculptor-architects of Lombardy worked in
succession on this miracle of beauty ; and this may account
for the sustained perfection of style, which nowhere suffers
from the languor of exhaustion in the artist or from repetition
of motives. It remains the triumph of North Italian genius,
exhibiting qualities of tenderness and self-abandonment to in-
spiration, which we lack in the severer masterpieces of the
Tuscan school.
To Borgognone is assigned the painting of the roof in nave
and choir-exceeding rich, varied, and withal in sympathy with
stately Gothic style. Borgognone again is said to have designed
the saints and martyrs worked in tarsia for the choir-stalls.
His frescoes are in some parts well preserved, as in the lovely
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
353
little Madonna at the end of the south chapel, while the great
fresco above the window in the south transept has an historical
value that renders it interesting in spite of partial decay.
Borgognone's oil pictures throughout the church prove, if such
proof were needed after inspection of the altar-piece in our
National Gallery, that he was one of the most powerful and
original painters of Italy, blending the repose of the earlier
masters and their consummate workmanship with a profound
sensibility to the finest shades of feeling and the rarest forms
of natural beauty. He selected an exquisite type of face for
his young men and women ; on his old men he bestowed
singular gravity and dignity. His saints are a society of strong,
pure, restful, earnest souls, in whom the passion of deepest
emotion is transfigured by habitual calm. The brown and
golden harmonies he loved, are gained without sacrifice of
lustre : there is a self-restraint in his colouring which corre-
sponds to the reserve of his emotion ; and though a regret
sometimes rises in our mind that he should have modelled the
light and shade upon his faces with a brusque, unpleasing hard-
ness, their pallor dwells within our memory as something
delicately sought if not consummately attained. In a word,
Borgognone was a true Lombard of the best time. The very
imperfection of his flesh-painting repeats in colour what the
greatest Lombard sculptors sought in stone—a sharpness of
relief that passes over into angularity. This brusqueness was
the counterpoise to tenderness of feeling and intensity of fancy
in these northern artists. Of all Borgognone's pictures in the
Certosa I should select the altar-piece of S. Siro with S.
Lawrence and S. Stephen and two Fathers of the Church, for
its fusion of this master's qualities.
The Certosa is a wilderness of lovely workmanship. From
Borgognone's majesty we pass into the quiet region of Luini's
Christian grace, or mark the influence of Lionardo on that
rare Assumption of Madonna by his pupil, Andrea Solari,
A A
354
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
a
Like everything touched by the Lionardesque spirit, this great
picture was left unfinished : yet Northern Italy has nothing
finer to show than the landscape, outspread in its immeasure-
able purity of calm, behind the grouped Apostles and the
ascendant Mother of Heaven. The feeling of that happy
region between the Alps and Lombardy, where there are many
waters-et tacitos sine labe lacus sine murmure rivos—and where
the last spurs of the mountains sink in undulations to the plain,
has passed into this azure vista, just as all Umbria is suggested
in a twilight background of young Raphael or Perugino.
The portraits of the Dukes of Milan and their families
carry us into a very different realm of feeling. Medallions
above the doors of sacristy and chancel, stately figures reared
aloft beneath gigantic canopies, men and women slumbering
with folded hands upon their marble biers—we read in all
those sculptured forms a strange record of human restlessness,
resolved into the quiet of the tomb. The iniquities of Gian
Galeazzo Visconti, il gran Biscione, the blood-thirst of Gian
Maria, the dark designs of Filippo and his secret vices, Fran-
cesco Sforza's treason, Galeazzo Maria's vanities and lusts;
their tyrants' dread of thunder and the knife; their awful deaths
by pestilence and the assassin's poignard; their selfishness,
oppression, cruelty and fraud ; the murders of their kinsmen;
i
their labyrinthine plots and acts of broken faith ;-all is tranquil
now, and we can say to each what Bosola found for the
Duchess of Malfi ere her execution :
Much you had of land and rent ;
Your length in clay's now competent :
A long war disturbed your mind;
Here your perfect peace is signed !
Some of these faces are commonplace, with bourgeois cunning
written on the heavy features; one is bluff, another stolid, a
third bloated, a fourth stately. The sculptors have dealt fairly
with all, and not one has the lineaments of utter baseness.
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
355
To Cristoforo Solari's statues of Lodovico Sforza and his wife,
Beatrice d'Este, the palm of excellence in art and of historical
interest must be awarded. Sculpture has rarely been more
dignified and true to life than here. The woman with her
short clustering curls, the man with his strong face, are resting
after that long fever which brought woe to Italy, to Europe a
new age, and to the boasted minion of Fortune a slow death
in the prison palace of Loches. Attired in ducal robes, they
lie in state ; and the sculptor has carved the lashes on their
eyelids, heavy with death's marmoreal sleep. He at least has
passed no judgment on their crimes. Let us too bow and
leave their memories to the historian's pen, their spirits to God's
mercy.
After all wanderings in this Temple of Art, we return to
Antonio Amadeo, to his long-haired seraphs playing on the
lutes of Paradise, to his angels of the Passion with their flutter-
ing robes and arms outspread in agony, to his saints and satyrs
mingled on pilasters of the marble doorways, his delicate
Lavabo decorations, and his hymns of piety expressed in noble
forms of weeping women and dead Christs. Wherever we
may pass, this master-spirit of the Lombard style enthralls
attention. His curious treatment of drapery as though it were
made of crumpled paper, and his trick of enhancing relief by
sharp angles and attenuated limbs, do not detract from his
peculiar charm. That is his way, very different from Dona-
tello's, of attaining to the maximum of life and lightness in the
stubborn vehicle of stone. Nor do all the riches of the choir
those multitudes of singing angels, those Ascensions and As-
sumptions, and innumerable bas-reliefs of gleaming marble
moulded into softest wax by mastery of art-distract our eyes
from the single round medallion, not larger than a common
plate, inscribed by him upon the front of the high altar.
Perhaps, if one who loved Amadeo were bidden to point out
his masterpiece, he would lead the way at once to this. The
Α Α 2
356
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Cross.
space is small : yet it includes the whole tragedy of the
Passion. Christ is lying dead among the women on his
mother's lap, and there are pitying angels in the air above.
One woman lifts his arm, another makes her breast a pillow
for his head. Their agony is hushed, but felt in every limb
and feature ; and the extremity of suffering is seen in each
articulation of the worn and wounded form just taken from the
It would be too painful, were not the harmony of art
so rare, the interlacing of those many figures in a simple
round so exquisite. The noblest tranquillity and the most
.
passionate emotion are here fused in a manner of adorable
naturalness.
From the church it is delightful to escape into the cloisters,
flooded with sunlight, where the swallows skim, and the brown
hawks circle, and the mason bees are at work upon their cells
among the carvings. The arcades of the two cloisters are the
final triumph of Lombard terra-cotta. The memory fails
before such infinite invention, such facility and felicity of
execution. Wreaths of cupids gliding round the arches among
grape-bunches and bird-haunted foliage of vine; rows of
angels, like rising and setting planets, some smiling and some
grave, ascending and descending by the Gothic curves; saints
stationary on their pedestals, and faces leaning from the rounds
above ; crowds of cherubs, and courses of stars, and acanthus
leaves in woven lines, and ribands incessantly inscribed with
Ave Maria! Then, over all, the rich red light and purple
shadows of the brick, than which no substance sympathises
more completely with the sky of solid blue above, the broad
plain space of waving summer grass beneath our feet.
It is now late afternoon, and when evening comes, the
train will take us back to Milan. There is yet a little while to
rest tired eyes and strained spirits among the willows and the
poplars by the monastery wall. Through that grey-green
leafage, young with early spring, the pinnacles of the Certosa
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
357
Voitur
University o.
GENERAL LIBRA
leap like flames into the sky. The rice-fields are under watet,
far and wide, shining like burnished gold beneath the level
light now near to sun-down. Frogs are croaking ; those per-
sistent frogs, whom the Muses have ordained to sing for aye,
in spite of Bion and all tuneful poets dead. We sit and watch
the water-snakes, the busy rats, the hundred creatures swarming
in the fat well-watered soil. Nightingales here and there, new-
comers, tune their timid April song : but, strangest of all sounds
in such a place, my comrade from the Grisons jodels forth an
Alpine cowherd's melody. Auf den Alpen droben ist ein
herrliches Leben !
Did the echoes of Gian Galeazzo's convent ever wake to
such a tune as this before ?
SAN MAURIZIO.
The student of art in Italy, after mastering the characters
of different styles and epochs, finds a final satisfaction in the
contemplation of buildings designed and decorated by one
master, or by groups of artists interpreting the spirit of a single
period. Such supreme monuments of the national genius are
not very common, and they are therefore the more precious.
Giotto's Chapel at Padua; the Villa Farnesina at Rome, built
by Peruzzi and painted in fresco by Raphael and Sodoma; the
Palazzo del Te at Mantua, Giulio Romano's masterpiece; the
Scuola di San Rocco, illustrating the Venetian Renaissance
at its cliinax, might be cited among the most splendid of
these achievements. In the church of the Monastero Maggiore
at Milan, dedicated to S. Maurizio, Lombard architecture and
fresco-painting may be studied in this rare combination. The
monastery itself, one of the oldest in Milan, formed a retreat
for cloistered virgins following the rule of S. Benedict. It
may have been founded as early as the tenth century ; but its
;
church was rebuilt in the first two decades of the sixteentb,
358
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
between 1503 and 1519, and was immediately afterwards
decorated with frescoes by Luini and his pupils. Gian
Giacomo Dolcebono, architect and sculptor, called by his
fellow-craftsmen magistro di taliare pietre, gave the design, at
once simple and harmonious, which was carried out with hardly
any deviation from his plan. The church is a long parallelo-
gram, divided into two unequal portions, the first and smaller
for the public, the second for the nuns. The walls are pierced
with rounded and pilastered windows, ten on each side, four of
which belong to the outer and six to the inner section. The
dividing wall or septum rises to the point from which the
groinings of the roof spring ; and round three sides of the
whole building, north, east, and south, runs a gallery for the use
of the convent The altars of the inner and outer church are
placed against the septum, back to back, with certain differences
of structure that need not be described. Simple and severe,
S. Maurizio owes its architectural beauty wholly and entirely
to purity of line and perfection of proportion. There is a
prevailing spirit of repose, a sense of space, fair, lightsome,
and adapted to serene moods of the meditative fancy in this
building, which is singularly at variance with the religious
mysticism and imaginative grandeur of a Gothic edifice. The
principal beauty of the church, however, is its tone of colour.
Every square inch is covered with fresco or rich woodwork,
mellowed by time into that harmony of tints which blends the
work of greater and lesser artists in one golden hue of brown.
Round the arcades of the convent-loggia run delicate
arabesques with faces of fair female saints, Catherine, Agnes,
Lucy, Agatha,-gem-like or star-like, gazing from their
gallery upon the church below. The Luinesque smile is on
their lips and in their eyes, quiet, refined, as though the
emblems of their martyrdom brought back no thought of pain
to break the Paradise of rest in which they dwell. There are
twenty-six in all, a sisterhood of stainless souls, the lilies of Love's
a
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
359
garden planted round Christ's throne. Soldier saints are
mingled with them in still smaller rounds above the windows,
chosen to illustrate the virtues of an order which renounced
the world. To decide whose hand produced these masterpieces
of Lombard suavity and grace, or whether more than one,
would not be easy. Near the altar we can perhaps trace the
style of Bartolommeo Suardi in an Annunciation painted on
the spandrils—that heroic style, large and noble, known to us
by the chivalrous S. Martin and the glorified Madonna of the
Brera frescoes. It is not impossible that the male saints of
the loggia may be also his, through a tenderer touch, a some-
thing more nearly Lionardesque in its quietude, must be
discerned in Lucy and her sisters. The whole of the altar in
this inner church belongs to Luini. Were it not for darkness
and decay, we should pronounce this series of the Passion in
nine great compositions, with saints and martyrs and torch-
bearing genii, to be one of his most ambitious and successful
efforts. As it is, we can but judge in part; the adolescent beauty
of Sebastian, the grave compassion of S. Rocco, the classical
perfection of the cupid with lighted tapers, the gracious
majesty of women smiling on us sideways from their Lombard
eyelids—these remain to haunt our memory, emerging from the
shadows of the vault above.
The inner church, as is fitting, excludes all worldly elements.
We are in the presence of Christ's agony, relieved and tempered
by the sunlight of those beauteous female faces. All is
solemn here, still as the convent, pure as the meditations of a
novice. We pass the septum, and find ourselves in the outer
church appropriated to the laity. Above the high altar the
whole wall is covered with Luini's loveliest work, in excellent
light and far from ill preserved. The space divides into eight
compartments. A Pietà, an Assumption, Saints and Founders
of the church, group themselves under the influence of Luini's
harmonising colour into one symphonious whole. But the
360
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
places of distinction are reserved for two great benefactors of
the convent, Alessandro de' Bentivogli and his wife, Ippolita
Sforza. When the Bentivogli were expelled from Bologna by
the Papal forces, Alessandro settled at Milan, where he dwelt,
honoured by the Sforzas and allied to them by marriage, till
his death in 1532. He was buried in the monastery by the
side of his sister Alessandra, a nun of the order. Luini has
painted the illustrious exile in his habit as he lived. He is
kneeling, as though in ever-during adoration of the altar
mystery, attired in a long black senatorial robe trimmed with
furs. In his left hand he holds a book; and above his pale,
serenely noble face is a little black berretta. Saints attend him,
as though attesting to his act of faith. Opposite kneels Ippolita,
his wife, the brilliant queen of fashion, the witty leader of
society, to whom Bandello dedicated his Novelle, and whom he
praised as both incomparably beautiful and singularly learned.
Her queenly form is clothed from head to foot in white
brocade, slashed and trimmed with gold lace, and on her fore-
head is a golden circlet. She has the proud port of a princess,
the beauty of a woman past her prime but stately, the indescrib-
able dignity of attitude which no one but Luini could have
rendered so majestically sweet. In her hand is a book ; and
she, like Alessandro, has her saintly sponsors, Agnes and
Catherine and S. Scolastica.
Few pictures bring the splendid Milanese Court so vividly
before us as these portraits of the Bentivogli : they are, more-
over, very precious for the light they throw on what Luini
could achieve in the secular style so rarely touched by him.
Great, however, as are these frescoes, they are far surpassed
both in value and interest by his paintings in the side chapel of
S. Catherine. Here more than anywhere else, more even than
at Saronno or Lugano, do we feel the true distinction of Luini-
his unrivalled excellence as a colourist, his power over pathos,
the refinement of his feeling, and the peculiar beauty of his
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
361
favourite types. The chapel was decorated at the expense of
a Milanese advocate, Francesco Besozzi, who died in 1529.
It is he who is kneeling, grey-haired and bare-headed, under
the protection of S. Catherine of Alexandria, intently gazing at
Christ unbound from the scourging pillar. On the other side
stand S. Lawrence and S. Stephen, pointing to the Christ and
looking at us, as though their lips were framed to say : ‘Behold
and see if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow. Even the
soldiers who have done their cruel work, seem softened. They
untie the cords tenderly, and support the fainting form, too
weak to stand alone. What sadness in the lovely faces of
S. Catherine and Lawrence! What divine anguish in the
loosened limbs and bending body of Christ; what piety in
the adoring old man ! All the moods proper to this supreme
tragedy of the faith are touched as in some tenor song with
low accompaniment of viols ; for it was Luini's special province
to feel profoundly and to express musically. The very depth
of the Passion is there ; and yet there is no discord.
Just in proportion to this unique faculty for yielding a
melodious representation of the most intense moments of
stationary emotion, was his inability to deal with a dramatic
subject. The first episode of S. Catherine's execution, when
the wheel was broken and the executioners struck by lightning,
is painted in this chapel without energy and with a lack of
composition that betrays the master's indifference to his subject.
Far different is the second episode when Catherine is about
to be beheaded. The executioner has raised his sword to
strike. She, robed in brocade of black nd gold, so cut as
to display the curve of neck and back, while the bosom is
covered, leans her head above her praying hands, and waits
the blow in sweetest resignation. Two soldiers stand at some
distance in a landscape of hill and meadow; and far up are
seen the angels carrying her body to its tomb upon mount
Sinai. I cannot find words or summon courage to describe
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
the beauty of this picture ; its atmosphere of holy peace, the
dignity of its composition, the golden richness of its colouring.
The most tragic situation has here again been alchemized
by Luini's magic into a pure idyll, without the loss of power,
without the sacrifice of edification.
S. Catherine in this incomparable fresco is a portrait, the
history of which so strikingly illustrates the relation of the arts
to religion on the one hand, and to life on the other, in the age
of the Renaissance, that it cannot be omitted. At the end of
his fourth Novella, having related the life of the Contessa di
Cellant, Bandello says: 'And so the poor woman was be-
headed ; such was the end of her unbridled desires; and he
who would fain see her painted to the life, let him go to the
Church of the Monistero Maggiore, and there will he behold
her portrait.' The Contessa di Cellant was the only child of a
rich usurer who lived at Casal Monferrato. Her mother was a
Greek ; and she was a girl of such exquisite beauty, that, in
spite of her low origin, she became the wife of the noble Ermes
Visconti in her sixteenth year. He took her to live with him
at Milan, where she frequented the house of the Bentivogli, but
none other. Her husband told Bandello that he knew her
temper better than to let her visit with the freedom of the
Milanese ladies. Upon his death, while she was little more
than twenty, she retired to Casale and led a gay
life
among
many lovers. One of these, the Count of Cellant in the Val
d'Aosta, became her second husband, conquered by her extra-
ordinary loveliness. They could not, however, agree together.
She left him, and established herself at Pavia. Rich with her
father's wealth and still of most seductive beauty, she now
abandoned herself to a life of profligacy. Three among her
lovers must be named : Ardizzino Valperga, Count of Masino;
Roberto Sanseverino, of the princely Naples family ; and Don
Pietro di Cardona, a Sicilian. With each of the two first she
quarrelled, and separately besought each to murder the other.
:
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
363
They were friends and frustrated her plans by communicating
them to one another. The third loved her with the insane pas-
sion of a very young man.
What she desired, he promised to
do blindly; and she bade him murder his two predecessors in her
favour. At this time she was living at Milan, where the Duke
of Bourbon was acting as viceroy for the Emperor. Don Pietro
took twenty-five armed men of his household, and waylaid the
Count of Masino, as he was returning with his brother and
eight or nine servants, late one night from supper. Both the
brothers and the greater part of their suite were killed : but
Don Pietro was caught. He revealed the atrocity of his mis-
tress; and she was sent to prison. Incapable of proving her
innocence, and prevented from escaping, in spite of 15,000
golden crowns with which she hoped to bribe her jailors, she
was finally beheaded. Thus did å vulgar and infamous
Messalina, distinguished only by rare beauty, furnish Luini
with a S. Catherine for this masterpiece of pious art! The
thing seems scarcely credible. Yet Bandello lived in Milan
while the Church of S. Maurizio was being painted ; nor does
he show the slightest sign of disgust at the discord between the
Contessa's life and her artistic presentation in the person of a
royal martyr.
A HUMANIST'S MONUMENT.
In the Sculpture Gallery of the Brera is preserved a fair
white marble tomb, carved by that excellent Lombard sculptor,
Agostino Busti. The epitaph runs as follows :
En Virtutem Mortis nesciam.
Vivet Lancinus Curtius
Sæcula per omnia
Quascunque lustrans oras,
Tantum possunt Camænæ.
6
'Look here on Virtue that knows nought of Death! Lancinus
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
Curtius shall live through all the centuries, and visit every
shore of earth. Such power have the Muses.' The time-worn
poet reclines, as though sleeping or resting, ready to be waked ;
his head is covered with flowing hair, and crowned with laurel ;
it leans upon his left hand. On either side of his couch stand
cupids or genii with torches turned to earth. Above is a group
of the three Graces, flanked by winged Pegasi. Higher up are
throned two Victories with palms, and at the top a naked
Fame. We need not ask who was Lancinus Curtius. He is
forgotten, and his virtue has not saved him from oblivion ;
though he strove in his lifetime, pro virili parte, for the palm
that Busti carved upon his grave. Yet his monument teaches
in short compass a deep lesson; and his epitaph sums up the
dream which lured the men of Italy in the Renaissance to their
doom. We see before us sculptured in this marble the ideal of
the humanistic poet-scholar's life: Love, Grace, the Muse, and
Nakedness, and Glory. There is not a single intrusive thought
derived from Christianity. The end for which the man lived
was Pagan. His hope was earthly fame. Yet his name
survives, if this indeed be a survival, not in those winged verses
which were to carry him abroad across the earth, but in the
marble of a cunning craftsman, scanned now and then by a
wandering scholar's eye in the half-darkness of a vault.
THE MONUMENT OF GASTON de Foix IN THE BRERA.
The hero of Ravenna lies stretched upon his back in the
hollow of a bier covered with laced drapery ; and his head rests
on richly ornamented cushions. These decorative accessories,
together with the minute work of his scabbard, wrought in the
fanciful mannerism of the cinquecento, serve to enhance the
statuesque simplicity of the young soldier's effigy. The contrast
between so much of richness in the merely subordinate details,
and this sublime severity of treatment in the person of the hero,
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
365
is truly and touchingly dramatic. There is a smile as of content
in death, upon his face; and the features are exceedingly
beautiful—with the beauty of a boy, almost of a woman. The
heavy hair is cut straight above the forehead and straight over
the shoulders, falling in massive clusters. A delicately sculp-
tured laurel branch is woven into a victor's crown, and laid
lightly on the tresses it scarcely seems to clasp. So fragile is
this wreath that it does not break the pure outline of the boy-
conqueror's head. The armour is quite plain. So is the sur-
coat. Upon the swelling bust, that seems fit harbour for
a
hero's heart, there lies the collar of an order composed of cockle-
shells ; and this is all the ornament given to the figure. The
hands are clasped across a sword laid flat upon the breast, and
placed between the legs. Upon the chin is a little tuft of hair,
parted, and curling either way ; for the victor of Ravenna, like
the Hermes of Homer, was apūrov ünnvirns, 'a youth of princely
blood, whose beard hath just begun to grow, for whom the
season of bloom is in its prime of grace. The whole statue is
the idealisation of virtù—that quality so highly prized by the
Italians and the ancients, so well fitted for commemoration in
the arts. It is the apotheosis of human life resolved into un-
dying memory because of one great deed. It is the supreme
portrait in modern times of a young hero, chiselled by artists
belonging to a race no longer heroic, but capable of compre-
hending and expressing the æsthetic charm of heroism. Stand-
ing before it, we may say of Gaston what Arrian wrote to
Hadrian of Achilles :-'That he was a hero, if hero ever lived,
I cannot doubt ; for his birth and blood were noble, and he
was beautiful, and his spirit was mighty, and he passed in
youth's prime away from men.' Italian sculpture, under the
condition of the cinquecento, had indeed no more congenial theme
than this of bravery and beauty, youth and fame, immortal
honour and untimely death ; nor could any sculptor of death
have poetised the theme more thoroughly than Agostino Busti,
ز
366
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
whose simple instinct, unlike that of Michelangelo, led him
to subordinate his own imagination to the pathos of reality.
SARONNO.
The Church of Saronno is a pretty building with a Braman-
tesque cupola, standing among meadows at some distance from
the little town. It is the object of a special cult, which draws
pilgrims from the neighbouring country side ; but the concourse
is not large enough to load the sanctuary with unnecessary
wealth. Everything is very quiet in the holy place, and the
offerings of the pious seem to have been only just enough to
keep the building and its treasures of art in repair. The
church consists of a nave, a central cupola, a vestibule leading to
the choir, the choir itself, and a small tribune behind the choir.
No other single building in North Italy can boast so much that
is first-rate of the work of Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari.
The cupola is raised on a sort of drum composed of twelve
pieces, perforated with round windows and supported on four
massive piers. On the level of the eye are frescoes by Luini
of S. Rocco, S. Sebastian, S. Christopher and S. Antony-by
no means in his best style, and inferior to all his other paintings
in this church. The Sebastian, for example, shows an effort
to vary the traditional treatment of this saint. He is tied in a
sprawling attitude to a tree ; and little of Luini's special pathos
or sense of beauty-the melody of idyllic grace made spiritual ---
appears in him. These four saints are on the piers. Above
are frescoes from the early Bible history by Lanini, painted in
continuation of Ferrari's medallions from the story of Adam
expelled from Paradise, which fill the space beneath the cupola,
leading the eye upward to Ferrari's masterpiece.
The dome itself is crowded with a host of angels singing
and playing upon instruments of music. At each of the
twelve angles of the drum stands a coryphæus of this celestial
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
367
a
choir, full length, with waving drapery. Higher up, the
,
golden-haired, broad-winged, divine creatures are massed
together, filling every square inch of the vault with colour.
Yet there is no confusion. The simplicity of the selected
motive and the necessities of the place acted like a check on
Ferrari, who, in spite of his dramatic impulse, could not tell a
story coherently or fill a canvas with harmonised variety. There
is no trace of his violence here. Though the motion of music
runs through the whole multitude like a breeze, though the joy
expressed is a real tripudio celeste, not one of all these angels
Alings his arms abroad or makes a movement that disturbs the
rhythm. We feel that they are keeping time and resting
quietly, each in his appointed seat, as though the sphere was
circling with them round the throne of God, who is their centre
and their source of gladness. Unlike Correggio and his
imitators, Ferrari has introduced no clouds, and has in no case
made the legs of his angels prominent. It is a mass of noble
faces and voluminously robed figures, emerging each above
the other like flowers in a vase. Each too has specific character,
while all are robust and full of life, intent upon the service set
them. Their instruments of music are all the lutes and viols,
flutes, cymbals, drums, fifes, citherns, organs, and harps that
Ferrari's day could show. The scale of colour, as usual with
Ferrari, is a little heavy; nor are the tints satisfactorily har-
monised. But the vigour and invention of the whole work
would atone for minor defects of far greater consequence.
It is natural, beneath this dome, to turn aside and think
one moment of Correggio at Parma. Before the macchinisti
of the seventeenth century had vulgarised the motive, Cor-
reggio's bold attempt to paint heaven in flight from earth-
earth left behind in the persons of the Apostles standing round
the empty tomb, heaven soaring upward with a spiral vortex
into the abyss of light above—had an originality which set at
nought all criticism. There is such ecstasy of jubilation, such
368
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
rapturous rapidity of flight, that we who strain our eyes from
below, feel we are in the darkness of the grave which Mary left.
A kind of controlling rhythm for the composition is gained by
placing Gabriel, Madonna, and Christ at three points in the
swirl of angels. Nevertheless, compositicn--the presiding all-
controlling intellect-is just what makes itself felt by absence ;
and Correggio's special qualities of light and colour have now
so far vanished from the cupola of the Duomo that the con-
structive poverty is not disguised. Here, if anywhere in
painting, we may apply Goethe's words-Gefühl ist Alles.
If then we return to Ferarri's angels at Saronno, we find
that the painter of Varallo chose a safer though a far more
modest theme. Nor did he expose himself to that most cruel
of all degradations which the ethereal genius of Correggio has
suffered from incompetent imitators. To daub a tawdry and
superficial reproduction of those Parmese frescoes, to fill the
cupolas of Italy with veritable guazzetti di rane, was com-
paratively easy; and between our intelligence and what remains
of that stupendous masterpiece of boldness, crowd a thousand
memories of such ineptitude. On the other hand, nothing but
solid work and conscientious inspiration could enable any
workman, however able, to follow Ferrari in the path struck out
by him at Saronno. His cupola has had no imitator; and
its only rival is the noble pendant painted at Varallo by his own
hand, of angels in adoring anguish round the Cross.
In the ante-choir of the sanctuary are Luini's priceless
frescoes of the Marriage of the Virgin, and the Dispute with
the Doctors.' Their execution is flawless, and they are
perfectly preserved. If criticism before such admirable
examples of so excellent a master be permissible, it may be
questioned whether the figures are not too crowded, whether
the groups are sufficiently varied and connected by rhythmic
| Both these and the large frescoes in the choir have been chromo.
lithographed by the Arundel Society.
LOMBARD VIGNETTES,
369
lines. Yet the concords of yellow and orange with blue in
the Sposalizio, and the blendings of dull violet and red in the
Disputa, make up for much of stiffness. Here, as in the
Chapel of S. Catherine at Milan, we feel that Luini was the
greatest colourist among frescanti. In the Sposalizio the
female heads are singularly noble and idyllically graceful.
Some of the young men too have Luini's special grace and
abundance of golden hair. In the Disputa the gravity and
dignity of old men are above all things striking.
Passing into the choir, we find on either hand the Adoration
of the Magi and the Purification of the Virgin, two of Luini's
divinest frescoes. Above them in lunettes are four Evangelists
and four Latin Fathers, with four Sibyls. Time and neglect
have done no damage here: and here, again, perforce we notice
perfect mastery of colour in fresco. The blues detach themselves
too much, perhaps, from the rest of the colouring; and that is
all a devil's advocate could say. It is possible that the absence
of blue makes the S. Catherine frescoes in the Monastero
Maggiore at Milan surpass all other works of Luini. But
nowhere else has he shown more beauty and variety in detail
than here. The group of women led by Joseph, the shepherd
carrying the lamb upon his shoulder, the girl with a basket of
white doves, the child with an apple on the altar-steps, the
lovely youth in the foreground heedless of the scene ; all these
are idyllic incidents treated with the purest, the serenest, the
most spontaneous, the truest, most instinctive sense of beauty.
The landscape includes a view of Saronno, and an episodical
picture of the Flight into Egypt where a white-robed angel
leads the way. All these lovely things are in the Purification,
.
which is dated Bernardinus Lovinus pinxit, MDXXV.
The fresco of the Magi is less notable in detail, and in
general effect is more spoiled by obtrusive blues. There is,
however, one young man of wholly Lionardesque loveliness,
whose divine innocence of adolescence, unalloyed by serious
B B
370
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
thought, unstirred by passions, almost forces a comparison with
Sodoma. The only painter who approaches Luini in what
may be called the Lombard, to distinguish it from the Venetian
idyll, is Sodoma ; and the work of his which comes nearest to
Luini's masterpieces is the legend of S. Benedict, at Monte
Oliveto, near Siena. Yet Sodoma had not all Luini's innocence
or naïveté. If he added something slightly humorous which has
an indefinite charm, he lacked that freshness as of “cool, meek-
blooded flowers ”and boyish voices, which fascinates us in Luini.
Sodoma was closer to the earth, and feared not to impregnate
what he saw of beauty with the fiercer passions of his nature. If
Luini had felt passion, who shall say? It appears nowhere in
his work, where life is toned to a religious joyousness. When
Shelley compared the poetry of the Theocritean amourists to
the perfume of the tuberose, and that of the earlier Greek poets
to “a meadow-gale of June, which mingles the fragrance of all
the flowers of the field,” he supplied us with critical images
which may not unfairly be used to point the distinction between
Sodoma at Monte Oliveto and Luini at Saronno.
THE CASTELLO OF FERRARA.
Is it possible that the patron saints of cities should mould
the temper of the people to their own likeness? S. George,
the chivalrous, is champion of Ferrara. His is the marble
group above the Cathedrad porch, so feudal in its medieval
pomp. He and S. Michael are painted in fresco over the south
portcullis of the Castle. His lustrous armour gleams with
Giorgionesque brilliancy from Dossi’s masterpiece in the
Pinacoteca. That Ferrara, the only place in Italy where
chivalry struck any root, should have had S. George for patron,
is at any rate significant.
The best preserved relic of princely feudal life in Italy is
this Castello of the Este family, with its sombre moat, chained
1
LOJBARD VIGNETTES.
371
drawbridges, doleful dungeons, and unnumbered tragedies,
each one of which may be compared with Parisina's history.
I do not want to dwell on these things now. It is enough to
remember the Castello, built of ruddiest brick, time-mellowed
with how many centuries of sun and soft sea-air, as it appeared
upon the close of one tempestuous day. Just before evening
the rain-clouds parted and the sun flamed out across the misty
Lombard plain. The Castello burned like a hero's funeral
pyre, and round its high-built turrets swallows circled in the
warm blue air. On the moat slept shadows, mixed with flowers
of sunset, tossed from pinnacle and gable. Then the sky
changed. A roof of thunder-cloud spread overhead with the
.
rapidity of tempest. The dying sun gathered his last strength
against it, fretting those steel-blue arches with crimson ;
and all the fierce light, thrown from vault to vault of cloud,
was reflected back as from a shield, and cast in blots and
patches on the buildings. The Castle towered up rosy-red
and shadowy sombre, enshrined, embosomed in those purple
clouds; and momently ran lightning forks like rapiers through
the growing mass. Everything around, meanwhile, was quiet
in the grass-grown streets. The only sound was a high, clear
boy's voice chanting an opera tune.
PETRARCH's TOMB AT ARQUA.
The drive from Este along the skirts of the Euganean Hills
to Arqua takes one through a country which is tenderly
beautiful, because of its contrast between little peaked mountains
and the plain. It is not a grand landscape. It lacks all tha:
makes the skirts of Alps and Apennines sublime. Its charm
is a certain mystery and repose-an undefined sense of the
neighbouring Adriatic, a pervading consciousness of Venice
unseen, but felt from far away. From the terraces of Arqua
the eye ranges across olive trees, laurels, and pomegranates on
B B 2
372
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
a
the southern slopes, to the misty level land that melts into the
sea, with churches and tall campanili like gigantic galleys
setting sail for fairyland over the foam of perilous seas forlorn.'
Let a blue-black shadow from a thunder-cloud be cast upon
this plain, and let one ray of sunlight strike a solitary bell-
tower :-it burns with palest flame of rose against the steely
dark, and in its slender shaft and shell-like tint of pink all
Venice is foreseen.
The village church of Arqua stands upon one of these
terraces, with a full stream of clearest water flowing by. On
the little square before the church-door, where the peasants
congregate at mass-time-open to the skies with all their stars
and storms, girdled by the hills, and within hearing of the
vocal stream-is Petrarch's sepulchre. Fit resting place for
what remains to earth of such a poet's clay! It is as though
archangels, Aying, had carried the marble chest and set it down
here on the hillside, to be a sign and sanctuary for after-men.
A simple rectilinear coffin, of smooth Verona mandorlato,
raised on four thick columns, and closed by a heavy cippus-
Without emblems, allegories, or lamenting genii, this
tomb of the great poet, the great awakener of Europe from
mental lethargy, encircled by the hills, beneath the canopy of
heaven, is impressive beyond the power of words. Bending
here, we feel that Petrarch's own winged thoughts and fancies,
eternal and aëriel, forms more real than living man, nurslings
of immortality,' have congregated to be the ever-ministering
and irremovable attendants on the shrine of one who, while
he lived, was purest spirit in a veil of flesh.
cover.
a
ON A MOUNTAIN.
Milan is shining in sunset on those purple fields; and a score
of cities flash back the last red light, which shows each in-
equality and undulation of Lombardy outspread four thousand
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
373
feet beneath. Both ranges, Alps and Apennines, are clear to
view ; and all the silvery lakes are over-canopied and brought
into one picture by flame-litten mists. Monte Rosa liſts her
crown of peaks above a belt of clouds into light of living fire.
The Mischabelhörner and the Dom rest stationary angel-wings
upon the rampart, which at this moment is the wall of heaven.
The pyramid of distant Monte Viso burns like solid amethyst
far, far away. Mont Cervin beckons to his brother, the gigantic
Finsteraarhorn, across tracts of liquid ether. Bells are rising
from the villages, now wrapped in gloom, between me and the
glimmering lake. A hush of evening silence falls upon the
ridges, cliffs, and forests of this billowy hill, ascending into
wave-like crests, and toppling with awful chasms over the dark
waters of Lugano. It is good to be alone here at this hour.
Yet I must rise and go-passing through meadows, where
white lilies sleep in silvery drifts, and asphodel is pale with
spires of faintest rose, and narcissus dreams of his own beauty,
loading the air with fragrance sweet as some love-music of
Mozart. These fields want only the white figure of Persephone
to make them poems : and in this twilight one might fancy
that the queen had left her throne by Pluto's side, to mourn
for her dead youth among the flowers uplifted between earth
and heaven. Nay, they are poems now, these fields ; with
that unchanging background of history, romance, and human
life—the Lombard plain, against whose violet breadth the
blossoms bend their faint heads to the evening air. Down-
ward we hurry, on pathways where the beeches meet, by silent
farms, by meadows honey-scented, deep in dew. The colum-
bine stands tall and still on those green slopes of shadowy grass.
The nightingale sings now, and now is hushed again. Streams
murmur through the darkness, where the growth of trees, heavy
with honeysuckle and wild rose, is thickest. Fireflies begin to
flit above the growing corn. At last the plain is reached, and
all the skies are tremulous with starlight. Alas, that we should
374
SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
vibrate so obscurely to these harmonies of earth and heaven !
The inner finer sense of them seems somehow unattainable-
that spiritual touch of soul evoking soul from nature, which
should transfigure our dull mood of self into impersonal
delight. Man needs to be a mytho-poet at some moments, or,
better still, to be a mystic steeped through half-unconsciousness
in the vast wonder of the world. Cold and untouched to
poetry or piety by scenes that ought to blend the spirit in our-
selves with spirit in the world without, we can but wonder how
this phantom show of mystery and beauty will pass away from
us—how soon--and we be where, see what, use all our sensi-
bilities on aught or nought ?
Sic Genius.
In the picture-gallery at Modena there is a masterpiece of
Dosso Dossi. The frame is old and richly carved ; and the
painting, bordered by its beautiful dull gold, shines with the
lustre of an emerald. In his happy moods Dosso set colour
upon canvas, as no other painter out of Venice ever did; and
here he is at his happiest. The picture is the portrait of a
jester, dressed in courtly clothes and with a feathered cap
upon his head. He holds a lamb in his arms, and carries the
legend, Si: Genius. Behind him is a landscape of exquisite
brilliancy and depth. His face is young and handsome.
Dosso has made it one most wonderful laugh. Even so perhaps
laughed Yorick. Nowhere else have I seen a laugh thus
painted : not violent, not loud, although the lips are opened
to show teeth of dazzling whiteness ;—but fine and delicate,
playing over the whole face like a ripple sent up from the
depths of the soul within. Who was he? What does the
lamb mean? How should the legend be interpreted? We
cannot answer these questions. He may have been the court-
fool of Ferrara ; and his genius, the spiritual essence of the
LOMBARD VIGNETTES.
375
man, may have inclined him to laugh at all things. That at
least is the value he now has for us. He is the portrait of
perpetual irony, the spirit of the golden Sixteenth Century
which delicately laughed at the whole world of thoughts and
things, the quintessence of the poetry of Ariosto, the wit of
Berni, all condensed into one incarnation and immortalised by
truthfullest art. With the Gaul, the Spaniard, and the German
at her gates, and in her cities, and encamped upon her fields,
Italy still laughed ; and when the voice of conscience sounding
through Savonarola asked her why, she only smiled-Sic Genius.
One evening in May we rowed from Venice to Torcello,
and at sunset broke bread and drank wine together among the
rank grasses just outside that ancient church. It was pleasant
to sit in the so-called chair of Attila and feel the placid stillness
of the place. Then there came lounging by a sturdy young
fellow in brown country clothes, with a marvellous old wide-
awake upon his head, and across his shoulders a bunch of
massive church-keys. In strange contrast to his uncouth
garb he flirted a pink Japanese fan, gracefully disposing it to
cool his sun-burned olive cheeks. This made us look at him.
He was not ugly. Nay, there was something of attractive in
his face—the smooth-curved chin, the shrewd yet sleepy eyes,
and finely-cut thin lips-a curious mixture of audacity and
meekness blent upon his features. Yet this impression was
but the prelude to his smile. When that first dawned, some
breath of humour seeming to stir in him unbidden, the true
meaning was given to his face. Each feature helped to make
a smile that was the very soul's life of the man expressed. It
broadened, showing brilliant teeth, and grew into a noiseless
laugh ; and then I saw before me Dosso's jester, the type of
Shakspere's fools, the life of that wild irony, now rude, now fine,
which once delighted Courts. The laughter of the whole world
and of all the centuries was silent in his face. What he said
need not be repeated. The charm was less in his words than
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY.
in his personality; for Momus-philosophy lay deep in every
look and gesture of the man. The place lent itself to irony:
parties of Americans and English parsons, the former agape for
any rubbishy old things, the latter learned in the lore of obsolete
Church-furniture, had thronged Torcello; and now they were
all gone, and the sun had set behind the Alps, while an
irreverent stranger drank his wine in Attila's chair, and nature's
jester smiled-Sic Genius.
When I slept that night I dreamed of an altarpiece in the
Temple of Folly. The goddess sat enthroned beneath a
canopy hung with bells and corals. On her lap was a beautiful
winged smiling genius, who flourished two bright torches. On
her left hand stood the man of Modena with his white lamb, a
new S. John. On her right stood the man of Torcello with
his keys, a new S. Peter. Both were laughing after their all-
absorbent, divine, noiseless fashion; and under both was
written, Sic Genius. Are not all things, even profanity, per-
missible in dreams?
APPENDIX.
BLANK VERSE.
I.
PREFATORY NOTE.
A SENTENCE in the essay on England's literary debt to Italy (see
above, p. 177) furnishes me with a pretext for reprinting two sepa-
rate studies on Blank Verse. They were composed with a view to
illustrating the rhetoric rather than the prosody of this metre, on
the conviction that though Blank Verse is an iambic rhythm, it
owes its beauty to the liberties taken with the normal structure.
The licences allowed themselves in this metre by great masters of
versificati sal may be explained, I think, invariably when we note the
accent required by the rhetorical significance of their abnormal
lines.
It can fairly be argued, however, that with this end in view I
have paid too little attention to the prosody of Blank Verse, or, in
other words, to its scansion by feet. In order to meet this objection,
some prefatory remarks may here be offered upon the difficult
question of quantity and accent.
We are accustomed, roughly speaking, to say
that ancient metre
depends on Quantity and modern metre on Accent. The names
Dactyl, Spondee, Trochee, &c., were invented in the analysis of
Greek metres to express certain combinations of long and short
! I have not attempted to avoid repetitions in this Appendix. Its three
parts were written at intervals during the last ten years; and two of them
have been separately published. My purpose will be sufficiently served by
a simple 'reprint, and I trust that the reader will not be fatigued by
occasional recapitulation of the points I have sought to establish.
378
APPENDIX.
a
syllables, without reference to pitch or emphasis. But when we
speak of Quantity in English metre, we mean the more or less
accentuation of syllables. Thus an English trochee is a foot in
which the first syllable is more accentuated than the second ; an
iamb is the contrary. In the transition from the ancient to the
modern world the sense of Quantity seems to have been lost, and its
values were replaced by Accent. We find, for example, in the watch-
song of the Modenese soldiers, which can be referred to a period
about the middle of the tenth century, such iambics as the follow-
ing :
Divina mundi rex Christe custodia,
Sub tua serva haec castra vigilia.
Both lines have an accentual as well as a quantitative trochee
in the fourth place. In the second line the accents on the first
syllable of tua, and on the second syllable of vigilia, which would
have been too slight to lengthen them for a classical bar, are al-
lowed to supply the place of quantity.
If Latin verses could thus be written without attention to quantity,
this shows that the feeling for it had expired ; and even at a period
which may still be called classical, the gradual blunting of the sen-
sibility can be traced in the shortening of vowel sounds. It will
suffice to quote the following hexameter :-
Caetera mando focis spernunt quae dentes acuti.
The Pompeian graffiti prove abundantly that among the common
people at any rate it had never been acute ; and we are led to the
conclusion that scansion by quantity in Latin was an artificial re-
finement, agreeable to highly educated ears. When, therefore, we
proceed to state that English lines ignore quantity, we mean that
the cultivated feeling for the relative values of long and short syl-
lables has never been sufficiently vivid with us to make us par-
ticular about preserving them. We are satisfied with the values
afforded by accentuation, though there is no doubt that verses can
be written with correct accentuation which shall also preserve
quantity in the classic sense. Tennyson's experiments in Alcaics,
Hendecasyllabics, and Sapphics suffice for proof. The difference
between us and the cultivated ancients in this respect may, in a
measure, be due to our comparatively negligent pronunciation.
For instance, we do not pronounce the word mella as the Italians
do, so as to give the full value to both l’s. We have not trained
APPENDIX.
379
our ear to require, or our vocal organs to make, that delicate differ-
entiation of syllables according to their spelling-in other words,
to separate instead of slurring the component parts of speech-on
which quantity depends. These considerations lead to a theory of
metrical analysis which may be offered with some diffidence.
The laws of metre are to be found in the natural rhythm of words ;
for each word in every language has its own rhythmical form. This
natural rhythm is expressed in pronunciation, and is determined by
the greater or less time consumed in the enunciation of the syllables.
Quantity and Accent distinguish two conditions of this expenditure.
Quantity, apart from Accent, is the measure of time, lengthened or
abbreviated, necessary for the due articulation of the component
parts of language. Thus, generally speaking, a long syllable is one
in which double vowels or a vowel before accumulated consonants
demand a full time for their utterance; a short syllable is one in
which a single vowel or a vowel before a simple consonant may be
uttered in a half time. Me (double e) and Tunc are long : Que
(single e) and Sub are short. It is agreed, apparently, in European
metres to take account only of full and half times; yet much of
the more subtle rhythmical effects depends upon the relative values
of syllables which can only be conventionally regarded as not ex-
ceeding or falling short of one of the two limitations. Not every
long is of exactly equal length. Not every short is of exactly equal
brevity. Accent is indifferently used to indicate two separate con-
ditions. It is either the measure of intonation, heightened or
lowered, or else it is enforced utterance. Of the former sort of
accent, or pitch, which probably played an important part in Greek
versification, no account need at present be taken. The latter, or
ictus, has the effect of quantity, inasmuch as it renders more time
needful for the stress laid upon the syllable—the accumulated
volume of sound requiring a greater effort of the vocal organs, and
consequently a retarded utterance. Every word, then, in articu-
lation is subject to conditions of time, implying what we call
Quantity and Accent; and in many words quantity is hardly dis-
tinguishable from accent. Thus, in the line :-
Tityre tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi,
the quantity of Tityre can be represented either as a double vowel
followed by two simple vowels, requiring a time and two half times
for enunciation, or else as an ante-penultimate accent. Without
380
APPENDIX.
pronounced
>
pursuing this analysis into further details, it may be possible to
define Quantity as enunciation retarded or accelerated by the
greater or less simplicity of the sound to be formed by the vocal
organs; Accent as the retardation of a simple sound by the in-
creased effort of the vocal organs needed for marking the ictus.
They are both, so to speak, in the category of time ; and though it
is necessary to distinguish them, it should not be forgotten that
their importance in prosody is due to the divisions and subdivisions
of time they represent.
The consideration of Pause and Elision will help to illustrate these
definitions. When two strong consonants have to be
together, there must always be a pause between them, and with the
pause an expenditure of time. That is the secret of the quantity
ascribed the preceding vowel. Thus amor in amor est has the
value of uw, because no pause is needed, no second consonantal
sound being produced after its pronunciation ; in amor dans it has
the value of ", because a fresh consonant has to be formed.
The English do not mark this pause clearly. In other words, they
do not give full value to each consonant, especially when the same
letter is repeated. The Italians do : the first syllable of mellifluo,
for instance, must be articulated mel-lifluo; and so jealous is the
spirit of the language on this point that in words like accento the
value of the double cc is preserved by a t-ch sound. It may be
asserted that in proportion as the pronunciation of syllables in a
language is more or less perfect, in the same proportion will the
sense for quantity be vivid, and quantitative versification be easy.
Elision can be explained on the same principles. Since no
fresh effort, no pause, no new expenditure of time is needed when
two vowels come together, they are suffered to pass as one. How
true a law this is may be perceived when we remember that vulgar
persons introduce an r between two a's, owing to the difficulty of
otherwise articulating them separately. The Lucretian elision of
the final s in words like moenibus, before a consonant, probably
shows that this final sibilant was on the point of becoming mute ;
and the recognised elision of m in words like mecum before a
vowel may in like manner indicate that this liquid had become
practically mute, mecum tending toward the modern meco.
The main driſt of the foregoing analysis has been to show that
both Quantity and Accent have a common element of Time. It
consequently follows that metres which, like the English, prac-
APPENDIX.
381
tically ignore quantity, can be scanned in feet, or divided into bars,
by accent. Yet the result will never be so accurate as in the case
of quantitative rhythms, chiefly because accent itself is variable
with us ; and the same combinations of syllables, by a slight shifting
of accents, may appear to one observer a dactyl, to another an ana-
pæst, and so forth.
An instance may be furnished by the following line, which is a
passable hendecasyllabic Blank Verse :-
She in her hands held forth a cup of water.
If we accentuate the first syllable, the rhythm would most na-
turally be marked thus :
cuul--l-ul-ul-01
But this does not yield even a‘licentiate iambic. Therefore,
in order to bring it within the rule of the metre, we must shift the
accent and scan :-
--|--|--|--|-- 1
It is of no use to complain that the line is a bad one, and ought
to be re-written, because similar lines are of plentiful occurrence in
our best dramatic writers. Without such irregularities, Blank Verse
would be monotonous.
Licences which would have been intolerable to a Greek ear,
such as successive trochees in the third and fourth places, of
which there are several specimens in Milton, or a trochee in the
second place, which is a favourite expedient of Shelley's, are
far from disagreeable in the English iambic. Indeed, so variable
is its structure that it is by no means easy to define the minimum
of metrical form below which a Blank Verse ceases to be a recog-
nisable line. It is possible that the diminution of the English iambic
by one foot less than the Greek renders its licences more tolerable,
and facilitates that interweaving of successive lines by which so
many discords are resolved in a controlling harmony. Lastly, it
may be observed that, being an accentual metre, blank verse owes
much of its rhythmical quality to emphasis. For emphasis is but
enforced accent; and when the proper emphasis has been dis-
covered in a line, the problem of its rhythmical structure has almost
always been solved. It is thus that close attention to the rhetoric of
Blank Verse becomes absolutely necessary.
It will be seen from the foregoing observations that I am neither
a
a
382
APPENDIX
for nor against the method of scanning Blank Verse by the tra-
ditional feet of Greek and Latin metres. The terms of ancient
prosody represent permanent relations between syllables, nor is
there anything merely arbitrary in their definitions. Indeed, they
must still be used, for want of a more modern system of notation,
when the legitimacy of a line has to be tested ; for, after all, the
English ‘licentiate iambic' has a form, although the deflections
from that form constitute its beauties. I only contend that it is
impossible to apply with rigour rules deduced from the analysis of
quantitative metres, to versification based upon accent and em-
phasis ; and also that when such application has been made, and
the scansion has been determined, we have still to seek the æsthetic
value of the lines in question. It may of course be answered that
the same difficulty meets us in classic poetry—that the finest
passages of Æschylus and Virgil do not owe their beauty to their
scansion, and that in reading them we habitually ignore it.' That
is true; but it is none the less true that they strictly obey the rules of
quantitative scansion, whereas it cannot be proved that our Blank
Verse is bound by the like limitations. This constitutes a decisive
difference ; and the obstinate search for quantitative scansion, even
when we have agreed to substitute accents for proper longs and
shorts, leads to such misconceptions of the genius of Blank Verse as
rendered Johnson's essay on the versification of Milton ridiculous.
The remarks expressed in the foregoing paragraphs, together
with the two following studies on the history and the mechanism of
Blank Verse, are not published without misgivings. The whole
subject of metre is so complex, so entangled with questions of pro-
nunciation, elocution, musical analogy, and proportional values of
concatenated syllables, varying in the case of each language, yet
probably capable of being scientifically reduced to simple rules
under laws as yet but dimly apprehended, that a prudent critic
might well hesitate before exposing his crude speculations to the
world. The conviction that as yet no congruity of doctrine has
· The matter is further complicated by the fact that we are quite
ignorant how the Greeks read their verse, and that we are not sure about
the pronunciation of Latin,
? As instances of these difficulties, I might point out the choice of
hendecasyllabic iambic lines by the Italians, and the loose structure of the
French Alexandrine, which seems to defy scansion, depending on cæsura,
pause, and rhyme.
APPENDIX
383
been arrived at—that we are still forced to adapt the nomenclature
of a prosody deduced from the analysis of the most highly perfected
Greek metres to rhythmical systems based on different principles-
that we have not sufficiently distinguished between the metrical
substratum and the æsthetical or rhetorical effect-induces me to
court censure, in the hope that further progress may be made in a
region where each observer is apt to tax his fellow-workers with a
want of intelligence. The best craftsmen work by instinct, and
the subtlest dilettanti of their masterpieces are contented with
sensation. It still remains for the analyst to discover the laws
which have regulated the artistic instinct in the production of ex-
quisitely pleasurable combinations.
1
384
APPENDIX.
II.
THE HISTORY OF BLANK VERSE.
ENGLish blank verse is, perhaps, more various and plastic than
any other national metre. It is capable of being used for the most
commonplace and the most sublime utterances ; so that, without
any alteration in the vehicle, we pass from merely colloquial dia-
logue to strains of impassioned soliloquy, from comic repartee to
tragic eloquence, from terse epigrams to elaborate descriptions.
Originally instituted for the drama, it received in Milton's hands
an epical treatment, and has by authors of our own day been used
for idyllic, and even for lyrical compositions. Yet all of these so
widely different applications have only served to develop, without
exhausting, its resources. Plato mentions a Greek musical instru-
ment called panharmonion, which was adapted to express the
different modes and systems of melodious utterance. This name
might be applied to our blank verse; there is no harmony of
sound, no dignity of movement, no swiftness, no subtlety of
languid sweetness, no brevity, no force of emphasis beyond its
scope. In hearing good blank verse, we do not long for rhyme ;
our ears are satisfied without it; nor does our sense of order
and proportion require the obvious and artificial recurrence of
stanzas, when the sense creates for itself a melodious structure,
and is not forced into the mould of any arbitrary form. So much
can hardly be said for any other metre. The Greeks, who were pe-
culiarly sensitive to self-imposed canons of fitness in art, reserved
the hexameter for epical and idyllic poetry, the iambic for satire
and the drama, the elegiac for inscriptions, epigrams, and minor
compositions of a more personal character, and other complex
structures for lyrical and choral utterances. To have written an
epic or an idyll in iambics would to them have seemed inexcusable.
And for this reason, the iambic was limited both in its use and its
APPENDIX.
385
6
development. Two sorts were recognised--the one adapted to the
loose and flowing style of comic conversation ; the other to the
more ceremonious and measured march of tragic dialogue and
description. But when the action of the play became animated,
instead of accelerating the iambic rhythm, the poet used trochaic
or anapæstic measures, obeying the law of variety by adopting a
new mode externally fitted to express the change he had in view.
In the infancy of our drama, rhyme, as the natural accompani-
ment of mediæval poetry, had universally been used, until the
courtiers of Elizabeth bethought them of inventing some more
solemn and stately metre in imitation of the classic. It will be
remembered that attempts to naturalise Greek and Roman rhythms
in our language were then fashionable. Sidney and the literati of
the Areopagus spent their leisure hours in fashioning uncouth
hexameters, and Roger Ascham, though he recognised the in-
capacity of English for scansion, was inclined to welcome an
unrhymed metre like the classical iambic. Surrey first solved the
problem practically by translating parts of the Æneid' into verses
of ten syllables without rhyme. But his measure has not much
variety or ease. It remained for two devoted admirers of classical
art, Sackville and Norton, to employ what Surrey called his
strange metre' in the drama. Their ‘Gorboduc,' acted before
the Queen in 1561-2, is the first tragedy written in blank verse.
The insufferable monotony and dreariness of this play are well
known to all students of our early literature. Yet respect for its
antiquity induces me to give a specimen of its quaint style. We
must remember in reading these lines that they are the embryon of
Marlowe's, Shakspere's, and Milton's verse.
O mother, thou to murder thus thy child !
Even Jove with justice must with lightning flames
From heaven send down some strange revenge on thee.
Ah, noble prince, how oft have I beheld
Thee mounted on thy fierce and trampling steed,
Shining in armour bright before the tilt,
And with thy mistress sleeve tied on thy helm,
And charge thy staff--to please thy lady's eye-
That bowed the headpiece of thy friendly foe!
I have purposely chosen the most animated apostrophe in the
whole play, in order that its venerable authors might appear to the
best advantage. It will be noticed that notwithstanding much
CC
386
APPENDIX.
6
stiffness in the movement of the metre, and some embarrassment
in the grammatical construction, we yet may trace variety and
emphasis in the pauses of these lines beyond what would at that
epoch have been possible in sequences of rhymed couplets. Mr.
Collier, in his “ History of Dramatic Poetry,' mentions two other
plays written in blank verse, but not performed on the public stage,
before the appearance of Marlowe’s ‘Tamburlaine.' It is to this
tragedy that he assigns the credit of having once and for all
established blank verse as the popular dramatic metre of the
English. With this opinion all students who have examined the
origin of our theatrical literature will, no doubt, agree. But
Marlowe did not merely drive the rhymed couplet from the stage
by substituting the blank verse of his contemporaries : he created a
new metre by the melody, variety, and force which he infused into
the iambic, and left models of versification, the pomp of which
Shakspere and Milton alone can be said to have surpassed. The
change which he operated was so thorough and so novel to the
playwrights as well as the playgoers of his time, that he met with
some determined opposition. Thomas Nash spoke scornfully of
idiot art masters, that intrude themselves to our ears as the
alchemists of eloquence, who (mounted on the stage of eloquence)
think to attract better pens with the swelling bombast of bragging
blank verse.' In another sneer he described the new measure as
the spacious volubility of a drumming decasyllabon ;' while
Robert Greene, who had written many wearisome rhymed dramas,
talked of making 'verses jet on the stage in tragical buskins, every
word filling the ear like the fa-burden of Bow bell, daring God out
of heaven with that atheist, Tamburlan, or blaspheming with the mad
priest of the Sun.' But our "licentiate iambic' was destined to
triumph. Greene and Nash gave way before inevitable fate, and
wrote some better plays in consequence.
Let us inquire what change Marlowe really introduced, and
what was his theory of dramatic versification. He found the ten-
syllabled heroic line monotonous, mon
onosyllabic, and divided into
five feet of tolerably regular alternate short and long. He left it
various in form and structure, sometimes redundant by a syllable,
sometimes deficient, enriched with unexpected emphases and
changes in the beat. He found no sequence or attempt at periods ;
one line succeeded another with insipid regularity, and all were
made after the same model. He grouped his verse according to
6
APPENDIX,
387
the sense, obeying an internal law of melody, and allowing the
thought contained in his words to dominate their form. He did
not force his metre to preserve a fixed and unalterable type, but
suffered it to assume most variable modulations, the whole beauty
of which depended upon their perfect adaptation to the current of
his ideas. By these means he was able to produce the double
effect of variety and unity, to preserve the fixed march of his chosen
metre, and yet, by subtle alterations in the pauses, speed, and
grouping of the syllables, to make one measure represent a thou-
sand. Used in this fashion, blank verse became a Proteus. It
resembled music, which requires regular time and rhythm ; but, by
the employment of phrase, induces a higher kind of melody to rise
above the common and despotic beat of time. Bad writers of
blank verse, like Marlowe's predecessors, or like those who in all
ages have been deficient in plastic energy and power of harmonious
modulation, produce successions of monotonous iambic lines,
sacrificing the poetry of expression to the mechanism of their art.
Metre with them ceases to be the organic body of a vital thought,
and becomes a mere framework. And bad critics praise them for
the very faults of tameness and monotony which they miscall
regularity of numbers. It was thus that the sublimest as well as
the most' audacious of Milton's essays in versification fell under the
censure of Johnson.
It is not difficult to support these eulogies by reference to
Marlowe's works ; for some of his finest blank verse passages allow
themselves to be detached without any great injury to their in-
tegrity. The following may be cited as an instance of his full-
yoiced harmony. Faustus exclaims-
Have I not made blind Homer sing to me
Of Alexander's love and Enon's death?
And hath not he who built the walls of Troy
With ravishing sound of his melodious harp
Made music with my Mephistophiles ?
We feel at once that a new spirit has been breathed into the metre-
a spirit of undefinable melody. Something is owing to the choice
of long-resounding and full-vowelled words ; something to the use
of monosyllables, as in the third line ; something to alliteration ;
but more than all to the passion of the author, and to the 'plastic
stress' of his creative genius. This tragedy is full of fine passages,
сс 2
388
APPENDIX.
a
and the soliloquy in which Faustus watches his last moments ebb
away, might be quoted as a perfect instance of variety and sustained
effect in a situation which could only be redeemed from monotony
by consummate art. "Edward the Second' is not less rich in versi-
fication. In order to prove that Marlowe could temper his blank
verse to different moods and passions, take this speech, in which
the indignant Edward first gives way to anger, and then to
misery-
Mortimer! who talks of Mortimer,
Who wounds me with the name of Mortimer,
That bloody man? Good father, on thy lap
Lay I this head laden with mickle care.
O, might I never opt these eyes again,
Never again lift up this drooping head,
O, never more lift up this dying heart !
The didactic dignity of Marlowe's verse may be gathered from
these lines in ' Tamburlaine,'—
Our souls whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet's course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.
Again, as if wishing to prove what liberties might be taken with
the iambic metre without injury to its music, Marlowe wrote these
descriptive lines in the Jew of Malta :-
Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts,
Jacinths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds,
Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds,
And seld seen costly stones of so great price,
As one of them, indifferently rated,
May serve, in peril of calamity,
To ransom great kings from captivity.
The licence of the first and third line is both daring and successful.
The second departs less from the ordinary rhythm, while the four
last carry back the period into the usual flow of Marlowe's verse.
The four passages which I have quoted are, perhaps, sufficient
APPENDIX
389
to prove that blank verse was not only brought into existence, but
also perfected by Marlowe. It is true that, like all great poets, he
left his own peculiar imprint on it, and that his metre is marked by
an almost extravagant exuberance, impetuosity, and height of
colouring. It seems to flow from him with the rapidity of impro-
visation, and to follow a law of melody rather felt than studied by
its author. We feel that the poet loved to give the rein to his
ungovernable fancy, forgetting the thought with which he started,
revelling in sonorous words, and pouring forth a stream of images,
so that the mind receives at last a vague and various impression of
sublimity.
Marlowe's contemporaries soon caught the trick of sonorous
versification. The obscure author of a play which has sometimes
been attributed to Marlowe, wrote these lines in the true style of his
master :
Chime out your softest strains of harmony,
And on delicious music's silken wings
Send ravishing delight to my love's ears.
Peele contented himself with repeating his more honeyed cadences.
Shakspere, next to Marlowe, had more influence than any poet
on the formation of our blank verse. Coleridge has maintained
that his diction and metre were peculiarly his own, unimitated and
inimitable. But I believe that a careful comparison of his style
with that of his contemporaries will make it evident that he began
a period in which versification was refined and purified from Mar-
lowe's wordiness. Shakspere has more than Marlowe's versatility
and power ; but his metre is never so extravagant in its pomp of
verbal grandeur. He res'rains his own luxuriance, and does not
allow himself to be seduced by pleasing sounds.
His finest
passages owe none of their beauty to alliteration, and yet he knew
most exquisitely how to use that meretricious handmaid of melody.
Nothing can be more seductive than the charm of repeated liquids
and vowels in the following lines :-
On such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea banks and waft her love
To come again to Carthage.
Nor again did Shakspere employ big sounding words so profusely
as Marlowe, but reserved them for effects of especial solemnity, as
in the speech of Timon :
390
APPENDIX.
Come not to me again : but say to Athens,
Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beachèd verge of the salt flood;
Whom once a day with his embossed froth
The turbulent surge shall cover : thither come,
And let my gravestone be your
oracle.
But Shakspere did not always, or indeed often, employ these
somewhat obvious artifices of harmonious diction. The character-
istic of his verse is that it is naturally, unobtrusively, and en-
duringly musical. We hardly know why his words are melodious,
or what makes them always fresh, whereas the more apparent
charms of Fletcher and of Marlowe pall upon our ears. Through-
out his writings there is a subtle adjustment of sound to sense, of
lofty thoughts to appropriate words; the ideas evolve themselves
with inexhaustible spontaneity, and a suitable investiture of
language is never wanting, so that each cadenced period seems
made to hold a thought of its own, and thought is linked to
thought and cadence to cadence in unending continuity. Inferior
artists have systems of melody, pauses which they repeat, favourite
terminations, and accelerations or retardations of the rhythm,
which they employ whenever the occasion prompts them. But
there is none of this in Shakspere. He never falls into the com-
monplace of mannerism. Compare Oberon's speeches with Pros-
pero's, or with Lorenzo's, or with Romeo's, or with Mark Antony's ;
under the Shaksperian similarity there is a different note in all of
these, whereas we know beforehand what form the utterances of
Bellario, or Philaster, or Memnon, or Ordella in Fletcher must
certainly assume. As a single instance of the elasticity, self-
restraint, and freshness of the Shaksperian blank verse ; of its
freedom from Marlowe's turgidity, or Fletcher's languor, or Milton's
involution; of its ringing sound and lucid vigour, the following
celebrated passage from ‘Measure for Measure' may be quoted.
It illustrates the freedom from adventitious ornament and the
organic continuity of Shakspere's versification, while it also ex-
hibits his power of varying his cadences and suiting them to the
dramatic utterance of his characters.
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit
6
APPENDIX.
391
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling ;—'tis too horrible !
The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on Nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
Each of Shakspere's contemporaries and successors among the
dramatists commanded a style of his own in blank verse com-
position. It was so peculiarly the function of the stage and of the
playwrights at that particular epoch to perfect this metre, that I do
not think some detailed examination of the language of the drama
will be out of place. Coleridge observes that 'Ben Jonson's blank
verse is very masterly and individual.' To this criticism might be
added that it is the blank verse of a scholar-pointed, polished, and
free from the lyricisms of his age. It lacks harmony and is often
laboured : but vigorous and solid it never fails to be. This pane-
gyric of poetry from the Italianised version of ‘Every Man in his
Humour,' may be taken as a specimen of his most animated
style :-
I can repell opinion and approve
The state of poesy, such as it is,
Blessed, eternal, and most true divine;
Indeed, if you will look on poesy,
As she appears in many, poor and lame,
Patched up in remnants and old worn-out rags,
Half starved for want of her peculiar food,
Sacred invention; then I must confess
Both your conceit and censure of her merit :
But view her in her glorious ornaments,
Attired in the majesty of art,
Set high in spirit with the precious taste
Of sweet philosophy; and which is most,
Crowned with the rich traditions of a soul
That hates to have her dignity profaned
With any relish of an earthly thought-
Oh! then how proud a presence does she bear!
Then she is like herself, fit to be seen
Of none but grave and consecrated eyes.
3
392
APPENDIX.
After a complete perusal of his works I find very little of the
fluent grace which belonged in so large a measure to Fletcher and
to Shakspere. Yet the first lines of the 'Sad Shepherd' have a
very delicate music; they are almost unique in Ben Jonson :
6
Here was she wont to go! and here ! and here!
Just where these daisies, pinks, and violets grow:
The world may find the spring by following her ;
For other print her airy steps ne'er left.
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass,
Or shake the downy blue bell from his stalk !
But like the soft west wind she shot along,
And where she went, the flowers took thickest root,
As she had sowed them with her odorous foot.
The melody which gives so chaste and elegant a beauty to these
lines is invariable in the verse of Beaumont and Fletcher. We
have too much of it there, and surfeit on sweets ; for in a very short
time we discover the trick of these great versifiers and learn to
expect their luxurious alliterations, and repeated cæsuras at the end
of the fifth syllable. Their redundant and deficient lines, the
sweetness long drawn out of their delicious cadences, become well
known. Then the movement of their verse is not, like that of
Shakspere, self-evolved and thoroughly organic; it obeys a rule ;
luxury is sought for its own sake, and languor follows as a direct
consequence of certain verbal mannerisms. Among these may be
mentioned a decided preference for all words in which there is a
predominance of liquids and of vowels. For instance, in this
line :-
Showers, hails, snows, frosts, and two-edged winds that prime
The maiden blossoms,
a
there is no unlicensed redundancy of syllables ; but the labour of
getting through so many accumulated sounds produces a strange
retardation of the movement. Another peculiarity is the substitu-
tion of hendecasyllabic lines for the usual decasyllable blank verse
through long periods of dialogue. In one scene of Valentinian'
there are fifty-five continuous lines, of which only five are decasyl-
labic verses, the rest being hendecasyllables ; so that the licence
of the superfluous syllable, which is always granted in dramatic
writing for the sake of variety, becomes, in its turn, far more cloy-
ing than a strict adherence to the five-footed verse. It is also
APPENDIX.
393
noticeable that this weak ending is frequently constructed by the
addition of some emphatic monosyllable. Thus :-
I do remember him; he was my guardian,
Appointed by the senate to preserve me :
What a full majesty sits in his face yet.
Or:-
The desolations that this great eclipse works.
:
The natural consequence of these delays and languors in the
rhythm is that the versification of Beaumont and Fletcher has
always a meandering and rotary movement. It does not seem to
leap or glide straight onward, but to return upon itself and wind
and double. The following passage may be quoted as illustrative
of its almost lyrical voluptuousness :--
I do her wrong, much wrong: she's young and blessed,
Fair as the spring, and as his blossoms tender;
But I a nipping North-wind, my head hung
With hails and frosty icicles : are the souls so too
When they depart hence, lame and old and loveless ?
Ah, no! 'tis ever youth there : Age and Death
Follow our flesh no more, and that forced opinion
That spirits have no sexes, I believe not.
The speech of Aspatia among her maidens is an excellent
example of the more careful verse of Fletcher :-
Fie, you have missed it here, Antiphila,
You are much mistaken, wench;
These colours are not dull and pale enough,
To shew a soul so full of misery
As this sad lady's was; do it by me,
Do it again by me the lost Aspatia,
And you shall find all true but the wild island.
I stand upon the sea beach now, and think
Mine arms thus, and mine hair blown with the wind,
Wild as that desert, and let all about me
Tell that I am forsaken; do my face
(If thou hadst ever feeling of a sorrow,)
Thus, thus, Antiphila, strive to make me look
Like Sorrow's monument; and the trees about me,
Let them be dry and leafless; let the rocks
Groan with continual surges, and behind me
Make all a desolation; look, look, wenches,
A miserable life of this poor picture !
394
APPENDIX.
There is enough variety and subtle melody in this without the usual
effeminacy of Fletcher's style. What makes it most effective is
that it is written so as to represent the natural inflections of tone,
the pauses, and the emphases of the character who speaks it. One
more specimen of this most musical of poets may be allowed me.
It is from “Thierry and Theodoret.' Thierry speaks and Ordella
6
answers :-
Th, 'Tis full of fearful shadows.
Ord.
So is sleep, sir,
Or any thing that's merely ours and mortal;
We were begotten gods else: but these fears,
Feeling but once the fires of noble thoughts,
Fly, like the shapes of clouds we form, to nothing.
Th. Suppose it death.
Ord. I do.
Th.
And endless parting
With all we can call ours, with all our sweetness,
With youth, strength, pleasure, people, time, nay reason.
For in the silent grave no conversation,
No joyful tread of friends, no voice of lovers,
No careful father's counsel; nothing's heard,
Nor nothing is, but all oblivion,
Dust, and an endless darkness, and dare you, woman,
Desire this place ?
Ord. 'Tis of all sleeps the sweetest;
Children begin it to us, strong men seek it,
And kings from height of all their painted glories
Fall like spent exhalations to this centre.
There the poet should have stopped, for exquisite thoughts have
hitherto been rendered in exquisite language. He continues, how-
ever, for five lines of inferior beauty.
Turning from the more celebrated to the less distinguished
playwrights, we find almost universally the power of writing forcible
blank verse. Marston condensed much thought into his lines, and
made such epigrams as these :
Can man by no means creep out of himself
And leave the slough of viperous grief behind ?
or such addresses of concentrated passion as this prologue-
Therefore we proclaim
If any spirit breathes within this round,
APPENDIX.
395
Uncapable of weighty passion
(As from his birth being hugged in the arms
And nuzzled 'twixt the breasts of Happiness),
Who winks and shuts his apprehension up
From common sense of what men were, and are ;
Who would not know what men must be : let such
Hurry amain from our black-visaged shows;
We shall afright their eyes. But if a breast,
Nailed to the earth with grief, if any heart,
Pierced through with anguish, pant within this ring;
If there be any blood whose heat is choked
And stifled with true sense of misery-
If aught of these strains fill this consort up-
They do arrive most welcome.
We find both quaintness of language and roughness of rhythm in
these lines; but how weighty, how eloquently solemn, is the apo-
strophe to those of the spectators whose own sorrows render them
participant of tragic woes. It is clear that a large and broad style,
a sense of rhythm, and a freedom in the use of blank verse as a
natural vehicle of thought, were epidemic in that age.
Facility for expressing every shade of sentiment or reflection in
clear and simple lines belonged peculiarly to Decker, Heywood,
Middleton, and Rowley, poets who made but little pretension to
melodious charms and flowers of fancy, but whose native ear main-
tained such flowing periods as the following :-
D. Thy voice sends forth such music, that I never
Was ravished with a more celestial sound.
Were every servant in the world like thee,
So full of goodness, angels would come down
To dwell with us. Thy name is Angelo,
And like that name thou art.
Get thee to rest ;
Thy youth with too much watching is oppressed.
A. No, my dear lady. I could weary stars,
And force the wakeful moon to lose her eyes,
By my late watching; Lut to wait on you,
When at your prayers you kneel before the altar,
Methinks I'm singing with some choir in heaven,
So blest I hold me in your company.
Therefore, my most loved mistress, do not bid
Your boy, so serviceable, to get hence;
For then you break his heart,
396
APPENDIX.
The same praise belongs to Massinger, who was, indeed,
associated with Decker in the production of the play from which
these lines are quoted. Coleridge remarks that he has reconciled
the language of everyday life with poetical diction more thoroughly
than any other writer of dramatic blank verse, and for this reason
he recommends him as a better model for young writers than
Shakspere, who is far too individual, and Fletcher, who is too
monotonously lyrical.
If it is the case with all our dramatists that the melody of their
versification depends entirely upon the sense of their words, this is
particularly true of Massinger. It will be noticed that all the
changes in his rhythm are accounted for by changes in the thought,
or answer to supposed alterations of the actor's gestures and of his
voice. In lighter moods, Massinger could use hendecasyllabic
periods with much of Fletcher's melody. This is a specimen :-
Not far from where my father lives, a lady,
A neighbour by, blest with as great a beauty
As nature durst bestow without undoing,
Dwelt, and most happily, as I thought then,
And blessed the house a thousand times she dwelt in.
This beauty, in the blossom of my youth,
When my first fire knew no adulterate incense,
Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness,
In all the bravery my friends could show me,
In all the faith my innocence could give me,
In the best language my true tongue could tell me,
And all the broken sighs my sick heart lent me,
I sued and served. Long did I love this lady,
Long was my travail, long my trade, to win her;
With all the duty of my soul I served her.
There is no need to call attention to the alliterative structures of
this period. They are strongly marked. Massinger represents a
whole class of the later Elizabethan playwrights, who used a flow-
ing blank verse, perfected by long practice for the purpose of the
stage. Shirley was one of this set; he wrote evenly and with due
attention to the meaning of his words. But there were other
ambitious versifiers, like Ford, who sought for more recondite and
elaborate graces. It has been thought that Ford imitated Shak-
spere in his style as much as in the situations of his dramas. I
cannot myself perceive much trace of Shakspere in the verse of
APPENDIX.
397
:
Ford ; but these two specimens will enable the reader to judge
fairly of his rhetoric :-
Hie to thy father's house, there lock thee fast
Alone within thy chamber; then fall down
On both thy knees, and grovel on the ground;
Cry to thy heart, wash every word thou utterest
In tears, and (if 't be possible) of blood :
Beg heaven to cleanse the leprosy of lust
That rots thy soul; acknowledge what thou art,
A wretch, a worm, a nothing: weep, sigh, pray
Three times a day, and three times every night;
For seven days' space do this; then, if thou findest
No change in thy desires, return to me,
I'll think on remedy. Pray for thyself
At home, whilst I pray for thee here; away-
My blessing with thee-we have need to pray.
The lines are much more broken up than is usual with our
dramatists. They sparkle with short sentences and quick succes-
sions of reiterated sounds. The same effect is noticeable in
Calantha's dying speech, where the situation is quite different :-
Forgive me. Now I turn to thee, thou shadow
Of my contracted lord : bear witness all,
I put my mother's wedding-ring upon
His finger ; 'twas my father's last bequest :
Thus I now marry him whose wife I am !
Death shall not separate us. O, my lords,
I but deceived your eyes with antick gesture,
When one news straight came huddling on another,
Of death, and death, and death; still I danced forward.
But it struck home, and here, and in an instant.
Be such mere women, who with shrieks and outcries,
Can vow a present end to all their sorrows;
Yet live to vow new pleasures, and outlive them.
They are the silent griefs which cut the heart strings;
Let me die smiling.
This is a sculptured and incisive style. Even the largo (to
borrow a term from music) of Calantha's address to her nobles,
though it assumes hendecasyllabic stateliness, maintains the crisp
and pointed motion of the lines that had preceded it. While
speaking of Ben Jonson or of Marston would have been the
proper time to mention the blank verse of George Chapman, a very
398
APPENDIX.
manly and scholarlike author. He expressed philosophical ideas
in elevated language. This eulogy of honourable love is vigorous
in thought as well as metre :-
'Tis nature's second sun,
Causing a spring of virtues where he shines;
And as without the sun, the world's great eye,
All colours, beauties, both of art and nature,
Are given in vain to man; so without love
All beauties bred in women are in vain,
All virtues born in men lie buried;
For love informs them as the sun doth colours;
And as the sun, reflecting his warm beams
Against the earth, begets all fruits and flowers,
So love, fair shining in the inward man,
Brings forth in him the honourable fruits
Of valour, wit, virtue, and haughty thoughts,
Brave resolution, and divine discourse.
There is nothing in this passage which can be termed highly
poetical. It is chiefly interesting as showing the plasticity of language
and of metre in the hands of our Elizabethan authors. They fixed
their mind upon their thoughts, as we should do in writing prose,
and turned out terse and pregnant lines not unadorned with melody.
I have hitherto purposely abstained from speaking about Webster,
a poet of no ordinary power, whose treatment of blank verse is
specially illustrative of all the licences which were permitted by the
playwrights of that time. His language is remarkably condensed,
elliptical, and even crabbed. His verse is broken up into strange
blocks and masses, often reading like rhythmical prose. It is hard,
for instance, to make a five-footed line out of the following :-
To be executed again; who must despatch me?
Yet close analysis will always prove that there was method in the
aberrations of Webster, and that he used his metre as the most
delicate and responsive instrument for all varieties of dramatic ex-
pression. Avoiding the sing-song of Greene and Peele, the lyrical
sweetness of Fletcher, the prosaic gravity of Jonson, the limpid
fluency of Heywood and Decker, the tumid magniloquence of
Marlowe, and the glittering regularity of Ford, he perfected a style
which depends for its effect upon the emphases and pauses of the
reciter. One of the most striking lines in his tragedy of the
APPENDIX,
399
'Duchess of Malfi' proves how boldly and how successfully
Webster sacrificed metre to expression. A brother is looking for
the first time after death on the form of a sister whom he has
caused to be murdered :-
Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle : she died young.
There is no cæsura, no regular flow of verse, in this line, though in
point of syllables it is not more redundant than half of Fletcher's.
Each sentence has to be said separately, with long intervals and
sighs, that indicate the working of remorseful thought. The
powerful collocation of his words may be illustrated by such a line
as-
Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out!
where the logical meaning can hardly fail to be emphasized by the
reader. Scansion in the verse ot Webster is subordinate to the
purpose of the speaker : in writing it he no doubt imagined his
actors declaiming with great variety of intonation, with frequent
and lengthy pauses, and with considerable differences in the rapidity
of their utterances. The dialogue of the duchess with her waiting-
maid on the subject of the other world and death is among the
finest for its thoughts and language. As far as rhythm contributes
to its excellences, they depend entirely upon the pauses, emphases,
and irregularities of all sorts which are used. The duchess
begins :
O, that it were possible we might
But hold some two days' conference with the dead.
From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure,
I never shall know here.
Up to this point the verses have run smoothly for Webster. But
the duchess has exhausted one vein of meditation. Her voice
sinks, and she falls into a profound reverie. When she rouses
herself again to address Cariola, she starts with a new thought, and
the line is made redundant :-
I'll tell thee a miracle ;
I am not mad yet to my cause of sorrow :
The heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass,
The earth of Alaming sulphur; yet I am not mad.
To eke out the second line the voice is made to dwell with emphasis
upon the word "mad,' while the third and fourth have each twelve
400
APPENDIX.
syllables, which must be pronounced with desperate energy and
distinctness—as it were rapidly beneath the breath. But again her
passion changes. It relents, and becomes more tender. And for
a space we have verses that flow more evenly :-
I am acquainted with sad misery;
As the tanned galley-slave is with his oar;
Necessity makes me suffer constantly,
And custom makes it easy.
At this point she sinks into meditation, and on rousing herself again
with a fresh thought, the verse is broken and redundant :
What do I look like now?
a
Cariola answers plainly, and her lines have a smooth rhythm :-
Like to your picture in the gallery,
A deal of life in show, but none in practice;
Or rather like some reverend monument,
Whose ruins are even pitied.
The duchess takes up this thought :-
Very proper ;
And fortune seems only to have her eyesight
To behold my tragedy.
Here her contemplation is broken by the approach of a messenger,
and she exclaims, without completing the line ::
How now!
What noise is that?
It might seem almost hypercritical to remark, that when the train
of thought is broken from without, the verse is deficient; when
broken by the natural course of the speaker's reflection, it is redun-
dant. Yet this may be observed in the instances which I have
quoted, and there is a real reason for it. The redundant line
indicates the incubation of long-continued reverie ; the deficient
very well expresses that short and sudden cessation of thought
which is produced by an interruption from without. The remarks
which I have made on Webster's style apply with almost equal
force to that of his contemporaries. We read in 'Hamlet,' for
instance :
APPENDIX.
401
This bodily creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
Ecstasy!
The second line is defective in one syllable. That syllable, to
Shakspere's delicate sense of the value of sounds and pauses, was
supplied by Hamlet's manner. The prince was meant, no doubt,
to startle his audience by the sudden repetition of the word
ecstasy,' after a quick gesture of astonishment.
To those who read the pages of our dramatists with this con-
ception of their metre, its irregularities furnish an unerring index
to the inflections which the actors must have used, to the characters
which the poets designed, and to the situations which they cal-
culated. The want of action is thus in some measure compensated,
and it becomes apparent that the true secret of blank verse consists
in the proper adaptation of words and rhythms to the sense con-
tained in them. On this point I have already more than once
insisted. I repeat it because it seems to me that blank verse can-
not be properly appreciated, far less properly written, unless it be
remembered that thought must always run before expression, and
mould language to its own particular uses. Blank verse is indeed
a sort of divinised prose. Unlimited by rhyme or stanza, it has
the freedom of oratio soluta subject to severe laws of rhythm. In
the cunning use of this liberty, in the continual creation of melo-
dious form adapted to the ever-varying subtleties of thought and
feeling, lies the secret of the versifier's art.
Having traced the origin and development of blank verse upon
the stage, and seen the congruence of liberty and law, the harmony
of thought and form, which constitute its beauty, we can under-
stand how Milton came to use it as he did. Milton was deeply
read in the Elizabethan authors ; he profited by all of them and
wore their mantle with a double portion of their power. Nor did
he fail to feel the necessity of raising this metre, without altering
its essential nature, to the epical dignity of the Virgilian hexa-
meter ; so that he added structures of more complex melody than
had been used upon the stage, periods more fitted to reading or to
recitation than to the rapid utterance of acted character. Yet,
while he dignified the metre by epical additions, he never forgot
that he was handling the verse of tragedy; and every one of the
remarkably unharmonious ’ lines which Johnson has collected in
his essay on the versification of Milton, was not fashioned, as the
>
D D
402
APPENDIX.
critic hints, in slovenly haste, or in despair of making modern
language musical, but was deliberately written in obedience to the
highest laws of the metre which Marlowe, Shakspere, Fletcher,
Webster, and the other dramatists had used. In suiting blank
verse to epic poetry, Milton preserved the elasticity and force with
which his predecessors had wielded it; his so-called harshness
resulted from a deliberate or instinctive obedience to the genius of
the English tragic metre. It seems hardly necessary to insist upon
this view of Milton's versification. Yet the pernicious canons of
the eighteenth century, when taste had become habituated to the
mechanical regularity and meaningless monotony of the couplet,
still prevail, and there are people who cannot read Milton by the
sense and by their ear, but who cling blindly to the laws of rigorous
scansion. A dispute arose some time ago in one of our leading
papers, as to the proper reading of two lines in Samson Agonistes ;
where, by the way, dramatic licence was, to say the least, allow-
able. The lines run thus :-
Yet God hath wrought things as incredible
For his people of old : what hinders now?
It was suggested that they might be reduced to order by this trans-
position :-
Yet God of old hath for his people wrought
Things as incredible : what hinders now?
It is clear that the versification according to the second reading is
far smoother. But is it more Miltonic, and would it not be very
easy by a similar process of transposition to emasculate some of
the most vigorous periods in Milton's poetry, and to reduce his
music to the five-footed monotony of incompetent versifiers? The
truth is, that the chorus-or Milton, who speaks in the chorus-
does not think about iambic regularity, but is intent on arguing with
Manoah. Its words of faith and confidence rush forth :-
Yet God hath wrought things as incredible
For his people of old --
then stop ; and the question follows after a pause :-
What hinders now?
Energy of meaning is thus communicated to the double purpose of
their argument. The action of the speech is weakened by the
APPENDIX.
403
6
suggested emendation. Take again line 175 of 'Samson Ago-
nistes' -
Universally crowned with highest praises,
and write it
Crowned universally with highest praises.
The first form is anomalous ; the second makes a very decent
hendecasyllabic. Johnson, Bentley, and the like, would rejoice in so
manipulating a hundred characteristic passages ; but true criticism
looks backward and deduces its grounds of judgment from the pre-
decessors rather than the successors of a poet. Adopting this
standard, we should try Milton by Elizabethan models and not by
the versifiers of the eighteenth century.
But these examples are taken from a tragedy. In Paradise
Lost' we find that Milton has varied the dramatic rhythm by a
very sparing use of hendecasyllable lines and by introducing far more
involved and artificial cadences. In fact the flow of epical language
is naturally more sedate and complex than that of the drama : for
it has to follow the thoughts of one mind through all its reasonings.
Yet the dramatic genius of the metre is for ever asserting itself, as
in the following lines :-
Rejoicing but with awe,
In adoration at his feet I fell
Submiss; he reared me, and, “Whom thou soughtest I am,'.
Said mildly, “Author of all this thou seest
A
Above, or round about thee, or beneath.'
a
Here if we fix our attention upon the lines and try to scan them,
we find the third most dissonant. But if we read them by the
sense, and follow the grouping of the thoughts, we terminate one
cadence atásubmiss,' and after a moment of parenthetical descrip-
tion begin another period, which extends itself through the con-
cluding lines. To analyse Miltonic blank verse in all its details
would be the work of much study and prolonged labour. It
is enough to indicate the fact that the most sonorous passages
begin and end with interrupted lines, including in one organic
structure, periods, parentheses, and paragraphs of fluent melody,
that the harmonies are wrought by subtle and most complex allitera-
tive systems, by delicate changes in the length and volume of
syllables, and by the choice of names magnificent for their mere
gorgeousness of sound. In these structures there are many pauses
D D 2
404
APPENDIX.
which enable the ear and voice to rest themselves, but none are per-
fect, none satisfy the want created by the opening hemistich, until the
final and deliberate close is reached. Then the sense of harmony
is gratified and we proceed with pleasure to a new and different
sequence. If the truth of this remark is not confirmed by the
following celebrated and essentially Miltonic passage, it must ſall
without further justification :-
And now his heart
Distends with pride, and hardening in his strength,
Glories ; for never since created man
Met such embodied force as named with these
Could merit more than that small infantry
Warred on by cranes : though all the giant brood
Of Phlegra, with the heroic race were joined
That fought at Thebes or Ilium, on each side
Mixed with auxiliar Gods; and what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther's son,
Begirt with English and Armoric knights;
And all who since, baptized or infidel,
Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban,
Damasco or Morocco or Trebizond,
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore,
When Charlemagne with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabbia.
After perusing this quotation, let the reader compare it with
Claudio's speech on Death in. Measure for Measure,' and observe
the difference between Shaksperian and Miltonic, between
dramatic and epical blank verse. The one is simple in construc-
tion and progressive, the other is complex and stationary ; but both
are musical beyond the possibility of imitation. The one exhibits
a thought, in the process of formation, developing itself from the
excited fancy of the speaker. The other presents to us an image
crystallised and perfect in the poet's mind; the one is in time, the
other in space—the one is a growing and the other a complete
organism. The whole difference between the drama and the epic
is iinplicit in these periods. The one, if we may play upon a fancy,
resembles Music, and the other Architecture.
In this again we find a proof that the structure of blank verse
depends upon the nature of the thought which it is meant to clothe.
The thoughts of a dramatist—whether his characters converse or
soliloquise-are, of necessity, in evolution; the thoughts of an
APPENDIX
405
epical poet are before him, as matter which he must give form to.
The richness and melody and variety of his versification will, in
either case, depend upon the copiousness of his language, the
delicacy of his ear, and the fertility of his invention. We owe
everything to the nature of the poet, and very little to the deca-
syllables which he is using.
Milton was the last of the Elizabethans. With him the spirit of
our literary renaissance became for the time extinct. Even
during his lifetime the taste and capacity for blank verse compo-
sition had expired. It is said that Dryden wished to put · Paradise
Lost' into couplets, and received from Milton the indifferent
answer, ' Let the young man tag his rhymes.' Dryden, in his essay
on dramatic poetry, defended the use of rhyme, and introduced the
habit of writing plays in heroics, to the detriment of sense and
character and freedom. Yet there are passages in his later tragedies
- All for Love,' Cleopatra,' • King Arthur,' and 'The Spanish
Friar'—which show that he could use the tragic metre of blank
verse with moderate ability. The Elizabethan inspiration still
feebly survives in lines like these :-
6
6
6
The gods are just,
But how can finite measure infinite ?
Reason, alas! it does not know itself!
Yet man, vain man, will, with this short-lined plummet,
Fathom the vast abyss of heavenly justice.
Whatever is, is in its causes just,
Since all things are by fate. But purblind man
Sees but a part of the chain, the nearest links;
His eyes not carrying to that equal beam
That poises all above.
This is average thought expressed in average words. But
‘Absalom and Achitophel’ is a work of the very highest genius in
its kind, written not under the influence and inspiration of another
age, but produced as the expression of a different and no less
genuine phase of national development. During the period of
Dryden's ascendency over English literature, very little blank verse
was written of much moment. Yet, it must be remembered that
the passage of the 'Mourning Bride,' which Johnson preferred to
any single piece of English descriptive poetry, first saw the light in
1697. The lines begin – How reverend is the face of this tall pile.'
They are dignified, melodious, and clear ; but we already trace in
406
APPENDIX.
the handling of the language more of the effort after neatness and
precision, and less of nature, than was common with the elder
dramatists. After the death of Otway and Congreve, blank verse
held the stage in the miserable compositions of the eighteenth
century; but it had no true vitality. The real works of genius in
that period were written in couplets, and it was not until the first
dawn of a second renaissance in England, that blank verse began
again to be practised. Meanwhile the use of the couplet had un-
fitted poets for its composition. Their acquired canons of regularity,
when applied to that loose and flowing metre, led them astray.
They no longer trusted exclusively to their ear, but to a mechanism
which rendered accuracy of ear almost useless, not to say impos-
sible. Hence it followed, that when blank verse began again to be
written, it found itself very much at the point where it had stood
before the appearance of Marlowe. Even Thomson, who succeeded
so well in imitating Spenserian stanza, wrote stiff and languid blank
verse with monosyllabic terminations and monotonous cadences-
a pedestrian style.
Cowper, in his translation of Homer, aimed at the Miltonic
structure, and acquired a solemn though cumbrous versification.
The description of the Russian empress's ice-palace, in “The Winter
Morning Walk,' proves how he had imbued himself with the language
of the · Paradise Lost,' and how naturally he adapted it to his own
thoughts. Coleridge's blank verse has a kind of inflated grandeur,
but not much of Elizabethan variety of music, subtlety of texture,
and lightness of movement. His lines written in the Valley of
Chamouni are sonorous; but they want elasticity, and are inferior
in quality to his lyrics. Heaviness of style and turgid rhetoric
deface his verse and prose alike. Wordsworth again could not
handle blank verse with any certainty of success. Wildernesses
of the • Excursion’ extend for pages and pages barren of beauty.
We plod over them on foot, sinking knee-deep into the clinging
sand ; whereas the true master of blank verse carries us aloft as
on a winged steed through cloud and sunshine in a yielding air.
Wordsworth mistook the language of prose for that of Nature, and
did not understand that natural verse might be written without
the tedious heaviness of common disquisitions. One of his
highest efforts is the poem on the Simplon Pass, introduced
into the ‘Prelude.' This owes its great beauty to the perfect
delineation which he has succeeded in producing by suggestive
6
APPENDIX.
407
6
images, by reiterated cadences, by solitary lines, by breathless
repetitions, by the perfect union, in short, which subsists between the
poet's mind and the nature he is representing.
Byron again is uncertain in his blank verse. The lines on the
Coliseum in ‘Manfred' are as good as a genuine Elizabethan passage,
because they are spoken from the fulness of a poet's heart, and with
a continuity of thought and copiousness of language which insured
their organic vitality. But they are exceptional. Byron needed
rhyme as an assistance to his defective melody. He did not feel
that inner music which is the soul of true blank verse and sounding
prose. In Keats at last we reach this power. His · Hyperion' is
sung, not written, governed in all its parts by the controlling force
of imagined melody. Its music is fuid, bound by no external
measurement of feet, but determined by the sense and intonation
of the poet's thought, while like the crotalos of the Athenian flute-
player, the decasyllabic beat maintains an uninterrupted under-
current of regular pulsations. Keats studied Milton and strove to
imitate him. But he falls below the majesty and breadth of
Milton's manner. He is too luxuriant in words and images, too
loose in rhythm and prone to description. In fact, he produces an
Elizabethan poem of even more wanton superfluity than those which
he imitates. The entrance of Phæbus into his desecrated palace
is a brilliant instance of the plasticity of language in a master's
hand. But there is something forid in it which smacks of a
degenerating taste in art. Some of Shelley's blank verse is perhaps
the best which this century has produced, though it is too hasty and
incoherent, especially in ‘Prometheus Unbound, to attain the
equality of sustained style. In 'Alastor' he shows what he can
do both without imitation and by its help. The lines on Egypt are
written with a true Miltonic roll and ponderous grandiloquence of
aggregated names. But in the last paragraph of the poem we find
the vernal freshness, elasticity, and delicacy that are Shelley's own.
It is noticeable that both Keats and Shelley make an Elizabethan
use of the so-called heroic couplet. “Epipsychidion’and • Lamia'
are written, not in the metre of Dryden, Churchill, Pope, and
Crabbe, but in that of Marlowe and Fletcher. Nothing proves
more significantly the distance between the Elizabethan spirit and
the taste of the eighteenth century, than the dissimilarity of these
two metres, syllabically, and in point of rhyme identical. The
couplets of Marlowe, Fletcher, Shelley, and Keats, follow the laws
a
408
APPENDIX.
6
of blank verse, and add rhyme ;—that is to say, their periods and
pauses are entirely determined by the sense. The couplets of
Dryden and his followers resemble Ovid's elegiacs in the per-
manence of their form and the restriction of their thought. Mr.
Browning, who is one of the latest and most characteristic products
of the Elizabethan revival, has made good use of this loose rhyming
metre in 'Sordello.' Among the most melodious passages of that
poem may be found the following :
You can believe
Sordello foremost in the regal class
Nature has broadly severed from the mass
Of men, and framed for pleasure, as she frames
Some happy lands that have luxurious names
For loose fertility; a foot-fall there
Suffices to upturn to the warm air
Half germinating spices, mere decay
Produces richer life, and day by day
New pollen on the lily petal grows,
And still more labyrinthine buds the rose.
The whole structure of this period, in its pauses and studied
disregard of the rhymed system, is that of blank verse. The final
couplet completes the sense and satisfies the ear with regularity.
Browning by fits and starts produces passages of fine blank verse,
blowing out bubbles of magnificent sound as glass is blown from
red-hot matter by the fierce breath and fiery will. Swinburne,
when he chooses, sweeps the long purple, blows the golden trumpet,
and intones the sacrificial chaunt of the Elizabethan hierarchy.
He is a supreme artist in words; they obey him as the keys obey
an organist, and from their combination he builds up melodious
palaces of resonant magnificence. Tennyson must be named the
most original and greatest living writer of blank verse. The clas-
sical beauty of the ‘Idylls of the King,' the luxuriant eloquence of
the Princess,' the calm majesty of Ulysses,' the idyllic sweetness
of Enone,' the grandeur of the ‘ Mort d’Arthur,' are monuments
to the variety and scientific grasp of his genius. Subtle melody
and self-restrained splendour are observable throughout his com-
positions. He has the power of selection and of criticism, the lack
of which makes blank verse tumid or prosaic. It may be noticed
that Tennyson has not only created for himself a style in narrative
and descriptive blank verse, but that he has also adapted this
APPENDIX.
409
Protean metre to lyrical purposes. Three songs in the Princess,'
• Tears, idle tears,' 'Now sleeps the crimson petal,' and 'Come
down, O maid,' are perfect specimens of most melodious and com-
plete minstrelsy in words. We observe that the first of these songs
is divided into periods of five lines, each of which terminates with
the words' days that are no more.' This recurrence of sound and
meaning is a substitute for rhyme, and suggests rhyme so per-
suasively that it is impossible to call the poem mere blank verse.
The second song is less simple in its construction : it consists of a
quatrain followed by three couplets, and succeeded by a final
quatrain, each group of lines ending with the word 'me. The lines
are so managed, by recurrences of sound and by the restriction of
the sense to separate lines, that the form of lyric verse is again
imitated without aid of rhyme. Theocritus, in his Amoebean Idylls,
had suggested this system ; and Shakspere, in the “Merchant of
Venice' (act v. sc. 1), had shown what could be made of it in
English. But the third song which I have mentioned depends for
its effect upon no artificial structure, no reiterated sounds. The
poet calls it an idyll : I think it may be referred to as a most con-
vincing proof that the English language can be made perfectly
lyrical and musical without the need of stanzas or of rhyme.
I have now passed in brief review the greatest writers of blank
verse, and have tried to show that this metre, originally formed for
dramatic elocution, became epical, idyllic, lyrical, didactic, accord-
ing to the will of the poets who made use of it. In conclusion, I
may repeat some of the points which are established with reference
to the scope and purpose of the metre. It seems adapted specially
for thought in evolution; it requires progression and sustained
effort. As a consequence of this, its melody is determined by the
sense which it contains, and depends more upon proportion and
harmony of sounds, than upon recurrences and regularities of
structure. This being its essential character, it follows that blank
verse is better suited for dialogues, descriptions, eloquent appeals,
rhetorical declamations, for all those forms of poetry which imply a
continuity and development of thought, than for the setting forth of
some one perfect and full-formed idea. The thought or moment'
which is sufficient for a sonnet would seem poor and fragmentary
in fourteen lines of blank verse, unless they were distinctly under-
stood to form a part of some continuous poem or dramatic dialogue.
When, therefore, blank verse is used lyrically, the poet who mani-
410
APFENDIX.
pulates it has to deceive the ear by structures analogous to those
of rhymed stanzas. The harmony of our language is such as to
admit of exquisite finish in this style; but blank verse sacrifices a
portion of its characteristic freedom, and assimilates itself to ano-
ther type of metrical expression, in the process. Another point
about blank verse is that it admits of no mediocrity; it must be
either clay or gold. Its writer gains no unreal advantage from the
form of his versification, but has to produce fine thoughts in vigor-
ous and musical language. Hence, we find that blank verse has been
the metre of genius, that it is only used successfully by indubitable
poets, and that it is no favourite in a mean, contracted and unima-
ginative age. The freedom of the renaissance created it in Eng-
land. The freedom of our own century has reproduced it. Blank
verse is a type and symbol of our national literary spirit-uncon-
trolled by precedent or rule, inclined to extravagance, yet reaching
perfection at intervals by an inner force and vivida vis of native
inspiration.
APPENDIX.
411
III.
THE BLANK VERSE OF MILTON.
verse.
AMONG the many points which connect the literature of this century
with that of the Elizabethan age, there is none more marked and
striking than the revival of a true feeling for the beauty of blank
Blank verse was the creation of our dramatists, from
Marlowe to Massinger and Shirley. Milton received it at their
hands; but, in appropriating this metre to the Epic, even Milton
thought it necessary to defend the use of unrhymed verse. Milton
belonged by education and by disposition to the age which for want
of a more accurate title has been called Elizabethan, but which may
better be described as the Renaissance in England. That is to
say, the spirit which gave form and life to our literature during the
sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries, preserved
its fullest vigour and manifested itself with the utmost splendour in
the genius of Milton. But while he was yet alive, and by the
publication of his masterpiece was proving his legitimate descent
from the lineage of Spenser, Bacon, and Shakspere, a new and an-
tagonistic spirit began to manifest itself. The poets and prose-
writers of the Restoration stood no longer in a close relation to
Italy and the classics, nor did they continue the tradition of the
dramatists of our renaissance. They followed French examples,
and introduced another standard of taste. One of the signs of this
change was their rejection of blank verse, their exclusive practice
of the couplet. To some extent this was a return to old English
precedents, to the rhyming metre of Chaucer and the earliest
English plays. But the heroic verse, as developed by Dryden, was
not a regular continuation of the tradition handed down from
Chaucer and from Marlowe. It had less in common with the metre
of the Canterbury Tales' and ' Hero and Leander' than with the
412
APPENDIX.
French Alexandrine, and its adoption was one of the signs of the
French influence which prevailed throughout the Restoration, and
which determined the style of English literature for the following
century.
The exchange of blank verse for the rhyming couplet was not so
insignificant as at first sight it may appear. It was no mere whim
of fashion or voluntary preference among the poets for one of two
metres, either of which they could have used with equal mastery.
On the contrary, it indicated a radical change in the spirit of our
literature. With the substitution of heroic for unrhymed verse, the
theory and practice of harmony in English composition were
altered. What was essentially national in our poetry—the music
of sustained periods, elastic in their structure, and governed by the
subtlest laws of melody in recurring consonants and vowels-was
sacrificed for the artificial elegance and monotonous cadence of the
couplet. For a century and a half the summit of all excellence in
versification was the construction of neat pairs of lines, smooth
indeed and polished, but scarcely varying in their form. The
breadth and freedom of style, the organic connection between
thought and rhythm, were abandoned for precise and studied regu-
larity : and corresponding to this restriction of the form of poetry
was an impoverishment in its matter both of thought and fancy.
The audacities of Shakspere and the sublimities of Milton were no
less unknown and unappreciated than the volume and the grandeur
of their metrical effects. We might compare this change in the
spirit of our literature to the extinction of all the architectural ori-
ginality of the earlier Italian Renaissance in the formal elegance of
the Palladian style. Of course it is not to be denied that much was
gained as well as lost. Not to speak of the exaggerated conceits,
fantastic phraseology, and faults of overstrained imagination, which
were eliminated in the age of the Restoration and Queen Anne, it
must always be remembered that few literatures can exhibit two
types of excellence so great and yet so diverse as those of our
Elizabethan and Classic periods. But the fact remains that during
this century and a half our authors abandoned the fields in which
the earlie it and most splendid laurels of the English had been won,
and our critics lost the sense for beauties of style peculiarly national.
To have written true blank verse during the despotism of the heroic
couplet would have been impossible, and to appreciate Shaksperian
or Miltonic melody was equally beyond the capacities of cultivated
APPENDIX.
413
taste. It was not until the spirit of the Elizabethan age revived in
the authors of the commencement of the present century that blank
verse began once more to be constructed upon proper principles,
and to be accepted at its true value. Even then the habits of
several generations had to be laboriously broken, and the metre
which every playwright of the sixteenth century commanded with
facility was used with pompous grandiosity or frigid baldness, by
poets even of distinguished genius.
These remarks serve merely as a preface to the following
attempt to analyse the structure of Miltonic blank verse, and to
explain some of the mistakes which have been made about it.
Johnson's essay on the versification of Milton proves the want of
intelligence which prevailed in the last century, and shows to what
extent the exclusive practice of the couplet had spoiled the ears of
critics for all the deeper and more subtle strains of which our
language is capable. Johnson lays it down as a fixed canon that
the English ten-syllable iambic measure is only pure and regular
when the accent rests upon every second syllable through the
whole line.' Thus such lines as these-
His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings . .
And mutual love, the crown of all our bliss,
which are not of very common occurrence in Milton, and perhaps
are never niet with in succession, he admits as pure ; while all the
others—those, that is to say, in which we recognise the triumphs of
Miltonic art-he condemns as ‘more or less licentious with respect
to accent.' The tender and pathetic cadence of the last line in the
following passage-
This delicious place
For us too large, where thy abundance wants
Partakers, and uncropt falls to the ground,
is stigmatised by Johnson as remarkably inharmonious. Cowley's
exquisite line-
And the soft wings of peace cover him round,
which exhibits a similar cadence, meets with the same condemna-
tion, Johnson adding magisterially, with reference to both examples
- In these the law of metre is very grossly violated by mingling
combinations of sound directly opposite to each other, as Milton
expresses it in his sonnet to Henry Lawes, by committing short and
a
>
414
APPENDIX.
9
long, and setting one part of the measure at variance with the rest.'
Johnson's ear, accustomed to the sing-song of the couplet, and his
instinct sophisticated by a too exclusive study of classical metres,
exacted an even flow of regular iambics, which might occasionally
be broken, for the sake of variety, by lines confessedly discordant.
A superfluous syllable at rare intervals, or a trochee instead of an
iamb in the first place, would be enough, he thought, to satisfy
human weakness pețulantly craving after change; then the metre
should resume its calculated melody, and march on without inter-
ruption for a score or so of lines. But a trochee in the fourth
place! (for so he scanned the lines), O Milton and Cowley! shame
upon your ears! The ferule was raised, and down it came with a
swinging blow upon the knuckles of the poets who had neglected
their prosody. Johnson need not be followed through the details
of his analysis. The canon already quoted is enough to prove how
far he was from having discerned the true principles of criticism in
this case.
He attempted to reduce blank verse to rule by setting
up the standard of an ideal line, any deviation whatever from which
was to be called “licentious, impure, unharmonious,' remaining
ignorant the while that the whole effect of this metre depends upon
the massing of lines in periods and on the variety of complicated
cadences. Among other things, he had not perhaps considered
that the fourth place in a ten-syllabled iambic is not the same as
the fourth place in a line of twelve syllables.
Todd, commenting on Johnson's essay, shows a truer appre-
ciation of Miltonic melody, and is properly indignant with the cool
arrogance of Aristarchus. But he, too, is far from having per-
ceived the laws which determine the structure of blank verse.
After observing tható Milton was fond of the ancient measures,'
which indeed is true, he goes on to settle some of the lines that
puzzled Johnson, thus : ' These lines exhibit choriambics in the
third and fourth, and in the fourth and fifth places :-
For us too large, whēre thị ăbūndance wants
Partakers, and uncropt falls to thể ground.'
1
He thinks that he has answered Johnson and established something
positive by his erudition in re metricâ, whereas he has only attained
the negative result of demonstrating that blank verse must not be
considered a mere sequence of iambi. It does not really satisfy
any one to be told that two-fifths of each of these lines is what
APPENDIX.
415
Horace might have called a choriambus, or that three-tenths of
some other line is an anapæst. Johnson, to begin with, would not
have been satisfied ; for he required iambi or their equivalents, and
critics like Todd think nothing of scanning an anapæst in the place
of one of Johnson's feet. Nor can the classical scholar be satisfied ;
for, even granting that English metrical feet may be classified as
tribrachs, dactyls, anapæsts, choriambics, and so forth, there is no
classical precedent for versification which indiscriminately admitted
all these kinds. The Greek comic metre is the only parallel of
anything like closeness; and, even there, liniits were fixed beyond
which the poet dared not venture. Such licences as Milton allowed
himself in his sublime epic would have been inadmissible in the
dialogue of the Frogs, and would have been utterly abhorrent to
the laws of the Sophoclean Iambic. The unlearned English reader
meanwhile will justly condemn this talk about anapæsts and cho-
riambi as inappropriate. It cannot help him to perceive the melody
of a line to be told “here is a trochee,' or 'there I think I detect an
amphibrach ;' for although these terms may usefully be employed
between students accustomed to metrical analysis, they do not solve
the problem of blank verse. With classical versification the case
is different. Quantity determines every line : a long syllable is
unmistakable, and invariably weighs as equal in the scale against
two short ones. But nothing so definite can be established in
English metre. What one man reads as a dactyl may seem like
an anapæst or a tribrach to another. So little is our language
subject to the laws of quantity, that to have produced four stanzas
of decently correct English alcaics is one of the proudest tours de
force of the most ingenious of our versifiers since Pope. Since
therefore quantity forms no part at present of our prosody, and
since the licences of quantity in blank verse can never have been
determined, it is plainly not much to the purpose to talk about cho-
riambs in Milton. They are undoubtedly to be found there. Our
daily speech is larded with trochees and cretics and so forth. But
these names of classic feet do not explain the secret of the varied
melody of Milton. In order to show the uncertainty which attends
the analysis of blank verse on these principles, it is enough to
mention that Sir Egerton Brydges scans the line already quoted
thus
'Părtā | kers, and I ūncrõpt ! fälls tõ the ground,
' first an iambic; second, an iambic; third, a spcndee ; fourth, a
416
APPENDIX.
dactyl ; fifth, a demifoot.' He makes no mention of the choriamb,
which seemed so evident to Todd, while Keightley, who has written
learnedly in the same spirit, seems to reject spondees from his
system.
Though the attempt to apply the phraseology of Greek and
Latin prosody to the analysis of blank verse is not really satis-
factory, yet the principle of substitution of other feet for iambs, as-
serted by Todd, Brydges, and Keightley, in opposition to Johnson,
was a step forward. They defend Milton's irregularities by saying
that in the place of two iambs he uses one choriambus, and
that he employs trochees, anapæsts, and tribrachs, under certain
limitations, as freely as iambs. If these critics had advanced beyond
the nomenclature of classic prosody, this principle of substitution
would probably have led to a better understanding of the matter.
English blank verse really consists of periods of lines, each one of
which is made up normally of ten syllables, a stress or accent being
thrown upon the final syllable in the line, so that the whole inclines
to the iambic rather than to any other rhythin. The ten syllables
are, also, if normally cadenced, so disposed that five beats occur in
the verse at regular intervals. So far Johnson was right; but he
went wrong the instant he proceeded to declare that deviation
from this ideal structure of the line produced an inharmonious
result. In truth, it is precisely such deviation that constitutes the
beauty of blank verse. When the metre was first practised by
Surrey, Sackville, Greene, and Peele, great hesitation was dis-
played as to any departure from iambic regularity ; but Marlowe,
the earliest poet of creative genius who applied himself to its cul-
tivation, saw that in order to save the verse from monotony it was
necessary to shift the accent, and, playing freely with feet properly
so called, to be only careful to preserve the right proportions and
masses of sound. A verse may often have more than ten syllables,
and more or less than five accents; but it must carry so much
sound as shall be a satisfactory equivalent for ten syllables, and
must have its accents so arranged as to content an ear prepared
for five. There are thirteen syllables, and who shall exactly say
how many accents, in this line ? -
Ruining along the illimitable inane;
yet it quite fulfils the conditions of a good blank verse. The
ponderous
Showers, hails, snows, frosts, and two-edged winds that prime,
APPENDIX.
417
which has perhaps seven accents, is as legitimate as the light and
rapid-
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts.
The secret of complex and melodious blank verse lies in pre-
serving the balance and proportion of syllables, while varying their
accent and their relative weight and volume, so that each line in a
period shall carry its proper burden of sound, but the burden shall
be differently distributed in the successive verses. This is done
by sometimes allowing two syllables to take the time of one, and
sometimes extending one syllable to the length of two, by forcing
the accentuation of prominent monosyllables and gliding over suc-
cessive liquid sounds, by packing one line with emphatic words so
as to retard its movement, by winging another with light and
hurried polysyllables, and by so adapting words to sense, and sense
to rhythm, that pauses, prolongations, and accelerations, absolutely
necessary for the understanding of the matter, evoke a cadence of
apparently unstudied melody. In this prosody the bars of the
musical composer, where different values from the breve to the
demi-semiquaver find their place, suggest perhaps a truer basis of
measurement than the longs and shorts of classic quantity. The
following line from Milton ("Paradise Regained,' iii. 256)—
The one winding, the other straight, and left between,
affords a good instance of what is meant by the massing of sounds
together, so as to produce a whole harmonious to the ear, but
beyond the reach of satisfactory analysis by feet. It is not an
Alexandrine, though, if we read it syllabically, it may be made to
seem to have six feet. Two groups of syllables-
The one winding | the other straight |
take up the time of six syllables, and the verse falls at the end into
the legitimate iambic cadence. At the same time it would no
doubt be possible, by the application of a Procrustean method of
elisions and forcible divisions, to reduce it to an inexact iambic,
thus-
Th' one win | ding th' oth | er straight. |
This instance suggests the consideration of another point all-
important in the prosody of blank verse. It is clear that in the line
E E
418
APPENDIX.
just quoted the sense helps the sound, and leads the ear to mass
the first eight syllables into the two groups requisite for the rhythm
of the verse. And this is not only once or occasionally, but always
and invariably the case in all blank verse composed with proper
freedom. In this respect
metre is true to its original purpose.
It was formed for the drama, where it had to be the plastic vehicle
of every utterance, and where a perfectly elastic adaptation of the
rhythm to the current of the sense was indispensable. The
irregularities in its structure were the natural result of emphasis.
This is illustrated by a line of Marlowe, as admirable for its energy
of movement as for its imagery,
See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament.
That violent stress upon the verb was illegitimate according to
iambic scansion ; but the verb required emphasis, and the verse
;
gained rather than lost by the deviation from its even rise and fall,
The one sound rule to be given to the readers of dramatic blank
verse, written by a master of the art, is this-Attend strictly to the
sense and to the pauses ; the lines will then be perfectly melodious ;
but if you attempt to scan the lines on any preconceived metrical
system, you will violate the sense and vitiate the music. Even the
abstruse and fantastic audacities of Webster, who is the veriest
Schumann of blank verse, melt into melody when subjected to this
simple process. If one does but conceive the dramatic situation,
sympathise with the passions of the speaker, allow for the natural
inflections of his voice, mark his pauses, and interpolate his inar-
ticulate exclamations, the whole apparently disjointed mass of
words assumes a proper and majestic cadence. Milton took blank
verse from the dramatists, and practised dramatic blank verse in
*Comus ;' nor in his epic did he depart from the rules of compo-
sition we have analysed. The movement of the sense invariably
controlled the rhythm of the verse ; and most of his amorphous
lines take form when treated as the products of dramatic art. The
following, for example, is one of those that puzzled Johnson,
although it is comparatively regular :-
'Tis true, I am that Spirit unfortunate.
Johnson, searching for iambs, had not gazed into the fallen Arch-
angel's face-his disguise thrown off, his policy abandoned-nor
heard the low slow accents of the two first syllables, the proud
APPENDIX.
419
emphasis upon the fourth, the stately and melancholy music-roll
which closed the line. Yet, in order to understand the rhythm of
the verse as the poet wrote it, it was necessary to have heard and
seen the fiend as Milton heard and saw. The same may be said
about the spasms of intense emotion which have to be imagined in
order to give its metrical value to this verse-
Me, me only, just object of his ire,
It is obvious here that scansion by feet will be of little use, though
we may grant that the line opens with a spondee followed by a
trochee. Its intention is understood as soon as we allow the time
of two whole syllables to the first emphatic me, and bring over the
next words, me only, in the time of another two syllables, by doing
which we give dramatic energy to the utterance. The truth of this
method is still more evident when we take for analysis a verse
from the eighth book of 'Paradise Lost,' at first sight singularly
inharmonious:-
Submiss; he reared me, and, Whom thou soughtest I am.'
6
Try to scan the line, and it seems a confusion of uncertain feet.
Read it over by itself, and its packed consonants offend the ear.
But now supply the context-
3
Rejoicing, but with awe,
In adoration at his feet I fell
Submiss; he reared me, and, "Whom thou soughtest I am,'
Said mildly, `Author of all this thou seest
Above, or round about thee, or beneath.'-P. L. viii. 319.
It is now seen that the word submiss belongs by the sense to the
preceding period; the words, he reared me, are a parenthesis of
quick and hurried narration; then another period commences.
So dependent is sound on sense, and so inextricably linked together
are the periods in a complex structure of blank verse. It not un-
frequently happens that a portion at least of the sound belonging
to a word at the commencement of a verse is owed to the cadence
of the preceding lines, so that the strain of music which begins is
wedded to that which dies, by indescribable and almost impercep-
tible interpenetrations. The rhythmic dance may therefore be pro-
longed through sequences and systems of melody, each perfect in
itself, each owing and lending something to that which follows and
E E 2
420
APPENDIX.
which went before, through concords and affinities of modulated
sound.
Notwithstanding the pliancy of the method here suggested for
the explanation of Miltonic verse, it is not easy to see the right
rhythm of some few of his lines. The following present peculiar
difficulties: since at first they seem like Alexandrines ; and yet
Milton's ear cannot be accused of letting an Alexandrine pass, nor
again have they the right Alexandrine pause ; while the striking
similarity in the endings of these abnormal verses suggests at least
some method in their irregularity :-
Imbued, bring to their sweetness no satiety.-P. L., viï. 216.
For solitude sometimes is best society.-P. L., ix. 249.
Such solitude before choicest society.-P. R., i.
302.
And linked itself by carnal sensuality.—'Comus,' 474.
The last instance, which is at once explained by pronouncing
sensual’ty as if it had but three syllables, gives perhaps the key to
the others. Though the English usage of words in iety precludes
their elision to the extent required, we must imagine that Milton
sometimes gave to such words as satiety and society the value of
three syllables by treating the ie almost as if it were a diphthong.
The words would then stand at the end of the lines, each forming a
full foot, followed by the licensed redundant syllable. It must,
however, be mentioned that, in ‘ Paradise Lost' at least, Milton does
not often make use of the hendecasyllabic line, and also that in
two instances (* Paradise Lost, viii. 383, and ix. 1007) he uses society
as a quadrisyllable. The ordinary way of explaining such lines is
to say that they have two syllables redundant, which is of course
a statement of the fact. But here a difficulty which often meets us
in English scansion, owing to the different values given at different
times to the same word, has to be faced. Society will play its part
as two good feet in one line, and in another will have to do service
as a single foot or its equivalent. The phenomenon is common
enough in dramatic blank verse, where accelerated and vehement
enunciation justifies it.
It may here be remarked that Milton's familiarity with what he
calls the various-measured verse' of the ancient poets, and with
the liquid numbers of the Italian hendecasyllable, determined, to
some extent, his treatment of our blank verse. The variety of
cadence and elaborate structure of Virgil's hexameters no doubt
incited hinı to emulation. He must have felt that the unincum-
a
APPENDIX.
421
verses.
bered eloquence, which is suited to the drama, where perspicuity is
indispensable, would be out of place in the stationary and sonorous
epic. Therefore, without seeking to reconstruct in English the
metres of the ancients, he adapted the complex harmonies of the
Roman poets to the qualities of our language. Like Virgil, he
opened his paragraphs in the middle of a line, sustaining them
through several clauses, till they reached their close in another
hemistich at the distance of some half a dozen carefully conducted
His pauses, therefore, are of the greatest importance in
regulating his music. From the Italians, again, he learned some
secrets in the distribution of equivalent masses of sound. Milton's
elisions, and other so-called irregularities, have affinities with the
prosody of Dante : for while the normal Italian hendecasyllable
runs thus-
Mo su, mo giù, e mo ricirculando,
the poet of the Inferno dares to write-
Bestemmiavano Iddio e i lor parenti;
е
which is an audacity on a level with many of Milton's.
Two elements of harmony in verse remain to be considered,
each of which constitutes a large portion of Milton's music, and
without which his pompous rhythm would often be hard and frigid.
These are alliteration and assonance. Alliteration is the repetition
of the same consonant at the beginning of words in a sentence.
Assonance is the repetition of the same vowel in words which do
not rhyme strictly. It is well known that the northern nations
employed alliteration and not rhyme as the element of melody in
poetry. The Vision of Piers Ploughman, for example, is written in
a metre of which this is a specimen :-
In habit as a harmot unholy of works
Went wide in the world wonders to hear.
Assonance, again, is used by the Spanish poets in the place of the
fuller rhyme required by our ear. Words like pain and flare are
assonantal. The brief mention of these facts proves that alliteration
and assonance can satisfy the craving for repeated sounds in poetry
to which modern ears are subject ; since each of them has taken the
place of rhyme in systematically cultivated literatures. It cannot
be denied that the singsong jingle of the alliterative couplet just
quoted is intolerable to an educated sense ; and it is on this account
422
AFPENDIX.
.
that alliteration has fallen into general disrepute. Nothing is
easier than to turn it to ridicule. When Shakspere, in ‘Love's
Labour's Lost,' made Master Holofernes say-
I will something affect the letter, for it argues facility;
The preyful princess pierced and pricked a pretty pleasing pricket,
he threw contempt upon the vulgar and illiterate abusers of an
ornament they did not understand. Nothing, again, is easier than
to make verses that skip or hobble on alliterative crutches. Our
ears are wearied with periods like the following:
Creeps through a throbbing light that grows and glows
From glare to greater glare, until it gluts,
And gulfs him in.
Yet in spite of all this the lofty muse of Milton owes no small
portion of her charm to this adornment. In order to understand
the Miltonic use of alliteration, it must be remarked that the faults
of the verses just quoted are due to the alliteration being forced
upon the ear. It is loud and strident, not flattering the sense by
delicate suggestion and subtle echoes of recurring sound, but taking
it by storm and strumming, as it were, relentlessly upon one nerve.
In good alliterative structures the letters chime in at intervals: two
or three consonantal sounds are started together, and their recur-
rences are interwoven like the rhymes in terza rima. Here is an
instance-
Far off from these a slow and silent stream,
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls
Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.-P. L. ii. 582.
Here the letters f and I predominate ; but they are assisted by
alliterations of s and r and w and g. Next, it may be shown that
really melodious alliteration owes much to medial and final as well
as to initial consonants, and also to the admixture of cognate
letters, such as por t in structures where b or d predominate. The
first of these points is illustrated by a strongly alliterative passage
in Paradise Lost' (v. 322), where, however, it must be admitted
that Milton has erred into alliterative monotony :-
Small store will serve, where store,
All seasons, ripe for use hangs on the stalk;
Save what by frugal storing firmness gains
To nourish, and superfluous moist consumes.
a
APPENDIX.
423
а
It will here be noticed that the sibilants, wherever they occur,
whether at the beginning, the middle, or the end of the words, are
felt. It is rare to find a structure of repeated s in Milton. Some
letters lend themselves more than others to harmonious alliteration,
and Milton shows decided preference for f, l, m, r, and w. D and
h are letters which he uses not always with melodious effect, as in
the following passage :-
But, lest his heart exalt him in the harm
Already done, to have dispeopled heaven,
My damage fondly deemed, I can repair
That detriment.-P. L., vii. 150.
We may compare, with the two examples just given, those in which
mere liquid sounds are employed, even though profusely, so as to
observe how far more delicate is the usic of the verse. Here
sequence of f and I -
Fairer than feigned of old, or fabled since
Of faery damsels, met in forests wide
By knights of Logres, or of Lyones,
Lancelot or Pelleas or Pellenore.-P. R., ii. 358.
Here is one in which w predominates :-
Sails between worlds and worlds with steady wing,
Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan
Winnows the buxom air; till within soar
Of towering eagles to all the fowls he seems
A phenix.-P. L., V. 268.
Three other instances of very marked alliteration may be pointed
out, to prove the frequence of repeated sounds which Milton some-
times allowed himself. They are as follows:-
War wearied hath performed what war can do,
And to disordered rage let loose the reins,
With mountains as with weapons armed, which makes
Wild work in heaven and dangerous to the main.
P. L., vi. 695
But drive far off the barbarous dissonance
Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard
In Rhodopé, where woods and rocks had ears
To rapture.-P. L., vii. 32.
· See, however, P. L., vii. 295.
424
APPENDIX
Moon that now meetest the orient sun, now fliest,
With the fixed stars, fixed in their orb that Aies;
And ye five other wandering fires, that move
In mystic dance not without song.-P. L., v. 175.
To these may be added · Paradise Lost,' vi. 37-55, a fine instance
of interlinked alliterations, f, r, l, m, p, b, determining the structure;
while in ‘Paradise Lost' (vi. 386–405) we find a similar system of
d, f, r, p, v. The famous passage at the end of the fifth book, which
describes the retirement of Abdiel from the rebel army, exhibits
splendid alliterative qualities in combination with Milton's favourite
sequence of adjectives beginning with un.
Another point, besides the interlacement of sounds and inter-
vention of subsidiary letters, which have been already mentioned,
characterises the alliteration of Milton. He confines his allitera-
tive systems to periods of sense and metrical construction. When
the period is closed, and the thought which it conveys has been
expressed, the predominant letter is dropped. Thus there subsists
an intimate connection between the metrical melody and the
alliterative harmony, both aiding the rhetorical development of the
It consequently often happens that the alliteration is de-
scriptive or picturesque, as in the lines about the Parthian bowmen-
Flying behind them shot
Sharp sleet of arrowy showers against the face
Of their pursuers.-P. R. iii. 323.—(Compare P. L., vi. 211-213.)
sense.
The descriptive pomp of the alliterative system is more remarkable
in the passage where Raphael relates the division of earth from
water-
Immediately the mountains huge appear,
Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave
Into the clouds; their tops ascend the sky,
So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low
Down sunk a hollow bottom, broad and deep,
Capacious bed of waters. Thither they
Hasted with glad precipitance, up-rolled,
As drops on dust conglobing, from the dry;
Part rise in crystal wall, or ridge direct,
For haste; such flight the great command impressed
On the swift floods. As armies at the call
Of trumpet-for of armies thou hast heard-
Troop to their standard, so the watery throng,
APPENDIX.
425
Wave rolling after wave, where way they found;
If steep, with torrent rapture, if through plain,
Soft-ebbing : nor withstood them rock or hill;
But they, or underground, or circuit wide
With serpent error wandering, found their way,
And on the washy ooze deep channels wore.
P. L. vii, 285-303.
Here the letters b and h, not inaptly, mark the firmness and
resistance of the earth, while w and r depict the liquid lapse of
waters.
Enough, perhaps, has now been said to prove that the harmony
of Milton's verse depends very greatly upon alliteration ; and here
it may be observed that he not unfrequently repeats the same word,
as much with a view to the recurrence of sound, as with a rhetorical
intention. In Paradise Regained' (iii. 109) there is a period of
twelve lines in which we find the word glory eight times repeated,
and the alliteration strengthened by five subsidiaryg's. At the 205th
line of the same book, there is a period of six verses containing
worse five times, supported by three subsidiary w's. In each of
these cases the repetition is of course rhetorically studied. A very
remarkable instańce of the grandeur resulting from simple reitera-
tion is the following:
If I foreknew,
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault;
Which had no less proved certain unforeknown.-P. L. iii. 117.
a
The assonance of various forms of the o sound adds to the volume
of the music in these lines.
Assonance, though not so obvious as alliteration, is no less
potent. Of its place in Milton's versification something must be
said. To begin with, the poet was himself very sensitive to the
harmony of vowel sounds when well pronounced. In his Epistle
to Master Hartlib, he lays it down as a rule that, in the education
of youths, 'their speech is to be fashioned to a distinct and clear
pronounciation, as near as may be to the Italian, especially in the
vowels. For we Englishmen, being far northerly, do not open our
mouths in the cold air wide enough to grace a southern tongue,'
This also would be the place to discuss the occasional rhymes found
in Milton's blank verse. P. L. xi. 853-860 has no less than six assonantal
endings. See, too, P. L. iv. 957. P. L. i. 612.
426
APPENDIX.
&c. His blank verse abounds in open-mouthed, deep-chested a's
and o's. Here is a passage in which their assonance is all the more
remarkable from the absence of alliteration-
Say, Goddess, what ensued when Raphael,
The affable Archangel, had forewarned
Adam, by dire example, to beware
Apostasy, by what befell in Heaven
To those apostates; lest the like befall
In Paradise to Adam or his race,
Charged not to touch the interdicted tree, &c.—P. L., vii. 40.
assonance.
The opening lines of Book ii., the passage about Mulciber at the
end of Book i., and the great symphonious period which describes
the movement of the fallen angels 'to the Dorian mood of Autes
and soft recorders,' all serve to illustrate the gorgeousness of Milton's
In attempting to characterise the effect of these deep-
toned vowels, it is almost necessary to borrow words from the art
of colours, since what colours are to painting vowels are to verse.
It would seem, after drinking in draught after draught of these in-
toxicating melodies, as if Milton with unerring tact had selected
from the English language only such words as are pompous, full-
sounding, capable of being wrought into the liquid architecture of
articulate music. Discord, who is so busy in the lines of even
mighty poets, stands apart and keeps silence here. That tenuity
of sound and want of volume from which the periods of otherwise
great versifiers occasionally suffer, never occurs in Milton. Like
Virgil he is unerringly and unremittingly harmonious. Music is
the element in which his genius lives, just as light is the element
of Pindar, or as darkness covers the 'Inferno' like a pall.
" 1
Having attempted an analysis of the melody of Milton's blank
verse, it remains to speak about the changes which may be traced in
it from the date of ‘Comus' to that of Samson Agonistes.' 'Comus,'
as might have been expected both from the time of its composition
and its form, is the one of Milton's masterpieces in which he has
adhered most closely to the traditions of the Elizabethan drama.
His style, it is true, is already more complex and peculiarly har-
monious, more characteristically Miltonic, than that of any of the
dramatists. Yet there are passages in Comus which remind us
forcibly of Fletcher. Others, like the following-
6
6
APPENDIX.
427
How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence, through the empty vaulted night!
At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smiled,
might have been written by Shakspere. Alliteration is used freely,
but more after the manner of Fletcher or of Spenser, not with
the sustained elaboration of Milton's maturity. The truly Miltonic
licences are rare: we find fewer inverted sentences, less lengthy
systems of concatenated periods,-in a word, a more fluent and
simpler versification. Both in the imagery and the melody of
'Comus' there is youthful freshness, an almost wanton display of
vernal bloom and beauty. In the 'Paradise Lost' we reach the man-
hood of the art of Milton. His elaborate metrical structure, sup-
ported by rich alliteration and assonance, here attains its full
development. Already too there is more of rugged and abrupt
sublimity in the blank verse of the 'Paradise Lost' than can be found
in that of 'Comus.' The metre, learned in the school of the Eliza-
bethan drama, is being used in accordance with the models of the
Roman Epic. Yet the fancy of the poet has not yet grown chill
or lost luxuriance, nor has his ear become less sensitive to every
musical modulation of which our language is capable. 'Paradise
Regained' presents a marked change. Except in descriptive pas-
sages, there is but little alliterative melody; while all the harsh in-
versions and rugged eccentricities of abnormally constructed verses
are retained. It is noticeable that hendecasyllabic lines, which are
but sparingly used in 'Paradise Lost,' only two occurring in the first
book, become frequent in 'Paradise Regained,' and add considerably
to the heaviness of its movement. These, for example, are found
within a short space in the first book :-
One day forth walked alone, the Spirit leading.
Awakened in me swarm, while I consider.
These gnawing thoughts my mother soon perceiving.
A star not seen before in heaven appearing.
•
No doubt there are admirers of Milton who would not allow that
the metrical changes in 'Paradise Regained' are for the worse. Yet
it is hardly to be denied that, in comparison with the 'Paradise
Lost,' much of richness, variety, sonorousness, and liquid melody
has been sacrificed. 'Samson Agonistes' is a step beyond 'Paradise
Regained' in dryness, ruggedness, and uncompromising severity.
428
APPENDIX.
The blank verse is shorn of alliterative and assonantal harmony,
except in the last speech of Manoah, and in a few of the more pensive
passages scattered up and down the drama. Still it displays every
form of the true Miltonic meter in so far as audacities of accent and
accumulations of compacted syllables are concerned. To the lover
of the most exalted poetry, 'Samson Agonistes,' even as regards
its versification, may possibly offer a pleasure more subtle and more
rare than 'Paradise Lost,' with all its full-toned harmonies. It has
the grandeur of a play of Sophocles which, after passing through
the medium of the Latin genius, has deen committed to Engl sh by
the loftiest of modern poets in austere old age. 'Comus' shows the
style of the master in his earliest manhood, with the luxuriance
of an untamed youth, the labyrinthine blossoms of an unpruned
fancy. Paradise Lost' exhibits the same richness, mellowed by
age and subordinated to the laws of abstruse and deeply studied
proportion. In 'Paradise Regained' the master has grown older,
and his taste is more severe. In Samson Agonistes' colour and
melody have lost their charm for him, though he preserves
his mighty style, restraining it within limits prescribed by a
taste ascetically grave. In 'Comus' we have the glowing hues of a
Giorgione, with a comparatively weak design. In 'Paradise Lost'
the design of a Michelangelo is added to the colouring of a
Titian. In 'Paradise Regained' both colour and design are of the
great Florentine. In 'Samson Agonistes' the design is still that
of Michelangelo; but the picture is executed en grisaille, in severest
chiaroscuro, careful only of the form. Fortunately we know the
dates of Milton's masterpieces. There is therefore no uncertainty
or subjectivity of criticism in the analysis of these changes in his
manner; at the same time they are precisely what we might have
expected à priori—the intellectual gaining on the sensual qualities
of art as the poet advanced in age.
APPENDIX.
429
NOTE ON THE 'ORFEO.
See p. 242.
POLIZIANO'S 'Orfeo' was dedicated to Messer Carlo Canale, the
husband of that famous Vannozza who bore Lucrezia and Cesare
Borgia to Alexander VI. As first published in 1494, and as re-
published from time to time up to the year 1776, it carried the title
of 'La Favola di Orfeo,' and was not divided into acts. Frequent
stage-directions sufficed, as in the case of Florentine 'Sacre Rap-
presentazioni,' for the indication of the scenes. In this earliest
redaction of the 'Orfeo' the chorus of the Dryads, the part of
Mnesillus, the lyrical speeches of Proserpine and Pluto, and the
first lyric of the Mænads are either omitted or represented by
passages in ottava rima. In the year 1776, the Padre Ireneo Affò
printed at Venice a new version of 'Orfeo, Tragedia di Messer
Angelo Poliziano,' collated by him from two MSS. This play is
divided into five acts, severally entitled 'Pastoricus,' 'Nymphas
Habet,' 'Heioïcus,' 'Necromanticus,' and 'Bacchanalis.' The
stage-directions are given partly in Latin, partly in Italian; and
instead of the 'Announcement of the Feast' by Mercury, a prologue
consisting of two octave stanzas is appended. A Latin Sapphic
ode in praise of the Cardinal Gonzaga, which was interpolated in
the first version, is omitted, and certain changes are made in the
last soliloquy of Orpheus. There is little doubt, I think, that the
second version, first given to the press by the Padre Affò, was
Poliziano's own recension of his earlier composition. I have, there-
fore, followed it in the main, except that I have not thought it neces-
sary to observe the somewhat pedantic division into acts, and have
preferred to use the original 'Announcement of the Feast,' which
proves the integral connection between this ancient secular play
and the Florentine Mystery or 'Sacra Rappresentazione.' The
last soliloquy of Orpheus, again, has been freely translated by me
430
APPENDIX.
from both versions for reasons which will be obvious to students of
the original. I have yet to make a remark upon one detail of my
translation. In line 390 (part of the first lyric of the Mænads),
the Italian gives us :
Spezzata come il fabbro il cribro spezza.
This means literally : “Riven as a blacksmith rives a sieve or
boulter. Now sieves are made in Tuscany of a plate of iron,
pierced with holes; and the image would therefore be familiar to
an Italian. I have, however, preferred to translate thus :-
Riven as woodmen firtrees rive,
instead of giving :-
Riven as blacksmiths boulters rive,
because I thought that the second and faithful version would be
unintelligible as well as unpoetical for English readers.
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