ART. XII.—Quadro della Storia Letteraria di Armenia, estesa da Mons Placido Lukias Somal, Arcivescovo di Liunia, ed Abate-Générale della Congregazione dei Monaci Armeni Mechitaristi di San Lazzaro.(A Sketch of the History of Armenian Literature, by Placido Lukias Somal, Archbishop of Liunia, and Abbot-General of the Congregation of Armenian Mechitarist Monks of St. Lazarus.) Venice. 1829. We have no intention of betraying the incautious reader into the investigation of a study which he may judge so unprofitable as the language and literature of Armenia; nor in fact did we cherish the wish insidiously to perpetrate such a literary guet-a-pens, would the volume now before us offer a decent pretext for accomplishing the meditated purpose, although unexceptionably adapted to that which we actually have in view. This Quadro supplies not a fragment of Armenian composition, in prose or rhyme, to translate. It is simply an historical sketch, written in Italian, of Armenian literature, recording the epochs of its glory, its decay, and its revival, and enumerating its principal authors, together with their works. Could we ask a happier occasion of doing three things we avow our desire to do?—namely, satisfying the interest which we conceive Lord Byron's fancy for these Armenian Monks must have awakened in the minds of his admirers, touching that apparent anomaly, an Armenian monastery in Italy; directing the attention of the studious to a line of research hitherto, we apprehend, little more than a dead letter, save to an exceedingly limited number; and informing the great mass of general readers, who probably have no other idea of Armenians than as vagabond pedlars in outlandish garb, of some few curious facts respecting the language and literature of a little known and much despised race.

We shall speak, first, of the Mechitarist Monastery of San Lazzaro, over which the learned prelate, the author of the book before us, now presides, and its origin.

Most of our readers are, we presume, aware that the larger portion of Armenia forms part of Turkey in Asia, as also, probably, that the industrious natives, who, in pursuit of gain, traverse every province of the Turkish dominions, abound at Constantinople, where they are indulged with several religious establishments. But not so many may be equally aware that the Armenian Church is divided by a great schism; somewhere about one half, both of clergy and laity, having attached themselves to the Roman Catholic creed, who are condemned as heretics by the adherents to the old Oriental Church, and in their turn reprobate as heterodox those of their brethren who persevere in the faith of their forefathers. At Constantinople, these last predominate, or did so at least in the year 1700, when Mechitar Pedrosian, a Catholic Armenian, founded a new monastery in the Moslem capital, of which he was himself appointed abbot. Being persecuted by the adverse sect, he fled with his monks to the Morea, then subject to Venice, and established his monastery, to which he attached an academy, at Modon. Here both flourished, but not permanently. The Morea reverted to the Ottoman sceptre, and in 1717 the worthy abbot transferred his monastery and academy to Venice, where upon the island of San Lazzaro, one of the more detached of the

60, 70, or 130 (geographers are not agreed as to the number) islets which constitute the substratum of the inhabited portion of Venice, it has ever since remained and prospered. In honour of its founder it is called Mechitarist.

Abbot Mechitar, during the remainder of his life, diligently and successfully exerted himself, taking advantage of a situation that enabled him to combine the knowledge of Europe with that of his native land, to render his monastic college the principal seat of Armenian erudition and education. Thither all such of his countrymen as desire a superior degree of cultivation for their offspring habitually send their sons for instruction. The best Armenian printing press extant is the Mechitarist, from which press issues a newspaper, permitted by the Turks, under certain restrictions, to circulate among their Armenian subjects; and neither the monks nor their superiors neglect any of the opportunities for improvement that they possess. Their chief literary occupations are indeed more useful to their less enlightened countrymen than interesting to strangers, namely, translating into Armenian the classic works of France, Italy, England, and Germany. But that in this endeavour to enrich Armenia with the treasures of Europe, they do not undervalue their native lore, we have practical demonstration in the interesting work of which we are now about to offer a very brief abstract.

But before we speak of Armenian authors and their works, we must mention one fact concerning the language, which is important, namely, that the language of literature is not that of ordinary life and business. The former is called Haican, from Haico, the reported progenitor of the nation; the latter Armenian. This appears, however, to be a modern distinction, the relative condition of the two languages being now what that of all the languages derived from the Latin was during the middle ages, when French, Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese, were but so many corrupt jargons, each in its own country called emphatically the vulgar tongue, in which scholars no more thought of writing than we should of inditing this article in broad Yorkshire, had the chance of birth made that dialect our especial vernacular. Thus the Armenian language and literature of the nineteenth century offer us an interesting living illustration of one of the characteristics of the middle ages.

*

We now turn to the Quadro. In it our learned prelate has recorded the names and merits of upwards of 220 authors, besides those whom he qualifies as unknown, meaning thereby that their names only are known, from being mentioned or quoted by compatriot writers. Amongst these 220 we find historians, theologians, poets (chiefly sacred), philologists, geographers and mathematicians; but the first two classes constitute a large majority. Of course we shall not follow our author through the list, but content ourselves with extracting from his details a short account of the origin, fall, and revival of Armenian literatute, and mentioning one or two of the names which are still esteemed the glory of their country and language.

Among these we may notice the "Travels of Macarius," published by the Oriental Translation Fund Committee, which throw much light on what may be called the "transition geography" of history.

The most learned Armenian antiquaries do not, we believe, pretend to trace their literature further back than about 150 years before the Christian era, when two Parthian brother princes, Arsaces and Valarsaces, reigned over Persia and Armenia. The latter monarch, being a lover of letters, was inquisitive touching the cicumstances of his kingdom in time past, and employed Marabas Catina, whom our reverend author calls "a very learned man, and indeed one of the most sublime geniuses of those times," (something of a compliment when we recollect what those times were,) to write a bistory of Armenia. Marabas obeyed, collecting his materials from old Persian documents preserved at Nineveb, and laid open to his examination by Arsaces, king of Persia, as well as from other sources. He completed his task down to the very period at which he wrote, and the work is said to have earned him the title of the Armenian Herodotus. He was followed by some half-dozen historians and Heathen theologians, if we may so designate believing writers upon mythology, and, our Mechitarist abbot doubts not, by a multitude of others altogether forgotten. But even of the commemorated few, and of the Armenian Herodotus himself, the names and the nature of their works is all we know or can hope to know. Their productions have long been lost, but have not thus become quite valueless, inasmuch as they were the sources whence later Armenian writers, who have survived, compiled their works.

The authors who lived in the fourth century of the Christian era are the first whose writings have been preserved. Christianity then prevailed in Armenia, her writers were princes and prelates; and this is esteemed what the abbot of San Lazzaro calls the first, and we should rather term the beginning of the golden age of literature, a period, be it remembered, when classical literature was fast decaying.

But the fifth century was the real golden age of Haican literature, which thus, for a while at least, seems to have thriven in proportion as classical splendour faded away. This century was fruitful in authors, and was further distinguished by two events important to the progress of learning. The Armenians had till then had no alphabet of their own, indifferently using Greek, Syriac, and Persian characters. Early in the fifth century Mesrop Masdoty invented an appropriate Haican alphabet of thirty-eight letters, still called, in honour of the inventor, Mesropian, and employed as capitals, since others, of more convenient form, have supplanted them in common use. About the same time schools were, by the favour of the Armenian sovereign, instituted throughout Armenia, and the scholars there trained exerted themselves in producing Haican versions of the Bible, and of the master-pieces of Greece and Rome.* To these circumstances we may probably ascribe the great developement of native talent that ensued.

One of the most distinguished authors who now appeared was Archbishop Moses Chorenensis, or Chorenabyi, according to the Armenian formation of a surname for the birthplace. Besides innumerable invaluable translations, he wrote a history of Armenia, (relying for the early

Our learned prelate some years since published a Quadro of translations into Armenian.

part upon our friend Marabas, and many others, of whom the names only have descended to modern times,) a treatise upon rhetoric, and a treatise upon geography, all of which, together with some homilies, have been preserved, as well as some hymns still habitually sung in the Armenian church service. A number of smaller works, which his reverend panegyrist denominates operette, have entirely or partially perished; and of Moses Chorenabyi's Commentaries upon Haican Grammar only a few fragments remain, inserted as quotations in the productions of later and more fortunate writers. Moses' History of Armenia was printed in England, in the first half of the last century, by the sons of the celebrated W. Whiston, and most judiciously with a Latin version, as at that time no Englishman, and only two continental scholars,* understood Haican.

As we desire only to attract some portion of attention to Armenian literature and its Mechitarist cultivators, what we have said of the multifarious labours of Archbishop Moses Chorenabyi may suffice as a sample of the kind of authors who adorned or constituted this golden age. With the fifth century the era closed, and the remainder of our history may be briefly despatched. In the sixth century Haican literature first remained stationary, and then began to decline. With every succeeding century, to the sixteenth inclusive, the decline became more decided, more rapid, and the very genius of the language was corrupted by attempts to assimilate its grammar to the Latin. Nevertheless we do not mean to say there were no authors during this contemned period: on the contrary, they abounded, but, in a literary sense, they were worthless, and some are even accused of writing in Armenian, not Haican. A few histories, however, national, Tartar, Arab, &c., some of them in verse, and deserving esteem for the information they contain, are carefully preserved even of the worst times.

In the seventeenth century Armenian schools and colleges arose in the east and in the west; Armenian printing presses were set up in various towns, and Armenian literature began to revive. Again historians, theologians, and poets wrote in choice Haican, and amongst the rest the only improvisatore mentioned by our author flourished, Nerses Moghensis, or Moghabyi. In the eighteenth century the revival was complete, very much owing to the zealous and judicious exertions of the already commemorated Mechitar Pedrosian. His academy still yields excellent scholars in their own and other languages, and Armenian literature promises fair to participate in the vigorous stimulus which throughout Europe literature seems in these latter times to have received. The only reason we see for apprehending that it may not fully keep this promise, is the disadvantage of writing in a dead language, not in that of impulse and passion, that in which we think, feel, converse, and transact all the business of life.

These two singularly erudite philologists were La Croze, librarian to the king of Prussia, and Schroeder, Professor of Oriental Languages at Marburg.

ART. XIII.-Les Consultations du Docteur Noir. Stello, ou les Diables Bleus (Blue Devils).* Par le Comte Alfred de Vigny. Première Consultation. Paris, 1832. 8vo.

Or Count Alfred de Vigny we have already had more than once occasion to speak, and that with more or less of praise according as he devoted himself to the narrative or the dramatic style. In the former we really think him one of the very few imitators of Sir Walter Scott, who have actually caught a spark of the genial fire that has so long delighted the whole reading world, and turned away the stigma formerly attaching to the perusal of works of prose fiction. De Vigny's Cing Mars possessed a degree of graphic truth and vigour in the historical portraits, which, although far from rivalling, yet reminded us of those wondrous resuscitated and embodied realities, Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, and Quentin Durward. With Cinq Mars full in our recollection, we eagerly opened the polyonymous volume before us. But this is no historic novel. It is a production altogether sui generis, and we must endeavour by a brief sketch of it to enable the reader to devise an appropriate designation for this clever but whimsical literary nondescript.

Stello, a youthful poet, the representative, we shrewdly suspect, of the talented author, is troubled with the blue devils, whom he describes as so many flesh and blood demons, of the magnitude of gnats, hammering, sawing, and drilling away at various phrenological protuberances of his skull. And one result of their labours seems to be, a passion for representative monarchy, and a consequent inclination to abandon the worship of the muses, and plunge into the labyrinths of politics. The invalid's real malady being, as the perspicacious reader will perhaps have conjectured, the contempt generally expressed for poets, and his real object to establish a state of the world in which poets and poesy shall enjoy meet and suitable honours.

The physician called in to cure the ostensible disease, who is called indifferently Dr. Black and the black doctor, (le Docteur Noir, and le noir docteur,) and whom the patient says he consults as equally a healer of the mind as of the body, administers, by way of remedy, these stories, intermixed with an infinity of philosophical discussion, and all intended to establish as a fact, that under every form of government, poets are, and ever have been, treated with contempt and aversion by those in power. The first story recounts the fate of the poet Gilbert, under the despotic Louis XV.; the second that of Chatterton, under the Constitutional British Monarchy; the third that of André Chenier, under the democratic reign of Terror; and in all, the narrator represents himself as an actor, or at least a spectator. Of these stories we infinitely prefer the last, and that for many reasons. In the first two, besides that the catastrophe of each deviates entirely from historical fact, the author endeavours to depict manners as he has gathered them from books; and were we to estimate the delineation of French court

The translation is Count A. de Vigny's; we copy the title page with our best accuracy.

+ See vol. iii. p. 314, and vol. ix. p. 78, of F. Q. R.