takes care to attribute the depravity of the nobles to their total idleness. Throughout his whole satire he shows himself bent upon the generous project of repairing the disgrace of his country, and never incurs the suspicion that he would only satisfy his private animosities.

Soon after the appearance of this poem, all those of easy circumstances in the middle classes, and the few patricians who, being addicted to literary pursuits, were the natural opponents of the great body of the nobles, interested themselves with the Austrian government in providing for Parini. They persuaded that government to found a professorship of eloquence expressly for their favourite, who justified the high expectations entertained of him; and, by his efforts in his new capacity, gave a stability to his rising reputation. He was indeed by nature qualified more than any one, perhaps, of his contemporaries, to give lessons on the belles lettres, and to perform that task in a way totally dif ferent from that usually employed in the Italian schools. There was a gravity, and at the same time an ease, in his eloquence, which enabled him to cite the examples of former great writers with a powerful effect, and to illustrate them with new and brilliant observations. He applied the various theories of the sublime and beautiful not only to the productions of the pen, but to all the creations of nature; and many of his contemporaries, already in possession of literary renown, were not ashamed to put themselves to the school of Parini. Those persons, and readers in general, were perhaps surprised to find, when they came to peruse his dissertations in print, that the ideas, although just, were seldom very profound: that a clear method, a chaste style, and an ingenious view of the subject, were their chief merit; but that the flow of words, the soul, the fire of expression and sentiment, had vanished with the delivery, and that the genius, and even the polished correctness of the poet, were not to be recognised in the discourses of the rhetorician.

Parini was so painfully scrupulous, and at the same time so idle a writer, that he never published more than the

two first cantos of his poem, the whole of which does not amount to four thousand lines. The two last cantos were published after his death, and they contain several halffinished verses, a great many variations, and two large chasms, which a long life was, it seems, too short to enable him to fill up to his satisfaction. This severity of taste he applied to others as well as to himself; and it was his favourite expression, when speaking even of Virgil and Horace," We should study them in those passages where they are not mortal men like ourselves." From such a master the youth of Milan imbibed a delicacy of taste bordering upon affectation, and these scruples were easily cherished in a people less given to poetry than any other of the inhabitants of Italy. Indeed Parini himself is the only distinguished poet that this city has produced from the revival of letters to the present day.

In addition to this individual propensity, it may be remarked that a severity of judgment prevails more or less with all the Italians, who are, as it were, saturated with poetry, and are besides accustomed to disregard the matter in comparison with the manner of metrical expression-a feeling deducible from the surpassing variety and beauty and strength of their language. Add to this that they judge all modern compositions with a reference to their most ancient poets, whom they worship with a veneration almost superstitious.

Parini was not remarkable for his erudition, and knew but very little Greek. He could not write Latin, but he felt all the beauties of the Roman writers, and made them perceptible to his audience. His favourite Italian studies were Dante, Ariosto, and the 'Aminta' of Tasso; yet he imitated none of these great writers; and it may be said of him as of our own Swift, that it would be difficult to point out a single idea that he has borrowed from his predecessors. He may be called an imitator, inasmuch as he sedulously traced back to their great constituent causes the effects produced by the old writers, and then made use of his discovery; but his manner is altogether his own; is

inspired by his own genius, and attempered by his own. inexorable taste. He followed the rule of Horace which inculcates the sacrifice of every thought, however noble, which is found incapable of embellishment; and he renounced the adoption of those beauties, which vulgar readers are apt to call natural, but which in fact are obvious and commonplace.

Treatises upon the fine arts, and more particularly the lives of celebrated artists, were his favourite and constant study. Amongst the few books which he possessed at the time of his death, his executors found two copies of "Vasari's Biography,' both of them worn away by repeated perusal. He never applied either to drawing or to music, but he was perfectly well acquainted with the theory, and sensible to the charms, of both, and the most celebrated professors had frequent recourse to his advice. His posthumous works furnish us with the ideas, the composition, and even the details of several pictures which he had communicated to distinguished artists, and which are now to be seen, faithfully executed according to his directions, in many of the palaces at Milan. Parini employed, indeed, his whole life in carrying into practice the maxim that poetry should be painting; for, with the exception of Dante, the other Italian poets have only occasional pictures: all the rest is but description. Parini effected by dint of meditation that which was the natural production of the wonderful genius of Dante, and it would be difficult to point out ten consecutive lines in the ' Giorno' from which a painter might not extract a complete picture, with all the requisite varieties of attitude and expression.

Parini also published in his lifetime about twenty odes, of which the Italians consider four as inimitable, six or seven of the others tolerable, and the remainder absolutely bad. The whole of them bear a nearer resemblance to those of Horace than of Pindar, but neither of them has a shadow of likeness to the lyric poetry of Petrarch, or of Chiabrera, or of Guidi. Not only the style, but even the language appears quite different. It is his constant practice here, as in the Giorno' to avoid detailed descriptions

and to throw out his images in mass and at one stroke of his pencil. He has also the same object in view; namely, the correction of national manners.

The ode addressed to a young woman of eighteen, who had adopted the Parisian fashion, then called "robe à la guillotine," is written in a style more than usually intelligible to a foreign reader. The beauty and the innocence of the maiden are presented under colours that contrast admirably with the depravity of mind and manners which the poet foresees must be the consequence of imitating so vile an example.

"Oh nato da le dure

Selci chiunque togliere
Da scelerata scure

Osò quel nome, infamia
Del secolo spietato ;
E diè funesti augurii
Al femminile ornato;

E con le truci Eumenidi
Le care Grazie avvinse;
E di crudele immagine
La tua bellezza tinse."!!

He digresses to the history of the ancient Roman females, from the earliest times to those days of cruelty and corruption when they thronged the gladiatorial shows, and a Vestal gave the signal for the slaughter.

"Potè all' alte patrizie

Come alla plebe oscura
Giocoso dar solletico

La soffrente natura.

Che più? Baccanti e cupide
D'abbominando aspetto

Sol dall' uman pericolo

Acuto ebber diletto;

E da i gradi e da i circoli
Co' moti e con le voci,
Di già maschili, applausero
A i duellanti atroci :

Creando a sè delizia
E de le membra sparte,
E de gli estremi aneliti,
E del morir con arte."

The poet has contrived that the progress of his ideas shall correspond with the gradual corruption with which the imprudent imitation of novelty seduces by little and little the incautious female into the worst practices of debauchery.

The biographer of Parini, who has furnished the greater portion of the preceding account, has been accused of swelling out the works of his author into six volumes, although those published during his lifetime scarcely occupy two hundred pages;* and perhaps we may add that, of all the posthumous works, little more than the two last cantos of his ' Giorno' deserved to be rescued from that obscurity to which they had been consigned by their scrupulous author.

It is true that none of them are deficient in affording instruction to those who delight in the study of human nature, and love to watch the development of the mind. The odes which are reckoned Parini's best were composed in his old age; and such of the verses as appear in their first form, and as were not intended for publication, are remarkable chiefly for their good sense, and for their unaffected taste. But their imagery is not abundant; their style has little warmth, and the thoughts are commonplace and trite; yet they enable us to form some conception of the time and labour employed in the elevation and constant support of a style which frequently borders upon sublimity. His commerce with mankind laid open to him the most secret recesses of the heart, and furnished him with that acquaintance with our natural foibles of which he discovers so intimate a knowledge in his principal poem, and in his odes. In the same manner his continued and minute contemplation of nature in all her varieties furnished him with the beauties necessary for his poetical purposes, and enabled him to recognise their recurrence in the old classical writers, and to copy them with success.

* See Opere di Giuseppe Parini, publicate ed illustrate da Francesco Reina, vol. vi. in 8vo., Milano, 1801.

VOL. II.