America. On this point indeed we must hold him wrong, but he was consistent. He always maintained these two positions; viz., that the superintending power of the mother country was to be strictly maintained, and the allegiance of the colonists preserved; and also that England had no right, according to the principles of the constitution, to tax them without their consent.

He viewed America as a county in Great Britain, and conceived that the mutual rights and duties which would appertain to Kent or Yorkshire, existed exactly in the same degree and extent with respect to America. He considered that the misconduct of the government in driving the colonists to rebellion, for the assertion of the right of self-taxation, had produced their independence, and this event he regarded as of the most direful character. The consequences have, in truth, been of the most beneficial kind to both countries, but who shall say that some of the evils that may possibly still exist in their mutual feelings would not have been avoided, had America and England parted on friendly instead of hostile terms?

Lord Chatham delivered a speech full of his accustomed energy, and concluded with this remarkable sentence, which was the last he ever uttered in parliament,

My Lords, any state is better than despair. Let us at least make one effort, and if we must fall, let us fall like men!"

Such were the last words of the great Earl! In uttering them he received his death stroke. "And if we must fall, let us fall like men!" How unhappily, but how exactly appropriate! Those burning words convey a more impressive and distinct idea of his character than whole pages of the most laboured dissertation could possibly do. The Duke of Richmond replied to him, and while he was speaking, Lord Chatham looked at him with attention and composure, but when he rose to answer his strength failed him, and he fell backwards. He was instantly supported by those who were near him, and every one pressed round him with anxious solicitude.

-

He was carried home to Hayes, and never rose again from his bed! "Therefore," justly observes the contemporaneous historian of the striking event (so familiar to us all, from the splendid painting which commemorates it in the National Gallery) "his death may be properly said to have happened in the House of Lords, in the discharge of his great political duty, a duty which he came in a dying state to perform! Such was the glorious end of this great man!" Yes, glorious indeed! In the arena of his triumphs, in the field of his long and noble contests for the liberty of his countrymen, Chatham continued to assert what he honestly, whether wisely or not, felt to be the just prerogative and the genuine glory of England. Untired to the end, undeterred by his physical suffering and weakness, his great soul sustained his sinking frame, and would not permit him to cease from his public duty, till he could use that exhausted body no longer in the service of his country. Illustrious man! -we venerate thy memory with grateful admiration. Let us essay, though at an immeasurable distance, to follow in thy footsteps, and to emulate thy example.

* Seward's Anecdotes of distinguished Persons, vol. ii. p. 383.

GENERAL VIEW OF MODERN ITALIAN LITERATURE.

Opere di Manzoni. PROMESSI SPOSI.

Ettore Fieramosco. By AzEGLIO.

L'Assedio de Firenze. By GUALANDI.

Marco Visconti. By GROSSI.

Bibliographia degli Italiani Illustri del Secolo XVIII. By TEPALDI.

We propose to give in the following pages a general view of modern Italian literature in its two departments of poetry and prose, compressed and rapid as the nature of the subject and the limits prescribed necessarily ordain. The immense number of meritorious works which claim our attention are more to be inferred than numbered by a similar catalogue raisonnée; and we are conscious that a numerous band of writers, particularly those of the very latest dates, have been unavoidably omitted. Other critical journals, however (and ourselves among the rest), have already made the public au courant du jour with respect to all works having claim to any note which the Italian press has published during the last and present years. Those of which we are about to treat have not hitherto been presented to them in such a form as to give a coup d'œil of the Italian mind. It is this task which at present we shall attempt to perform, rushing at once in medias res.

The great work of Italian literature in the beginning was to develop with genius, and raise to a pure, polished, and yet strongly original form, all the germs of poetry originated in the night of the Middle Ages. Dante expressed in his colossal work the fulness of the symbols of the Catholic theology, beheld from its sublimest heights and from its darkest and deepest abysses. Petrarch sang a Christian love veiled by chastity, which, in its most impassioned flights, appealed only to the mystic joys of heavenly hope. Boccacio, coming after them, was also inspired by the poetical traditions of the Middle Ages, but selected the profane side of those traditions. He preferred the gaiety of the Trouveres to the more lyrical inspiration of the Troubadours of the South. He effected for the derisive Tales of the one what Petrarch had done for the amorous Chansons of the others. Boccacio led Italian poetry from its ideal path into the sphere of the finite and real. With Dante Italian poetry had left finite time and space to hover in the ́universe of time and space so high that earth scarcely appeared to it at all, or as narrow, circumscribed, and wretched, melancholy as a cell where one prays, or an abode where one avenges, weeps, and dies. With Petrarch the Muse had traversed earth somewhat less mournfully, but veiled, like Modesty, and sad as the love of a solitary heart, with her eyes, like Hope, fixed always upon heaven. With Boccacio the Christian maiden had become a woman devoted to pleasure, but still credulous and superstitious. She refused already to submit to the mandates of the pope, but joyfully bent beneath his benediction; she passed all her time in abusing the priests, but took good care never to miss the mass. A little later this woman metamorphosed herself still more; she was still the young and sprightly dame, but she had read the Greeks and Latins, and had profited well by her reading. She knew all the treasures of the East, and was covetous of them. The magicians had seduced her; the enchanters had endowed her with their marvellous gifts. Fairy and Peri she issued from the cities of Italy to wander over all the world: she disdained the humble roof of smoky

houses for the verdant dome of forests, where her ring knew how to create, in the twinkling of an eye, palaces of crystal, paved with diamonds, all peopled with genii, and here and there chequered with smiling' howers of roses. Speak no more to her of hell; she believed no longer in it - she laughed at it; and, as for paradise, her paradise was upon earth! Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto- these are the symbols of the three forms of Italian literature-forms which, down to the last century, were continually imitated as invariable types.

The close of the last, and the commencement of the present centuries, beheld three new generations of poets in Italy, those devoted to ancient forms, or forms merely extrinsic, without popularity or passions other than such as were merely personal, or, if political, tinged with hatred or fear; next, the friends of the new forms, believing in an era of improvement, and animated by generous hope; then the writers who were devoted to truth and novelty, with a love still warmer, and an ardour still more intense. Poetry, descending from on high, began to exhibit herself once more, and truth and reality added to her beauty.

At the head of the first band was Monti, dead some ten or twelve years since, according to the journals, but dead for some twenty or thirty, if we are to believe common report. His life alternated between flattery and apology, insulting through weakness, and repenting through weakness the one the weakness of fear, the other the weakness of pride; - a mind not venal, but weak from education, and without any deep convictions or strong affections holding the place of them, swayed by women, by friends, or by fortune, just as it might happen. At times, however, he ventured upon the truth, and among the best of his poetry may be quoted the "Aristodemo," the "Gracchi," some passages of his " Mascheroniana," and a few lyrics and verses of his "Prometheus." The "Basvilliana," admired for the artifice of its style, is an imitation, not of the creations, but of the phrases of Virgil and Dante. An imitator himself, he left no imitators. The growing generation held up his life as an example to be shunned, not imitated, and compassion alone rescued him from infamy.

One poet surpassed him in his idolatry of forms-Cesare Arici, the author of a poem, "Pastorizia," and of some didactic and descriptive verses, praised for their elegance, and certainly superior to those of the French Delille; but with him didactic and descriptive poetry expired. Vittorelli sang with Metastasian facility his chaste loves; and that languid and effeminate style ended also with him. Neat, clear, and harmonious, he sings from the lips, but seldom from the heart. In burlesque poetry a few smiles are perceived here and there, but forced and melancholy like those of a sick or imbecile man. The poetry of the various Italian dialects, so fertile a few years before in caricatures, satires, and novels, is now silent. The Milanese Porta is dead, as are also the Sicilian Meli, the Piedmontese Calvi, the Venetian Buratti-ingenious versifiers, with the exception of Meli, who was something more, who, with a little more inspiration, might have been poets. Meli, however, was a genius of a superior order, and the Sicilian dialect, in which he wrote, may boast of a worthy successor to Theocritus. The following are specimens of his sonnets:

Montagnoli interrutti da vaddati.

Green airy mountains, sloped by shelving plains,

Cliffs, with hoar moss and gadding thyme o'ergrown,

Clear falling waters, bright as silvery veins,

Mute stagnant marshes, rivers murmuring on,

Rocks where the fawns lie hid in ambuscades,
Smooth-sliding currents crown'd with vocal reeds,
Sweet flowers, fantastic trees, sequester'd shades,
Damp caves, wherein the oozing nitre breeds,
Night-warbling birds that tune your labour'd song,
Echo that hears, and then doth all disclose,
Vines interlacing the elm leaves among
Dark intricate wild wood of trees and boughs,
O blest retreats! far from the vulgar throng
Receive the friend of peace and calm repose.

Pane chi intra gli sacre grutti oscuri
Une s'adura la tu' effigi santa.

Pan! who in caves and dark inwoven bowers,
Where thy great image is adored as king,
To me didst once appear and say, "O sing

The shepherd's life, the fields, the flocks, and flowers!"
And this sweet pipe, now to a reed transform'd,

(The nymph who did thy love whilome disdain,)

Thou gavest and saidst, "No voice hath wiser charm'd,
One youth except― the Syracusian swain."

Since to thine ears our songs have grateful been,
The ravenous wolves do thou in forests hide;
Accept the firstborn that our flock supplies;
Far distant drive ambition, pomp, and pride;
And if thy power a recreant one despise,
Ah! cast the impious man to dogs unclean!

Umbri figli da Notte uv' habitanno.

Dark Stygian shades, the eldest born of night,
Which in deep caves your gloomy horrors veil,
Ah! may a wretch among your wilds exhale
The soul whose hour supreme now wings its flight;"
And if with wandering steps the nymph should stray
More hard than marble to my mild complaints,
With mournful voice to cruel Cloris say -

Say that I die-then see if she laments.

If one vain tear should ever chance to rove

O'er my green tomb, think not from love it flows,
Or that my fate doth her compassion move,

For pity in that bosom never glows;

And if she sigh, 'tis not regret to prove

He is no more who perish'd for her love.

With the burlesque perished the sermon and the satire, a spurious genus between prose and poetry. Parini and Gozzi alone could, by a strong and forced effort, revive it for a little time in making irony and ridicule the vehicles of thought and tears. To them succeeded the acrid Zanoia, the soft Pindemonte, Elci, a strong but monotonous and elaborate writer, and, lastly, a lady-Teresa Vordoni. The sermon or epistle from the hands of Horace, an Epicurean courtier, passed into those of a poor gentleman, a pious and amorous Marchese di Verona, of a monk Bassano, and at last came to fall at the feet of a lady, in whose arms Italian satire died.

The Petrarchic lyre, with its long metres, its accumulated epithets, its laboured languor, and its cold elegance, for ever disappeared. Romagna, that cradle of the Arcadians, yet counts among its sons specimens of those despised versifiers whom it is neither right to praise nor to blame. Of all these the best is a young Neapolitan poetess, Teresa Guacci, who, under forms of Petrarchic elegance, conceals a fund of generous sentiments neutralised by the circumlocutions of her style. As the epistle ended in Vordoni, so did the Petrarchic canzone end worthily with Guacci.

The hereditary faculty of the improvisatrici exhausted itself in the Luccan

Bandetti and the Roman Taddei. To put an end for ever to all extemporaneous poetry, adorned by Cicconi, Giannone, and Sgricci, minds born for greater things, in the present day have arisen French and German improvisatori! But the best of all improvisatori are the people who, not in academies, but upon the mountains, amid nuptial feasts or funerals, give forth their songs. If more tropes are made, according to Dumarsais, in a market than in an academy, there is more poetry in the heart of a single Tuscan contadina than in all the collections of court poets from Metastasio to the present day. The style of lyrical poetry, pensive and affecting, sometimes painful, but always concentrated and strong, which Foscolo gave to the world in his "Sepolcri," had few and cold imitators. It is a poetry wholly of art and erudition, wherein every verse recalls a classic passage, and is a sort of harmonious quotation. To this species belong the strains of Giacomo Leopardi, elegantly despairing, prolixly mournful, and learnedly wearied of this miserable life.

The Alfierian Tragedy, arid, sententious without imagination or love, expired with Foscolo. His "Ricciarda" was its grave. Giambattista Niccolini imitated the declamatory wrath of the Piedmontese Count, but made the style brilliant, the verse powerful, the sentences varied, and the affections human. In "Nabuco," "Edipo," "Procida," and "Ludovico," there are things, which, were it for nothing else than the style, will live.

Italian Comedy, as in all parts of Europe at the time, was uncultivated in its style, and poor and affected in its matter. It is a species peculiar to times when the passions were great, and the defects variously contrasted, and when there was no universal principle upon which belief was founded which was not placed in ridicule or doubt. Even to laugh in earnest requires that we should believe in something-to believe in the truth which is contrasted with the defect at which we laugh. Nota, who is praised by many in Italy, does little but plagiarise and spoil the creations of the great Goldoni. Giraud alone-French by name, but Italian by family and origin -treats comedy with spirit and gaiety; and his "Aio nell' Imbarazzo," and some other sketches, are listened to with avidity.

The comic sketches of Zannoni, in which the dresses, language, and pronunciation of the lower classes of Florence are faithfully imitated, sometimes recall the wit of the ancient Tuscan comedy, and although disfigured with vulgarities, smack sufficiently of the inexpressible Tuscan elegance. Renowned for its proverbial stupidity, the musical drama comes next, nothwithstanding Italy may name, without a blush, two versifiers, Annelli and Romani. Many of Bellini's works and Donizetti's "Anna Bolena," however, owe not a little of their fame to the merits of their poetry.

Alfieri, Foscolo, Niccolini infused into art, if not the love of good, at least the hatred of evil they prepared the way for a new progeny; and at length the writers who were so tenacious of old forms, began to attemper their minds to the novelty, and either in their arguments or mode of treating them announced the march of civilisation, -a progress sufficiently marked by this abundance of imitations and variety of species peculiar to Italy, imitations of Dante and Petrarch, poetry, didactic and amorous, Metastasian and Alfierian, satirical and witty, vernacular and inaccessible to all save the learned, extemporaneous and epic. Amidst all this poverty of enthusiasm and fancy, Italy, in this portion of the century, reckons more epics than all Europe put together. Putting aside the "Camillo" of Carlo Botta, the embryo epics of Monti, the "Gerusalemme" of Arici, the "Cadmus" of Bagnoli, and such like, Ricci's two poems "Italia" and "San Benedetto" still remain-two great themes of Italian history, not un