The Works of Lord Byron Volume II Part 82

Every footstep of Laura's lover has been anxiously traced and recorded.

The house in which he lodged is shown in Venice. The inhabitants of Arezzo, in order to decide the ancient controversy between their city and the neighbouring Ancisa, where Petrarch was carried when seven months old, and remained until his seventh year, have designated by a long inscription the spot where their great fellow citizen was born. A tablet has been raised to him at Parma, in the chapel of St. Agatha, at the cathedral, because he was arch-deacon of that society, and was only s.n.a.t.c.hed from his intended sepulture in their church by a _foreign_ death. Another tablet, with a bust, has been erected to him at Pavia, on account of his having pa.s.sed the autumn of 1368 in that city, with his son-in-law Brossano. The political condition which has for ages precluded the Italians from the criticism of the living, has concentrated their attention to the ill.u.s.tration of the dead.

10.

In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire, And Boileau, whose rash envy, etc.

Stanza x.x.xviii. lines 6 and 7.

Perhaps the couplet in which Boileau depreciates Ta.s.so may serve as well as any other specimen to justify the opinion given of the harmony of French verse--

"a Malherbe, a Racan, prefere Theophile, Et le clinquant du Ta.s.se a tout l'or de Virgile."

_Sat_. ix. v. 176.

The biographer Sera.s.si,[578] out of tenderness to the reputation either of the Italian or the French poet, is eager to observe that the satirist recanted or explained away this censure, and subsequently allowed the author of the _Jerusalem_ to be "a genius sublime, vast, and happily born for the higher flights of poetry." To this we will add, that the recantation is far from satisfactory, when we examine the whole anecdote as reported by Olivet.[579] The sentence p.r.o.nounced against him by Bouhours[580] is recorded only to the confusion of the critic, whose _palinodia_ the Italian makes no effort to discover, and would not, perhaps, accept. As to the opposition which the _Jerusalem_ encountered from the Cruscan academy, who degraded Ta.s.so from all compet.i.tion with Ariosto, below Bojardo and Pulci, the disgrace of such opposition must also in some measure be laid to the charge of Alfonso, and the court of Ferrara. For Leonard Salviati, the princ.i.p.al and nearly the sole origin of this attack, was, there can be no doubt,[581] influenced by a hope to acquire the favour of the House of Este: an object which he thought attainable by exalting the reputation of a native poet at the expense of a rival, then a _prisoner of state_. The hopes and efforts of Salviati must serve to show the contemporary opinion as to the nature of the poet's imprisonment; and will fill up the measure of our indignation at the tyrant jailer.[582] In fact, the antagonist of Ta.s.so was not disappointed in the reception given to his criticism; he was called to the court of Ferrara, where, having endeavoured to heighten his claims to favour, by panegyrics on the family of his sovereign,[583] he was in turn abandoned, and expired in neglected poverty. The opposition of the Cruscans was brought to a close in six years after the commencement of the controversy; and if the Academy owed its first renown to having almost opened with such a paradox,[584] it is probable that, on the other hand, the care of his reputation alleviated rather than aggravated the imprisonment of the injured poet. The defence of his father and of himself, for both were involved in the censure of Salviati, found employment for many of his solitary hours, and the captive could have been but little embarra.s.sed to reply to accusations, where, among other delinquencies, he was charged with invidiously omitting, in his comparison between France and Italy, to make any mention of the cupola of St. Maria del Fiore at Florence.[585] The late biographer of Ariosto seems as if willing to renew the controversy by doubting the interpretation of Ta.s.so's self-estimation[586] related in Sera.s.si's life of the poet. But Tiraboschi had before laid that rivalry at rest,[587]

by showing that between Ariosto and Ta.s.so it is not a question of comparison, but of preference.

11.

The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust The iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves.

Stanza xli. lines 1 and 2.

Before the remains of Ariosto were removed from the Benedictine church to the library of Ferrara, his bust, which surmounted the tomb, was struck by lightning, and a crown of iron laurels melted away. The event has been recorded by a writer of the last century.[588] The transfer of these sacred ashes, on the 6th of June, 1801, was one of the most brilliant spectacles of the short-lived Italian Republic; and to consecrate the memory of the ceremony, the once famous fallen _Intrepidi_ were revived and reformed into the Ariostean academy. The large public place through which the procession paraded was then for the first time called Ariosto Square. The author of the _Orlando_ is jealously claimed as the Homer, not of Italy but Ferrara.[589] The mother of Ariosto was of Reggio, and the house in which he was born is carefully distinguished by a tablet with these words: "Qui nacque Ludovico Ariosto il giorno 8. di Settembre dell' anno 1474." But the Ferrarese make light of the accident by which their poet was born abroad, and claim him exclusively for their own. They possess his bones, they show his arm-chair, and his inkstand, and his autographs.

"......Hic illius anna, Hic currus fuit......"

The house where he lived, the room where he died, are designated by his own replaced memorial,[590] and by a recent inscription. The Ferrarese are more jealous of their claims since the animosity of Denina, arising from a cause which their apologists mysteriously hint is not unknown to them, ventured to degrade their soil and climate to a Boeotian in capacity for all spiritual productions. A quarto volume has been called forth by the detraction, and this supplement to Barotti's Memoirs of the ill.u.s.trious Ferarrese, has been considered a triumphant reply to the "Quadro Storico Statistico dell' Alta Italia."

12.

For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves.

Stanza xli. lines 4 and 5.

The eagle, the sea calf, the laurel, and the white vine,[591] were amongst the most approved preservatives against lightning: Jupiter chose the first, Augustus Caesar the second, and Tiberius never failed to wear a wreath of the third when the sky threatened a thunder-storm.[592]

These superst.i.tions may be received without a sneer in a country where the magical properties of the hazel twig have not lost all their credit; and perhaps the reader may not be much surprised that a commentator on Suetonius has taken upon himself gravely to disprove the imputed virtues of the crown of Tiberius, by mentioning that a few years before he wrote a laurel was actually struck by lightning at Rome.[593]

13.

Know, that the lightning sanctifies below.

Stanza xli. line 8.

The Curtian lake and the Ruminal fig-tree in the Forum, having been touched by lightning, were held sacred, and the memory of the accident was preserved by a _pateal_, or altar resembling the mouth of a well, with a little chapel covering the cavity supposed to be made by the thunder-bolt. Bodies scathed and persons struck dead were thought to be incorruptible;[594] and a stroke not fatal conferred perpetual dignity upon the man so distinguished by heaven.[595]

Those killed by lightning were wrapped in a white garment, and buried where they fell. The superst.i.tion was not confined to the worshippers of Jupiter: the Lombards believed in the omens furnished by lightning; and a Christian priest confesses that, by a diabolical skill in interpreting thunder, a seer foretold to Agilulf, duke of Turin, an event which came to pa.s.s, and gave him a queen and a crown.[596] There was, however, something equivocal in this sign, which the ancient inhabitants of Rome did not always consider propitious; and as the fears are likely to last longer than the consolations of superst.i.tion, it is not strange that the Romans of the age of Leo X. should have been so much terrified at some misinterpreted storms as to require the exhortations of a scholar, who arrayed all the learning on thunder and lightning to prove the omen favourable; beginning with the flash which struck the walls of Velitrae;, and including that which played upon a gate at Florence, and foretold the pontificate of one of its citizens.[597]

14.

There, too, the G.o.ddess loves in stone.

Stanza xlix. line 1.

The view of the Venus of Medicis instantly suggests the lines in the _Seasons_; and the comparison of the object with the description proves, not only the correctness of the portrait, but the peculiar turn of thought, and, if the term may be used, the s.e.xual imagination of the descriptive poet. The same conclusion may be deduced from another hint in the same episode of Musidora; for Thomson's notion of the privileges of favoured love must have been either very primitive, or rather deficient in delicacy, when he made his grateful nymph inform her discreet Damon that in some happier moment he might perhaps be the companion of her bath:--

"The time may come you need not fly."

The reader will recollect the anecdote told in the _Life of Dr.

Johnson_. We will not leave the Florentine gallery without a word on the _Whetter_. It seems strange that the character of that disputed statue should not be entirely decided, at least in the mind of any one who has seen a sarcophagus in the vestibule of the Basilica of St. Paul without the walls, at Rome, where the whole group of the fable of Marsyas is seen in tolerable preservation; and the Scythian slave whetting the knife, is represented exactly in the same position as this celebrated masterpiece. The slave is not naked; but it is easier to get rid of this difficulty than to suppose the knife in the hand of the Florentine statue an instrument for shaving, which it must be, if, as Lanzi supposes, the man is no other than the barber of Julius Caesar.

Winckelmann, ill.u.s.trating a bas-relief of the same subject, follows the opinion of Leonard Agostini, and his authority might have been thought conclusive, even if the resemblance did not strike the most careless observer.[598] Amongst the bronzes of the same princely collection, is still to be seen the inscribed tablet copied and commented upon by Mr.

Gibbon.[599] Our historian found some difficulties, but did not desist from his ill.u.s.tration. He might be vexed to hear that his criticism has been thrown away on an inscription now generally recognised to be a forgery.

15.

In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie.

Stanza liv. line 1.

This name will recall the memory, not only of those whose tombs have raised the Santa Croce into the centre of pilgrimage--the Mecca of Italy--but of her whose eloquence was poured over the ill.u.s.trious ashes, and whose voice is now as mute as those she sung. Corinna is no more; and with her should expire the fear, the flattery, and the envy, which threw too dazzling or too dark a cloud round the march of genius, and forbad the steady gaze of disinterested criticism. We have her picture embellished or distorted, as friendship or detraction has held the pencil: the impartial portrait was hardly to be expected from a contemporary. The immediate voice of her survivors will, it is probable, be far from affording a just estimate of her singular capacity. The gallantry, the love of wonder, and the hope of a.s.sociated fame, which blunted the edge of censure, must cease to exist.--The dead have no s.e.x; they can surprise by no new miracles; they can confer no privilege: Corinna has ceased to be a woman--she is only an author; and it may be foreseen that many will repay themselves for former complaisance, by a severity to which the extravagance of previous praises may perhaps give the colour of truth. The latest posterity--for to the latest posterity they will a.s.suredly descend--will have to p.r.o.nounce upon her various productions; and the longer the vista through which they are seen, the more accurately minute will be the object, the more certain the justice, of the decision. She will enter into that existence in which the great writers of all ages and nations are, as it were, a.s.sociated in a world of their own, and, from that superior sphere, shed their eternal influence for the control and consolation of mankind. But the individual will gradually disappear as the author is more distinctly seen; some one, therefore, of all those whom the charms of involuntary wit, and of easy hospitality, attracted within the friendly circles of Coppet, should rescue from oblivion those virtues which, although they are said to love the shade, are, in fact, more frequently chilled than excited by the domestic cares of private life. Some one should be found to portray the unaffected graces with which she adorned those dearer relationships, the performance of whose duties is rather discovered amongst the interior secrets, than seen in the outward management, of family intercourse; and which, indeed, it requires the delicacy of genuine affection to qualify for the eye of an indifferent spectator. Some one should be found, not to celebrate, but to describe, the amiable mistress of an open mansion, the centre of a society, ever varied, and always pleased, the creator of which, divested of the ambition and the arts of public rivalry, shone forth only to give fresh animation to those around her. The mother tenderly affectionate and tenderly beloved, the friend unboundedly generous, but still esteemed, the charitable patroness of all distress, cannot be forgotten by those whom she cherished, and protected, and fed. Her loss will be mourned the most where she was known the best; and, to the sorrows of very many friends, and more dependants, may be offered the disinterested regret of a stranger, who, amidst the sublimer scenes of the Leman lake, received his chief satisfaction from contemplating the engaging qualities of the incomparable Corinna.

16.

Here repose Angelo's--Alfieri's bones.

Stanza liv. lines 6 and 7.

Alfieri is the great name of this age. The Italians, without waiting for the hundred years, consider him as "a poet good in law."--His memory is the more dear to them because he is the bard of freedom; and because, as such, his tragedies can receive no countenance from any of their sovereigns. They are but very seldom, and but very few of them, allowed to be acted. It was observed by Cicero, that nowhere were the true opinions and feelings of the Romans so clearly shown as at the theatre.[600] In the autumn of 1816, a celebrated improvisatore exhibited his talents at the Opera-house of Milan. The reading of the theses handed in for the subjects of his poetry was received by a very numerous audience, for the most part in silence, or with laughter; but when the a.s.sistant, unfolding one of the papers, exclaimed _The apotheosis of Victor Alfieri_, the whole theatre burst into a shout, and the applause was continued for some moments. The lot did not fall on Alfieri; and the Signor Sgricci had to pour forth his extemporary common-places on the bombardment of Algiers. The choice, indeed, is not left to accident quite so much as might be thought from a first view of the ceremony; and the police not only takes care to look at the papers beforehand, but, in case of any prudential afterthought, steps in to correct the blindness of chance. The proposal for deifying Alfieri was received with immediate enthusiasm, the rather because it was conjectured there would be no opportunity of carrying it into effect.

17.

Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose.

Stanza liv. line 9.

The affectation of simplicity in sepulchral inscriptions, which so often leaves us uncertain whether the structure before us is an actual depository, or a cenotaph, or a simple memorial not of death but life, has given to the tomb of Machiavelli no information as to the place or time of the birth or death, the age or parentage, of the historian.

TANTO NOMINI NVLLVM PAR ELOGIVM NICCOLAVS MACHIAVELLI.

There seems at least no reason why the name should not have been put above the sentence which alludes to it.

It will readily be imagined that the prejudices which have pa.s.sed the name of Machiavelli into an epithet proverbial of iniquity exist no longer at Florence. His memory was persecuted, as his life had been, for an attachment to liberty incompatible with the new system of despotism, which succeeded the fall of the free governments of Italy. He was put to the torture for being a "libertine," that is, for wishing to restore the republic of Florence; and such are the undying efforts of those who are interested in the perversion, not only of the nature of actions, but the meaning of words, that what was once _patriotism_, has by degrees come to signify _debauch_. We have ourselves outlived the old meaning of "liberality," which is now another word for treason in one country and for infatuation in all. It seems to have been a strange mistake to accuse the author of _The Prince_, as being a pander to tyranny; and to think that the Inquisition would condemn his work for such a delinquency. The fact is, that Machiavelli, as is usual with those against whom no crime can be proved, was suspected of and charged with atheism; and the first and last most violent opposers of _The Prince_ were both Jesuits, one of whom persuaded the Inquisition "benche fosse tardo," to prohibit the treatise, and the other qualified the secretary of the Florentine republic as no better than a fool. The father Possevin was proved never to have read the book, and the father Lucchesini not to have understood it. It is clear, however, that such critics must have objected not to the slavery of the doctrines, but to the supposed tendency of a lesson which shows how distinct are the interests of a monarch from the happiness of mankind. The Jesuits are re-established in Italy, and the last chapter of _The Prince_ may again call forth a particular refutation from those who are employed once more in moulding the minds of the rising generation, so as to receive the impressions of despotism. The chapter [xxvi.] bears for t.i.tle, "Esortazione a liberare l'Italia da' Barbari," and concludes with a _libertine_ excitement to the future redemption of Italy. "Non si deve adunque lasciar pa.s.sare questa occasione, acciocche la Italia vegga dopo tanto tempo apparire un suo redentore. Ne posso esprimere con quale amore ei fusse ricevuto in tutte quelle provincie, che hanno pat.i.to per queste illuvioni esterne, con qual sete di vendetta, con che ostinata fede, con que pieta, con che lacrime. Quali porte se gli serrerebbero? Quali popoli gli negherebbero l'ubbidienza? Quale Italiano gli negherebbe l'ossequio? AD OGNUNO PUZZA QUEs...o...b..RBARO DOMINIO."[601]

18.

Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar.

Stanza lvii. line 1.

Dante was born in Florence, in the year 1261. He fought in two battles, was fourteen times amba.s.sador, and once prior of the republic. When the party of Charles of Anjou triumphed over the Bianchi, he was absent on an emba.s.sy to Pope Boniface VIII., and was condemned to two years'

banishment, and to a fine of 8000 lire; on the non-payment of which he was further punished by the sequestration of all his property. The republic, however, was not content with this satisfaction, for in 1772 was discovered in the archives at Florence a sentence in which Dante is the eleventh of a list of fifteen condemned in 1302 to be burnt alive; _Talis perveniens igne comburatur sic quod moriatur_. The pretext for this judgment was a proof of unfair barter, extortions, and illicit gains. _Baracteriarum iniquarum extorsionum et illicitorum lucrorum_,[602] and with such an accusation it is not strange that Dante should have always protested his innocence, and the injustice of his fellow-citizens. His appeal to Florence was accompanied by another to the Emperor Henry; and the death of that Sovereign in 1313 was the signal for a sentence of irrevocable banishment. He had before lingered near Tuscany with hopes of recall; then travelled into the north of Italy, where Verona had to boast of his longest residence; and he finally settled at Ravenna, which was his ordinary but not constant abode until his death. The refusal of the Venetians to grant him a public audience, on the part of Guido Novello da Polenta, his protector, is said to have been the princ.i.p.al cause of this event, which happened in 1321. He was buried ("in sacra minorum aede") at Ravenna, in a handsome tomb, which was erected by Guido, restored by Bernardo Bembo in 1483, praetor for that republic which had refused to hear him, again restored by Cardinal Corsi, in 1692, and replaced by a more magnificent sepulchre, constructed in 1780 at the expense of the Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga. The offence or misfortune of Dante was an attachment to a defeated party, and, as his least favourable biographers allege against him, too great a freedom of speech and haughtiness of manner.

But the next age paid honours almost divine to the exile. The Florentines, having in vain and frequently attempted to recover his body, crowned his image in a church,[603] and his picture is still one of the idols of their cathedral. They struck medals, they raised statues to him. The cities of Italy, not being able to dispute about his own birth, contended for that of his great poem, and the Florentines thought it for their honour to prove that he had finished the seventh Canto before they drove him from his native city. Fifty-one years after his death, they endowed a professorial chair for the expounding of his verses, and Boccaccio was appointed to this patriotic employment. The example was imitated by Bologna and Pisa, and the commentators, if they performed but little service to literature, augmented the veneration which beheld a sacred or moral allegory in all the images of his mystic muse. His birth and his infancy were discovered to have been distinguished above those of ordinary men: the author of the _Decameron_, his earliest biographer, relates that his mother was warned in a dream of the importance of her pregnancy: and it was found, by others, that at ten years of age he had manifested his precocious pa.s.sion for that wisdom or theology, which, under the name of Beatrice, had been mistaken for a substantial mistress. When the _Divine Comedy_ had been recognised as a mere mortal production, and at the distance of two centuries, when criticism and compet.i.tion had sobered the judgment of the Italians, Dante was seriously declared superior to Homer;[604]

and though the preference appeared to some casuists "an heretical blasphemy worthy of the flames," the contest was vigorously maintained for nearly fifty years. In later times it was made a question which of the Lords of Verona could boast of having patronised him,[605] and the jealous scepticism of one writer would not allow Ravenna the undoubted possession of his bones. Even the critical Tiraboschi was inclined to believe that the poet had foreseen and foretold one of the discoveries of Galileo.--Like the great originals of other nations, his popularity has not always maintained the same level. The last age seemed inclined to undervalue him as a model and a study: and Bettinelli one day rebuked his pupil Monti, for poring over the harsh and obsolete extravagances of the _Commedia_. The present generation having recovered from the Gallic idolatries of Cesarotti, has returned to the ancient worship, and the _Danteggiare_ of the northern Italians is thought even indiscreet by the more moderate Tuscans.

There is still much curious information relative to the life and writings of this great poet, which has not as yet been collected even by the Italians; but the celebrated Ugo Foscolo meditates to supply this defect, and it is not to be regretted that this national work has been reserved for one so devoted to his country and the cause of truth.

19.

Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding sh.o.r.e: Thy factions, in their worse than civil war, Proscribed, etc.