LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES * c/0 TRANSLATION FROM THE ITALIAN OF FORTEGUERRI OF THE FIRST CANTO OF RICCIARDETTO ; WITH &n Introduction CONCERNING THE PRINCIPAL ROMANTIC, BURLESQUE, AND MOCK-HEROIC POETS. (NOT PUBLISHED.) LONDON : PRINTED BY THOMAS DAVISON, WHITEFRIARS. 1821. F7W INTRODUCTION. MY purpose in attempting the translation of the first Canto of Monsignor Forteguerri's Ricciar- detto subjoined to this prefatory discourse, was to try if I could convey to English readers any thing like an adequate idea of the style and character of that amusing Poem. But the most competent judges of my success in this attempt, must be persons, conversant not only with our own litera- ture, but with that of Italy, and particularly with the poets among the Italians who are generally ranked in the same class with Forteguerri. Definitions have been long said to be dangerous in Law*; they are also, though not so pro- verbially, dangerous in Science, and it may be added, that, if not dangerous, they are in many * " Definitiones in jure sunt periculosae." Law Maxim. b 978384 VI INTRODUCTION. respects inconvenient in matters of Literature. Perhaps, in that case, as in the others, their best and safest use is to assist arrangement, and serve as a sort of index to the different ideas which are treasured up in the memory, and become objects of our contemplation. As in the natural world it is found very difficult to fix the exact lines of demarcation even between the three great king- doms of Animal, Vegetable, and Fossil, or Mineral, and still more so, to draw the evanescent strokes which divide the different orders, classes, genera, and species in those several kingdoms, whatever system of nomenclature may have been adopted, so it has happened in things intellectual ; for ex- ample, in laying down accurate limits even be- tween prose and poetry, but yet more in classify- ing in a satisfactory manner by subdivisions, the different sorts of composition which are to be considered as belonging to the one or the other of those several provinces of literature. For general purposes the common division of Poetry into Epic, Dramatic, Didactic, Lyric, and Satiric, is sufficiently clear, and there are certain works which all the world will agree in placing INTRODUCTION. vii immediately under one or other of those heads. But when the Critics descend to fix the place of many poems which are of a mixed unsystematised description, they find themselves engaged in con- troversy, and embarrassed to decide whether this or that poem belongs to the one or the other of those classes, or is so much sui generis that it cannot with propriety be marshalled with any of them. It has never been questioned, I believe, that the Iliad and Tasso's Jerusalem belong to the head of Epopeia, but it has been maintained that the Paradise Lost has no right to be placed in that, which is usually considered as the highest station in poetry. Addison, in his well known analysis and commentary on that great boast of our country, proposes to settle the matter by placing it still higher, and calling it a Divine Poem. On the other hand, some ingenious lovers of singularity have assigned a place among Epic poerns to the ballad of Chevy Chase. These, in- deed, may be deemed too much of extreme cases to be adduced as proofs of the unsatisfactory na- ture of definitions. It is only in those instances where a particular poem seems to stand, as it b2 viii INTRODUCTION. were, on the verge between two of the established divisions, that, as in the case of the contiguous borders of the primary colours in the rainbow, it is difficult, or impossible to say to which of the conterminous classes it belongs. If the term Narrative, which has been lately introduced into the critical nomenclature, should be adopted instead of Epic, (which would then fall to be the appropriate name of a subdivision of the narrative) under that more comprehensive head, Ricciardetto would be, as indeed it has been, properly placed. It certainly is not Dramatic, Didactic, Lyric, nor Satiric ; its general tenor is narration, either by the Poet himself, or by his fictitious representative, the Muse : yet that spe- cies of the narrative admits of a greater or less proportion of the more peculiarly characteristic qualities of some other sorts. Where Dialogue is intermixed, it becomes in part Dramatic; a vein of disguised Satire may pervade it through- out ; and who shall deny, that in such a narrative poem as our Author's, might be introduced, with- out the necessity of changing its denomination, Lyric digressions like those which form such INTRODUCTION. IX happy ornaments to the exquisite compositions of Lord Byron, and Sir Walter Scott. Not to pursue such subtilties any farther, I think it sufficient to add here, that Ricciardetto is generally classed by the Italian Critics with the Morgante of Pulci, with the Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo, with that poem as new cast by Berni, and with the Mai man tile Racquistato of Lippi. These are often called Romantic and Chivalresque, being either founded on the chivalrous fictions so current and fashionable for centuries in all our western part of Europe, or imitating the nature and style of the wild and extravagant personages and adventures of those Romances. In this last predicament stands the Malmantile, and it par- takes in many other respects of the particular qualities of the other three. The Girone il Cor- tese of Alamanni is also Romantic, but founded on the fabulous history of the Round Table of King Arthur. The Amadigi of Bernardo Tasso is a Romantic poem, deriving, like the Morgante, and the Orlandos of Berni and Boiardo, its per- sonages from the fabulous histories concerning Charlemagne and his Paladins. But those two X INTRODUCTION. workshavesofewof the other characteristic features of that class, and which are much more essential to it than the mere substratum of fabulous nar- rative, that they cannot be held to belong to the same subdivision of poetry. A strain of comic humour, under the mask of ironical gravity, or chivalrous solemnity*; the frequent parodying of the very words, but more frequently of the elevation or pomp of Epic diction ; an almost constant mockery, quizzing, persiflage, or mystification-^, sometimes of his personages, sometimes of his readers, sometimes of his sup- posed audience ; not seldom poignant satirical al- lusions to public or private vices and follies ; to- gether with an intermixture of the more lofty or pathetic, or descriptive kinds of poetry : these are * " Cervantes' serious air." Pope. If Don Quixote had been in verse it would have been called a chivalrous burlesque or mock-heroic poem ; but being without poetical feet, which forms, though not the most essential, yet a necessary com- ponent part or ingredient in our common idea of poetry, it is no more in strictness and wholly a poem, than Cervantes, if he had been born without his natural feet, would have been wholly a man. \ Vide, infra, Note to Stanza 1. INTRODUCTION. XI all features distinctly marked in Forteguerri's work, and most of them also are in a greater or less degree to be found in the Morgante, the two Orlandos of Boiardo and Berni, and in the Mal- mantile. All the works I have mentioned are in what may be called the heroic stanza of the Italians, that stanza having long been, almost exclusively of other measures, employed by them in the higher sorts of poetry, in consequence of the transcendent fame of the Orlando Furioso which is written in it, and of the immortal work of Torquato Tasso, who, when his judgment and taste were at their full maturity, also preferred it to the Versi Sciolti, or blank verse of Trissino, as his father had previously done in his Amadigi, on perceiv- ing, as we are informed by Bernardo's Biographer, the then recent ill success of Trissino's Poem (the Italia Liberata) in that measure ; though in what- ever measure that poem had been written, there can be little doubt that it must have been equally unsuccessful. It is from the prevalence more or less of hu- mourous, good natured mockery in the works of Xll INTRODUCTION. the class of Poets to which our Author belongs, that they are commonly distinguished by the name of burlesque, derived immediately from the Italian word bur la, whose proper meaning is joke, or mockerv. Yet with regard to the Morgante there long subsisted a learned controversy among the Italian Critics whether it was not to be con- sidered as of the class of the true Epic. At first sight a modern reader must be surprised to find the great Torquato himself, in one of his numer- ous critical works referred to by Crescimbeni, reckoning Pulci in the number of renowned Epic Poets. But Tasso, who is proved by his own im- mortal work, to have had the justest idea of what constitutes the real Epic, undoubtedly meant, in the passage to which Crescimbeni refers, to use the word in a much more extensive sense than that to which it is now generally confined, namely, in the sense above expressed by " Narrative," founding himself on the interpretation which the original Greek word 'Etfof will admit of. Many of my readers must be aware of the little esteem in which the Morgante has in general been held out of Italy. Voltaire particularly has not INTRODUCTION. XU1 been sparing of his ridicule of it ; and the late ingenious author of a work " Sur la Litterature du Midi," who, as he writes in the French lan- guage, may on such subjects be considered as ultramontane, after describing it, as " by turns' low and burlesque, amusing and devout;" ob- serves particularly, " that all the Cantos begin by religious invocations, and that religion is con- tinually mixed in it with every adventure, in a manner the most strange and unedifying, so as to render it very difficult to reconcile that monkish sort of medley with the half Pagan character of the society of Lorenzo of Medicis, and to judge whether one ought to impute to Pulci the ex- tremest bigotry, or a mere profane derision of what ought to be held most sacred." With all its defects, the Morgante continues to retain . its popularity in Italy. It is still fre- quently reprinted in the different cities in that country ; and I am possessed of a small edition, very lately published at Cagliari in Sardinia, though Italian is there the language only of the higher ranks, and of persons connected with the government. But it is in Tuscany (the soil XIV INTRODUCTION. in which it grew) that it is in the highest re- pute, because there Pulci's pleasantry is natu- rally best understood*. What is considered as humour and wit, in any country or district, seems to be connected in no small degree with the peculiarities of the verna- cular phraseology of that particular country, and with the local manners and modes of thinking and acting of its inhabitants. Hence it is com- mon enough with different nations, to claim wit, and humour, (two things very distinct in many respects, but still in others so analogous and often so intimately combined, that they are commonly both mentioned at one and the same time), as exclusively or peculiarly their own. The French are seldom willing to share with any other nation the talent of wit, or the happy facility of " bons- mots," an expression I have been forced to adopt in order to limit the sense of their very vague * From such differences of opinion between Pulci's country- men and foreigners one might be tempted to say, that to have a proper taste for the beauties of his work his readers ought to have been born and bred on the banks of the Arno, as it was said that no one could be expected to relish the black broth of Sparta but such as had bathed in the Eurotas. INTRODUCTION. XV and general word " Esprit" The English again are often disposed to consider humour, as confined to the southern divisions of this island; and I have conversed with many English readers, who, though they admire the extraordinary talents dis- played in the late copious harvest of novels which Scotland has produced, have little relish for the humour of those parts of them that are written in the Scottish dialect, though that dialect is merely a mode of the self-same language which is and always has been, the mother tongue of the low country Scotch, as much as of their southern neigh- bours, and differs much less from pure and clas- sical English than the dialects of Venice, Lom- bardy, Naples, &c. differ from the pure Italian. Pulci, though a man of good family in Flo- rence, probably owed his familiar access to the table of Lorenzo, to his poetical vein, in many respects congenial to Lorenzo's own. There it has been conjectured that various stanzas of the Morgante were composed impromptu, and this will account for the flatness and triviality of many of the lines, and even of whole stanzas, resembling such as are often to be observed in the extern- XVI INTRODUCTION. porary effusions of the most eminent of the Italian " Improvisatori." On the whole, however, there must surely be some extraordinary beauties in the style of Mor- gante, otherwise the great Torquato would scarcely have believed, as it appears he did, that Marsilio Ficino, a man so conversant with the purest elo- quence of ancient Greece, was in part the real author. Nay there are others who have even gone so far as to suggest the probability that the whole was in truth the work of Politian, who had given it to be recited by Pulci, on account of a singular talent he had in that way ; that very Politian, whose famous stanzas on the tournament of Julian of Medicis are considered as the forerunners and models of the beautiful style in Ottava Rima, which was carried to such perfection in the succeeding century, by Ariosto and Tasso. If the Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo had no other intrinsic merit, it would be an interesting work, from its having led Ariosto's choice to the same subject; the far-famed Orlando Furioso being, as to its characters and incidents, a direct INTRODUCTION. XV11 continuation of Boiardo's. But Boiardo's work is entitled to the positive praise justly bestowed on it by Sismondi, of having carried the burlesque poetical narrative, by the invention of a great variety of amusing adventures, much beyond his contemporary Pulci. " II lui est bien sv> perieur," adds that author, " par la richesse du coloris, et 1'interet meme qui nait de la bravoure;" and, continues he, " les femmes y paraissent ce qu'elles doivent etre dans la chevalerie, 1'ame de tout le roman. Angelique surtout s'y montre deja avec tous ses charmes et toute sa puissance sur les plus braves chevaliers." Boiardo was a man of illustrious descent, and in his own right the feudal sovereign of Scandiano, and also governor of Reggio, under Hercules, first Duke of Ferrara. His style is reckoned unpo- lished, and partakes I believe of the inelegance which few writers in Lombardy were at that time able to avoid ; there being then no Vocabolario Delia Crusca to appeal to ; and not having lived to finish his poem, he probably had not given it that ultimate polish which he might otherwise have XVI11 INTRODUCTION. done. But though it milst perhaps be admitted that his verses are often harsh and uncouth, I can- not help thinking there is sometimes a sort of simple naivete in them, which neither Ariosto, his continuator, nor his professed reformer, Berni, have been able to surpass. It has, however, proved disadvantageous to the fame of Boiardo, that in general he has been so much improved by Berni in point of taste and elegance, though Berni has followed him very closely for the most part in the narrative parts. The great Ariosto is too often classed with the burlesque poets, who became so numerous after those patriarchs of that style of whom I have al- ready treated, that a mere catalogue of them would fill several pages. But Ariosto's genius soared so high above their level Ccetusque vulgares et udam Spernit humum fugiente penna that it seems a sort of derogation from his great name to rank him among them. It is true there is much burlesque in his poem ; but it is so rich INTRODUCTION. XIX in all the beauties of the higher poetry, that he ought to be contemplated alone in that vast in- termediate space which he occupies between the mere burlesque writers and the great masters of the true Epic.* This is not the place to discuss the question of the comparative merits of Tasso and Ariosto. That " vexata questio" has now been litigated by the critics of Italy for above two centuries, with as much eagerness as may have been observed sometimes in this country among the disputants concerning Dryden and Pope. As there has not yet been discovered any satisfactory standard of taste by which all the general lovers of poetry would be willing to weigh or measure their own sentiments or opinions, I am afraid the only safe refuge out of such controversies is to shelter one's * Alas ! I am afraid there are still readers, not only in our own country but in Italy itself, who consider Ariosto in no other light than that of a sort of poetical buffoon, who has strung together in pleasing rhymes a great number of merry and diverting, though absurd and extravagant, stories ; per- sons who would be ready to concur in the well known apostrophe addressed to the poet, by his illiberal, ungenerous, and tasteless patron, the Cardinal D'Este. XX INTRODUCTION. self under the trite but sensible maxim " that there is no disputing of tastes" (qu'il ne faut pas disputer des gouts.) As far as the principles of regular composition commonly acknowledged can influence the decision, this subject has been no where treated with so much impartiality as by Metastasio, in his Letter to Diodati, printed in the collection of his epistolary correspondence ; in my opinion one of the most elegant and candid morsels of criticism that is any where to be met with. Many will ever continue to think, from the infinite diversity of forms and colours which Ariosto's muse can assume 3 and the sweet variety of his numbers, * that his genius was superior to that of Tasso. But who can tell how much Tasso's fancy was restrained by the plan of com- position which his judgment had taught him to adopt, in order to produce the greatest effect; and, as a work, how is it possible to put the wild and desultory tissue of adventures and knight- errantry, of which the Orlando Furioso is com- * Those unapproachable (" inarrivabili") beauties of the Furioso, as Serassi, though the biographer and panegyrist of Tasso, expresses himself. INTRODUCTION. XXI posed, on a level with the majestic design and ex- ecution, consistent beginning, middle, and end, unequalled discrimination and shadowing of cha- racters constantly sustained, and from time to time adorned with the happy adoption and fre- quent improvement of the most striking beauties of the genius of former times, which have been thought to entitle the Gerusalemme Liberata to be considered as the most finished poem that exists in any language *. * One of the earliest, and, I believe, scarcest editions of the Gerusalemme, printed at Lyons in 1581, appresso Alessandro Marsilij, in 16mo. published by Angelo Ingegneri, and de- dicated by him to Charles Emanuel, Duke of Savoy ; a copy whereof I possess, and which now lies before me, contains at the beginning of the dedication so affecting a picture of the miserable state in which the unfortunate Torquato, after his escape from Urbino, arrived at the gates of Turin, that I hope I shall be pardoned for inserting it here. " Serenissimo Signore, due anni, e mezzo fa, quand' il povero Signor Torquato Tasso, portato dalla sua strana ma- ninconia, si condusse sin alle porte di Torino, onde, per non haver fede di sanita, venne ributtato ; fui quegl'io, che ritor- nando dalla Messa udita a Padri Capuccini, lui incontrato in- trodussi nella citta : fatte prima capaci le guardie delle nobili c XXll INTRODUCTION. Lippi, the author of il Malmantile Racquistato, a painter by profession, was born in 1606, more than half a century after the death of Ariosto, Boiardo, Berni, and Tasso. But though the Ge- rusalemme, in spite of the sort of persecution qualita sue ; lequali (come ch'ei fusse male all'ordine, e pedone) non pero afFatto si nascondevano sotto a si bassa fortuna." I have had my copy of that edition ever since the year 1769, long before Serassi's Life of Tasso appeared, and I had never then heard or read of the fact disclosed by that remarkable dedication, except in that original copy. The melancholy anecdote has been since incorporated into the body of Serassi's work, and the words of Ingegneri quoted verbatim in one of bis notes. But methinks the reading them in the very form and manner in which they may have first met the eyes of many of the contemporaries of Tasso, makes a different and deeper impression than when so transcribed. Whenever I have had occasion to turn to them, I have felt it scarcely possible to ab- stain from tears " E' se non piangi di che pianger suoli." The first entire edition of the Gerusalemme was printed at Venice, 1580, in 4to. There were no less than seven editions in 1581, five of them in 4to., one in I2mo., and the one I have mentioned in I6mo. ; and of that in 12mo. there were no less than 1300 copies taken off. INTRODUCTION. XXH1 which that poem as well as its author were so long destined to endure, had then reached the height of its fame and glory, the taste for the chivalrous burlesque still maintained a sort of divided empire at Florence. As the distinguishing characteristic of the Orlando Innamorato of Berni was the graceful facetiousness which he had given to the ruder inventions of the Lombard Boiardo: so Lippi's great merit with the Florentines was to have interwoven many of the most striking pro- verbs and quaint expressions, which abound in the mouths of the plebeian inhabitants of that part of Tuscany, with a sort of pseudo-chivalresque story, and applied them, in a humourous manner, with now and then happy stanzas of a more serious cast, and the whole expressed (the mere proverbs and undisguised vulgarisms excepted,) in what has been considered as the purest and most clas- sical Italian. The Malmantile has been described by a modern Italian critic as " Poema tutto sparso di proverbj e di graziosi Fiorentinismi * ;" * In one of the prefaces, or prolegomena, to the edition I have now before me, and considered, I understand, as the best, c 2 XXIV INTRODUCTION. and indeed Lippi's general style partakes of that sly bonhommie which, from Berni's works, has ob- tained the name of the Bernesco ; and which is perhaps still more conspicuous in that author's smaller poems in terza rima, called Capitoli, than in his Orlando. Proverbs, or, to call them by their more dig- nified name, adages, have been justly described as summaries of the wisdom of ages. They consist most commonly of the illustration of som,e just sentiment by a quaint laconic sort of metaphor, simile, or allegory, while their pithy and concise form makes them in some respects like the Tvu- pai, or sententious maxims which abound in Pindar and Euripides, not to refer to a more sacred author, or to many of those happy lines applicable to the affairs of human life which occur so ha- bitually to the memory of persons much con- versant with the plays of Terence, and the works of Horace, Shakspeare, and Pope. The more fre- in two volumes 4to. 1750, from the celebrated press of Fran- cesco Moiicke, there is this just and laconic praise of the Malmantile. " Libro ottimo per apprendere le maniere e modi di dire della lingua Fiorentina." INTRODUCTION. XXV quent use of old proverbs by vulgar and illiterate persons may be owing to this, that unaccustomed to analyse through the medium of language the process of their thoughts upon any subject, they find it convenient to jump to the conclusion by the application of some apposite proverb ; and, as this reason does not so generally hold in the better ranks of society, the too frequent use of them is properly avoided ; but yet, when aptly made use of, a proverb sometimes contributes to produce a happy effect even in the highest kinds of forensic or parliamentary eloquence. It is a remarkable thing, that in that part of the united kingdom where I am now writing, it is not unusual to speak of Scotch proverbs as particularly clever, and I should be very unwilling to disclaim so well-established a confirmation of the astute * sagacity frequently attributed, by the just in praise, by others with a sneer, to my fellow-coun- trymen. But the truth is, that the greater part of the best of those Scotch proverbs, as well as of those of England, France, Italy, &c. and of an- * Vide infra, note to stanza 45. XXvi JNTKODUCTION. cient Greece and Rome, are to be found often literatim, but still oftener in the form of cor- responding equivalents, in the languages of all those different countries. Of this, those readers will be easily satisfied, who may have amused themselves with turning over the pages of the large folio volume containing a collection of many chiliads of adages by the incomparable Erasmus, which is to be found in the complete edition of his works printed at Lyons in 1703. It has been above observed, that much of what is reckoned humour in different countries and districts is in a manner local. Yet with this dis- advantage, every reader, even such as like myself are foreigners to the language of Tuscany and Italy, if conversant with the less idiomatic poetry of that country, will find his pains well repaid by reading the Malmantile, however much he may be interrupted by unavoidable reference to the voluminous and often not satisfactory notes and commentaries of Paolo Minucci, which generally accompany the best editions. The Malmantile was first published, I believe, in 1676, twelve years after the death of the author, by Minucci, INTRODUCTION. XXvii under the name of Pucci Lamoni, as editor, that being the anagram of his real name, and of Per- loni Zipoli, being in like manner the anagram of Lorenzo Lippi, the author. The Secchia Rapita of Tassoni, the Lutrin of Boileau, and Pope's Rape of the Lock, are more commonly spoken of by the description of mock- heroic, than as burlesque poems. There is nothing of knight-errantry in their personages; nothing of the peers of Charlemagne, or King Arthur; no Archbishop Turpino ; no Abbe Triteme ; no Gar- bolin ; cited as the authorities for what they re- late/ there is one single action in each, as in the most regular epic, and that action in all three is founded in real fact. Yet in their details there is much of true burlesque, as the very term mock- heroic implies. Tassoni, who was born in 1565, and died in 1635, began his literary career by various works in criticism, and did not publish his Secchia Rapita till 1622. He was a native of Modena. Bracciolini, a Pistoian, born in 1556, is said by his biographer, Count Mazzuchelli, to have written his poem intitled Lo Scherno degli Dei, " a con- XXV111 INTRODUCTION. correnza," with the Secchia Rapita. The priority of date between them is still a disputed .point among- the literary chronologists of Italy ; but though certainly written about the same time, there is no possibility of justly accusing the one of being a plagiarist from the other. The ground work of the Secchia Rapita, as I have just men- tioned, is a real incident in the history of Modena and Bologna. Every part of the Scherno degli Dei, which the author himself has explained to mean the Mockery or Ridicule of the heathen gods, is entirely fiction, and, according to my taste, very clumsy and absurd fiction *, whereas Tassoni's work, which suggested the title of the Rape of the Lock, and perhaps the general idea both of that and .of the Lutrin, is worthy to stand in compe- tition with those two master-pieces of English and French poetry. It is true that one or two Italian critics of bad, or singular, or partial taste, such as Mazzuchelli, have contended for the superiority of Bracciolini's poem. But honest Tiraboschi, after having declared his own contrary opinion, in very * In my copy it is announced in the title page as " Poema Piacevole," a rash anticipation of the opinion of the reader. INTRODUCTION. XXIX strong 1 terms, adds a powerful practical argument, by stating, that at the time when he wrote*, there had not been more than six editions of the Scherno, and none posterior to the yeart 1628, whereas of the Secchia Rapita there had been thirty during that period, besides some in ultramontane coun- tries,, I believe ; indeed it was first printed at Paris. It is curious to contemplate the diversity of national tastes with regard to the three several poems of Tassoni, Boileau, and Pope. Italians, if not possessed of the Gallomania, which I think I hare observed to be not much less common in Italy than the Anglomania is said to be in France, will generally be found to give a decided preference to the Secchia over the other two ; whereas, as the French of the last century had been taught by Boileau to think La Fontaine had improved on the humour of Ariosto, so I have very seldom conversed on the subject with any French person * Viz. in 17 i being the date of the second edition of Tira- bosclii's work. f There has been since an edition in the series of Milanese classics in 1804. XXX INTRODUCTION'. of letters, let him have understood English ever so well, and been as conversant as many of them now are with our English poets, who has not thought the Lutrin greatly superior to the Rape of the Lock. I again, like most others whose mother tongue is English, hold Pope's work su- perior beyond comparison to Boileau's. I remem- ber once mentioning this difference of national tastes to the celebrated Abbe Delille, when I found that he not only preferred the Lutrin to the Rape of the Lock, but confessed to me that he had never been able to relish the beauties which we ascribe to the latter poem. This astonished me in a man, many of whose works prove his extensive acquaint- ance with our language, especially as I knew the particular admiration he had of Pope, whose poetry in general was a frequent and favourite topic of conversation with him. To us, the gallantry and tone of good company which pervades the Rape of the Lock, have charms which we cannot discover in the story of a dispute among a set of canons and choristers, about restoring an old desk to a place which it had formerly occupied in their ca- thedral, without any female character, except the INTBODUCT10N. XXXI mistress or wife of a periwig-maker, to grace and enliven it. I know that there are English critics, as well as foreign, who have disapproved of the machinery, as it is called, of sylphs, gnomes, &c. which Pope, by an after-thought, added to the original sketch of his admired poem. But how comparatively bald and jejune would it now appear if those aerial beings were driven from it, as Andres in his ponderous history of the Literature of all Na- tions thinks they ought to have been, and nothing left but transactions between mere human crea- tures. Much has been written against the employ- ment of the supernatural agency of the heathen gods in modern poetry, now that nobody believes in the existence of those pagan divinities. Yet still, whatever rigid critics may say, it is probable that Venus, Cupid, Phosbus, and the Muses, will long retain their place in the poetry of modern times. To introduce heathen gods as perpetual efficient agents in regular connection with all the events of a long narrative, certainly awakens too much our sense of improbability, and thereby XXXJi INTRODUCTION. takes off from the interest which it must be the author's object to excite. Yet the substitution in their stead of those metaphysical unembodiable entities, the personified abstractions of human virtues, vices, or other affections of men, or of Superstition, Discord, Night, &c. (the machinery of Boileau in the Lutrin, and Voltaire in the Hen- riade), which we can never contemplate as invested with the complex dispositions and passions, the flesh and blood as it were of men, tends to produce a still greater sense of improbability. The idea that the greater part of the original readers of Homer and Virgil believed in the real existence of their deities, serves in some sort to satisfy the imagination, when we find in their works those deities interfering in the concerns of human life ; but to reconcile us to a system of machinery founded on this assumption, that mere naked attributes of mind ever existed as distinct and individual beings, so as to take an active part in the complicated de- tails of the affairs of our world, would require such a stretch of the imagination as will ever be found to baffle the utmost efforts of the most powerful genius. It is true, ^Eschylus has personified the INTRODUCTION. XXXlll qualities of Force and Strength in his sublime poem of Prometheus. How far that is to be con- sidered as one of the excellencies of that wonderful piece, I will not take upon myself to decide, nor to say whether there were not in his days such deities known. Their appearance, however, in the Prometheus is very short, like that of the allegorical personage of Fame in the Eneid ; and that sort of brief epi- sodical personification is not only unexceptionable, but often gives variety and beauty to poetical nar- ration*. So deep rooted in heathen times does the po- * Of this sort is the charming description of " La Nollesse" (imperfectly rendered in English by " Indolence") at the end of the second canto of the Lutrin, the last line of which par- ticularly " Soupire, etend les bras, ferine 1'oeil et s'endort," has been always so justly admired. Yet even in that instance I feel the objection I have stated, to the appearance of " Night" as a bustling agent in the business of the poem. Boileau himself seems to have felt, at the end of his work, that the introduction of the heathen goddess Themis, to wind up his story and conclude it with a compliment to his friend the first President Lamoignon, would have a better effect than if he had adhered to the general plan of his machinery, by employing the abstract virtue Justice to perform that part. XXXIV INTRODUCTION. pular creed appear to have been with all except the comparatively small number of sceptical phi- losophers and metaphysicians, that Lucretius, though one of those philosophers, was not afraid to place in the front of a work denying and pur- porting to disprove such interference of the gods, an address to Venus, ascribing all the beautiful phenomena of nature to that goddess. If he had been as rigid a logician as some of our modern critics, we should have lost one of the finest pas- sages that is to be found in any of the classics. In our days, though, as before observed, Apollo and the Muses are still continued to be invoked, it is not as personifications of the abstract poetical talent, but from our habitual acquaintance with them in consequence of our early classical studies, as invisible beings once thought to have inspired and presided over the exercise of that talent. As to the machinery of the Rape of the Lock, most of us in this country have been in a manner prepared, by our almost infantine familiarity with the idea of those little sprites, the fairies of the nursery creating a sort of anticipated credence, for predilection in favour of the Rosicrucian dream, INTRODUCTION. XXXV which Pope's youthful fancy and cultivated taste led him to borrow from Gabalis. It must have surprised some of those sectaries in poetry with us, who seem desirous of excluding Pope from the pale of that first of the fine arts, if they have chanced to meet with the work * of that Historian of all Literature quoted above as an objector to the machinery of the Rape of the Lock, to have found him (after having made the two new discoveries of a redundancy of expression in the most concise of all poets, and that he never knows when to end) complimenting him with great fer- tility of imagination. I might have been tempted, after having thus suffered myself to fall into a sort of patriotic de- fence of Pope's Rape of the Lock, to say some- thing of the Dunciad; but the limits M'ithin which I had resolved to confine this discourse, require that I should omit what I might other- * Dell'Origine, progress!, e stato attuale d'Ogni Letteratura dal Abate Giovanni Andres, 4to. vol. '2. page 4o6, &c. I should find it difficult to say whether I have been more provoked or amused by this author's absurd analysis of those two celebrated works of Pope, the Rape of the Lock, and the epistle of Heloisa to Abelard. XXX VI INTRODUCTION. f wise have added concerning that other admirable mock epic of his, though too temporary and per- sonal not to have already lost much of the in- terest and picquant, which must at first have be- longed to it; I except, however, from that ob- servation the fourth book, written in a loftier strain than the other three, and calculated to please equally readers of taste, at all times and in all countries where our language shall be under- stood. I shall in like manner pass over Hudibras, in its form belonging to the chivalrous burlesque, of which poem Voltaire says that he never met with so much wit in any one single book as in this, and Mr. Hume, in his History of England, justly ob- serves, that, though scarcely any other author was ever able to express his thoughts in so few words, Butler often employs too many thoughts on one subject, and thereby becomes prolix after an un- usual manner. I now therefore proceed to give some account of the author of Ricciardetto and his work, where he himself will be my principal authority ; and also of the circumstances which led me to attempt a INTRODUCTION. XXXV11 translation of his first canto, and my reasons for proceeding no farther. Niccolo Forteguerri, otherwise Fortiguerra, was born in the year 1674, of respectable parents at Pistoia, in Tuscany, and after the example of one, or perhaps more, of the same family in that city, he often assumed, both in his Latin and Italian compositions, the name of Carteromachus, or Carteromaco, according to the pedantic custom of adopting the Greek translation of modern names, which was so prevalent with the learned at the revival of letters, and for many years after- wards*. Scipio Carteromachus, a Pistoian, and no doubt of our author's family, a learned man who lived in the time, and some time in the ser- vice, of Leo the Tenth, seems to have been known by no other name, either by his contemporary Erasmus, who had been familiarly acquainted with him while in Italy, or by Bayle. The former gives to this learned man an encomium for recon- dite and finished erudition, joined to the most * Erasmus, from the Greek E^ao-fAio?, was not even a translation of that great man's family name, by which if he were now quoted nobody would know who was meant, d XXXV111 INTRODUCTION. complete absence of all display, so happily ex- pressed, that Bayle exclaims, after citing it, " que c'est un bel eloge ! et qu'il y a peu de savans qui le meritent !" The words of Erasmus are, " Bo- noniae primum videre contigit Scipionem Cartero- machum, reconditae et absolutae eruditionis ho- minem, sed usque adeo alienum ab ostentatione, ut ni provocasses, jurasses esse literarum igna- rum." Our Forteguerri also frequently followed an- other more modern, but not less affected mode among Italian authors, of assuming in their title pages their academic appellation, as Shepherds of Arcadia; his name, by his diploma from that academy, being Nidalmo Tiseo. He was by his parents designed for the profession of the law, but like many other poets of renown, both among us, and in France and Italy, he soon abandoned that severe study for the more seductive cultivation of the muses. Desertions to the bar have been much less common, and when they have happened, there have been still fewer that could have justified an exclamation similar to the elegant piece of flattery addressed by Pope to the future Lord Chief INTRODUCTION. XXXIX Justice Mansfield, in the early part of that great lawyer's professional life, " How sweet an Ovid was in Murray lost !" Forteguerri's legal studies, however, were pro- bably of use to him when, in the early part of his life, after going through the usual course of edu- cation at the university of Pisa, he established himself at Rome, under the patronage of his mother's near relation, Carlo Augustino Fabroni, afterwards Cardinal Fabroni *. In that city, which its present inhabitants still love to hear called the Head of the world, he passed the greater part of his days under suc- * Most of the considerable offices at the court or under the government of Rome require, to be duly executed, an ac- quaintance with the canon and civil law, and accordingly most of those who hold them have studied those branches of learn- ing. They are generally made prelates or monsignori, though often not ordained priests, so that it remains competent for them to renounce the ecclesiastical character, to marry, and to hold situations incompatible with the priesthood. Many cardinals continue in that predicament. This I believe is the case of the present eminent statesman, and accomplished and amiable gentleman, Cardinal Gonsalvi, Secretary of State to his present holiness, Pius the Seventh. d2 xl INTRODUCTION. cessive pontiffs, experiencing various vicissitudes of fortune. After the death of his relation, Car- dinal Fabroni, in whose authoritative dignity, says the writer of his life, Monsignor Fabroni, a relation of both, he had long reposed all his hopes of advancement, he appears to have lived for a considerable time in a state of neglect, if not dis- grace ; but on the succession of Clement the Sixth to the throne of St. Peter, that venerable head of the Catholic church appointed him secretary to the congregation of cardinals, called Delia Propa- ganda, and with well founded prospects, which however were never realised, of being soon after raised to a situation of higher dignity. Clement is said to have taken great delight in our author's company, finding relief from the cares and fatigues of his various weighty and laborious occupations in the cheerful playfulness of his conversation, and particularly to have been much amused by his recitals of the entertaining adventures of Ricciar- detto, which we may suppose he delivered with peculiar grace, as we are told he had a very happy facility in repeating poetry, with a most un- common suavity of voice and gesture ; being also INTRODUCTION. xli of a tall and dignified presence, with limbs finely proportioned, a manly freshness of complexion, and a most engaging- and exhilarating expression of countenance. He died at Rome in the pos- session of his office of Secretary to the Propaganda on the 17th of February, 1735, in the 6lst year of his age. It appears that Forteguerri was possessed of a most powerful memory, and an eager ambition of distinction in almost every branch of composition both in prose and verse ; and, as was more the custom in those days, in Latin as well as in the vulgar and Tuscan language, as the purists of that district of Italy love to call the general language of the country. His Latin orations or discourses upon public occasions, both inaugural and on spe- culative topics of taste or morality, were applauded in their day ; but I believe few were ever printed. I have never met with any of them, and it seems to be generally admitted now, even by his most unqualified admirers, that he had no particular claim to extraordinary merit in writings of that description. The great and early bent of his genius was certainly poetry. He was a proficient xlii INTRODUCTION. not only in the knowledge of the Latin, but also of the Greek classics, and had endeavoured to form his taste upon a profound and judicious considera- tion of their excellencies, and in his attempts to approach the highest station in poetry, if he failed, as will be mentioned by and by, it may be said of him " Magnis tamen excidit ausis." As a member of the Academia degli Arcadi he composed odes, canzoni, sonnets, stanzas, and a collection of capitoli in the Terza Rima of Dante, and in a style something between the manner of Berni in his capitoli, and that of Ariosto in his satires. In whatever he undertook his aim was perfection, being used to say that one ought never to despair of arriving at the best. While Forteguerri was actually employed in writing his Ricciardetto he executed a translation into blank verse of the Comedies of Terence, which has been published in various editions, and is spoken of in terms of high commendation by many Italian critics of high authority. He was much too good a scholar not to have done justice in his translation to the sense of the original, and too much a master of Italian versification not to INTRODUCTION. xliii have done it with elegance, and some approach to the extreme delicacy and beauty of Terence's iambics. But modern accented hendecasyllables can ill furnish a just and happy resemblance of the inimitable dialogue of Terence. To give the reader of Italian some idea of Forteguerri's Terzetti, in the manner of Berni, I insert at the bottom of the page * the twelve first lines of the 25th Capitolo. The gaiety of Forteguerri's character was one of its most conspicuous features, insomuch that it had obtained for him, among his friends and acquaintances, the name of " il Lepido," derived from the Latin " kpor" a word to which it would * Liborio, il caldo mi rasciuga in modo, Che di grasso, ch'io era a'di passati, Oggi mi trovo secco, come un chiodo. DalT Inferno cred'io, che sien scappati Questi stirocchi, tanto sono ardenti, E tramontani sol sieno pe' Frati, Che, ancorche involti fra lane roventi, Van sulla nona, e'l meriggio piu fitto, In busca dell'amiche, e de' parenti. E loro importa poco, che a direttp Gli piombi il sole in sulla rasa mica, Tant 'odio han per le lor celle, e despitlo. xliv INTRODUCTION. be difficult to find one exactly synonymous in our language; it expresses that light and graceful jocundity which, when united with true good breeding, forms together the sort of chastised liveliness which still knows to confine itself " Within the limits of becoming mirth." * It is confessed, however, that the good Niccolo, in certain and perhaps not unfrequent moments of social relaxation and unrestrained open-heart- edness, transgressed those limits. Of this being conscious himself, he was not well pleased that those should give him that appellation of Lepido whom he suspected of meaning to convey by it that he was a person who habitually sacrificed the proprieties of conversation to an indulgence in coarse and indecent pleasantry. Yet it certainly cannot be denied, that, in his most celebrated work itself, he has given way too much to the irresistible force of a laughter-loving disposition, such as is so apt to transport the boon companion beyond the checks prescribed by a just sense of delicacy and decorum. To the great purity of For- * Shakspeare. INTRODUCTION. xlv teguerri's manners, and his abstinence from every thing that could have justified the imputation of dissoluteness or immorality, we have abundant testimony; so that if censured because he does not always write with a due regard to delicacy, which God forbid that I should attempt to justify, though he is not more faulty in that way than the admired Ariosto, or (proh dolor !) \>ur Spenser himself, in a certain canto of his Fairy Queen, it may be said with truth of him, " Licentious though his song, his life was chaste ! " I have hinted that our author was ambitious of eminence in the highest sort of poetry, as well as in that which has rendered his name of such ce- lebrity with all who have a taste for genuine humour. His Ricciardetto probably cost him a thousand times less pains than his translation of Terence; and his historian and relation relates, that as it appears that he wrote Ricciardetto in a sort of rivality with Ariosto, Berni *, &c. he had conceived a work in imitation of the immortal * Vide, infra. xlvi INTRODUCTION. Gerusalemme, on the subject of Bajazet, but that when he was proceeding to describe the barbarian conqueror boxed up in his iron cage, he was so carried away by a sudden train of ludicrous images, that all at once he determined to relinquish a project so little suited to the natural turn of his mind. The circumstances which gave rise to his writing Ricciardetto are told with so much simplicity and good humour by the author himself, in a letter prefixed to the first acknowledged edition, that I cannot better perform a part of what I had pro- posed to myself in this preface than by trans- lating it. He there states that at a country-house of his, near his native Pistoia, in a society of friends as- sembled there in the autumn of the year 1716, there were several young men of great erudition and literature, with whom, in the evenings, while others of his company diverted themselves with play in another room, he used to read sometimes Berni, sometimes the Morgante of Pulci, sometimes Ariosto, which readings, he says, were a source of very particular delight ; that one evening, during INTRODUCTION. xlvii some intervening 1 pause, after they had read for a considerable time, one of his young friends said, " God knows what a labour it must have cost the authors of those poems to compose, not to say an entire Canto, but even a dozen of their stanzas, and the greater the facility of the measure and of the rhyme appears to be, so much greater must their exertions have been." That his other friends present all concurred in this remark: ' Upon this/ continues he, ' I, less considerate, or at least more confident, observed with a smile, " In good faith those poets have, peradventure, laboured much less than you imagine, for in poetry, if not the whole, at least more than one half, is due to nature, and he who has not been benignly seconded by nature, will do well not to meddle with so noble and delectable an occupation, but rather betake himself to some other employment of his time, where art, not nature, may be his guide. And not to waste more words, but to prove in fact what I have asserted, I engage to produce to you a Canto to-morrow evening, containing in it the style of the different bards we have been reading; for to speak freely, nature has been rather liberal to me xlviii INTRODUCTION. than scanty in her gifts of that sort." The engage- ment was received with applause by all, and having retired after supper, I executed it punctually, and produced and read the new Canto the next even- ing, to the no ordinary satisfaction of the society.' The whole thirty cantos are said to have been finished in thirty days. When I was first in Italy, now more than half a century ago, the Ricciardetto was the most popular of all their burlesque poems with the young and gay society into which I happened to be introduced at that time, and its novelty to me, and its broad but sly humour, naturally recom- mended it to a very young reader ; and now, in my later years (such is the force of early habit), a few cantos, or even stanzas of this jocular poem, have been a frequent temporary source of relief to my spirits when afflicted with poignant grief (of which I have had my share), or visited by occa- sional returns of depression and melancholy. I had often been surprised, considering the great love of Italian poetry, both of the serious and amusing kind, so prevalent in England, that no translation of Ricciardetto into our language INTRODUCTION. xlix had, as far as I knew, ever been attempted. The different translations of Tasso and Ariosto, as well as of the Portuguese epic Camoens, by Fairfax, Harrington, Fanshawe, Hoole, and Mickle, are in most considerable libraries ; and it seemed unac- countable, that in the country which had produced Hudibras and the Rape of the Lock, the two ex- tremes as it were of the burlesque and mock-he- roic, there had been found no translator of Ricciar- detto. A few years ago I had presumed to suggest to a gentleman possessing great poetical talents, and a remarkable vein of humour and pleasantry, that if he would undertake to translate that work it would be a source of amusement to himself, and at the same time be a great service rendered to the public in this department of the very extensive and diversified domain of the British Muse. I had also ventured to state the same idea to a friend who holds almost daily and active intercourse with men of genius in all branches of science and belles lettres. My suggestion was not adopted, I verily believe from a juster measure of what is suited to the actual taste of the present day, than my habits of reading had enabled me to form. I myself. I INTRODUCTION. though, like most lovers of poetry, a scanner of syllables, and accustomed to strain, from time to time, once in a year perhaps, a few lines on occa- sional subjects, with all the pangs and throes of difficult labour*, never dreamed of attempting any thing in verse of one third part the length of a canto of Ricciardetto. But finding myself not many weeks ago in a country-house with some friends, ladies and gentlemen, fond of " merry doggrel verse," as well as " lofty rhymet," our con- versation one evening happened to turn on the subject of Italian poetry, when I introduced my favourite topic of Ricciardetto ; and wishing to give them a sort of sample of that work, I wrote and carried down with me the next morning at breakfast, the translation or imitation of the first stanza, almost as it is now printed. I had even then not the smallest intention of proceeding any farther, but, when alone, the nature of association carried me on to the next, and so from stanza to * " Who writes to make his barrenness appear, And strains from hard-bound brains six lines a year." POPE. f- Vide infra, stanza 7- INTRODUCTION. II stanza, sometimes one, sometimes two or more in a day, till I worked my way, without any fixed design, on to the 95th and last, which I finished at the inn where I slept on my road back to town. When I got about half way in my translation, while still at the country-house I have mentioned, I happened to open a printed catalogue at the end of one of the late numbers of the Quarterly Re- view, where I found that a translation of the first and second cantos was advertised as already pub- lished. I had not an opportunity of seeing that translation till after I had received from the printer the first proof of my own, when I found that the principal story in the first Canto had been omitted in it. I have since learned that the author of that translation is a gentleman of great classical attainments, and known to the literary world by many happy imitations both of the Greek and Latin poets. It has never entered into my thoughts to pro- ceed farther in translating Ricciardetto. Were I as sure as I begin to be doubtful of the taste of the present day, on the subject of that species of poetry, it would be an ill employment of any Hi INTRODUCTION. portion of the time I may yet have to live to de- vote it to such an undertaking, especially as it would certainly be necessary, in compliance with the improved delicacy of manners at this period, and in this country, to omit, curtail, or disguise, a good deal of what is contained in the succeeding Cantos of the poem. Luckily there is nothing in the first which required any departure from the original in that respect, and as that Canto compre- hends a characteristic introduction, where the au- thor speaks in his own person, and then his Muse's relation of two independent stories, those of Stella and Brunetta, I thought it might serve as a suf- ficient specimen of his style and manner, if I shall be found in any way to have done him justice. While I have been writing this preface I have perused a learned and ingenious essay in the Quar- terly Review (No. 42, April, 1819,) in which there is in many respects a just, but in others, in the opinion at least of myself, his volunteer translator and commentator, a not sufficiently favourable account of the genius and writings of Forteguerri. I will not have the conceit to enter the lists on any question concerning Italian poetry with the author INTRODUCTION. HU of that essay, who manifestly appears to be much more deeply versed in it than I can pretend to be *. I shall therefore take the same course I had meant to pursue before I had read that interesting essay, by concluding these pages with the eloquent words of the author whom I have already so often taken occasion to quote. " Ricciardetto est, en quelque sorte, le produit du talent aimable d'un improviseur, de cette fer- tilite d'imagination, de cette harmonic naturelle, de cette gaite nai've et enfantine qui caracterisent les Italiens. Les strophes en sont ecrites avec une negligence que la beaute seule d'une langue si poetique et si sonore peut rendre agreable, mais il revolt souvent aussi un merite plus eclatant d'une inspiration plus imm6diate. Souvent la versification est lache et trainante, mais quelque- * I am happy in this opportunity of declaring my entire concurrence with the opinion expressed in the essay above quoted, with regard to the two very entertaining poems which form the direct subject of the article referred to in the Quar- terly Review, and of adding that for the persons, as well as talents of their authors (venturing to guess at the one whose publication is anonymous), I entertain the highest respect and esteem. lir TXTKODUCTION. fois elle s'orne a"H. (faXayya?. Iliad. Note 20, stanza xx. Of horsemen, girding girths and pointing spears. This line was meant to bear some allusion to the following passage of Homer : El7 fAEV Ttf ioptl Stl%U,Ci9ul, EL? S'ttCTWja $EG9ul, EtJ JE T< "WHQKTII JEITTVOV JOTU; uixt/TroJtcro'iVj II. lib. ii. v. 382, &c. Imitated by Milton, " Let each His adamantine coat gird well, and each Fit well his helm, gripe fast his orbed shield." Par. Lost, B. ii. v. 541. Forteguerri's line is, " Chi raggiusta le sclle, e chi gli elmetti." Note 21, stanza xx. And that ly Macon's aid. " Mocow," or " Macone," is a name frequently used by the Italian romance poets for " Mahomet." NOTES. 63 Note 22, stanza xxiii. Great Charles alone sat sorrowing at the tale Of brave Orlando's wondrous strong insanity. The masterly account of Orlando's madness, the reader will find in the Orlando Furioso, Canto 24, stanza 25. Note 23, stanza xxv. This King of men. " A'y|o'yJpiv Aya/ Horn. Note 24, stanza xxv. xxvi. Or Richardet to have alive or dead, WTio gave his dear and only son to death. Many examples might be adduced both from Italian and English Poets, where the sense is thus carried on from one stanza to another. To admit the frequent use of this licence, as I think it may be called, would certainly have a bad effect, as a similar enjambement has, (to use the French term) when in rhyming distichs the sense is too often made to begin in one, and carried on to a full stop in the middle of the following line, or, which is still more analogous to the present in- stance, where the sense of the last line of a distich is carried on in like manner to the middle or end of the first of the next. It is indeed true, that when this sort of enjambement never or extremely rarely occurs in works of any considerable length, that sort of monotony is produced which is so generally ob- jected to in Pope's versification. But as, after all, rhyme in 64 NOTES. the same manner as the measure of every sort of verse, must be intended, in some degree, to be perceived (otherwise why write in rhyme or poetical measure ?) the ear may be said to be disappointed when, in order to give a real or supposed due effect to the sense, that intention, though professed by the very form of the composition, is, as it were, studiously de- feated. Therefore, as a general proposition, this ought to be avoided, unless when the manifest advantage of harmony and variety, or that of fixing the attention to some obviously em- phatic pause in the sense, more than counterbalances such dis- appointment. In the verse of the Fairy Queen, the Minstrel, the Castle of Indolence, and Childe Harold, the last line of every stanza being an Alexandrine, this enjambement seems more productive of that sort of disappointment to the ear, than where there is no such change of the measure in the moment of passing from one stanza to the other ; besides which the full completion of the thought, by the winding of it up in the Alexandrine, is one of the most striking beauties belonging to that sort of verse. Still however every one must feel the good effect of sometimes breaking the continually returning uniformity even of such stanzas, by sacrificing what, if they are considered separately, seems in a manner essential to their perfect construction. The French in their distichs much more frequently than any of our poets carry the sense on from the last line of one distich to the end of the first of the other, so as to begin a new subject with the second line of that other distich. This I imagine they do the more to fix the attention to that change of subject. The sense in the last line of the 25th stanza to which this note applies, is carried on in the first NOTES. 65 Kne of the 2Gth stanza, quite to the end of that line. In a subsequent stanza (33) the enjambement stops in the middle of a line, and these are the only two instances in which I have resorted to the licence which I have been endeavouring to explain. But though I have here tried to express what I believe most readers of poetry fed with regard to those niceties in versification, the good taste of the poet must guide him in the use he may make of them, as well as of every deviation from the more ordinary practice ; and the good taste of his readers must decide whether the effect justifies such devia- tion. Note 25, stanza xxvi. And sent him "whence no travellers return. " That undiscover'd country, from whose bourne No traveller returns." Shakespeare, Hamlet. Note 26, stanza xxx. Still tried with asking eye. " Explain the asking eye." Pope, Epil. to Satires. Note 27, stanza xxx. % To get some inkling of the Count at last. By the Italian poets who have written on the fabulous his- tory of Charlemagne and his Paladins, Orlando is often called 6 NOTES. il Conic de Montalbano, as Astolfo is represented as prince of England. Vide Stanza 44. Note 28, stanza xxxii. So prick'd they on that road. " A gentle knight was pricking on the plain." Spenser, F. Q. Note 29, stanza xxxiii. Blaspheming as they fell! Vide note 24, stanza 25-6. Note 30, stanza xxxiv. Crying, " Dear lordings! from her glorious lowers " My lady greets you with these beauteous flowers" " To lordings proud I tune my lay, Who feast in bower or hall, Though dukes they be, to dukes I say, That pride will have a fall." Swift. Note 31, stanza xxxvi. And having smoothed his frill. The word " frill" is not to be found in Johnson, but it is daily in the mouths of all persons of all ranks for what is otherwise called the " breast-ruffle of a man's shirt." I am told NOTES. 6? by some of my female friends, that it also extends to append- ages of the same sort to any part of dress; as the "frill of a ruff, of a tucker, shirt collar," &c. The reader will perceive that the character of Astolphus, or Astolfo, is that of a coxcomb, brave, easily captivated and in- flamed, and with a fribblish attention to his dress. Note 32, stanza xxxvii. TJtat take the ravished ear with strange delight. " The song was partial, but the harmony Suspended hell, and took with ravishment The thronging audience." Par. Lost, B. 2. v. 552. Note 33, stanza xxxvii. They all are fair, fyc. P'fia y aftyvwll K&&U) xXa< $i It jrac-a*. Odyss. z. v. 108. Note 34, stanza xxxvii. Their mistress, in the midst, excels as far The rest, as Luna doth the meanest, star. Velut inter ignes Luna minores. Hor. Lib. 1. Od. 12. Note 35, stanza xxxix. Ador'd and dear, Thou, holy Freedom, art. This more serious address to Freedom in one stanza, seems so little in unison with the continuation of it in the next, that F 2 68 XOTES. I have sometimes thought it must have been one of those " purpjirci paiini" which poets amuse themselves in com- posing, and keep by them, ready to be incorporated, on any accidental occasion that may occur, into some work for which they may not have been at first particularly designed. Such it has always appeared to me must have been the case with the famous speech ofjaqucs on the different stages of human life in " As you like it :" and there are many other admired passages in Shakespeare's plays of the same sort, which in getting some of them up, as it is called, for representation, have often been transferred into those prepared for acting, from their original places. The following beautiful verses on marriage, from Voltaire'' s comedy of the " Enfant Prodigue," might, in like manner, with very little alteration, be intro- duced into any other play where the subject of marriage is to be mentioned. " A mon avis, 1'hymen, et ses liens, Sont les plus grands, ou des maux ou des biens : Point de milieu ; 1'etat du mariage Est des humains le plus cher avantage, Quand le rapport des esprits et des cecurs, Des sentimens, des gouts, et des humeurs, Serre ces noeuds tissus par la nature, Que 1'amour forme, et que 1'honneur opure. Dieux ! quel plaisir d'aimer publiquement ; Et de porter le nom de son amant ! Votre maison, vos gens, votre livree, Tout vous retrace unc image adoree ; Et vos enfans, ces gages precieux, Nes de 1'amour, en sont de nouveaux ncruds. NOTES. 6'9 " Un tel hymen, une union si chere, Si 1'on en voit, c'est le ciel sur la terre ! Mais tristement vendre, par un contrat, Sa liberte, son nom, et son etat, Aux volontes d'un maitre despotique, Dont on devient le premier domestique ; Se quereller ou s'eviter le jour; Sans joie a table, et la nuit sans amour ; Trembler toujours d'avoir une faiblesse, Y succomber, ou combattre sans cesse ; Tromper son maitre, ou vivre sans espoir, Dans les langueurs d'un importun devoir ; Gemir, secher dans sa douleur profonde ; Un tel hymen est 1'enfer de ce monde !" Of these very popular lines, the following imitation has been attempted. In my opinion, Hymen and his chains Are the chief source of pleasures and of pains ; That state no medium knows. To every wife Marriage is bliss, or wretchedness for life. When head and heart in unison we see, When tempers, tastes, and sentiments agree, The precious knot to fasten and secure, Which Nature form'd, and honour render'd pure, Gods ! unrestrain'd, how charming to make known Your love for him, whose name is now your own; Your very house, your servants, liveries, all Still that dear object to your thoughts recal ; But chief your darling offspring, born to prove New ties and tender pledges of your love ; 70 NOTES. " Oh ! such an union, if to mortals giv'n, Is a sure foretaste of the joys of heaven ! But by a sordid contract, seal'd and sign'd, To be made over, bargain'd, sold, assign'd, To a despotic master's sovereign will ; His upper, but most abject servant still ; To quarrel daily, or to shun his sight; Joyless at meals, at morn, at noon, at night ; Fearful to some forbidden love to yield, Or still to combat with a flame conceal'd ; To languish and to pine in ceaseless woe ; Oh ! this were torture worse than hell's to know !" Note 36, stanza xli. But mov'd smooth sliding without step along. -- Smooth sliding without step. Par. Lost, B. 8. v. 302. Note 37, stanza xli. Oh face! Oh voice! Oh grace! Oh matchless maid ! This line was meant to resemble in its character, expres- sive of sudden agitation and passion, though not in the par- ticular sense of the words, the following verses of Theocritus and Virgil. { ov, uf /xavMV, i$ Theo. Id. 2. v. 82. Ut vidi, ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error ! Virg. Eel. 8. v. 41. NOTES. 71 Note 38, stanza xlv. Her damsels silly smile with looks astute. This word " astute" is in very common use in the forensic language of the English bar, but I question if it has been yet fully naturalized with us beyond that pale. The French have " astuce" and I think I have heard " astucieux" though it is not in the Dictionary of the Academy: the Italians have " astute" and " astuzia." Perhaps " shrewd" has pretty nearly the same sense ; but, alas ! it would not rhyme with " mute." Note 39, stanza xlviii. That men her wifely love would oft compare With Artemisia's, so much prized and quoted. " 9iirei 8' o,7ro9avV>)?, &a iiiiQa; IS ai-Jpof." Strabo, Lib. 14. Suidas in " Artemisia" Cic. Tusc. Q. 3. Note 40, stanza IvL Soon cleansed his bosom of the perilous stuff Tfiat weighed upon his heart. " And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, Cleanse the foul bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart ?" Shakespeare, Macbeth. Note 41, stanza IvL And wakes his comrades tway. " And Gyon's angry blade so fierce did play, That quite it clove its plumed crest in tway." Spenser. 72 NOTES. Note 42, stanza Iviii. Bold as my cousin grim, great Arcibaldo. " Ta'J7>jj7oi ym?i; ?> xai a'i / ua?3; ivyjipcti fivai." " Douglas stood, And with stern eye the pageant view'd : I mean that Douglas, sixth of yore Who coronet of Angus bore, And, when his blood and heart were high, King James's minions led to die On Lauder's dreary flat : Princes and favourites long grew tame, And trembled at the homely name Of Archibald Scll-the-Cat." I hope T shall be pardoned for having mentioned in this place that Scottish chieftain and hero, Archibald Douglas, the Vltli* Earl of Angus of his name and family, and one of the most eminent warriors in the history of Scotland. He is often distinguished in that history by the different appella- tions of" Archibald the Great Earl of Angus," and Archi- bald Bell-tlie-Cat ; which last name he derived from his having made use of the well-known fable, on offering himself (and he performed what he offered) personally to impeach and seize the favourite and obnoxious servants of James the Third, in that monarch's presence. He is one of the most remarkable personages in the poem of Marmion, whose author seems in * Or, according to some, the Vth. NOTES. 73 many of his works, to have taken particular delight in re- ferring to the chivalrous renown of that house ; and who has therefore, independent of his transcendant talents, a particular claim to the admiration and gratitude of all who bear the name of Douglas. In another passage of the same poem, like honourable homage is paid to the memory of Gawin Douglas, one of the sons of that Archibald, and well-known to all conversant with the history of English poetry, by his celebrated translation of the Eneid. " A bishop by the altar stood, A noble lord of Douglas blood, With mitre sheen, and rocquet white. Yet shew'd his meek and thoughtful eye But little pride of prelacy ; More pleas'd that, in a barbarous age, He gave rude Scotland Virgil's page, Than that beneath his rule he held The bishopric of fair Dunkeld." Note 43, stanza lix. Or else in Utopia, Which lies let-ween that realm and Ethiopia. If any of my readers should be disposed to question the relative situation which Forteguerri's Muse has here assigned to Utopia, that fertile and interesting portion of Terra Incog- nita, in consequence of the poet's too candid surmise of her 7* NOTES. false steps in geography, in stanza 4, I beg leave to refer him to Busch'mg's Erdbcschrcibung, T. 10. p. 1 12. : - * Note 44, stanza Ixiv. In kitchen phrase of scullion frolics brags. " ' TTToyXi/xatviuy fay Slloi; juoyttpixoif." Aristoph. 'ITTW'TI;. v. 21C. Note 45, stanza Ixiv. Mine Jiost observes his love o/butter'd toast. The fashionable English innkeepers, whose accomplished daughters learn to draw, sing, play, and speak what they call French, and even Italian, would not reckon the love of buttered toast any great sign of gentility, though it is a favourite English regale, and an Italian Anglomane may very well be supposed to consider it as a dainty. There is an anecdote of a well-known representative of this country in Italy some sixty or seventy years ago, who having invited an Englishman to dinner with a number of British travellers, but who had no acquaintance of that visitor, a question arose, after he retired, concerning him, and to what class of society he might belong ; upon which the diplomate observed, that he had no particular means of knowing who he was, but that he must have been accustomed to good com- pany, since he eat grated cheese with his soup. NOTES. 75 Note 4t>, stanza Ixxvi. With this, lie catches up a piece of a stick. " And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, Was beat with fist instead of a-stick" Hudibras. Note 47, stanza Ixxvi. And hits him on the nob. I do not find this ignoble but familiar word " nob" in Johnson's Dictionary. Note 48, stanza Ixxxi. He near'd the mount. To " near''' for to " approach," as a verb, is not in John- son ; but it is familiar with all persons acquainted with sea phraseology. Note 49, stanza Ixxxi. Traggea hurls huge stone with hasty hand. " *O JE ^fgfxaJoy Xaft X E 'i' TuSiJ>jf, fXfya ipfoy !" II. Lib. 5. v. 302. " Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat llle manu raptum trepida torquebat in hostem." JEn. 12. 897. Note 50, stanza Ixxxii. Then headlong grunts, and dies like loathsome swine. " To grunt and sweat under a weary life." Shakespeare. 76 XOTES. See the learned notes, upon the use of the word " grunt" in Hamlet's famous soliloquy, by Johnson, Steevens, and Malone. The modern reading is " groan," which sounds better to our refined ears ; but those eminent commentators have decided, upon the authority of various quotations from their author and other old poets, for the more homely term ; and which, at any rate, suits my purpose better. Note 51, stanza Ixxxvi. Loose Jlow'd the soft redundance of her hair. This line I have always admired. It is taken verbatim from Shenstone, Elegy 15. Note 52, stanza Ixxxviii. Dart forth a sulphurous fame, and smoke abhorred. Sa bouche se remplit d'un poison odieux Et de longs traits de feu lui sortent par les yeux. Lutrin 1. v. 44. Note 53, stanza xciii. Giving " in good set terms," the knight his meed. " A fool, a fool ! I met a fool i' the forest, A motley fool ; a miserable world ! As I do live by food, I met a fool, Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun, And rail'd at lady Fortune in good terms, In good set terms, and yet a motley fool." Shakespeare, As you like it. XOTES. 77 Note 54, stanza xciv. That once again in France unchristian tcar-is-secn, And Paris close besieged ly heath* nish Sa-ra-cen. In this sort of triple rhyme, the two last syllables are super- numerary ; and where the verse is in our ordinary heroic deca- syllabic iambic measure, they render the last, or fifth foot, in- stead of being an accented iambus, like " success," " resent" &c. that sort of compound foot of four syllables, in which the second is long in Greek and Latin, and accented in our language, and the other three short, or non-accented, which foot is called by the prosodaists " the second pceon" ( -tian-tuar-is- seen) ; for instance, like the Latin word " resoltere." This of course gives to the three last syllables the effect of a dactyl, as " Saracen" resembles in this respect " solvere." When such three syllables consist in part or entirely of monosyllabic words, as " laar-is-sccri" in the first of the two lines above, they sound harsh to the ear if any but the second of those monosyllables require from their nature to be pronounced (as " seen''' does in that line) with some degree of exertion or emphasis, which, in our ordinary versification, would render them analogous to long syllables in Greek and Latin. It was to show my sense of this harshness that, in stanza 95, I introduced the line " Mark how she hollies now when she would prance." Yet when such lines are employed with discretion, and with a view to particular effect, especially in rhyme, they are sometimes very amusing. Witness the general popularity of the two following lines in one of Lord Byron's poems, 78 XOTES. " But, Oh ! ye lords of ladies m-1ellectual, Inform us truly, have they not hen-p6ck'd-you-ull* ?" I may also cite these of Swift when speaking of his deaf- ness, and which I quote from memory. (They belong to the eight-syllable iambic measure.) " For both my ears were fellow sufferers, Which made my grandame al-wdys stuff tier ears." And in the same piece, " To t' other ear I found it coming on, And thus I solve this hard phenomenon" And these of Butler, in the same last-mentioned kind of verse, " There was an ancient sage phil6sopher That had read Alexander Ross over" Our dodecasyllabics, such as the two lines to which this note refers, terminating with the second peon, or a dactyl, whether in rhyme or blank verse, (differing entirely from our regular dodecasyllabic iambics or Alexandrines), correspond exactly to the versi sdruccioli of the Italians ; whereas their regular heroic measure, consisting (strictly) of five iambic feet with an additional eleventh unaccented syllable, resembles as exactly our ordinary decasyllabics when they have the addition of one supernumerary or eleventh unaccented syllable. Of this, instances are very common in the blank verse of our tragedies, and occur sometimes in Milton ; I doubt if at all * Here this 5th foot is analogous to " rcsblverc.'' NOTES. 79 in Thomson's Seasons : often in Dryden's rhymes : scarcely ever in Pope, unless when he means to give a burlesque turn to his verse, as in the two following distichs : " Whether the goddess sinner it, or saint-it, If folly grow romantic, I must paint-it." " Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow, The rest is all but leather and pruwcMa." Here is an instance from the Paradise Lost : What time his pride Had cast him out from heaven, with all his host Of rebel angels ; by whose aid, aspir-ing To set himself in glory above his peers, He trusted to have equall'd the Most High." Shakespeare seems, in a few of his plays, particularly in Henry VIII., to have studied to make use of this super- numerary or eleventh syllable. Of this a very striking ex- ample occurs in the beautiful soliloquy of Wolsey, which, consisting of twenty-two lines, has but five of those that are not hendecasyllables. So farewell to the little good you bear-me ! Farewell ! a long farewell to all my great-ness. This is the state of man ; to-day he puts-forth The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blos-soms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon-him : The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, (1) And when he thinks, good easy man, full sure-ly His greatness re a ripening, nfps his root, (2) 80 NOTES. And then he falls, as I do. I have ven-ttfr'd, Like little wanton boys that swim on blad-dcrs, These many summers in a sea of glo-ry; But far beyond my depth ! my high blown pride (3) At length broke under me, and now has left-me, Weary and old with service, to the mer-cy Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide-me. Vain pomp and glory of the world ! I hate-ye ! I feel my heart new open'd. O ! how wret-ched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' fa-vours ! There is betwixt the smile he would aspire-to, The sweet aspect of princes, and his ru-in, More pangs and fears than war or woman know ; (4) And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, (5) Never to hope again. I have also been reminded that such lines occur in almost every page in Beaumont and Fletcher. In several of the lines just cited, as well as in the two be- fore taken from Pope, the monosyllables (pronouns, and other particles), being to be pronounced without emphasis, have the effect to the ear of those called enclitic in Greek and Latin grammar; as, " bear-me," " puts-forth," " upon-him," " left-me," " hide-me," " hate-ye," " aspire-to," (Shake- speare); " saint-it," " paint-it," (Pope); like " Toio^Jr," "'OI^E," " Ayjuuj'fli," "Tf(uuj>7f," in Greek; "tecum," "vobis- cum,'' "tuusque," in Latin; "parlerotti,""meco," in Italian; " precarella,'' " haberos,'' in Spanish ; " vendome," " pass- ouse," in Portuguese. If we consider the words " day, he" NOTES. 8 1 in the third line of Wolsey's soliloquy, as one diphthongal syllable, that line is only decasyllabic ; and, indeed, the words " put forth," at the end of the line, are, I believe, most naturally read as an iambus (or spondee perhaps), and with less stress on " put" than on " forth," which last word, in that view, ought not to be considered as a supernumerary syllable. The versi sdruccioli of the Italians are never, or scarcely ever, used in their graver poetry, or mixed with their hendeca- syllables,but for the purposes of ridicule or burlesque. Here is an example of three sdruccioli taken from the Arcadia of Sannazaro. " Solca nell' onde, e nelT arene semina, E tenta i vaghi venti in rete accogliere, Chi fonda sue speranze in cor di femmina." Ariosto had the fancy of writing most of his comedies in versi sdruccioli (they are also sciolti, or without rhyme) ; but their monotonous effect has prevented subsequent Italian dramatic writers from, adopting that practice. Goldoni, not finding such sdrucciolo measure successful or popular, tried some of his comedies in lines of fourteen syllables, or versi Martelliani, so called from one Martelli having written in that measure. Here is a specimen from Goldoni's Filosofo Inglese. Ecco i stampati fogli, che il padron mio vi manda I soliti foglietti, di Parigi, e d'Olanda, 82 XOTES. II Mercuric galante, che fa tanto rumorc Ed il corrcnte foglio del nostro Spcttatore. It will be observed that these versi Martelliani, though consisting of an equal number of syllables with those of some of our old poets, are of a different construction ; for the English are divisible into two verses, the first of eight, the second of six syllables ; those of Goldoni into two equal divisions of seven syllables each, the seventh and fourteenth syllables being always unaccented. Here are four (strange sounding) lines from Phaer's Virgil : Then first the cruel fear me caught, and sore my spirits* appall'd, And on my father dear I thought, his face to mind I call'd, When slain with grisly wound our king, him like of age in sight, Lay gasping dead ; and of my wife Creuse bethought the plight I believe many English readers, and most of those Italians who understand our language, are ignorant of the complete similarity of the measure of our heroic verse to that of the Italian, when we employ the eleventh, or supernumerary syllable. It may therefore be of some use to show that simi- larity, by comparing together the first stanza of Tasso, and a literal translation of it in the same measure, though not in ottava rima. Used as one syllable, V-kc sprites. NOTES. 8$ " Canto | 1'arnie | picto | se e il ca | pita-nu Che il gran sepolcro libero di Cris-to, Molto cgli opro col scnno e con la ma-no, Molto sofFri nel glorioso acquis-to. E in van 1' Inferno a lui si oppose, e in va-no S'armo d'Asia, e di Libia il popol mis- to ; Che il Ciel gli die favore, e sotto a i san-ti, Segni, ridusse i suoi compagni erran-ti.'' Englished verbatim. I sing | the pi | ous ar | mies and | the cap-tain Who the great sepulchre of Christ deli-ver'd ; Much he achiev'd by wisdom and by prow-ess, Much suffer'd in the glorious acquisi-tion ; And Hell in vain oppos'd him, and in vain-too Was arm'd of Asia and Lybia, the mixt peo-ple; For Heaven gave favour to him, and to his ho-ly Ensigns submitted his companions er-rant. I need not say that this translation has no other pretence or purpose, but to establish what I have just stated. Opposed to the verso sdrucciolo is the verso tronco, which exactly answers to our usual verse, since it ends with an iambus, or has the last syllable accented, which in general is the case with ours. I say, in general, because our best poets sometimes con- clude a line of only the regular number of ten, or, as the case may be, of eight syllables, with a polysyllable, the two last 84 XOTES. syllables of which have not the accent (or the acute accent) ; and there too, when sparingly used, they produce a graceful variety, especially in blank verse. " That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal providence, And justify the ways of God to men." Milton, Par. Lost. " Which his fair tongue (conceit's expositor) Delivers in such apt and gracious words, That aged ears play truant at his tale, And younger hearings are quite ravished, So sweet and voluble is his discourse." Shakespeare, Love's Labour Lost. " Thrice blessed they, that master so their blood, To undergo such maiden pilgrimage : But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd, Than that, which, withering on the virgin thorn, Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness." Shakespeare, Mids. N.'s Dream. " And in the modesty of fearful duty, I read as much as from the rattling tongue Of saucy and audacious eloquence." Shakespeare, ibid. " Sleep, gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses in forgetfulncss !'' Shakespeare, Hen. IV. NOTES. 85 " In the first rank of these did Zimri stand : A man so various, that he seem'd to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome." Dryden, Abs. and Achit. " Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words, health, peace, and competence." Pope. The following is an example in our eight syllable iambics : " Who neither heed, nor hear, nor see, But at the nod of Vanity'." Advice to Julia. Here also the three last syllables have the effect, to our ears, of a dactyl, like that of the two final dactyls in " Maecenas, atavis edite Regiltis" In general the versi tronchi, like the sdruccioli, are only used by the Italians, mixed with their regular hendecasyllables, for the same burlesque purpose for which, as in the lines above quoted from Butler, Swift, and Lord Byron, triple rhymes are employed in our language. Take as an example the 79th stanza of the first canto of our Ricciardetto : " E legge a carte settecento e tre Tutto questo negozio come sta ; E che legare la Fata si de', E darle fuoco senza aver pieta : E le ceneri poi portar con se, E in lunga lista spargerle cola 86 NOTES. Dove li cagna e il cervo in su e in giu Vanno correndo, accio vi passin su." Pulci, Ariosto, and others, make now and then whole stanzas (like that just taken from Forteguerri), and at other times their concluding couplets or distichs, of versi tronchi, and sometimes also of versi sdruccioli. There is not, I be- lieve, a single instance of the one or the other licence in that most perfect work the Gerusalemme Liberata ; but which, in respect of its too strict versification, is often considered by the Italians, just as Pope's verses are by many of us, as wanting in variety. I learned from the very scholarlike and respectable editor of the late beautiful and patriotic edition of the Portuguese Lusiad, printed by Didot, at Paris, that versi sdruccioli are frequently used in that language in the most serious and solemn poetry : and to exemplify this, he mentioned to me the following admired stanza, being the 39th of the 5th canto of that poem, in which the second, fourth, and sixth verses are sdruccioli. " Nao acabava, quando huma figure, Se nos mostro no ar, robusta e vali-da, De disforme e grandissima estatura, O rosto carregado, a barba esquali-da : Os olhos encovados e a postura Medonha e ma, e a cor terrena e palli-da, Cheios de terra, e crespos os cabellos, A boca negra, os denies amarellos." NOTES. 87 The same, I believe, is true with regard to Spanish poetry. The German tragedies of Schiller, of Lessing, of Schlegel, the successful translator of Shakespeare, &c. are in exactly the same measure with our decasyllabics. Before the great revolution produced in their versification by Klopstock, the most general heroic verse in German was on a like model with the French Alexandrines, having the constant pause in the middle, that is, at the end of the sixth syllable, or of the first hemistich, and the alternation of mas- culine with something corresponding to the French feminine rhymes. I believe in all French verse there must be either an alterna- tion of distichs which are denominated feminine and masculine, or of masculine and feminine lines intermixed in an irregular manner, but preserving always corresponding rhymes of each sort. Every feminine has a syllable more than the correspond- ing masculine verse, formed by what is called a feminine, and sometimes, though improperly, a mute "e" or " es"*. Their heroic, or most solemn sort of verses, correspond, when mascu- line, in the number of syllables, with our Alexandrines, with this difference however, that they necessarily consist of two half lines or hemistichs, the first always of six syllables, the last of which six must be formed of the last syllable of some entire word, so that the first of the next hemistich, of course, is the be- ginning of another word. The feminine verse must be formed It requires much practice to read French verse so as to give the effect of a syllable to the feminine " e," without articulating it distinctly, in the manner of the natives of the south of France. 88 NOTES. in the same way, except that the second hemistich must consist of seven syllables ; the first hemistich, as in die mas- culine, being of six. Those long verses, whether masculine or feminine, are called, by the French, Alexandrines. For lighter poetry the French more generally use verses of ten and eleven syllables, that is, the masculine of ten, and the feminine of eleven ; and they in like manner are always divided into hemistichs ; their first hemistich being of four and the other of six, when masculine, and of seven when feminine. This strict mechanism is never dispensed with ; so that each line, whether Alexandrine or of the shorter sort, might be written as two lines, making a distich appear as a quatrain, with only the second and fourth lines rhyming together. Let us take the following passage of the Lutrin as a specimen of their Alexandrine, and the subsequent passage from Du- mourier's * imitation in French verse of Ricciardetto, as one of their ten and eleven syllable verse ; and which last instance will also serve 'as a good sample of the manner of that very entertaining imitator of the Italian of Forteguerri. From the Lutrin. " Ses- Chanoines vermeils, et brillans de sante, S'engraissoient d' une longue et sainte oisivete. He was the father of General Dumourier, and is said to have written his abridged imitation of Rieciardetto after he was eighty years of age: the son mentions it in his Memoirs. It has been often reprinted in France, but, I believe, is hitherto little known in England. NOTES. 89 Sans sortir de leurs lits plus doux que leurs hcrmincs Ces pieux faineans faisoient chanter Marines ; Veilloient a bien diner, et laissoient en leur lieu A des Chantres gages le soin de lolier Dieu." From the French Richardet. " Comme tu dis, c'est une bagatelle, Repond Renaud. Le projet est badin. Tu me crois done de France un Paladin ? A dire vrai, 1'histoire m'epouvante ; Le plus souvent mon ombre me fait peur ; Je crains sur-tout cette race geante, Et cette nuit je mourrai de frayeur. Mon bon ami, pour rassurer mon ame II me faudra coucher avec ta femme. Plutot cent fois, dit 1'Hote avec fureur, A belles dents j'arracherois ton cceur ; Et, le croyant poltron comme il s'annonce, D'un coup brutal assortit sa reponse. Le Paladin, qui de rage palit, D'un bras nerveux par un pied le saisit, Et vous lui fait en Pair faire une ronde, Comme un Berger qui balance sa fronde. Toute sa vie il en resta poussif, L'Hotesse en pleurs, crie, et demande grace, Le bon Renaud s'en tient a la menace, Et devant elle il jette le chetif, Ne sachant plus s'il etoit mort ou vif." 90 NOTES. The first masculine and feminine lines of the passage from Boileau might be written thus : Masculine f Ses Cha | noines | vermeils, verse \ Et brillans de sante. Feminine f Sans sortir de leurs lits, verse \ Plus doux que leurs hermines, &c. And the two first from the French Richardet as follows: Feminine f Comme | tu d's, verse \ C'est un | e ba | gatelle. /^Renaud repond, Masculine I Le projet est badin, verse i ^ u me cr( " s done, ^ De France un Paladin. Feminine f A dire vrai, verse \ L'histoire m'epouvante, &c. Drayton's Poly-Olbion is written entirely in Alexandrines, differing in nothing from the French, except that in his there are no feminine rhymes or alternate couplets necessarily of thirteen syllables ; the following is a specimen : " Thus scarcely said the Muse, but hovering while she hung Upon the Celtic wastes, the sea-nymph loudly sung, O ! ever happy isles ! your heads so high that rear, By nature strongly fenc'd, which never need to fear NOTES. 91 On Neptune's wat'ry realms when Eolus raiseth wars, And every billow bounds, as though to quench the stars." 1 Song. These agree entirely with the Alexandrines at the end of Spenser's stanzas, and such as are frequently mixed with the ordinary ten syllable verses of Dryden, &c., and sometimes, but much more rarely, with Pope's. The two ensuing quotations from Opitz and Haller, prove the exact similarity of the German Alexandrines to the French. " Was eine Schlacht erheischt, wo Sturm und Anlauff gut, Wo Hinterhalt must stehn, wo Wacht vonnothen thut, Und was der Sachen mehr, bist selber angegangen, Behertzt und ungebiickt hast nie entfarbt die Wangen, Die Augen nie verkehrt ; zwar, durch Verstand und Rath, Ein Feldherr, aber auch durch Fechten ein Soldat." Opitz. " Ein Kind ist noch ein Kraut das an der Stange klebt, Nicht von sich selbst besteht, und nur durch andre lebt. Darauf, wann nach und nueh sein Denken wird sein eigen, Und Witz und Bosheit sich durch stiirkers Werkzeug zeigen, Wachst Geitz und Ehrsucht schon, noch weil ein kinderspiel, Ein Ball und schneller Reif, ist seiner Wunsche ZieL'* HaUer. And here are two specimens of German decasyllabics and hendecasyllabics. The first is an extract from Schlegel's trans- 92 NOTES. lation of the passage quoted above from Shakespeare's Mid- summer Night's Dream. " O drey mal selig die, des Bluts Beherrs-cher, So jungfrauliche Pilgerschaft bestehn ! Doch die gepflUckte Ros'ist irrdischer begluckt Als die, am unberlihrten Dome welkend, Wachst, lebt, un stirbt in heil'ger Einsamkeit*' Except that the third line is an Alexandrine in the old form, " Doch die gepflUckte Ros' ist irrdischer begllickt," which mixture I think not uncommon in German tragedies. An English ear cannot but be very much struck with the consonance between those verses and their original. The next is from Schiller's Maria Stuart, of which the French translation (but greatly altered from the original) had so great a run at Paris last Spring (1820). " Ich stehe an dem Rand der Ewigkeit, Bald soil ich treten vor den hochsten Rkh-ter, Und noch hab, ich den Heil'gen nicht versohnt." Lastly, here are four hexameters (the prevailing measure now in German) from the Messias of Klopstock : " Scho'nster der Tage, du sollst vor alien kiinftigen Tagen Fesdich und heilig uns seyn, dich soil vor deinen Gefiihrten,' Kehrst du wider zur'uck, die Seele des Menschen, der Seraph, Und der Cherub, beym Aufgang undUntergange, begrussen!" (Thin last note, of such disproportionate length, is an extract from an Essay I have in part composed on the differ- ent modes ofvcrsijication in several of the modern languages. ) NOTES. 93 Note 55, stanza xcv. Next week our Forteguerri's Muse renew'd. History says " the next day ;" but how often, and truly, has it been remarked, that things which have actually hap- pened in real life, would be thought too improbable to be hazarded in works supposed to be fictitious ; I have therefore taken upon me here to weaken the real fact, in order to make it appear more credible. Additional Note * to p. xxi. after the paragraph ending with the words " that exists in any language." Yet were it not better far to abstain from the too common practice of weighing the transcendent talents of those matchless poets in opposite and as it were contending scales ? Reader ! if you have already had the delight of perusing the last productions of Lord Byron's Muse, how must you have admired those exquisitely poetical and affecting portraitures of Ariosto and Tasso which conclude the 3d Canto of the " Prophecy of Dante," We there see them contrasted without invidious comparison, or depreciation of the one to exalt the other; and characterized in numbers, style, and senti- ment, so wonderfully Dantesquc, that mastering our uncon- genial language, and habitual modes of thought as well as expression they seem to have been inspired by the very genius of the " inarrivabile'" Dante himself. * Written May, ifi?l. ERRATA, CORRIGENDA, ET ADDENDA. INTRODUCTION. Page xiii. 9th line from the bottom. After the words "field most sacred,'" add the following Note. Those who have read the collection of Sonnets, &c. by Luigi Pulci and Matteo Franco, can have little doubt of the spirit in which the very objectionable passages in the Morgante referred to by Sismondi were written. They were republished (after two rare editions in the 15th Century, and one in 1520,) in 1759 by a certain Marchese Filippo de Rossi, but without the name of any printer or place several of those sonnets being addressed to Lorenzo de Medici him- self. The Editor of that last edition says of Pulci, " Era " di carattere assai bizzarro. Fu esso il primo che, a H 2 96 ERRATA, CORRIGENDA, " persuasione del Magnifico, introdusse col suo Morgante, i " Romanzi nella nostra Poesia, cantando, ad imitazione degli " antichi Rapsodi, ai conviti del suo Mecenate," and of the two authors, " La maggior gloria per altro di quei due Poeti, " oltre la piacevolezza Satirica, si e la purita della nostra " lingua, ond'essi sono annoverati tra i padri della Toscana " favella." Page xviii. 9th line. After the word " though," for " Berni" read " t?te latter " Ibid. 6th line from the bottom. For " soared," read " soars." Page xxv. llth line. After the word " effect," insert " not only in conversation, but," &c. Page xxix. in Note*. For " 17 ," read " 178793." Page xxxiv. Instead of the paragraph beginning " As to the machinery of the Rape of the Lock, &c." down to " Gaballs," read, " As to the machinery of the Rape of the Lock, most of us in this country have been prepared, by our infantine familiarity with the fairies of the nursery, to give a sort of anticipated credence, not only to Shakespeare's inimitable little sprites, but to those of the Rosicrucian dream, which Pope's youthful fancy and cultivated taste led him to borrow from Gabalis" ET ADDENDA. 97 Page xxxv. 2nd line. After " Gabalis," add, " The machinery of the Rape of the Lock has in a very recent publication been described as among * the most exquisite embellishments of fancy ;' and the same writer calls that poem ' a composition to which it will be in ' vain to compare any thing of the kind Pope there stands 4 unrivalled, and possibly never will be rivalled.' " Ibid. 9th line. For " new," read " new" (i. e. in Italics.) Ibid. 10th line. After " discoveries" insert a comma. Page xxxvi. 13th line. " Which poem Voltaire says," &c. add, " Voltaire farther called Hudibras ' le livre le plus intraduistble,'' yet Mr. J. Towneley, an English gentleman who had been long in the French service, having successfully rendered parts of it into French verse of eight syllables without hemistich, was encouraged at last to execute the whole ; and accordingly his entire translation was printed and published, with the original, in London, in 1 757, by the Abbe J. T. Needham. This French translation had become a great curiosity, and extremely scarce, when the bookseller Jombert of Paris un- dertook a republication of it about three years ago, to which I was a subscriber, and which I afterwards saw placarded in large characters in all the streets of that city when I was 98 ERRATA, CORRIGENDA, there in 1820-1. Mr. Towneley said modestly, in his short preface, that he had not dared to offer to the public what Voltaire had declared to be impracticable, with any other view than to assist those foreigners who were desirous of forming some idea of the peculiar characteristics of this singular performance. It has been observed that the French version, except in a very few instances, is as concise as the original English. I am also possessed of a translation of Hudibras into German, printed at Riga, in 1787 ; and it may afford amusement to English readers acquainted with those two foreign languages, to compare part of the portrait drawn by Butler of his hero as rendered in the one and the other. French. Son aspect etait, trait pour trait, D'un preux chevalier 1e portrait, Dont le fier genou, de sa vie, Ne plia qu'a chevalerie ; Qui jamais qu'aw coup n'endura Qui son epaule decora ; A bon droit la fleur de la clique Soit errante, soil domestique ; Grand sur les banes, grand a cheval ; Sur tous deux d'un merite egal Brillaient son ceeur et sa cervelle A juger, ou vider querelle ; Et fut renomme pour ses fails Pendant la guerre comme en paix ; ET ADDENDA. 99 (Ainsi certain rat amphibie Dans Pair ou 1'eau trouve sa vie,) Mais ici doute maint auteur S'il cut plus d'esprit, ou de coeur ; C'est disputer et faire glose, En verite, sur peu de chose ; L'esprit ne passait, c'est certain, La valeur que d'un demi-grain ; Ce qui fit passer pour nianie L'eclat dont brillait son g6nie, Et qu'on le prit (tranchons le mot) Pour 1'outil des fripons, un sot ;" &c. German. " Sein Ansehn war voll Drang und Kraft, Ein wahrer Spiegel der Ritterschaft ; Der nie gebeugt sein steifes Knie Vor etwas anders, als Chevalerie, Und keinen under Schlag vertrug, Als den der ihn zum Ritter schlug ; Ein Konig aller irrenden Ritter Und Friedensrichter ; ein wahrer Zwitter Vom Helden in Turnier und Streit, Und Weisen in Urtheil und Bescheid ; Gleich gross auf seiner Richterbank, Und wenn er auf sein Ross sich schwang ; Krieg oder Friede gait ihm gleich, 100 ERRATA, CORRIGENDA, So wie die Wassermaus zugleich In Scheunen wohnt und auch im Teich. Viel uns'rer Autor'n zweifeln zwar Ob er mehr klug, oder tapfer war. Der eine halt dies, der andre das ; Doch all' ihr Zank ist wol nur Spass, Derm hochstens uberwog sein Him Die Wuth ein halbes Gerstenkorn. Viel hielten ihn fiir ein Werkzeug gar Das Schelme brauchen, und heisst ein Narr," &c. Page xliv. 2nd line. For, " it expresses that light and graceful jocundity which, when united with true good breeding, forms together the sort of chastised liveliness which still knows to confine itself Within the limits of becoming mirth ;" read, " it expresses that light and graceful jcundity which, when united with true good breeding, forms the sort of chas- tised liveliness that still knows to confine itself Within the limit of becoming mirth." The speech in Shakespear's " Love's Labour's Lost" from which this line is taken, contains so perfect a description of an agreeable man, that I must indulge myself here with transcribing the whole of it. ET ADDEKDA. 101 " Another of these students at that time Was there with him : if I have heard a truth Biron they call him ; but a merrier man, Within the limit of becoming mirth.) I never spent an hour's talk withal. His eye begets occasion for his wit ; For every object that the one doth catch, The other turns to a mirth-moving jest ; Which his fair tongue (conceit's expositor,) Delivers in such apt and gracious words, That aged ears play truant at his tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished ; So sweet and voluble is his discourse." Shakespeare, Love's L.'s L. A. 2. S. I. It is observable that " hour," in the fifth line of this passage, is used by Shakespeare as a dissyllable, as the mono- syllable " fire," is also in the following, and in other in- stances. O, who can hold a fire in his hand, By thinking on the frosty Caucasus ? King Rich. II. A. 1. S. 3. The stanza on the reverse of the title-page after the Intro- duction, is the first of a set of Ottave Rime, inserted at the end of the 3d volume of the Milan edition, 1813, and ad- dressed, by Nicotele Emonio, (a fictitious name, as pastor of Arcadia,) to the Princess of Forano, who had sent their author a copy of Ricciardetto. 102 ERRATA, CORRIGENDA, ARGUMENT. Page 5. 1st line. " The portrait of the Muse, capricious wench" Johnson gives " young woman," as the primitive sense of the word " wench," and quotes for it the following passage in Othello, so familiar to all the readers of Shakespeare : " Now how dost look now ? O 511-starr'd wench!" And Steevens, for that sense of the word, quotes 2 Samuel, ch. xvii. v. 17, and a line from Gawin Douglas's version of the Eneid, " Audetque viris concurrere virgo." " This itiensclie stoutley rencounter durst with men.'' STANZAS. Page 8, stanza vi. " And scratch their addle pates, and bite their nails, When sense or rhyme or proper accent fails." " Be mindful, when invention fails, To scratch your head, and bite your nails." Swift's Rhapsody on Poetry. Page 9, stanza viii. For " She weeps for Ariadne on her rock;" read " She weeps with Ariadne on her rock." ET ADDENDA. 103 Page 1 1 , stanza xii. " (But nameless now.)" The original is, " Ch'or non voglio dire." Thus, " I quali ora nomar non fa mestiere." Ariosto. Page 31, stanza liii. " And Agamemnon, too, of chiefs the chief. " And young Telemachus," &c. read, " And Agamemnon, too, of chiefs the chief, " And young Telemachus," &c. i. e. A comma ( , ) instead of a full stop ( . ), after the word " Agamemnon.'' Page 36, stanza Ixii. " The monstrous worm,'' &c. " O, Eve, in evil hour thou didst give ear " To that false worm." Milton's P. L. B. 9. v. 10678. Page 39, stanza Ixviii. For " To Miss Brunette, who won'd in village near ;" read " To Miss Brunette, who wonti'd in village near." 104 ERRATA, CORRIGENDA, " A people neere the northern pole that teonne, " Whom Ireland sent from Icughes and forests hore, " Divided far by sea from Europe's shore." Fairfax's Tasso, C. 1. S. 44. Page 45, stanza Ixxxi. " (In Babylonish slang.)" The word " slang" is not in Johnson. It means properly the enigmatical language, or jargon, of thieves and jail-birds, serving them for a sort of spoken cy flier ; and it corresponds to the word " argot," in French, defined by the Academy, in like manner, " Certain langage des gueux et des filoux, qui n'est intelligible qu'entre eux." " Slang" seems to me to have come of late years into more general use, as synonymous to " jargon," or " gibberish," which last word Johnson ex- plains to mean, " the private language of rogues and gip- sies." " Jargon," being equally a French and English word, the Academy explain it first, as " langage corrompu," but then also, as the particular language of certain sorts of people, adding, " les Bohemiens, les gueux, les coupeurs de bourse, ont chacun \e\n jargon particulier que personne n'entend. Le jargon des coquettes. Le jargon des petits-maitres. II n'a point d'esprit, il n'a que du jargon." In Italian the. word " gergo" has the same meanings, being " Lo stesso, che parlar furbesco" and, "usato e inteso da'furli c baratticri." So io bene, che se alcun forestiero per mia sciagura s'obbat- tcsse a questo trattato, egli si farebbe befi'e di me, e direbbe, ET ADDENDA. 105 che io t'insegnassi di favellare in gergo, owero in cifera." (Galatea di Geo. D^lla Casa.) " Egli era picoletto di persona, Ma di malizia ben fornito e pieno, Sempre in calmone, e per gcrgo ragiona ** Nel dire e nel rubare e senza freno." Berni Orl. In. Lib. 2. C. 3. S. 43. Page 47, stanza Ixxxv. For " And on the flags his caitiff carcass stretch. " He writhes convulsed ;" read " And on the flags his caitiff carcass stretch, " Writhing convulsed." NOTES. Page 64, 7th line from bottom. After " The French in their distichs," &c. insert, The following instances will illustrate what is here meant. " Telle est de ce Poeme et la force et la grace. D'un ton un peu plus haut, mais pourtant sans audace, La plahitive Elegie, en longs habits de deuil, Sjait, les cheveux epars, gemir sur un cercueil." Boileau. L'Art Poet. Ch. 2. v. 36. " II faut que le coeur seul parle dans 1'Elegie. L'Ode avec plus d'eclat, & non moins d'energie, 106 'tfRRATA, CORRIGENDA, &c. Elevant jusqu'au Ciel son vol ambitieux, Entretient dans ses vers commerce avec les Dieux." Boileau, ib. v. 5 6. Page 70, addition to Note 35. Few readers I think will approve of the word " /irr^e," in the French (p. 68, line 4 from the bottom.) Though copied in the translation, it is perhaps less emphatically marked there, not forming part of the rhyme. There seems also (pace tanti poetcE /) to be an inaccuracy hi the measure of the first line of this celebrated tirade of Voltaire, the word " liens" being there made of two syllables, (for otherwise the neces- sary number often would be wanting,) and, besides that such words ought always, I believe, to be monosyllables in French verse, " /ten*" tliere rhymes as a dissyllabic with " biens" used actually, as well as according to correct prosody, as a monosyllable. On observing this, I consulted various editions, and particularly that of Beaumarchais, but I found that the irregularity (if such) is not a typographical error. Yet quaere. THE END. LONDON : PRINTED BY THOMAS PAVISON, WHITEFRIARS. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 10M-1 1-50(2555) 470 REM1HCTON RAND - 2O A 000 479 51 1 8