THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES t^3 f -T 1 eM 7 Y &YL.YESTER (DOUGLAS ) LORD QJLEKBERYIE Nat, 13 May 17^4. THE FIRST CANTO RICCIARDETTO TRANSLATED FROM THE P ITALIAN OF FORTEGUERRI AN INTRODUCTION, CONCERNING THE PRINCIPAL ROMANTIC, BURLESQUE, AND MOCK-HEROIC POETS; AND NOTES, CRITICAL AND PHILOLOGICAL. BY SYLVESTER (DOUGLAS) LORD GLENBERVIE. Non ego sum vates sed prisci conscius an. LONDON : JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET. Neque enirn concludere versum Dixeris esse satis : neque si quis scribal uti nos. HOR. 852831 PICCOLO CARTEROMAC PREFACE. A FEW copies of this little book were printed some months ago. I had no fixed design at that time of submitting it to the criticism and presumed candour of the public at large. The circumstances which gave occasion to its being written, at least the part which is in verse, are correctly set forth in the Introduction : the very mis- cellaneous notes are such as most probably might have occurred to me had it been, not my own, but the production of a friend who had entrusted it to my perusal. I do not say that I was entirely determined not to publish when I first sent my manu- script to the press : but the mere printing, correcting the errata, and adding the notes as chance suggested them, served to amuse me, then in bad health and spirits, Vi PREFACE. and gave me better opportunities of im- proving the book to the best of my skill, than I should otherwise have had. I be- lieve whoever has dealt in printing, must have found that blemishes, even of style and composition, have struck him on read- ing the proof sheets, which had wholly escaped his attention in the manuscript ; and also that many collateral thoughts, tending to elucidate and illustrate his meaning, had then first presented them- selves to his mind. In parts of Germany where paper and printing are very cheap, and authorship much practised, I have understood that several of their writers have used them- selves to send their works, prose and verse, to the printer's, sheet by sheet, or leaf by leaf, never polishing or amending them till they receive the first of the printed proofs. I recollect that Wieland says, in PREFACE. vii one of his prefaces, that he had found great advantage in this. Of the small impression of this essay which I had taken off at the beginning of this year, I distributed the greater part among particular friends, from whom I flattered myself that I might receive good- natured and useful remarks and counsel, touching the numerous defects which I justly apprehended might still have re- mained after my own repeated revisions; and I have had good reason to be glad that I had indulged that expectation. Having come to the resolution of throw- ing myself on the mercy of the grand literary inquest of the nation, of whatever class or cast of his majesty's liege subjects that awful assemblage of rarely unanimous jurymen is composed, perhaps I may seem to have been a little precipitate in carrying such resolution into effect. But Horace's viii PREFACE. advice, and Pope's, " to keep your piece nine years," would have been equally inap- plicable to my time of life, and to the nature of this ephemeral trifle : that may be a good rule for the works of authors, who, like young Cowley, say to themselves, " What shall I do to be for ever known, And make the world to come my own !" * or who, according to one of Shakespeare's inspired expressions, imagine they " feel im- mortal longings in them." Though even as to such cases, experience in some noted in- stances shows the danger of too far exceed- ing the proper period of retention, and still continuing polishing and re-polishing, or ra- ther altering and re-altering, while confined within the author's closet, works so meant for remotest posterity. It has been said, that Lord Lyttelton printed, and then totally * That same Cowley, in his less sanguine days, quaintly but strongly exclaimed, (t Who his to-morrow would bestow For all great Homer's life, even from his death till now ?" PREFACE. IX cancelled and destroyed, several entire im- pressions of his elaborate History of Henry II., during the course of twenty or thirty years ; and that those who had seen the work in its earlier state, found it had gra- dually acquired from the author's too anxi- ous ambition to improve it, while he fondly dreamed it was advancing to perfection, the sort of heaviness and languor which is now generally thought to belong to it. A like fate is known to have attended another historical work of more modern date, the History of the Rebellion in 1745, by the author of the tragedy of Douglas. That history, according to many concurrent re- ports at the time, by the author's con- tinual can ceilings, and, as he thought, me- liorations, during near half a century, had been in a considerable degree emasculated, and deprived of much of its original interest. So far is it from being universally true, that " Authors lose half the praise they would have got, Were it but known what they discreetly blot." X PREFACE. Yes, it is true, if the blotting out is really done discreetly ; and the two writers I have just mentioned no doubt thought theirs a sound and wise discretion ; but, after carrying such supposed discretion so far, they would, in the opinion of some splenetic, though in my opinion very un- just, critics, have done better to suppress their said histories altogether. As to this poor insignificant volume of mine, written at an age from which seldom any thing but what may be quaintly called senile puerilities can be looked for, I trust it will be received with some degree of that indulgence which good nature, still most predominant with the truest masters of the critic's art, generally bestows on the immature exercises of the school- boy, or newly matriculated collegian. The chief faults and defects which my friends have had the kindness to point out PREFACE. xi to me, either while my translation still re- mained in manuscript, or afterwards, in the short space of time between the first and the present impression, (about nine weeks, in- stead of nine years), havebeen of three sorts: 1. That I have nowhere given any ex- planation or sketch of the general plan of the original poem. That objection I had in some degree obviated, I thought, by what I have said in the Introduction. The truth is, that Ricciardetto. is (like the two Orlandos) a mighty maze, and almost quite without a plan. However, if I live to finish another literary labour which has occupied me at various intervals, during a great many years, amidst the avocations of business professional and official, and many suspen- sions of all study from ill health and do- mestic misfortunes, I may yet be tempted to try to make a general abstract, or ground- plot, as it were, on a very limited scale, of b xn PREFACE. Forteguerri's irregular fabric ; perhaps in stanzas ; transplanting into it here and there a selection of what may appear to me the most brilliant if also in no respect excep- tionable passages of the original. 2. A second head of objection has been the having employed in some instances cer- tain faulty and inadmissible rhymes. One of these, in the 85th stanza, as it stood in the manuscript, was so unlike a rhyme, that I still wonder how it could have escaped me : yet it did, and after many repeated readings over by myself, until a friend of most distinguished talents in almost all the fine arts, and therefore practically a judge, and confessedly a very excellent judge on such subjects, remarked it to me, and luckily time enough before the former im- pression was wholly printed off. It was indeed so stupid, that I am ashamed to notice it further than by saying that it PREFACE. xiii was worse even than one of our great pro- saist's, Addison, in his Epistle to Sache- verel : " I leave the arts of poetry and verse, To those who practise them with more success;" or than one still more provokingly bad of Prior, which (and there is another very faulty one in the same passage) proves a sad deformity to the otherwise beautiful verses on intemperance in his Solomon ; remark- able likewise for containing the best defini- tion of a pun I have ever seen either in prose or verse : " I drank ; I liked it not. 'Twas rage, 'twas noise, An airy scene of transitory joys. In vain I trusted that the flowing bowl Would banish sorrow, and enlarge the soul. To the late revel, and protracted feast, Wild dreams succeeded, and disordered rest ; And, as at dawn of morn fair Reason's light Broke through the fumes and phantoms of the night, b 2 xiy PREFACE. What had been said, I ask'd my soul, what done, How flow'd her mirth, and whence its source begun ? Perhaps the jest that charm'd the sprightly crowd, And made the jovial table laugh so loud, To some false notion owed its poor pretence, To an ambiguous word's perverted sense, To a wild sonnet or a wanton air, Offence and torture to the sober ear. Perhaps, alas ! the pleasing dream was brought From this man's error, from another's fault, From topics which good-nature would forget, And prudence mention with the last regret." A few other instances of vicious or not allowable rhymes have, on different re-peru- sals, occurred to myself : viz. " coast," made to rhyme with " accost" in stanza xxxi. ; "Coww"with "account" stanza Ivii. ; "mine" with itself identically, both in sense and spelling, stanza Ixvi.; "scene" with "seen," stanza IxxviL; and "drest" with "addrest" stanza Ixxviii. I hope if any patient and well-conditioned reader will take the trou- ble to collate what I may, though not ac- PREFACE. ^cv curately, distinguish as the first edition, with the present, in order to see the changes I have made in those stanzas, he will think that, with the expulsion of illegitimate rhymes, I have mended the sense as well as the sound. It would be no justification in the case of English rhyme to observe, that in Italian, and in French* too, but there more sparingly, such rhymes as " scene" and " seen," or even "mine" and " mine" that is, the same identical word, and, in the Italian, in the same sense, but not in French, are lawful, and not very unfrequent; nor are they indeed without re- peated examples, perhaps from negligence * " Prens-moi le bon parti, laisse-la tous les livres, Cent francs au dernier cinq combien font-ils ? vingt livres." Boileau. " Tel que vous me voyez, monsieur, ici present, M'a d'un fort grand soufflet fait uu petit present." i Rac. Les Plaideurs. XVI PREFACE. or oversight, in our now semi-obsolete, but still excellent and admired Spenser. 3. The third objection which has been mentioned to me may seem of a more serious nature. It is to the use sometimes of expressions considered, in a general view, as coarse and homely ; and for the most striking examples of this sort, the stanzas narrating the circumstances of the single combats between the two giants, Tragga and Master Stritch, and Rinaldo, have been particularly specified. A lady, (for to that sex I have always wished to resort for criticism united with taste, in matters within the compass of their literary pursuits, having found their judgment in such matters at once sure and liberal), a lady, on whose opinion I have the most implicit reliance, and whose indulgence to my muse is hereditary, wrote to me that this was an objection which she feared was PREFACE. xvii likely to be made. I have done my best to get out of the scrape, if it is one, by my note, No. 84 ; and, if example and pre- cedent be allowed by our poetical jurists that authority which they claim in other judicatories, I beg leave to say, "fecere alii scepe, item boni,"* I have only trod in this respect in the footsteps of others in- finitely my betters ; and, to support me in this, I particularly pray in aid, in the first place, Homer himself, who, in that dramatic scene which I have cited in the note on stanza xxvi. makes the humi- liated and contrite Helen call herself by a namet of which no well-bred person in our days ever pronounces more than the first letter ; J and, secondly, on our own Par- * Ter. j- " Aaijf dvT epofstnte KOvcyViJoj, si ifoT eyy ys." 11.3, v. 180. J Avidien and his wife, no matter which, For him you call a dog, and her a b . Pope's Imit. of Hor. Lib. 2. Sat. 2. xvni PREFACE. nassus, the refined author of the Rape of the Lock ; not to name a host of other poets, as well of ancient as modern, foreign as domestic renown; confining my appeal to those compositions of theirs for there it is that their cases are, as the lawyers say, in point of which the purport and general tenor most clearly prove that they must have meant to avoid every thing that could be considered as low and plebeian. I must, at all events, request my fair and young readers to do me the justice to ob- serve, that no example, nor any blind ve- neration for the greatest poetical names, have any where seduced me to follow any precedent in the adoption of words which the modest meek-eyed virgin might blush to see, or her uncontaminated ears be shocked to hear. I will now state a fourth sort of fault PREFACE. xix which many may find, and indeed some have found, in my notes : I mean the very frequent quotation of parallel passages from different authors of high eminence, both ancient and modern. In this I own I gave way to a taste natural to me, and almost innate, and increasedby unsuspended habits of more than half a century. I like to see how fine writers express the same ideas, sometimes in almost the same words, whether knowingly or not ; and why ? be- cause such repetitions fix a sort of stamp on the ideas and expressions, like the stamp of the mint, which authenticates and cer- tifies the purity and sterling value of our current coins ; and indeed to me such passages, even when undisguised imitations, often seem to confer on the original thought as it were new and original beauty or ef- fect. Such an imitator was Virgil, who yet merited from one of the greatest of poets, the description of " that fountain which XX PREFACE. pours forth so broad a stream of elo- quence," " Quella fonte Che spande di parlar si largo fiume ;" * and such imitators of Horace and Juvenal were Boileau and Pope, of the one as well as of the other of whom it may be said, that he was " Meme en imitant toujours original." THE ADMIRERS of the divine, though some- times a little profane, Lodovico, must well remember those exquisite stanzas towards the end of his immortal Orlando, where he supposes himself, after a long and perilous voyage, to be arrived at length in sight of his native harbour, and that he already perceives numerous friends, whom he names * Dante 1' Inferno. PREFACE. xxi or characterizes, come down to the shore to hail his return, and preparing to embrace and surround him with every tender sign of gratulation. It would be a most ex- travagant abuse of the privilege of com- paring great things to small, if, from my not less worthy, and, I may add, in many in- stances not less illustrious friends who have taken the kindest interest in my poor enterprise, I were to dream of similar gra- tulation on the return of my little bark from her short and undignified cruise ; but I trust those friends will not disdain to allow me the satisfaction of here dedicating the fruits of my coasting expedition not on that account the more secure from the dangers of shipwreck to each and all of them ; To the ingenious and learned friend, as deeply versed in professional science as he is conversant with all the branches of xxil PREFACE. polite literature, while the small portion of leisure time he can now enjoy is spent and courted in the best society of London, whose simultaneous taste and decision made me reject a disagreeably jingling word from the third line of the stanzas addressed to the Earl of G d ; To the elegant scholar and polished gentleman, best loved where most known, in that select society to which his delicate health and discriminating choice require him chiefly to confine himself, who I believe will find banished from my verses almost all the words and expressions which his just and scrupulous acumen condemned ; - To one of the persons before-mentioned, by me ever most honoured, esteemed, and admired, whose quick eye, and skill, and experience, in building the lofty or pathetic PREFACE. xxm song, discovered at once that worse than bellman's rhyme in my 85th stanza, which, had it been left there, would probably have brought on me such a deluge of epi- grammatic quizzing, and critical sarcasm, as to render me and all my 95 ottave rime " Sacred to ridicule my whole life long, Or the sad theme of many a merry song ;" To him, who, if he is not always named in the very first rank of our best con- temporary poets, has his ill health, or a disposition perhaps unambitious of such mere literary fame, certainly not his muse, to blame ; and who corrected a hasty su- perficial note of mine, in an instance where my early and long habitual use of the most northern dialect of our mother tongue had misled me, " manserunt, hodieque ma- nent vestigia ruris;" To the most amiable person, also already xxiv PREFACE. mentioned, whose mild susceptibility per- ceived, while a friendly fear of hurting the almost morbid sensibility of an author (genus irritabile], perhaps most partial to what is most objectionable in his writings, only permitted the surmise of a fault which might probably be imputed to me, and which in deference to that suggestion I have above attempted, perhaps unsuccess- fully, to palliate or defend j To that citizen of the world, in the best sense of a term so frequently misapplied, who is entitled to be considered as a classic, and also as a critic of safe and sure judg- ment and taste, equally in English and Italian literature " degno d' esser salutato maestro di color che sanno;" and who, amidst his most pressing literary occupations and pur- suits, has found time attentively to peruse, and has spoken indulgently and favourably of my prose and rhymes ; PREFACE. XXV To the most valued and respected friend, with whose acquaintance I have been so long honoured distinguished for natural eloquence both in foreign languages and our own, and a superior understanding and acquirements, cultivated and refined by the most steady and persevering applica- tion of the happiest faculties to the study and practice of all that can improve the morals and manners of polite and social life who has taught me to reconsider and amend many passages to which I had not before sufficiently attended ; To each individual of the much regretted assemblage mentioned in my Introduction regretted, for we shall never all meet again in this world who were the motives, I may say, and witnesses of what their ap- probation gave me the courage to attempt, and which may now afford some excuse, I hope, for the mock importance I am at pre- XXVI PREFACE. sent endeavouring to give it : and, among them, To our then host, the most learned, yet the least pedantic of men ; of know- ledge and literature the most profound, because acquired by the most capacious and most retentive memory; possessed too of the quickest, keenest sense of ridicule, with the happiest vein of playful humour in expressing that sense, yet this so tem- pered by the milk of human kindness as never to give offence: in short, the best good man with the best-natured muse ; my near and dear relation, chosen by me for many affecting reasons to be the poetical patron of this tardy and feeble effort of my widowed and childless old age : To all these I thus again devote, dedi- cate, and consecrate, the following pages. PREFACE. xxvii And since this " ex voto" is in itself of but little worth, I crave permission to con- clude the humble offering in the words of Forteguerri himself, at the end of his poem : " Che r anima gentil sempre pon mente Al buon cuor di chi da, non al Presente :" " The gentle mind ever considers, not the value of the gift, but the good heart of the giver." September 17, 1821 INTRODUCTION. MY intention in attempting the translation of the first Canto of Monsignor Forteguerri's Ricciar- detto subjoined to this 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 per- sons, conversant not only with our own literature, 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 ; l they are also, though not so proverbially, dangerous in Science, and it may be added, that, if not dangerous, they are in many respects incon- venient 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 INTRODUCTION. 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 kingdoms of Animal, Vegetable, and Fossil, or Mineral, and still more so, to draw the evanescent strokes which divide the different or- ders, classes, genera, and species in those several kingdoms, whatever system of nomenclature may have been adopted, so it has happened in things intellectual ; for example, in laying down accurate limits even between prose and poetry, but yet more in classifying in a satisfactory manner by subdivi- sions, 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 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- INTRODUCTION. 3 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 never was 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, that ingenious and accomplished writer seems to have been inclined to have assigned a place among Epic poems to the ballad of Chevy Chase -f-. These, indeed, may be deemed too much of extreme cases to be adduced as proofs of the un- satisfactory nature of definitions. It is only in in- stances where a particular poem appears to stand, as it were, on the verge between two of the esta- blished divisions that, as in the case of the con- tiguous borders of the primary colours in the rain- bow, it is difficult, or impossible to say to which of the conterminous classes it belongs. * Spectator, No. 267. t Spectator, Nos. 70. 74. 4 INTRODUCTION. 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, pro- perly placed. It certainly is not Dramatic, Didactic, Lyric, nor Satiric ; its general tenor is narration, either by the Poet himself, or by his fictitious re- presentative, the Muse: yet this species 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 throughout ; and who shall deny, that in such a narrative poem as our Au- thor's, might be introduced, without the necessity of changing its denomination, Lyric digressions like those which form such 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 INTRODUCTION. 5 of Boiardo, with that poem as new cast by Berni, and with the Malmantile 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 partakes in many other respects of the particular qualities of the other three. The Girone il Cortese 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 personages from the not much less fabulous histories concerning Charle- magne and his Paladins. But those two works have so few of the other characteristic features of that class, and which are much more essential to it than the mere substratum of fabulous narrative, 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 ; 2 the fre- 6 INTRODUCTION. quent parodying of the very words, but more fre- quently of the elevation or pomp of Epic diction ; an almost constant mockery, quizzing, persiflage, or mystification, 3 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 all features distinctly marked in Forteguerri's work, and most of them also are in a greater or less de- gree to be found in the Morgante, the two Orlandos of Boiardo and Berni, and in the Malmantile. All the works I have mentioned are in " Ottawa Rima," or 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 Tor- quato Tasso, who, when his judgment and taste were at their full maturity, 4 also preferred it to the " Versi Sciolti," or blank verse of Trissino, as his father had previously done in his Amadigi, on per- ceiving, as we are informed by Bernardo's Biogra- INTRODUCTION. 7 pher, the then recent ill success of Trissino's Poem (the Italia Liberata) in that measure ; though in whatever 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 humor- ous, good natured mockery in the works of the class of Poets to which our Author belongs, that they are commonly distinguished by the name of bur- lesque, derived immediately from the Italian word burla, whose proper meaning is joke, or mockery. Yet with regard to the Morgante there long sub- sisted a learned controversy among the Italian Critics whether it was not to be considered as of the class of the true Epic. At first sight a modern reader must be surprised to find the great Tor- quato himself, in one of his numerous critical works referred to by Crescimbeni, reckoning Pulci in the number of renowned Epic Poets. But Tasso, who is proved by his own immortal work to have had the justest idea of what constitutes the real Epic, undoubtedly meant, in the passage to which Cres- cimbeni refers, to use the word in a much more ex- tensive sense than that to which it is now generally 8 INTRODUCTION. confined, namely, in the sense above expressed by " Narrative," founding himself on the interpreta- tion which the original Greek word *Eirt$ will ad- mit 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 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 language, may on such subjects be considered as ultramon- tane, after describing it, as " by turns low and bur- lesque, amusing and devout;" observes particularly, " that all the Cantos begin by religious invocations, and that religion is continually mixed in it with every adventure, in a manner the most strange and unedifying, so as to render it very difficult to re- concile 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 extremest bigotry, or a mere profane derision of what ought to be held most sacred." 5 With all its defects, the Morgante continues to INTRODUCTION. 9 retain its popularity in Italy. It is still frequently reprinted in the different cities of 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 in which it grew) that it is in the highest repute, because there Pulci's plea- santry is naturally best understood. 6 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 common 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 in- timately 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 10 INTRODUCTION. to limit the sense of their very vague and general word " Esprit" The English again are often disposed to consider humour, as confined to the southern division of this island ; and I have con- versed with many English readers, who, though they admire the extraordinary talents displayed 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 neighbours, and differs much less from pure and classical English than the dialects of Venice, Lombardy, Naples, &c. differ from the pure Italian. Pulci, though a man of good family in Florence, probably owed his familiar access to the table of Lorenzo, chiefly to his poetical vein, in many re- spects congenial to Lorenzo's own. There it has been conjectured that various stanzas of the Mor- gante were composed impromptu, and this will account for the flatness and triviality of many of the lines, and even of whole stanzas, resembling INTRODUCTION. 1 1 such as are often to be observed in the extem- porary effusions of the most eminent of the Italian " Improvisator's" On the whole, however, there must surely be some extraordinary beauties in the style of the Morgante, otherwise the great Torquato would scarcely have believed, as it appears he did, that Marsilio Ficino, a man so conversant with the purest eloquence of ancient Greece, was in part the real author. Nay there have been 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 fore- runners 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 could be justly thought to have little or no intrinsic merit, it would still 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 12 INTRODUCTION. and incidents, a direct continuation of Boiardo's. But Boiardo's work is entitled to the positive praise 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 supe- rieur," adds that author, " par la richesse du co- loris, et 1'interet meme qui nait de la bravoure ;" and, continues he, " les femmes y paraissent ce qu'elles doivent etre dans la chevalerie, Fame 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 un- polished, 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 done. But though it must perhaps be ad- mitted that his verses are often harsh and uncouth, INTRODUCTION. 13 I cannot 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 the latter has, for the most part, followed him very closely in the narrative, as well as in the names and cha- racters of his heroes and heroines, both chivalrous and burlesque. 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 soars so high above their level Coetusque vulgares et udam Spernit humum fugiente penna D. H. Uepi y$40w?, xij>. 5. 14 INTRODUCTION. 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 in all the beauties of the higher poetry, that he ought to be contemplated alone in that vast inter- mediate space which he occupies between the mere burlesque writers and the great masters of the true Epic. 7 This is not the place to discuss the com- parative 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 some- times in this country among the disputants con- cerning 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 unprofitable disputation is to shelter one's self under the trite but sensible maxim " that there is no disputing of tastes" (" quil nefaut pas disputer des gouts") As far as the principles of regular composition commonly acknowledged can INTRODUCTION. 15 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 probably from the infinite diversity of forms and colours which Ariosto's muse can assume, the sweet variety of his numbers, those unapproachable (" inarrivabili") beauties of the Furioso, as Serassi, though the biographer and panegyrist of Tasso, expresses himself, will ever continue to think 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- posed, on a level with the majestic design and execution, 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 frequent 16 INTRODUCTION. improvement of the most striking beauties of the genius of former times, which have been thought to entitle the Gerusalemme Liberata to be con- sidered as the most finished poem that exists in any language? 8 Lippi, the author of il Malmantile Racquistato, a painter by profession, was born in 1G06, more than half a century after the death of Ariosto, Boiardo, and Berni, and several years after that of Tasso, which happened in 1595. Lippi died 16G4 ; but though the Gerusalemme, in spite of the sort of persecution 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 di- vided 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, INTRODUCTION. IT and applied them, in a humorous 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 classical Italian. The Malmantile has been described by a modern Italian critic as " Poema tutto sparse di proverb] e di graziosi Fiorentinismi ;" 9 and indeed Lippi's general .style partakes of that sly bon- hommie which, from Berni's works, has obtained the name of the Bernesco, as somewhat of a similar style in French is called Marotique, from Clement Marot. But the naive bonhommie, called Ber- nesque, is still more conspicuous in Berni's Capi- toli, in terza rima, 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 some 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 Tvujpou, or sententious maxims which abound in Pindar and Euripides, (not to refer to a more sacred 18 INTRODUCTION. 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 fre- 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 hasten to the conclusion by the application of some apposite proverb ; and, as this reason does not so generally hold in the higher ranks of society, such too frequent use of them is by persons of better taste properly avoided ; but yet, when aptly introduced, a proverb sometimes contributes to produce a happy effect not only in conversation, but even in the most powerful kinds of forensic and 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 INTRODUCTION. 19 praise, by others with a sneer, to my fellow- countrymen. 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 ancient 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 Leyden 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 tolerably conversant with the less idiomatic poetry of that country, will find his pains well re- paid in 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 20 INTRODUCTION. accompany the best editions. The Malmantile was first published, I believe, in 1676, twelve years after the death of the author, by Minucci, 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, as 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. INTRODUCTION. 21 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- 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; 10 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 22 INTRODUCTION. strong terms, adds a powerful practical argument, by stating, that at the time when he wrote, 11 there had not been more than six editions of the Scherno, and none posterior to the year 12 1628, whereas of the Secchia Rapita there had been thirty during that period, besides some in ultramontane countries, 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 have 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 prefer- ence 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 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 INTRODUCTION. 23 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, 13 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 acquaintance with our language, especially as I knew the particular admiration he had of Pope, whose poetry in general was a frequent and fa- vourite topic of conversation with him. To us, the gallantry and tone of good company which pervades the Rape of the Lock, notwithstanding certain ex- ceptions, 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 cathedral, without any female character, except the quondam mistress, and then wife, of a periwig-maker, to grace and enliven it. I know there are English critics, as well as foreign, who have disapproved of the machinery, as it is called, of sylphs, gnomes, &c. which Pope, 24 INTRODUCTION. 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 pon- derous history of the Literature of all Nations thinks they ought to have been, and nothing left but transactions between mere human creatures. Much has been written against the employment of the supernatural agency of fhe heathen gods in modern poetry, now that nobody believes in the existence of those pagan divinities. Yet still, what- ever rigid critics may say, it is probable that Venus, Cupid, Phoebus, and the Muses, will long retain their place in the poetry of modern times. To in- troduce heathen gods as perpetual efficient agents in regular connexion with all the events of a long narrative, certainly awakens too much our sense of improbability, and thereby takes off from the in- terest which it must be the author's object to ex- cite. Yet the substitution in their stead of those metaphysical unembodiable entities, the personified abstractions of human virtues, vices, or other affec- tions of men, or of Superstition, Discord, Night, &c. (the machinery of Boileau in the Lutrin, and Voltaire in the Henriade), which we can never con- INTRODUCTION. 25 template 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 improba- bility. The vague 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 the assumption, that mere naked attributes of mind ever existed as distinct and individual beings, so as to take an active part in the complicated details of the affairs of our world, would require such a stretch of the imagina- tion as will ever be found to baffle the utmost efforts of the most powerful genius. It is true, ^Eschylus has personified the qualities of Strength and Force* in his sublime poem of Prometheus. How far that is to be considered as one of the ex- cellencies 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 * Kpaltf, Ba. 26 INTRODUCTION. 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. 14 But so deep rooted in heathen times does the po- pular creed appear to have been with all except the comparatively small number of sceptical philoso- phers and metaphysicians, that Lucretius, though one of those philosophers, was not afraid to place in the front of a work denying and purporting 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 passages 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 so much, I conceive, as personifications of the abstract poetical talent, as 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. INTRODUCTION. 27 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 the fictitious Gabalis, a name assumed by the Abbe de Montfaucon de Villars. It must have surprised some of those sectaries in poetry with us who seem desirous of excluding that author from the pale of the first of the fine arts, if they have chanced to meet with the work 15 of the Historian of all Literature, a book of considerable repute when I was last in Italy, and quoted above as objecting to the machinery of the Rape of the Lock, to have found him after having accused Pope, the most concise of all poets, of a redundancy of expression, and that he never knows when to end complimenting him with great fertility of imagination. I might have been tempted, after having thus suffered myself to fall into a sort of patriotic de- 28 INTRODUCTION. fence of Pope's Rape of the Lock, to say some- thing of the Dunciad ; but the limits within which I had resolved to confine this discourse, require that I should omit what I might otherwise have added concerning that other admirable mock epic of his, though too temporary and personal not to have already lost much of the interest and picquant, which must at first have belonged to it ; I except, however, from that observation 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 understood. 16 I shall in like manner pass over Hudibras, in its form belonging to the chivalrous burlesque, of which poem Voltaire 17 says that he never met with so much wit in any other book ; while Mr. Hume, in his History of England, no less justly observes, 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 unusual manner. INTRODUCTION. 29 I now therefore proceed to give some account of the author of Ricciardetto, and of his work, in which last respect he himself will be my principal au- thority ; and also of the circumstances which led me to attempt a 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 Car- teromaco, according to the pedantic custom of adopting the Greek translation of modern names, which was so prevalent with the learned at the re- vival of letters, and for many years afterwards. 18 Scipio Carteromachus, a Pistoian, and no doubt of our author's family, a learned man who lived during the reign, and some time in the service, 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 For- teguerri an encomium for recondite and finished 30 INTRODUCTION. erudition, joined to the most complete absence of all display, so happily expressed, that Bayle ex- claims, 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, " Bononia? primum videre contigit Scipionem Carteromachum, reconditse et absolutae eruditionis hominem, sed usque adeo alienum ab ostentatione, ut, ni provocasses, ju- rasses esse literarum ignarum." 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 hap- pened, there have been still fewer that could have justified an exclamation similar to the ele- gant flattery by Pope of the future Lord Chief INTRODUCTION. 31 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 service to him when, in his youth, after going through the ordinary course of education at the university of Pisa, he established himself at Rome, under the patronage of his mother's near relation, Carlo Augustino Fabroni, afterwards Car- dinal Fabroni. 19 In that town, which its present inhabitants still love to hear called the Head of the world, and the Eternal City, he passed the greater part of his days, under successive pontiffs, experiencing va- rious vicissitudes of fortune. After the death of his relation, Cardinal Fabroni, in whose authorita- tive dignity, says the writer of his life, Monsig- nor Fabroni, a relation of both, he had long re- posed all his hopes of advancement, he appears to have lived for a considerable time in a state of neglect, if not disgrace ; but on the succession of Clement XII. to the throne of St. Peter, that venerable head of the Catholic church appointed INTRODUCTION. him secretary to the congregation of cardinals called Delia Propaganda, 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 de- light 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 Ricciardetto. These we may suppose he delivered with peculiar grace, as we are told he had a very happy facility in repeating poetry, with a most uncommon suavity of voice and gesture; being also 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 possession of his office of Secretary to the Pro- paganda on the 17th of February, 1735, in the 61st year of his age. It appears that Forteguerri was endowed with a most powerful memory, and an eager ambition of distinction in almost every branch of composition INTRODUCTION. 33 both in prose and verse ; and, as was more the custom in those days, in Latin as well as in the Vulgar or Tuscan, 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 specu- lative 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 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 mem- ber 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 20 in 34 INTRODUCTION. 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 finished 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 great authority. He was much too good a scholar not to have done justice in this translation to the sense of the original, and too much a master of Italian versification not to 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. The gaiety of Forteguerri's character was one of its most conspicuous features, insomuch that it had obtained for him, among his friends and ac- quaintances, the name of " il Lepido," derived from the Latin " lepor" or " lepos" a word to INTRODUCTION. 35 which it would be difficult to find one exactly synonymous in our language. It must be ren- dered by a circumlocution. Does it not, in its most appropriate sense, express a Kght and graceful jucundity united with good breeding ; that chas- tised liveliness, which still knows to confine itself " Within the limit of becoming mirth ?" 21 Lepidus is more than "jucundus:" one may have "jucunditas" without " lepos." Cicero sometimes makes the distinction : " Multa erat in homine ju- cunditas, et magnus in jocando lepos." In other parts of his writings, indeed, that great, though not always successful, joker, uses lepos in a more indeterminate sense; in a sense in which the Italian epithet may have been sometimes offen- sively applied to our author ; thus he speaks of " facetiarum et urbanitatis non scurrilis lepos." And it is confessed, that the good Niccolb, in cer- tain and perhaps not unfrequent moments of so- cial relaxation and unrestrained open-heartedness, transgressed Shakespeare's limit of becoming mirth. Of this being conscious himself, he was not well pleased with those who gave him the appellation of Lepido, whom he suspected of meaning to convey by it that he was a person who habitually sacrificed 36 INTRODUCTION. the civility and proprieties of conversation to an in- dulgence in coarse and indecent pleasantry. Yet it certainly cannot be denied, that, in his most cele- brated work itself, he has given way too much to the irresistible force of a laughter-loving disposi- tion, such as is so apt to transport the boon com- panion beyond the checks prescribed by a just sense of modesty and decorum. To the great purity of Forteguerri's manners, and his abstinence from every thing that could have justified the imputation of dissoluteness, intemperance, or immorality, we have abundant testimony : so that if censured be- cause 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 !) our 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 higher sorts 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 INTRODUCTION. 37 thousand times less pains than his translation of Terence ; and his historian and relation informs us, 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 Gerusalemme, on the subject of Bajazet, but 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 discourse than by trans- lating it. In that letter he states, that at a country-house of his, near his native Pistoia, in a society of friends assembled there in the autumn of the year 1716, there were several young men of great erudition, 38 INTRODUCTION. with whom, in the evenings, while others of his company diverted themselves with play in an- other room, he used to read sometimes Berni, sometimes the Morgante of Pulci, sometimes Ari- osto, which readings, he says, were a source of very particular delight ; that one evening, during some intervening 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 INTRODUCTION. 39 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 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 intro- duced at that time, and its novelty to me, and its broad but sly humour, naturally recommended 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 fre- quent temporary source of relief to my spirits when afflicted with poignant grief (of which I have had 40 INTRODUCTION. my share), or visited by occasional 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 had, as far as I knew, ever been attempted. The different versions of Tasso and Ariosto, as well as of the Portuguese epic, Gamoens, 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 extremes as it were of the burlesque and mock- heroic, there had been found no translator of Ricciardetto. A few years ago I had presumed to suggest to a gentleman possessing great poeti- cal 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 INT110DUCTION. 41 Muse. I had also ventured to state the same idea to a friend who holds almost daily and active in- tercourse with men of genius in all branches of science and belles lettres. My suggestion was not adopted, I incline to 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, 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 occasional subjects, with all the pangs and throes of difficult labour, 22 never dreamed of at- tempting 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 rhyme," in circumstances, therefore, not dissimilar to those under which the idea of the original was first con- ceived, our conversation one evening happened to turn on the subject of Italian poetry, when I intro- duced my favourite topic of Ricciardetto ; and wish- ing 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 42 INTRODUCTION. 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 stanza, sometimes one, sometimes two or more in a day, till I worked my way, without any fixed design, to the 95th and last, which I finished at the inn where I slept on my road back to town. When I had 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 then late numbers of the Quarterly Review, where I saw a translation of the first and second cantos advertised as already published. I had not an opportunity of meeting with 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- INTRODUCTION. 43 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 por- tion of the time I may yet have to live, * to devote it to such an undertaking, especially as it would certainly be necessary, in compliance with the im- proved 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 ef the poem. Luckily there is nothing in the first which required any departure from the original in that respect, and as that canto comprehends a characteristic introduction, where the author speaks in his own person ; and then his Muse's relation of two independent stories, those of Stella and Bru- netta; I thought it might serve as a sufficient specimen of his style and manner, if I should be found in any way to have done him justice. While I have been writing this discourse I have * " E*x ifalal V0 Though to man, as an animal, the head and heart are more vital and essential than the upper or lower ex- tremities, yet a child born without hands or feet, how- ever complete in other respects, would be considered and described as a monster : so, though, to constitute poetry, thought and sentiment are much more essential, and, as it were, vital component parts than that metrical arrangement of the words and syllables called verse j yet to common feeling and understanding, a composition without such metre, however abundant in thought and sentiment, if it claims to be a poem, should, in my opinion, be regarded as a sort of monster. Note 3, page 6. Vide, infra, note 35, to stanza 7. Note 4, page 6. &$ Tasso afterwards, when his noble intellect had been broken down by vexation, misfortune, and distemper, adopted the blank verse of Trissino in his poem called " Le Sette Giornate del Mondo Creato." * This was writter/Sept 1821. NOTES. 105 Note 5, page 8. 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. That collection was 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 himself. The editor of that last edition says of Pulci, " Era di carattere assai bizzarro. Fu esso il primo che, a persuasione del Mag- nifico, introdusse col suo Morgante, i Romanzi nella nostra poesia, cantando, ad imitazione degli antichi rapsodi, ai conviti del suo Mecenate," and, of both the 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." Note 6, page 9. From such differences of opinion between Pulci's countrymen 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. 106 NOTES. Note 7, page 14. 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 ex- travagant, stories ; persons 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. Note 8, page 16. Why is it necessary to adopt the invidious and too com- mon 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 beautiful and affecting portraitures of Ariosto and Tasso which conclude the 3d Canto of the " Prophecy of Dante." We there see them contrasted without such invidious comparison, or depreciation of the one to exalt the other ; and characterized in numbers**, style, and sentiment, so wonderfully Dantesque, that mastering our uncongenial language, and habitual modes of thought as well as ex- Written May, 1821. Terzette. NOTES. 107 pression they seem to have been inspired by the very genius of the " inarrivabile" Dante himself. Kf- Vincenzo Monti, in his ifxS'f, TiaTt a'xXiuv ArevauJy jUtr' (i^xjuoya n>jXsiu;va." II. Lib. II. v. 673-4. But a/^J/u.wv must, I suppose, be construed in that place in a ge- neral sense, " excellent." NOTES. 1 1 1 traducteur dans une langue si superieure a la notre par la precision, qu'en les lisant, ' voila un Anglais/ ai-je dit, ' qui met de 1'eau dans mon punch.' " Note 14, page 26. Of this sort is the charming description of " La Mollesse" (imperfectly rendered into English by " In- dolence") at the end of the second canto of the Lutrin, the last line of which particularly " Soupire, etend les bras, ferme 1'oei], 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 thought, 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. Note 15, page 27. Dell' Origine, progressi, e stato attuale d'Ogni Let- teratura, dall' Abate Giovanni Andres, 4to. vol. ii. page 456, &c. I should find it difficult to say whether I have been more provoked or amused by this author's absurd ana- lysis of those two celebrated works of Pope, the Rape of the Lock, and the Epistle of Heloisa to Abelard. 112 NOTES. Note 16, page 28. BJ- Vide in Spence's Anecdotes (page 60) a carious account of a conversation with Dryden concerning his Macflecno, from which it would seem he imagined there was some analogy between that poem and the Secchia Rapita and Lutrin. Note 1 7, poge 28. Voltaire farther called Hudibras " le livre le plus intraduisible ;" yet Mr. J. Towneley, an English gentle- man who had been long in the French service, having successfully rendered parts of it into French verse of eight syllables without hem'stich, was encouraged at lust to execute the whole j and accordingly h^s entire trans- lation was printed and published, with the original, in London, in 1757, by the Abbe J. T. Needham. This French translation had become a great curiosity, and extremely scarce, when the bookseller Jombert of Paris undertook 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 there iu 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 perform- ance. It has been observed that the French version, ex- cept in a very few instances, is as concise as the original NOTES. 113 English. I am also possessed of a translation of Hudi- bras 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 le portrait, Dont le fier genou, de sa vie, Ne plia qu'a chevaleriej Qui jamais qu'ww coup n'endura Qui son epaule decora ; A bon droit la flour de la clique Soit errante, soit domestique; Grand sur les banes, grand a cheval ; Sur tous deux d'un merite egal Brillaient son coeur et sa cervelle A juger, ou vider querelle; Et fut renomme pour ses faits Pendant la guerre comme en paix j (Ainsi certain rat amphibie Dans 1'air 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-grainj i 2 114 NOTES. Ce qui fit passer pour manie L'eclat dont brillait son genie, 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 ander Schlag vertrug, Als den der ihn zum Ritter schlug ; Ein Konig aller irrenden Ritter Und Friedensrichter ; ein wahrer Z witter 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 j Krieg oder Friede gait ihm gleicb, 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, Den hochstens iiberwog sein Him Die Wuth ein halbes Gerstenkorn. Viel hieiten ihn fur ein Werkzeug gar Das Schelme brauchen, und heisst ein Nar," &c. NOTES. 115 Note 18, page 29. Erasmus, from the Greek 'EpoHrpiOf, was not even a translation of that great man's name, by which, if he were now quoted, nobody would know who was meant.* ft^> To refer to a much more modern instance, how few of the readers of Metastasio are aware that his real name was Trapassi^ Note 19, page 31. Most of the considerable offices at the court or under the government of Rome require, to be duly executed, an acquaintance with the canon and civil law, and, ac- cordingly, most of those who hold them have studied those branches of learning. 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 be- lieve, 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, f * 65" It would have been difficult to ascertain his Dutch name, as he is understood to have been the illegitimate, and of course not avowed, son of a monk. f 8^ I am told that, since I was at Rome in 1815-16, Cardinal Gonsalvi has taken priest's orders. 116 NOTES. Note 20, page 33. To give the reader of Italian some idea of Forte- guerri's terzetti, in the manner of Berni, I here insert the twelve first lines of the 25th capitolo, in the Milan edition. " Liborio, il caldo mi rascinga in modo, Che di grasso, ch' io era a' di passati, Oggi mi trovo secco, come un chiodo. Dall' Inferno cred' io, che sien scappati Questi sciroccbi, tanto sono ardenti, E tramontani sol sieno pe' Frati, Che, ancorche involti fra lane roventi, Van sulla nona, e '1 meriggio piu fitto, In busca dell' amiche, e de' parenti. E loro importa poco, che a diritto Gli piombi il sole in sulla rasa nuca, Tant' odio han per le lor celle, e despitto." Note 21, page 35. " Another of those 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 mirth : For every object that the one doth catch, The other turns to a mirth-moving jest j Which his fair tongue (conceit's expositor) Delivers in such apt and gracious words, NOTES. 117 That aged ears play truant at his tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished j So sweet and voluble is his discourse." Shakesp. Love's L.'s L. act iL sc. 1 It is observable that " hour," in the fifth line of this passage, is used by Shakespeare as a dissyllable, as the monosyllable "fire" also is in the following and other instances. f< O, who can hold a fire in his hand By thinking on the frosty Caucasus." Id. Rich. II. act i. sc. 3. fc^" It too often happens that persons endowed with the most agreeable talents for society, are liable to such un- certainty and inequality of spirits and temper, that their agreeableness proves very precarious, and renders them what the French call "journalier." We find from the following passage in Spence's Anecdotes, that this was the case with Addison " Addison was rather mute in society upon some occasions ; but, when he began to be company, he was full of vivacity, and went on in a noble stream of thought and language, so as to chain the at- tention of every one to him." Dr. Young, apud Spence, Anecd. p. 335. I must remark here, as I shall have occasion to do again in another place, * what, I think, must appear to a modern reader a vulgarism in the use of the word ' ' company" in this passage ; whether attri- * Infra, note 30, p. 122. 1 1 8 NOTES. butable, in the present case, to Spence himself, or to Dr. Young, or whether it may only have become vulgar since their time, from one of those changes to which what is considered as polite, especially in colloquial language, or the familiar style of the lighter sorts of writing, is so liable. No one who has lived long in the world can be insensible of those changes, or help re- marking in the works of some of our purest writers, even at no very distant period, (as in the Spectator, for instance,) expressions which are now banished to some steward's room; to some district far far to the east of Westminster and Temple-Bar; to the ultimate Thule per- haps of the United Kingdoms ; or, wafted on the wings of commerce, across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The progress of refinement in this respect is particularly re- markable with regard to the use of words now shunned as indelicate and indecent, though not so considered heretofore. Of these how many instances might be quoted from the most correct and polished works of Pope himself, though they were written particularly for the meridian of whatever was distinguished for elegance and politeness in his days. Whether our morals have mended with this improvement in our manners is a point which it is more easy to discuss than to decide. Much has been, and may be, said on both sides of the question. For myself, I hope, and, in sooth, am on the whole in- clined to the opinion that they have : The query in the following anonymous lines may seem rather to point the other way. NOTES. 119 SONNET. " How language changes with the lapse of years ! * Time was when plain John Bull was not abash' d Plain words to use, now silenced quite and quash'd, Lest they should shock our modern eyes or ears. If now in decent company one hears Such words escape from lips of clown unwash'd,^ Straightway each modest eye to ground is dash'd, And on each cheek a crimson blush appears. It was not so in famed Eliza's times, Nor even much later under good Queen Ann ; The nicest then would call a " spade a spade ;" But now, though more correct our talk and rhymes, If we the truth with honest candour scan, Are folks of slips in conduct more afraid?" * '' Time was, a sober Englishman would knock His servants up, and rise by five o'clock." Pope's Im. of Hor. lib. ii. ep. 1, v. 161. t " Another lean un-wash'd artificer Cuts off his tale, and talks of Arthur's death." Sh. K. John, act iv. sc. ii. Reed's Ed. vol. x. p. 482. " The king of late drew forth his sword, (Thank God 'twas not in wrath) And made of many a 'squire and lord An unwasfi'd'Z Knight of Bath." Swift's Works, Scott's Ed. vol. xiii. p. 358. ^ Qu. why uuwash'il ? 120 NOTES. Note 22, page 41. " Who writes to make his barrenness appear, And strains from hard-bound brains six lines a year." Pope. Note 23, page 44. I am happy in this opportunity of declaring my entire concurrence with the opinion expressed in the essay here quoted, concerning the two very enter- taining poems which form the direct subject of the article referred to in the Quarterly Review, and of adding, that for the persons as well as talents of their authors (venturing to guess at the one whose publica- tion is anonymous), I entertain the highest respect and esteem. Note 24, page 48. The stanza on the reverse of the title-page after the Introduction, is the first of a set of Ottave Rime, in- serted at the end of the 3d volume of the Milan edition of Ricciardetto, (1813), and addressed, by Nicotele Emonio, (a fictitious name, as pastor of Arcadia), to the Princess of Forano, who had sent their author a copy of that poem. Note 25, argument. The portrait of the Muse, capricious wench. Johnson gives " young woman," as the primitive sense of the word " wench" and quotes for it the fol- NOTES. 121 lowing passage in Othello, so familiar to all readers of Shakespeare : ' ' Now how dost look now ? O ill-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 JEneid, " Audetque viris concurrere virgo." M. lib. 1. v. 497. " This wensche stoutley recounter durst with men." B. 1. v. 832. Note 26, argument. And though both he, and she, plain facts should wrench. " Cyriack, whose grandsire, on the royal bench Of British Themis, with no mean applause, Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws, Which others at their bar so often wrench." Milton, Son. 21. Note 27, argument. For me, a mere translator, to retrench One word from what Ihey tell, were shame and sin. Those who may have the curiosity to compare this translation with the original, will no doubt observe how scrupulously attentive I have been to avoid subjecting myself to the sin here denounced ; but had they not better take my word for it ? according to the familiar French saying, " II vaut mieux croire que d'y aller voir." * " Now Jonathan and Ahimaaz stayed by En-rogel : for they might not be seen to come into the city : and a -wench went and told them : and they went and told king David." NOTES. Note 28, stanza ii. Her hint is now to sing adventures strange. " Wherein of antres vast, and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills, whose heads touch heaven, It was my hint to speak." Shakespeare, Othello. Note 29, stanza iii. - To our Arcadia late there came A bevy bright of strangers from afar; Poets and orators of mighty name. This passage manifestly alludes to the set of friends mentioned in the author's account of the origin of his poem which I have inserted in the introduction, p. 37 39. Note 30, stanza iii. So loving company with them to keep. Kf~ Let not the indelicate imagination of any reader, from his too great familiarity with the vulgar tongue, misinterpret here the words " to keep company," in a sense inconsistent with the unblemished character of Forteguerri's Sylvan Muse. Her own solemn protest in a subsequent stanza, (st. xi.) ought to prevent any such unwarrantable construction. Indeed I have been sur- prised to find the Rev. Mr. Speuce, who appears to have been a man accustomed to live in good society, using the same expression in the meaning peculiar to the language of the lowest classes of the people. The passage I allude NOTES. 123 to in Spence's Anecdotes is as follows: " Prior left most of his effects to the poor woman he ' kept company with' his Chloe : every body knows what a wretch she was. I think she had been a little ale-house keeper's wife." (Sp. Anecd. p. 49.) He quotes Pope for this anecdote, and the expression in question may have been Pope's. Vide supra, Note 20, p. 117. Note 3 1 , stanza iv. Or heap of flour perdie. This word " perdie" is not in my edition of Johnson's Dictionary, though it occurs not only in Spenser (whom, however, Johnson often quotes as authority), but also in a well known epigram of Prior : " Had this same tale in other guise been told, Had they been young (perdie) and she been old." It is in some degree an expletive, like usque in Latin ; but it also sometimes serves to give a sort of archaic vigour to an assertion, when used with discretion. Note 32, stanza v. Member elect of a blue-stocking tribe, Nor eer aspired with dandy wits to shine. The expressions " blue-stocking" and " dandy" may furnish subject matter for the learning of a commentator at some future period. At this moment every English reader will understand them. Our present ephemeral dandy is akin to the macaroni of my earlier days. The 124 NOTES. first of those expressions has become classical by Mrs. Hannah More's poem of the " Bas Bleu," and the other by the use of it in one of Lord Byron's poems. Though now become familiar and rather trite, their day may not be long. " Cadentque Quse nunc sunt in honore vocabula." Note 33, stanza v. Who think themselves immortal and divine. " E si stima ciascun nel suo pensiero Assai piu di Virgilio e piil d'Omero." Bracciolini, Scherno degli Dei, canto 3, st. 2. To these formerly belonged, " The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease." Pope, Ep. to Aug. v. 8. Note 34, stanza vi. And scratch their addle pates, and bite their nails, When sense or rhyme or proper accent fails. " Be mindful, when mvention^/azTs, To scratch your head, and bite your nails." Swift's Rhapsody on Poetry. Note 35, stanza vii. She 's apt to turn to ridicule, and quiz. The word quiz stands in the same predicament with NOTES. ] 25 those observed upon in note 32. It is not in Johnson, nor perhaps in any author of note before the end of the last century, or the beginning of this j but now it is in general, and, I may say, fashionable use, both as a verb and as a noun. " Quizzing," as I understand it, is a coarser or broader shade of what is called by the French persiflage, and mystification; also words now very com- monly used with us in conversation. KS- The talent or turn for quizzing, like that for drawing caricatures, or for mimicry, requires to be vigilantly checked and reined in by a proportionate share of tact, good nature, and delicacy. Those qualities, (much more rare than what passes for wit), in union with wit the most genuine, prompt, and brilliant, I, for many years of my now alas ! solitary life, had the good fortune to have opportunities of observing exemplified almost daily and hourly, in the conversation of some of my own nearest and dearest connexions. But how often does the inconsiderate vanity of the professed " diseur de bons-mots" by a sprightly but indiscreet or ill-timed joke or epigram on some innocent foible or peculiarity, incur the risk of forfeiting the good will of perhaps his most valuable friend. In such cases, however the joker may abound in wit, the mirth he excites trans- gresses the becoming limit : " medio de fonte leporum Surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus angat." Lucr. lib. iv. 1 126. 126 NOTES. " Cursed be the verse, how well so e'er it flow, Which tends to make one worthy man my foe." If Pope had always acted up to that sentiment, which his better sense and feelings had inspired, he might have been spared much of those heart-burnings and palinodias, or, which often amount to the same thing, explanations, to which he is said to have exposed himself. But a still graver consequence is apt to at- tend the irresistible " pruritus" of quizzing, for those who are strongly infected with it cannot sometimes refrain from attempting to turn to jest and ridicule matters too serious for such frivolous pleasantry,* nay even such as are required to be held sacred by the most authoritative sanctions both human and divine. Note 36, stanza viii. Then lofty anthems build. " Who would not weep for Lycidas ? He knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme." Milton, Lycidas. Note 37, stanza x. In Paris, compass d round, and sorely shent. Johnson cites not only Spenser and Shakespeare, but * I take the Greek words y\wd^i.t and ^fvaa-fto; or yXswW/ur/, to mean " to mystify," and " quizzing'' or " persiflage ;" and an eminent and judicious author, whose works I have been lately perusing, makes a personage in his history characterize an indiscreet joker of whom he was speaking, thus; " Xxtv?ty tiri-^tipti i:pay/jLxl French like that of the Prioress in the Prologue to the Can- terbury Tales : " And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly After the scole of Stratford at the Bowe, For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe." v. 124, &c. * * 5 The sarcasm here cannot affect many worthy individuals, whose respectable conduct in their calling affords the traveller in England conveniencies and comforts to be met with in no other country ; nor their sons and daughters, on whom many of them may have been able, from their fortunes, honourably acquired, to bestow an education, particularly in languages, both becoming and orna- mental, and often useful to persons in their situation of life. NOTES. 153 Note 84, stanza Ixxvi. With this, he catches up a piece of d stick. " And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, Was beat with fist instead of a-stick." Hudibras. Note 85, stanza Ixxvi. And hits him on the nob. I do not find this ignoble but familiar word " nob" in Johnson's Dictionary ; Kf But is it not the same with knob? Note 86, stanza Ixxxi. In Babylonish slang. K3* In Hudibras the Babylonish dialect is described to be " what learned pedants much affect." How the giant Traggea could have become acquainted with that par- ticular dialect, or slang, Garbolin hath no where recorded ; but undoubtedly the jocular urbanity of his expressions here, savour very much of those we every now and then meet with in the polite lucubrations of some of the most eminent among the writers of the " Notae Variorum." Be this however as it may, our refined and courtly Paladin of France seems to have been willing to show that he was up to giving, in language, as well as in fighting, to Nera's two body guards, what would be called in the dialect in question, " as good as they brought;" and even Garbolin himself (for in such instances Forte- 154 NOTES. guerri's delicate Muse must be taken to have been merely an humble and faithful repeater of her author's original text in the vulgar tongue*) appears, when he speaks in propria persona, to have thought it a fit compliment to that hero, to try his own hand a little in the same style. The word " slang" is not in Johnson. It meant originally the cant or enigmatical language of thieves and jail-birds, serving them as a sort of spoken cypher,^ and corresponding to the words " argot" in French, and " gergo" in Italian ; and in that sense there must be, I should imagine, some equivalent term in all languages. But " slang" seems to me to have come of late into more general use with us, as synonymous to " jargon" or " gibberish." None 87, stanza Ixxxi. Traggea hurls huge stone with hasty hand. - " 'O $s yjc^Utdhov Xoi^t %<' TvSslfys, jw-eya ephvl" II. Lib. 5. v. 302. " Saxum antiquuin, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat Ille manu raptum trepida torquebat in hostem." . 12. 897. * Vide stanza xi. " And set it forth in Vulgar and in Latin." J- Si direbbe ch' io 1' insegnassi di favellare in " gergo," ovvero in " cifera" Delia Casa, Galatea. NOTES. 155 Note 88, stanza Ixxxii. Then headlong grunts, and dies like loathsome siaine. " To grunt and sweat under a weary life." Shakespeare. 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, in favour of the more homely term j and which, at any rate, suits my purpose better. Note 89, stanza Ixxxiii. Thunder' d his voice! as lightning flash" d his eye ! I know not if the nominative in this manner after a neutral verb is to be considered as an allowable figure of grammar, or is warranted by any very good recent au- thority.* I think I recollect that there are various in- * jf^- Since the above was written, I have met with such an authority in a poem, the name of whose author I must not suggest, as it does not appear in the title-page ; yet I will venture to say, that the reader must be a " blockhead'" indeed who does " not know him by his style." The lines I allude to are, " Their leader sang and bounded to her song With choral Step and voice, the virgin throng." 156 NOTES. stances of the use of it by Pope, particularly in his Homer, and by other poets of former though modem times, but I cannot at present specify any of them. By placing the main idea foremost in the phrase, it appears to me to produce a good effect here and in a subsequent line in Stanza XC. " Shrieks the foul fiend," &c. Note 90, stanza Ixxxiii. Falchion "which never yet its object miss'd. 3" Falchion is one of the many words in our language almost peculiar to poetry. In such poetical words the Italian and German, and, I believe, the other branches of the Latin and Teutonic stems also abound, whereas the French is extremely poor in this respect ; a dis- advantage of which their own poets are very sensible, greater effort thereby becoming necessary to raise their poetical style above prose. The following four lines were often quoted to me by Dr. Beattie, as being, in point of lofty and harmonious diction, superior to any thing else he knew in English rhyme. I believe he also Observe an instance of the same sort in the passage quoted from the French Hudibras (supra, p. 113): " Grand sur les banes, grand a cheval : Sur tous deux, d'un merite egal, Brillaient son coeur et sa cervelle." I think similar examples are very common in French verse, especi- ally of the Marotique or antique, and burlesque sort. Vide La Fon- taine passim. NOTES. 157 mentions them with that commendation in some of his critical works. " Red was his sword, and shield, and whole attire, And all the godhead seem'd to glow with fire ; Even the ground glitter'd where ihejalchion flew, And the green grass was dyed to sanguine hue." Dryden's Knight's Tale from Chaucer. Note 91, stanza Ixxxvi. Loose florid the soft redundance of her hair. Shenstone's Works, Elegy 15. Note 92, stanza Ixxxviii. Dart forth a sulphurous jlame, 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 93, stanza xc. Shrieks the foul fiend, &c. Supra, note 89, p. 155. Note 94, stanza xciii. Giving, " in good set terms," the knight his meed. " A fool, a fool ! I meet a fool i' the forest, A motley fool ; a miserable world ! 158 NOTES. 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. Note 95, stanza xciv. That once again in France unchristian war-is-seen, And Paris close besieged by heath' nish Sd-ra-cen. In this sort of triple rhyme, the two last syllables are supernumerary ; and where the verse is in our ordinary heroic decasyllabic iambic measure, they render the last, or fifth foot., instead 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 I believe is called by the prosodaists " the second poeon" (-tid,n-tx>dr-is-seen}; for instance, like the Latin word " resolvere," which compound foot is of course resolvable into an iambus and pyrrhichius. This therefore gives to the three last syllables the effect of a dactyl, as " Saracen" resembles in this respect " solvSre." When such three syllables consist in part or entirely of monosyllabic words, as " war-is-seen" in the first of the two lines above, they sound harsh to the ear if any one but the second of those monosyllables requires from its nature to be pronounced (as " seen" does in that line) with some degree of exer- NOTES. 159 tion or emphasis, which, in our ordinary versification, would render it analogous to a long syllable in Greek and Latin. It was to show my sense of this harshness that, in stanza 95, I introduced the line " Mark how she hobbles 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 po- pularity of the two following lines in one of Lord Byron's poems : " But, Oh ! ye lords of ladies in-tellectudl, Inform us truly, have they not hen-peck'd-you-all?"* I may also cite these of Swift when speaking of his deafness, and which I quote from memory : (They be- long to the eight- syllable iambic measure) : " For both my ears were fellow sufferers, Which made my grandame al-ivdys stuff" her 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 philosopher That had read Alexander Ross over." * Here the 5th foot is analogous to " risolvtre" M 160 NOTES. 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 en- tirely from our regular dodecasyllabic iambics or Alex- andrines), correspond exactly to the versi sdruccioli of the Italians ; whereas their regular heroic measure, con- sisting (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 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 rest is all but leather and prunella." 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 NOTES. 161 in Henry VIII., to have studied to make use of this supernumerary or eleventh syllable. Of this a very striking example 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 j 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 is a ripening, nips his root, (2) And then he falls, as I do. I have ven-tur'd, Like little wanton boys that swim on blad-ders, These many summers in a sea of glo-ryj 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 j (4) And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, (5) Never to hope again. M 2 162 NOTES. I have also been reminded that such lines occur in almost every page of Beaumont and Fletcher. In several of the lines just cited, as well as in the two before taken from Pope, the monosyllables (pronouns, and other particles), being to be pronounced without em- phasis, 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," (Shakespeare) ; " saint-it," " paint- it," (Pope) ; like " Tojotrfe," " 'O^e" " A%a7e," " Tpwwvle," in Greek ; "tecum," " vobiscum," " tuus- que," in Latin ; " parlerotti," " meco," in Italian ; " precarella," " haberos," in Spanish; " vendome," " passouse," in Portuguese. If we consider the words " day, he," 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 * 55- This is always (or almost always) the case where two, or even three vowels, though in distinct words, concur in this manner in Italian verse, as " se e il," in the first line of the Gerusalemme, " Canto 1'arme pieto | se e il | capitano," and not unfrequently in English, as in " glo | ry a 1 bove" in the abovementioned line of Milton. " To set himself in glo | ry a ] bove his peers," And in " the eas | tern" in the following, *' Now mom her rosy steps in | the eas | tern clime." Par. Lost, b. v. v. 1. This mode of writing, or scanning, without elision, has become much more common of late than with our older poets. NOTES. 163 (or spondee perhaps), and with less stress on " put" than on " forth," which last word, in this 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 hendecasyllables 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 nell' 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 sub- sequent Italian dramatic writers from adopting that practice. Goldoni, not finding such sdruccioli measure success- ful 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 his Filosofo Inglese. Ecco i stampati fogli che il padron mio vi manda I solid foglietti, di Parigi, e d'Olanda, II Mercurio galante, che fa tanto rumore, Ed il corrente foglio del nostro Spettatore. It will be observed that these versi Martelliani, though consisting of an equal number of syllables with those of 161 NOTES. 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 j 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. 03- Chapman's entire translation of Homer's Iliad, a work of a very different character from Phaer's Virgil, is in the same fourteen syllable measure (which by an error in the press, I suppose, is called in VVarton's History, vol. iii. p. 397, Isted. " fourteen-foot ed.") Pope says of it, " that its defects are covered by a daring fiery spirit that animates his translation, which is something like what one might imagine Homer himself to have writ (written) before he arrived at years of discretion." I copy from Wharton the concluding part of his translation of the sublime passage concerning Diomed, at the be- ginning of the 5th Iliad, * Used as one syllable, like sprites. NOTES. 165 And then the God began To drive his chariot through the waves. From whirl- pools every way The whales exulted under him, and knew their king: the sea For joy did open, and his horse so swift and lightly flew, The under axeltree of brasse no drop of water drew. Wharton's Hist, of Eng. Post. vol. iii. p. 444. These lines might perhaps bear a comparison with those describing the armour of Mars by Dryden, quoted, supra, p. 157. They resemble also the only sublime lines perhaps in Sternhold and Hopkins's version of the Psalms, which are in the same seven-footed iambics, though generally printed with each line divided into two. They are by Sternhold The Lord descended from above And bow'd the heavens high ; And underneath his feet he cast The darkness of the sky. On cherubs and on cherubims Full royally he rode; And on the wings of all the winds Came flying all abroad. Psalm XVIII. v. 9, 10. 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, of 166 NOTES. supernumerary syllable. It may therefore be of some use to show that similarity, by comparing together the first stanza of Tasso, and a literal translation of it in the same measure, (though not in ottava rima.) " Canto | 1'arme | pieto | -se e il ca | -pita-no Che il gran sepolcro libero di Cris-to, Molto egli opro col senno 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 j Che il Ciel gli die favore, e sotto a i san-ti, Segni, ridusst i suoi compagni erran-ti." Englished verbatim. I sing | the pi j ous ar | mies and | the cap-taiu Who the great sepulchre of Christ deli-ver'd j Much he achiev'd by wisdom and by prow-ess, Much suffer' d in the glorious acquisi-tion j 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 pre- tence 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 NOTES. ] 67 conclude a line of only the regular number of ten, or, as the case may be, of eight syllables, with a polysyllable, the two last 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. 1 ' ' Sleep, gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, 168 NOTES. That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses iii forgetfulness!" Shakespeare, Hen. IV. " 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, Essay on Man. " O ! thou, whatever title please thine ear, Dean, Draper, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver." Pope, Dunciad. 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. ^ I have indulged in quoting here these numerous examples on account of the beauty of most of them : I doubt if some of the commentators on Shakespeare (too wordy sometimes) could plead the same excuse. But both Homer and Pindar warn me to stop. The former says, " ndvlcoy ply Kopof er" " all things are liable to sa- tiety ;" and the other, " 'AXAa yap dvaMauns E'v i(a.v\\ yXuxeTa epyw, xopw $' Zysi Ka j^eAi/' &c. " to pause is always agreeable, for things most sweet will cloy" and NOTES. 169 Mictlii nks I now seem to hear the learned reader ex- claim here, " Ohe! jam satis !" ""AA<$ 2rw Twv ffafa- Jejy^aVtuv *," " a truce at length to quotations." 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 edzte Regzbus." In general the versi tronchi, like the sdruccioli, are only used by the Italians, mixed with their regular hen- decasyllables, 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 staj 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 Dove la 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 distich s, of versi tronchi, and sometimes also of versi sdruccioli. There is not, I believe, a single instance of the one or the other * Scriptor supra cit. note 35, p. 126'. 170 NOTES. licence in that most perfect work the Gerusalemme Li- berata j but which, in respect of its too strict versifica- tion, is often thought by the Italians, as Pope's verses are by many of us, to be 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 the Lusiad, in which the second, fourth, and sixth verses are sdruccioli. * " Nad acabava, quando huina figura, 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." * jf$- Here is also an instance of versi tronchi in the Lusiad. Canto i. stanza xiv ; " Logo os Dalmatas vivem, e no seio, Onde Antenor ja muros levantow, A soberba Veneza esta no meio Das aguas, que tao baixa comeou. Da terra hum bra$o vem ao mar, que cheio De esfor9O na$6es varias sujeitow , Branco forte de gente sublimada, Nad menos nos engenhos, que na espada." NOTES. 171 The same, I believe, is true with regard to Spanish poetry. A friend, most familiarly acquainted with all good literature, and particularly so with that of Spain, has pointed out to me the following stanza with three sdruc- cioli (endruxili) lines, in Lope de Vega's long poem on the life and death of Mary, Queen of Scots : " i Que noche no me llama imagen fiera (La apretada cerviz, cardeno lino) Mi esposa, que por ti venganza espera De mi rigor y su cruel martyrio ? Pues Judith se llamaba, Judith fuera, Y yo el dormido Capitan Assyrio, O para no igualar la de Betulia, Escocesa Judith, Romana Tulia." Corona Trag. Lib. 3. The same friend observes, that, in this, and in another stanza he has shown me of the same poem, the eleventh and twelfth syllables of the sdruccioli lines are formed of two vowels, which in any other part of a line would be counted only as one diphthong. Sdruccioli of that sort are very common in Italian. Qu : An instance of sdruccioli in Spanish not formed of that sort of diphthongal composition 3 for, if the ter- minations here quoted, and all those similar to them, are to be considered as diphthongs still, the verses are hen- decasyllables, and not sdruccioli ? The German tragedies of Schiller, of Lessing, of Schlegel the successful translator of Shakespeare, &c. are in exactly the same measure with our decasyllabics. 172 NOTES. Before the great revolution produced in their versifica- tion by Klopstock, the most general heroic verse in German was on a like model with the French Alexan- drines, 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 masculine with something corre- sponding to the French feminine rhymes. I believe in all French verse there must be either an alternation of distichs which are denominated feminine and masculine, or of masculine and feminine lines inter- mixed in an irregular manner, but preserving always corresponding rhymes of each sort.* Every feminine line has a syllable more at the end than the corresponding masculine verse, formed by what is called a feminine, and sometimes, though improperly, the mute "e" or "es."t Their heroic, or most solemn sort of verses, correspond, when masculine, in the number of syllables, with our Alexandrines, with this difference however, that theirs necessarily consist of two half lines or hemi- stichs, 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 beginning of another word. The feminine verse must be formed in the same way, except that the second hemistich must consist of seven syllables; the first hemistich, as in the masculine, being of six. Those * Infra, p. 138. j- 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. NOTES. 173 long verses, whether masculine or feminine, are called, by the French, Alexandrines. IO- No species of French verse is governed, I under- stand, by any regular arrangement of accents or atten- tion to the position of them ; it is therefore loosely or ignorantly stated in some of their prosodies that the French language has no accent. No dissyllable or poly- syllable is pronounced, or, according to usual and distinct articulation, can be pronounced, without a particular stress of the voice or utterance on one of the syllables, which is what on this point is meant by accent. 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 these 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 * He was the father of General Dumourier, and is said to have written his abridged imitation of Ricciardetto 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. 174 NOTES. 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. Sans sortir de leurs lits plus doux que leurs hermines Ces pieux faiueans faisoient chanter Matines; Veilloient a bien diner, et laissoient en leur lieu A des Chantres gages le soin de loiier 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, Thistoire m'epouvantej Le plus souvent inon 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 coeur; Et, le croyant poltron comme il s'annonce, D'un coup brutal assortit sa reponse. NOTES. 175 I Le Paladin, qui de rage palit, D'un bras nerveux par un pied le saisit, Et vous lui fait en 1'air 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." The first masculine and feminine lines of the passage from Boileau might be written thus : Masculine ( 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 ( Comme | tu dis, verse. ( C'est un | e ba | gatelle, Masculine ( Renaud | repond, verse. \ Le pro | jet est | badin. Drayton's Poly-Olbion is written entirely in Alex- andrines, differing in nothing from the French, except that in his there could be no feminine rhymes or alternate couplets necessarily of thirteen syllables ; the following is a specimen : N 17G NOTES. " Thus scarcely said the Muse, but hovering wliile 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 On Neptune's wat'ry realms when Eolus raiseth wars, And every billow bounds, as though to quench the stars." 1 Song. 3" Sometimes the ancient trimeter iambics, when they happen to be divisible, like the French Alexandrines, and those just quoted from Drayton, that is, when the last syllable of the third foot is a monosyllable, or the end of a word, resemble completely those Alexandrines ; and if the last syllables of the first and second hemistich rhyme together, they resemble English rhyming distichs of six syllables. Thus the ancient proverbial trimeter, which, I believe, has been applied to Demosthenes, and which seems to be the original of the English well known lines, generally thought to be, but which, I believe, are not in Hudibras : o (pew/cuv xai -jraXiv pa%ir) but did not die till 1679. Opitz was bom 1597, died 1639. NOTES. 179 And here are two specimens of German decasyllabics and hendecasyllabics. The first is an extract from Schlegel's translation of the passage quoted above from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. " O drey mal selig die, des Bluts Beherr-scher, So jungfrauliche Pilgerschaft bestehn ! Doch die gepfliickte Ros'ist irrdischer begluckt Als die, am unberiihrten Dome welkend, Wachst, lebt, und stirbt ib heil'ger Einsamkeitj" Except that the third line is an Alexandrine in the old ' form, " Doch die gepfliickte Ros' ist irrdischer begluckt," which mixture I think not uncommon in German trage- dies. 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 hbchsten Rich-ter, Und noch hab ich den Heil'gen nicht versohnt." Lastly, here are four hexameters (the prevailing mea- sure now in German) from the Messias of Klopstock : 180 NOTES. " Schonster der Tage, du sollst vor alien kiinftigen Tagen Festlichundheiliguns seyn, dich soil vor deinen Gefahrten, Kelirst du wider zuriick, die Seele des Menschen, der Seraph, Und der Cherub, beym Aufgang und Untergange, be- griissen !" *3~ The attempt to adapt the Greek and Latin mea- sures to the modern languages was made on the revival of letters in this country, as well as in Italy, France, and, I believe, in all the western part of Europe. But it was soon found advisable to relinquish a scheme so in- compatible with the genius of those languages. Whether the experiment was then made in Germany I do not im- mediately recollect. I think it was : but if tried in that country, it must also have been soon abandoned. As to English, Pope's opinion is very decided, " And Sidney's verse halts ill on Roman feet !"* I am unqualified to pronounce any opinion on its right applicability to the rich and energetic language which, in its ruder state, formed the basis of our own. But, in fact, it has established or re-established itself, from Hamburg to Vienna, for now about half a century ; and all I must venture to say is, that I cannot reconcile my ear to it, though not unused to German poetry. Much less can I wish to see it revived in England, notwith- standing the former and very recent efforts of the author Imiu of Hor. Lib. 2. Ep. 1. NOTES. 181 (but I think fortunately in our honest, and in a manner prescriptive Iambic decasyllabics), of that most masterly poem, Roderick the Last of the Goths. Nothing can sound more ridiculously burlesque than the seriously intended hexameters of Stanyhurst's monstrous version of the four first books of Virgil, though now this precious fragment is so much regretted on account of its rarity. Mr. Southey, in his very curious selection of hexameters in modern languages, subjoined to his Vision of Judgment, has given an adequate sample of that absurd or rather mad monstrosity. Here are the six last lines of his extract : Three showrs wringlye wrythen glimmring, and forciblye scweiug, Thre watrye clowds shymning to the craft they rampired hizzing, Three whern's nerd glystring, with south winds rufflered huffling. Now doe they rayse gastly lightenings, now grisyle re- boundings Of ruffe raffe roaring, mens harts with terror agrysing, With peale meale ramping, with thwich thwack sturdie thundering. Vision of Judgt. p. 72. How much does Mr. Pope's attempt at roughness in our tame heroic measure of five Iambuses fall short of this " ruffe raffe roaring, thwick thwack thundering," of 182 NOTES. the native of that country which was afterwards to pro- duce a Swift, a Parnell, a Goldsmith, and a Moore : " Or like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough, and fierce, With arms, and George, and Brunswick crowd the verse, Rend with tremendous sounds our ears asunder, Of guns, drums, trumpets, blunderbuss, and thunder." Pope. I think the best English hexameter in the Eliza- bethean age of our poetry, is that impromptu of Queen Elizabeth herself, wherein she so happily characterises the three Roman poets, Ovid, Persius, and Martial ; "Persius, a crab-staffe; bawdy Martial j Ovid, a fine wag;"* though I know no system of English pronunciation or prosody, which would have made this line pass muster with her majesty's biographer, Camden, that distinguished master of Westminster school. For some short but interesting observations on the subject of the vogue which hexameters &c. by quantity of syllables had begun to obtain, when the great Haller wrote, as concise and classical in his admired poetry and politico -philosophical novels, as he is voluminous but I believe not verbose in his scientific prose, I would refer my readers to the dedication of the last edition of his Schweizerische Gedichte (published by himself, Lord Orford's Works, v. 1, p. 267. NOTES. 183 1777), to the famous Ulrica, Queen of Sweden, and sister to the more famous Frederic of Prussia. It was to her that Voltaire presumed to present the celebrated verses (or Madrigal), which have been thought in part to have contributed to the quarrel between him and her royal brother ; verses much more familiar probably than any thing ever addressed by the sentimental and per- secuted Tasso to Leonora of Este, the sister of his cruel and unrelenting master, though pretended patron and protector, Alfonso : " Souvent un air de verite Se mele au plus grossier mensoiige. L'autre jour, dans 1'erreur d'un songe, Au rang des rois j'etais monte. Je vous aimais alors, et j'osais vous le dire, Les Dieux a mon reveil ne m'ont pas tout ote : Je n'ai perdu que mon empire." Attempted in English : " Not seldom something real seems To mingle with our vainest dreams. Last night, asleep, on fancy's wing, Soaring, I thought myself a king. I loved you then, and dared impart Unawed, the passion of my heart. When I awoke, the gods benign Resumed not all I dreamt was mine. My throne I willingly resign." This incidental quotation, being one of the most 184 NOTES. striking instances of Voltaire's unequalled " curious felicity," in what the French call " vers de societe," may serve as an example of those " rimes melees" just touched upon in an earlier part of this note.* The versification of the modern Greeks, and which has been now established for many centuries, is accen- tual, or founded on accent instead of quantity. It is, I believe, almost always accompanied with rhyme, as the verse of the English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and German, most commonly is. The heroic, or that sort in most general use with the Greeks, as our decasyllabic Iambic are with us, hendecasyllables with the Italians, and hexametrical Alexandrines with the French, is formed of fifteen syllables, or two hemistichs, the first of eight, the second of seven syllables, with the regular pause or caesura, between them. The following speci- men makes the two first lines of a sort of elegy, written on the occasion of the death of Prince Mourouges, chief dragoman of the Porte, who was beheaded at Constan- tinople in 1798. " T) 7o ^a/*a 7ap^a lovlo ; T\s y 7f yj>oj cnojv>) ; Ilo/a IjtAsfvJ/i; e NOTES. 185 literal sense of the word, the equivalent in Latin would be " civiles," or " urbani," and in English perhaps f( genteel j" certainly not ''political," notwithstanding Mr. Home Tooke's ingenious system. (This last note, of such disproportionate length, is an extract from an Essay I have in part composed on the different modes of versification in several of the modern languages.) INDEX. ABELARD, note 15, p. 111. Abstract qualities, naked attributes of mind, or meta- physical entities, unfit machinery in poetry, p. 24, 25, 26. Academia degli Arcadi, p. 30, 33. Delia Crusca, note 72, p. 146. * ft*. Accented syllables in English verse are analogous to long syllables in Greek and Latin, note 95, st. xciv. p. 158163. Achilles, note 51, p. 134. Adage, vide Proverb. Adam, note 45, p. 131. * C^. Addison, p. x. note 20, p. 117, 118. JEschylus personifies strength and force, p. 25. Agamemnon cured of love by a nut of Brazil, st. liii. Alard, Alardo, companion to Richard and Astolfo, st. xxiv. j a sort of grave splenetic Mentor to Astolfo, ib. and st. xxxvi. Ivii. Alexandrine dodesyllabic accented iambics in English and German, note 95, p. 160. In French, ib. p. 172; but not governed by any regular arrangement of ac- 188 INDEX. cented syllables, p. 1 73 ; example of English Alexan- drines in the Poly-Olbion, p. 1 76 ; the last line of every stanza in the Fairy Queen is like this ; and so in the Castle of Indolence, the Minstrel, Childe Harold, &c. Only the hemistich, though much studied, is not essential as in French and German, p. 1 77 j specimen of French Alexandrines, ib. p. 174, 175; of German, p. 177180. Alfonso, patron and persecutor of Tasso, note 95, p. 183. Allegory, or personification, if short, agreeable in poetry, p. 25, 26. Amadigi, Amadis of Bernardo Tasso, a romantic nar- rative poem, founded on the fabulous history of Charle- magne and his Paladins, p. 5, 6. American use of the word " guess," note 48, p. 132. * 03- Andres Dell' Origine d'ogni Litter atur a, p. 27, note 15, p. 1 1 1 j his ridiculous yet provoking analysis of the Rape of the Lock, and Eloisa to Abelard, p. 27, note 15, p. lllj he imputes prolixity to Pope, p. 27; allows him great fertility of imagination, ib. Angelica, her character well supported in the Orlando of Boiardo, p. 12. Anglomane, note 83, p. 152. Anglomania, said to be common in France, p. 22. Anne (Queen), language less delicate in her time than now, notes, Sonnet, p. J19. Apollo and the Muses continue, and probably will con- tinue to be pretended to be invoked by modern and Christian poets, p. 24, 25. INDEX. 189 Arcadi, Academia degli, vide Academia. Archibald, Arcibaldo, surnamed the Great, and Bell- the-Cat, immediate ancestor of the true Douglas's, st. Iviii. note 79, p. 148; quotation concerning him from Sir W. Scott, p. 150. Argot, French, vide Slang, note, p. 154. Ariosto, p. xviii. ; futility of unprofitable parallels or comparisons between Ariosto and Tasso, note 8, p. 106; their comparative merit a vexata qucestio for more than 200 years, p. 14; character of the Orlando of Ariosto, p. 15; of the Gerusalemme, p. 15, 16; Ariosto's beauties unattainable, p. 15; the Gerusa- lemme a perfect work, p. 1 6 ; Metastasio's opinion re- ferred to, p. 15 ; Lord Byron's opinion of each without invidious comparison, note 8, p. 106; Cardinal Hip- polito d'Este's foolish and ungenerous question to Ariosto, note 7, p. 106 ; his, the opinion of many tasteless people, ib. ; quotation from, note 40, p. 129. Most of Ariosto's comedies are in versi sdruccioli sciolti, note 95, p. 1 63 ; these monotonous, and he has not been followed in the practice, ib. ; his satires are in terza rima, p. 33, 34; his account of Orlando's madness, note 72, p. 135. Aristophanes, expression adopted from his play of the Knights, stanza Ixiv. note 82, p. 151. Artemisia's wifely love for her husband, st. xlviii. note 73, p. 146 ; dies of her grief for him, ib. Arthur, King, p. 5 ; Catch concerning Prince Arthur, note 48, p. 132, 133. 190 INDEX. Astolphus, Astolfo, described as a modern dandy, finical in his dress and manners, st. xxxvi. ; traditionally the Prince of England in the Italian romance poetry, note 63, p. 140} his sudden madness, st. xxxvi. lv.; and cure by the potent nut of Brazil, st. Iv. Ivi. Astute, Scotch said to be, p. 18, 1 9, st. xlv. ; word familiar in Westminster Hall, note 72, p. 146; the French have Astuce, ib., and Madame de Stae'l uses astucieuse- ment, ib. * 85" j the Italians, Astuto and Astuzia, ib. Author, The, the circumstances which led him to attempt this translation, p. 29. 39 43. Authority of precedents in poetry, note 89, p. 155. * 65". B. Babylonish Slang or dialect, st. Ixxxi. j vide Slang. Baccola Castle, in Spain, st. Ixvii. Bajazet, Forteguerri begins an epic poem concerning, p. 37 j but fails, being carried away by his turn for ridicule, ib. Baitty, conversation at his house (Hotel de ville) with Delille in 1791, note 13, p. 110. Bayle, his praise of the learning and extraordinary mo- desty of Scipio Carteromachus, p. 29, 30. Beatlie, versification of his Minstrel, note 54, p. 136 ; his admiration of a passage in Dryden, note 90, p. 156. Beau, gloves of, st. Ixxii. Beaumont and Fletcher cited for dactylic endings of their lines, note 95, p. 1 62. INDEX. 191 Bell-the-Cat, epithet of Archibald Douglas , Earl of Angus, note 79, p. 149. Bernardo Tasso, wrote his Amadigi in ottava rima in preference to versi sciolti, p. 6. Bernesco, burlesque style so called, p. 17. Berni, his Orlando Innamorato in ottava rima ; his Ca- pitoli in terzetti, p. !/ Bibliomane, the Muse's father one, st. xi. Biron, citation from Shakespeare for the character of a merry but well bred man, p. 35 } note 21, p. 116. Blue-stocking, st. v. ; expression become classical, note 32, p. 123, 124. Bonhommie, sly bonhommie in Berni's and Lippi's works, p. 17 ; called the Bernesco style or manner, ib. Boiardo, author of Orlando Innamorato, p. 5, 6 ; sove- reign of Scandiano, p. 12 ; governor of Reggio, ib. ; his simple naivete, p. 13 j Sismoiidi thinks him much be- yond his contemporary Pulci, p. 12; that his female characters are more consonant to chivalrous manners, ib. ; that Angelica in his poem is already invested with all her charms and influence, ib. ; his style unpo- lished, and improved by Berni, p. 13 ; Berni follows him close in the narrative part and personages, ib. ; Ariosto continues his story, ib. ; he did not live to give his work the ultimate polish, p. 12. Boilcau, p. xviii. ; quotations from, note 14, p. 111} note 54, p. 137; note 92, p. 157: vide Lutrin. Bracciolini, author of the Schema degli Dei, written " a concorrenza" with the Secchia Rapita, p. 21 j much o 192 INDEX. inferior to it, ib. j his ground work mere fiction, and clumsy absurd fiction, ib. j cited note 33, p. 124. Brazil, nut of, st. xlvi. j cure for unrequited love, ib.j receipt, sec. artem, for applying it, st. xlvii. j cured Stella's mother, st. xlviii. et seq. ; a sea-nymph, st. li. j an old seaman, st. lii. j Helen, st. liii. j Agamemnon, ib. j Telemachus, ib. Brand, falchion, poetice for sword, st. Ixxxii. Brogues, a sort of cheap shoes, by the gods called pumps, st. xi. ; note 38, p. 127. Buck, the Baron of the Castle of Baccola changed to a, by Nera, the sorceress, st. Ixx. j pursued by his bride Brunetta turned into a doe, st. Ixxi. 5 how they re- become lad and lass, maid and man, bride and bride- groom, st. xci. xcii. xciii. j their curiosity to learn the " what" and " how," ib. ; their gratitude to their deliverer, Rinaldo, st. xciv. Bulasso, sceptered chief of Negroland, st. xviii. ; a giant measureless and strong, ib. ; his club, and boasting confidence in it, ib. Burla, jest, mockery, ridicule ; hence burlare, burlesco, p. 7 ; burlesque poetry distinguished from mock-heroic, ib. Busching's Erdbeschreibung mis-quoted, note 80, p. 151. Butler, vide Hudibras. Byron, Lord, his Prophecy of Dante, note 8, p. 106 j his beautiful and affecting verses on the respective hi- stories and genius of Ariosto and Tasso, ib. ; his use of the word "dandy," note 32, p. 124; Alexandrines INDEX. 193 in Childe Harold, note 54, p. 136 j example of placing the nominative after a neutral verb, st. Ixxxiii. xc. note 89, p. 155 ; quotations from, ib. ; note 95, p. 159. C. Cafria, Bulasso, sceptered chief of, st. xviii. ; his club, ib. j compared to the club of Ereuthalion, in the Iliad, note 47, p. 132 ; the heiress of Cafria, Despina, st. xx. j Herald of Cafria delivers an insolent challenge to Charlemagne, st. xxv. ; Charlemagne's mild reply thereto, st. xxvi. xxvii. xxviii. Calfoglou, a modern Greek poet, note 95, p. 184. f. Calypso, st. liii. Camoens (author of the Portuguese Lusiad), his use of sdruccioli verses in that poem, note 95, p. 1 70 ; an example thereof, ib. ; also an example of tronchi, ib. * S5-. Cant, st. Ixxxi. note 86, p. 153. Vide Slang. Canterbury Tales, Chaucer's, quotation from the pro- logue to, on bad French, note 83, p. 152. * t^. Caractacus, Mason's tragedy of, note 76, p. 147 ; quota- tion from, ib. Carlo, Charlemagne, Charles, widely known to fame, st. xiv. j new war plotted in hell against him, ib. et seq.; his mild answer to the Cafrian herald, st. xxvi. ; but at last quizzes him and his master's troops, xxvii. xxviii. ; his despair for the madness of Orlando, st. xxiii. j his preparations for war, st. xxix. Carteromachus, Carteromaco, vide Forteguerri (Scipio), o2 194 INDEX. p. 29 ; a Pistoian in the service of Leo X., ib. ; his remarkable modesty with profound learning praised by his acquaintance Erasmus, p. 29, 30 j Bayle's ex- clamation thereon quoted, p. 30. Carving-knife, falchion, poetice for broad-sword, st.lxxxv. Casa (Delia), his Galatea, note 86, p. 154. f . Catch, a popular one cited, note 48, p. 133. Catullus, Mr. Lamb's translation of, vide Lamb. Cervantes' " serious air," quoted from Pope, note 2, p. 103. Chapman's translation of Homer praised by Pope, note 95, p. 164. 03-; quotation from, p. 165. Character of the Morgante of Pulci, p. 7 9 j of Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo, p. J 1 ; of ditto of Berni, p. 13; of the Malmantile Racquistato, p. 16; of the Secchia Rapita, p. 21 ; of the Orlando Furioso, p. 13 15; of the Scheme Degli Dei, p. 21 ; of the Rape of the Lock, p. 23 ; of the Dunciad, p. 28 ; of Hudibras, ib. ; of Ricciardetto, p. 29, et seq.; by Sismondi, p. 44, 45. Charlemagne, vide Carlo. Charles, vide Carlo, Chaitcer, vide Canterbury. Cheat, vide Diomed, Goatherd, Slang, Thief. Chevy-Chase, stated by some to be an epic poem, p. 3. Childe Harold, note 54, p. 136. Chiliads of adages collected by Erasmus, p. 1 9. Cicero, his interpretation of lepidus, lepos, &c. p. 35 ; quoted, note 73, p. 146. INDEX. 195 Classification in science and literature, difficulty of, p. 1 . et seq. Classical, vide Byron, Moore, Stael. Clement, took delight in the pleasantry, reading, and re- citals of Forteguerri, p. 31, 32. XAsoa^gjy, p^Xua p- 106. Home, his history of rebellion 1/45, p. vii. Homer, vide Iliad; his account of the exchange of arms between Glaucus and Dioined cited and discussed, note 38, p. 127} held by a late critic to be an inter- polation, ib. 128, 129} Pope's and Cowper's trans- lations of it, ib. p. 127, 128; quotations from, note 47, p. 132} note 4-9, p. 133} note 51, p. 134} note 65, p. 141 ; note 79, p. 148} note 87, p. 154} note 95, p. 168. Hopkins, vide Sternhold. Horace quoted, p. v. vi. 13} note 66, p. 141. Host of the inn where Rinaldo alights, st. Ixiv. liixv. -, INDEX. 207 he recounts the story of the Baron of Baccola and Miss Brunette, st. Ixvii. Ixxiii. ; quarrel betwixt him and Rinaldo, st. Ixxvi. Ixxvii. Hostess, the buxoin wife of the aforesaid landlord, st. Ixiii. Ixiv. Ixxv. Ixxvii. Hound and hawk, st. xlii. xliii , note 71, p. 145, 14G. Hour made a dissyllable by Shakespeare, note 20, p. 1 17. Hudibras, Voltaire's character of, p. 28 ; Hume's ditto, ib. ; Voltaire treats it as " intraduisible," note 17, p. 112; translated by Mr. J. Towneley, an English gentleman in the French service, into French verse of eight syllables, first published, London, 1757, by the Abbe J. T. Needham, ib. ; German translation of, printed at Riga, 1787, ib. p. 113; extract from the French translation, ib. p. 113, 114; extract from the German, ib. p. 114; quoted, note 84, p. 153; note 86, ib.} note 95, p. 159. Hume, his opinion of Hudibras, note 17, p. 114. -- of Godscroft, character of his history, note 79, p. 149. tJ-. Humour in different countries and districts is in a manner local, p. 9. Hymen, for marriage, note 67, p. 142 ; a happy and unhappy marriage contrasted from Voltaire's Enfant. Prodigue, ib. p. 142, 143 ; the same imitated in En- glish, ib. p. 143, 144. Jacques, his famous speech on the different stages of life ^08 INDEX. conjectured not to have been originally written for the play of As you Like it, note 67, p. 142 j a like con- jecture concerning Voltaire's tirade on the two sorts of marriages in his Enfant Prodigue, ib. Iambics formed of the alternation of accented and non- accented syllables, the general measure of our heroic verse, note 95, p. 158, et seq. ; and also of the Italian heroic verse, ib. j the Italian verso tronco corresponds exactly to our regular decasyllabic iambics, ib. p. 166; instances where our ten syllable and eight syllable iambics end gracefully with the fifth and fourth feet respectively formed of two unaccented syllables, or what may be called (substituting accented and non-ac- cented, for long and short syllables) pyrrhichius, ib. p. 1 67, 1 68 j example of a stanza in Ricciardetto in versi tronchi, ib. p. 1 69 ; one of versi tronchi in Portuguese verse, ib. p. 1 70. * fr^ ; decasyllabic iambics with two extra syllables at the end unaccented in English cor- respond exactly to the Italian versi sdruccioli, ib. p. 1 58j instance of such at the end of the 94th stanza of this translation, p. 98 ; instances of in Italian from Sanna- zaro, note 95, p. 163 ; instance of versi sdruccioli in the Portuguese of Camoens, ib. p. 170 ; Ariosto wrote most of his comedies in versi sdruccioli, ib. p. 1 63. James III. of Scotland, his favourites accused and seized by Archibald Douglas, note 79, p. 149. Jerusalem, vide Gerusalemme. Iliad, p. 3; quotations from, note 38, p. 127j note 47, p. 132 j note 49, p. 133 ; note 51, p. 134 ; note INDEX. 209 53, p. 135 ; note 55, p. 138; note 79, p. 148; note 87, p. 154. Improvisator}, p. 11. Improviseur, p. 44. Ingegneri, editor and friend of Tasso, note 8, p. 107; most affecting incident in Tasso's life related by In- gegneri, ib. p. 107, 108 : vide Malone. Johnson's Dictionary referred to, note 25, p. 120, 121 ; plan of his dictionary, like that of the Crusca, and preferable to that of the Academic Franchise, note 72, p. 146. * *3" ; note 74, p. 147; note 85, p. 153 ; note 86, p. 154; note 88, p. 155. Jombert, editor of the second edition of the French Hudibras, note 17> p. 112. Journalier, a French expression for inequality of spirits or temper, note 21, p. 117. Ippolito, vide Hippolito. Irishman, note 48, p. 133. Italia Liberata of Trissino, in blank verse, p. 7. Julia (Advice to) quoted, note 95, p. 168. K. KlopstocJt, revolution produced by him in the versifica- tion of the Germans, note 95, p. 172; sample of hexameters by him, ib. p. 180. Knife, poetics for sword, st. xx. , (carving) st. Ixxxv. Knob, vide Nob. 210 INDEX. Kpalos> Strength, personified by ^Eschylus in his Pro- metheus, p. 25. L. Lamb, (Mr.) his translation of Catullus, note 95, p. 177. Landlady "I of an inn near the castle of Baccola, Rinal- Landlord ) do's adventures with, st. Ixiii. to the end. Law, definitions dangerous in, note 1, p. 103. Leo X., p. 29. Leonora of Este, note 95, p. 183. Lepido, Lepidus, an epithet applied to Forteguerri on account of his great gaiety and playfulness, p. 34 ; discussion concerning the proper sense of Lepido, Lepidus, and Lepos, explanation of, p. 34, 35 j quoted from Cicero, p. 35. Lessing, the measure of his tragedies the same with English heroic iambics, note 95, p. 171- Lille, vide Delille. Lippi, author of the Malmantile Racquistato, born 1606, p. 16 j a painter by profession, ib. ; founded his poem on the romantic and chivalresque history of Charlemagne and his Paladins, p. 5 ; his poem de- scribed as full of proverbs and graceful Florentinisms, p. 1 7 ; his works published under the fictitious name of Perloni Zipoli, being the anagram of Lorenzo Lippi, p. 20 ; died 1664, p. 16 j his Italian considered as pure and classical, p. 1 7. Literati "I English and Italian, p. 3; definition and Literature ) classifications inconvenient, p. 1 3. INDEX. 21 1 Love and war, the intended subject of the poem, st. iii. ; the Muse's protestation against the conceit of her ever being made rnad or merry by love, st. xiii.; vindication of her character in that respect on the authority of her said solemn protestation, note 30, p. 122. Love's Labour Lost, quotation from, containing a happy description of becoming mirth, p. 35; note 21, p. 116, 117. Lucretius, a sceptical philosopher, p. 26; his beautiful address to Venus, ib. ; a passage from him applied to the subject of quizzing, note 35, p. 125. Lusiad, beautiful edition of, by Count Souza-Bouttelha, note 95, p. 170; two stanzas quoted from, to show that the Portuguese ottava rima admits in serious poetry both of versi sdruccioli and versi tronchi, ib. Lutrin preferred in general by the French to the Secchia Rapita and the Rape of the Lock, p. 22 ; reasons for thinking it inferior to the latter, p. 23 j ob- jection to the machinery employed in it, ib. 27; beautiful description of La Mollesse in the Lutrin, note 14, p. Ill ; quotation from, note 92, p. 157; passage quoted from it as a specimen of the French Alexandrine, note 95, p. 174. Lyttleton, (Lord) history of Henry II. p. vii. M. Macaroni, once the fashionable word for dandy, note 32, p. 123. 212 INDEX. Macbeth, plagiarism from, st. Ivi.; note 75, p. 147. Macfleckno, vide Dry den. Macon, Macone, st. xx. ; name frequently used by the Italian romance poets for Mahomet, note 50, p. 133. Madrigal by Voltaire, note 95, p. 183 ; translated, ib. Malmanttte, vide Lippi. Malone, his proof that "grunt" is the proper reading in Hamlet's soliloquy, note 88, p. 155. Mann (Sir Horace), anecdote of, note 83, p. 152. Mansfield (Lord), a deserter from the Muses to the bar, p. 30 j elegant compliment to him by Pope on that subject, p. 31. Marot (Clement), a simple bonhommie style in French verse, called from his name Marotique, p. 17. Marriage, Despina makes the killing of Ricciardetto for having killed her brother a sine qua non in her choice of a husband, st. xvii. ; Stella's perseverance in re- fusing to hear of a husband or change her name by marriage, st. xxxv. xl. ; note 62, p. 140; quotation from Voltaire's comedy of the Enfant Prodigue, containing a beautiful description of a happy contrasted with that of an unhappy marriage, note 67, p. 142, 143 5 imi- tated in English, ib. p. 143, 144 j the wedding of the Baron of Baccola with Miss Brunette interrupted by the fairy Nera, who transforms her into a doe and him into a buck, st. .Ixvii. to Ixx. j how they grow maid and man again, and are happily married, st. xciii. xciv. Martelli, a poet who wrote comedies in a measure so INDEX. 213 called from his name, note 95, p. 163 ; extract from Goldoni's Filosofo Inglese, ib. ; difference between the measure which has been used in some English poetry of fourteen syllables, and the Italian versi Mar- telliani which are in that measure, ib. p. 163, 164. Mars, beautiful description of the shield of, from Dryden's modernisation of Chaucer's Knight's Tale, quoted, note 90, p. 157 ; Dr. Beattie's admiration of those four lines, ib. p. 156. Mason, the mystical purgation of Caractacus in his tragedy compared to the effect of the nut of Brazil in curing Astolfo, note 76, p. 147- Mathias, note 8, p. 107. Mausolus, King of Caria, his wife Artemisia's ex- treme grief for his death, " so much prized and quoted," compared to Stella's mother's sorrows for the death of her father, st. xlviii. note 73, p. 146. Metaxtasio, his original name Trapassi, note 18, p. 115j quaere, whether a certain mode in the ar- rangement of words sometimes affected by him, is a beauty or a blemish ? note 71, p. 145, 146. Midsummer Night's Dream, words adopted from, st. xiii.; note 41, p. 130; those very words literally adopted by Wieland, ib. Milton, p. 3 ; line taken from, st. xli.; note 26, p. 121 ; note 68, p. 144; quotation from his Paradise Lost, proving that the comparison of beautiful eyes to stars must have been in use ever since the creation of Eve, 214 INDEX. note 45, p. 131.*^f~ ; imitation of a passage of Homer by the translator, st. xx. note 4*9, p. 1 33 ; of the same passage by Milton, ib.;. used by Forteguerri, ib. j Milton's celebrated episode on the occupations of the fallen spirits during the absence of Satan on his expedition against our first parents, note 51, p. 134 ; some similarity between that passage and the va- rious employments of the Paladins of France during the armistice, st. xxi. xxii. ; Milton probably had in Tiew in the said episode the account Homer gives of the amusements of Achilles's companions during his secession from the Grecian army, note 51, p. 134; quoted, note 68, p. 144; note 81, p. 151; note 95, p. 16O. Minstrel (Beattie's), remark on the Alexandrines of, note 54, p. 136. Moc&-heroic poetry, how distinguished from the chi- valresque burlesque, p. 20 j a short review of the principal mock-heroic poems in English, French, and Italian, p. 2028. Moloch, Bulasso, the hideous giant, measureless and strong, suggests Milton's picture of that fallen spirit, st. xviii. ; note 46, p. 131. Montfaucon de Villars, the real author of the Comte de Gabalis, p. 27- Monti, note 8, p. 107. Moore (Thomas), note 95, p. 182. More (Hannah), her poem of the Bas Bleu first brought INDEX. 215 the trite expression of blue and blue stocking into such general use, note 32, p. 123, 124. Morgante Maggiore of Pulci, p. 4 ; belongs to the class of romantic and chivalresque poems, p. 5 ; de- scription of the principal features of such poems as the Morgante, the two Orlandos of Boiardo and Berni, and the Malmantile, p. 5, 6 ; a controversy formerly whether the Morgante, though highly burlesque, was not an epic poem, p. 7 ; reason why that idea has been mistakenly imputed to Tasso, p. 7, 8 3 Voltaire's ridicule of the Morgante, p. 8 ; Sismondi's censure of the mixture in it of what is religious with what is grossly profane, p. 8 ; edition of it at Cagliari, p. 9 ; it is most relished in Tuscany, the soil where it grew, ib. ; Tasso believed that Marsilio Ficino was in part the author of it, p. 1 1 ; others have ascribed it wholly to Politian, who only had given it to be recited to Lorenzo de Medici, as excelling in that way, ib.: vide Moucke.- Moiicke, a celebrated printer, editor of the best edition of the Malmantile, 2 vols. 4to. 1750, note 9, p. 109. Murray, vide Mansfield. Muse, Forteguerri's account of his, st. i. ix.; how she came to sing of love and war, st. iii. ; often em- broiled in her geography, st. iv. j called a gipsy, which she very possibly was, ib. ; her scanty reading, st. v.5 never chosen of a blue stocking club, ib. ; nor aspiring to shine with dandy wits, ib. ; never could see any sense in the rules of Aristotle and Bossu, st. vi. ; apt to quizz the patient plodders, st. vii. ; and 216 INDEX. capriciously to fly from war to love, from love to re- ligion, and from composing anthems to lamenting the desertion of Ariadne, st. viii.j very shy and apt to blush till fairly engaged in her subject, st. ix. ; her solemn denial of having ever been hand and glove with love, st. xiii. N. Narrative poetry, a generic description of a more com- prehensive meaning than epic, p. 4; the Morgante is certainly narrative, and certainly, in the usual sense of the word epic, it is not epic, p. 7, 8. Needham (Abbe), published the original edition of Towneley's French Hudibras, London, 1757> note 17, p. 112. Negroland, Bulasso chief of, st. xii. xviii. ; note 46, p. 131; note 47, p. 132. Nera, a fairy, witch, or sorceress, grows mad with love of the Baron of Baccola, st. Ixvii. j changes him and his bride, Brunetta, into a buck and doe, st. Ixx. j assumes the form of a beautiful damsel weeping and forlorn, st. Ixxxvi. ; Rinaldo ties her to a tree, and burns her alive, st. xc.j her ashes, strewed in the way of the buck and doe, brings them back to their human shape, st. xci. xciii. Nidalmo Tiseo, the name, as an Arcadian, of Forteguerri, p. 30. Night, description of the advance of, st. xxxiii. Nob, note 85, p. 153- INDEX. 217 Nut of Brazil, its wondrous effects in curing love, st. xlvi. ; exact receipt for preparing it, to be used in- fused in wine, and applied internally and externally, st. xlvii. ; cured Stella's mother, st. 1.3 a sea-nymph who received it from Proteus, st. li. ; an old mariner cured with it by the sea nymph, st. lii. ; Proteus cures by it Helen, Agamemnon, and Telemachus, st. liii. ; it cures Rinaldo of his mad impromptu passion for Stella, st. Ivi.j its operation somewhat rough, ib. O. Ocean, Rinaldo traverses it and the Euxiue in quest of Rowland, st. lx. Odyssey, quotation from, note 65 , p. 141. Oliver or Olivier i, st. xxiv. Ondine, note 2, p. 103. Vide Undine. Opitz, quotation from, in Alexandrine verse, the great patriarch of the old or middle school of German poetry, note 95, p. 177, 178 ; a singular coincidence between part of the quotation from him and a passage in a Greek author cited also, ib. p. 178. * 63=-; born 1597, ib. ; died 1639, ib. Orlando, vide Rowland. Innamorato of Boiardo, vide Boiardo. ofBerni, vide Berni. Furioso, vide Ariosto. Othello quoted, note 28, p. 122. Ottava Rima has become the heroic measure and stanza of the Italians, p. 6j all the romantic, burlesque, and 218 INDEX. mock heroic poets have written in it, ib.j its pre- ference over versi sciolti, and its form of stanzas established also for serious narrative poetry by the transcendent merit of the Orlando Furioso and the Gerusalemme, both written in it, ib. ; Politian's fa- mous stanzas the supposed models of Ariosto's and Tasso's ottava rima style, p. 11. Ovid, Lord Mansfield compared to, by Pope, p. 31. P. Paradise Lost, vide Milton. Paris, the Frenche of, quotation from Chaucer, note 83, p. 152. * ts-. Parnassus, st. v. Parnell, note 95, p. 182. Parody, frequent parodying of the very words, or eleva- tion and pomp of epic diction, one of the characteristics of the romantic chivalresque burlesque poetry, p. 5, 6. Pause or ccesura, and hemistich in Alexandrines, &c. note 54, p. 135 137? note 95, p. 164, et seg. Peon, in the four last syllables of our verses ending in what are called triple rhymes, intellectual, hen-peck'd- you-all, -tian tvar-is-seen, -nish Sa-ra-cen; that last foot of the verse is, taking accent for quantity, what prosodaists call the second peon, like resolvere, note 95, p. 158. Perceval, note 8, p. 107. Persia, Rinaldo sets out for, in search of Orlando, st. lix. j Utopia lies between, and Ethiopia, ib.j this INDEX. 219 proved by reference to Biisching's Erdbeschreibung, note 80, p. 151. Phaer, specimen of his translation of Virgil in verse of fourteen syllables, with hemistich between the eighth and fourteenth, note 95, p. 164. Phoebus will probably still be continued to be invoked by modern poets, p. 24, et seq. Pindar, quotations from, p. 43, note 95, p. 158. KX Plot, new, in hell against Charlemagne, st. xiv. Pluto's trump sounds to arms against Charlemagne, st. xiv. Poetry^ not to be chained by pedantic rules in her devious wanderings and merry and lofty rhyme, st. vii. vide Alexandrine : burlesque romantic epic heroic lyric satiric j nothing complete poetry with- out poetic measure or feet, note 2, p. 103. Vide M'wgante, note 95, p. 169. Politian, his famous stanzas in ottava rima, p. 1 1 j sup- posed by some to be the author of the Morgante, ib. Political verse, why so called, note 95, p. 184, 185. Poly-Olbion, vide Dray ton. Pope, p. vi. vii. xv. xvi. 20 ; his Rape of the Lock, a mock-heroic rather than burlesque poem, p. 22 j dif- ference of national tastes on the. comparative merits of the Secchia Rapita, the Lutrin, and the Rape of the Lock, p. 22, 23 j justification of the machinery of Pope, p. 27 5 some sectaries in poetry bent upon excluding Pope from the pale of true poetry, ib. j Andres, author of a massy book on the history of all 220 INDEX. literature, on the other hand, says he is redundant, and never knows where to end, ib. } but grants to him, what those critics deny, great facility of imagination, ib.; quotations from, p. vi. 30, 31 ; note 21, p. 119 } note 22, p. 120; note 95, p. 168} his pithy style, note 13, p. 109} note 33, p. 124 } note S5, p. 126} note 95, p. 160, 162 ; words used by him now become vulgar, and others have become indelicate, note 21, p. 118j his translation of the passage in the 6th Iliad of the exchange of armour between Glaucus and Diomed, note 38, p. 127} monotony objected to in Pope's versification, note 54, p. 135, 136} expression copied from, st. xxx. note 57, p. 139} note 89, p. 156} dactyllic termination from, note 95, p. 1 68 } studied harshness in a quotation from, note 95, p. 181, 182. Porphyry, quoted from Eustathius, note 38, p. 128. Portrait of the Muse} argument, vide Muse; of De- spina, st. xvi.} of Stella, st. xxxv. xxxvii. xxxviii. xli. 1. j portrait and character of Astolfo, st. xxxvi. xli. xliii. xliv. xlvi. liv. lv. } of Miss Brunetta, st. Ixviii. Ixix. } of Nera as a young beauty, Ixxxvi. Ixxxvii. ; as an old witch, st. Ixxxviii. Ixxxix. Prior, p. xi. xii. } note 31, p. 123. Prometheus, observation on the allegorical personages of Strength and Force in ^Eschylus' Prometheus, p. 25. Proteus, vide Nut. Protest of the Muse against the supposition of her know- ing any thing of love, st. xiii.} calls herself fancy- free, as Shakespeare calls Queen Elizabeth, ib. INDEX. Proverbs, considerations concerning, p. 17 19; why more used by vulgar and illiterate persons, p. 18 j sometimes of happy effect in the higher kinds of forensic and parliamentary eloquence, ib. j Erasmus's folio volume of proverbs or adages, p. 1 9. Pruritus of quizzing requires to be vigilantly counter- acted, note 35, p. 125, 126. fc3-. Psalms, vide Sternhold. Public officers, reason why the, of the Pope's government generally canonists and civilians, note 19, p. 115. Pulci, vide Morgante and Franco. Pump, st. xi.j pumps, brogues so called by the gods, note 38, p. 129. Punch, diluted, a lax wordy translation compared to, note 13, p. 110, 111. Pyrenees, " The mountainous expanse, " And rude, which parts the realm of Spain from France." st. xxx. xxxi. Pyrrhichius, a foot consisting, in ancient metre, of two short, in modern, of two unaccented syllables, note 95, p. 158. Q- Qualities, abstract, why disapproved of as machinery in poetry, p. 24, 25. Quantity, in Greek and Latin prosody, short and long, generally speaking, analogous to accented and non- acceuted syllables in our modern European languages, note 95, p. 158, 159. 222 INDEX. Quarterly Review, No. XLII. cited for the opinion there given of Forteguerri, p. 44 ; note 23, p. 120. Question concerning the comparative excellence of Ariosto and Tasso, p. 13 16 ; note 8, p. 106. Quixote (Don), as little an entire poem, having no poeti- cal feet, as Cervantes would have been a man if born without any flesh and blood, note 2, p. 103. Quiz, st. vii.; attempt to define quizzing, note 35, p. 124 1265 a diatribe against, ib. p. 125 ; Lucretius there quoted, ib. ; a Greek critic and historian also quoted, ib. p. 126 *. R. Rape of the Lock, vide Pope. Receipt, vide Nut. Rhymes, ottava rima the heroic measure in Italian, Por- tuguese, and Spanish, p. 6, 7, et passim; specimens of in Italian, note 95, p. 166; in Portuguese, ib. p. 170. Ricardo or Richard, st. xxiv. xxx. Ricciardetto, st. xv. xx. xxv. xxvi. Richardet by Dumourier the father, vide Dumourier. Rolli, his translation of the Paradise Lost very in- adequate, note 51, p. 134; first printed 1735, ib. Rinaldo sets out alone in quest of Rowland, st. xxiv. ; account of his progress, st. Iviii. to the end; bold as Archibald Douglas the Grim, note 79, p. 148; lands, it is presumed, in Persia, st. Ix. ; kills an enormous serpent, st. Ixii. ; arrives at an inn near the castle of INDEX. Baccola, st. Ixiii. ; falls in love with the landlady, st. Ixiv. ; pretends to be a clown or scullion, ib. ; this doubted by the host, from his gentility in look and motion, ib. j the host tells him the history of the Baron of Baccola and Miss Brunette, st. Ixv. j proposes to him, ironically perhaps, to rescue the Baron and Miss Brunette, st. Ixxiii.; Rinaldo pleads his mean birth and innate cowardice, st. Ixxiv.j and, from his terror of the witch and giants, says he would fain tarry all night with the hostess, st. Ixxv. ; the host hits him a blow on the head, st. Ixxvi. ; he takes the host by the two legs, and whirls him as in a sling round the room, st. Ixxvii. ; the wife pacifies Rinaldo, but who does not lay her husband down till he was quite stunned as if asleep, ib. ; the details of his defeating and putting to death the two giants, and binding and burning alive their mistress Nera, st. Ixxxi. xci.; gratitude of the Baron and Brunette and their neigh- bours to him, for having been the means of their dis- enchantment, st.xcii.xciii. ; a courier from Charlemagne brings him tidings of the new war with the Saracens, st. xciv. ; he sets off on his return to France, venting threats against those invaders, st. xcv. Rome still called the head of the world and the Eternal City, p. 31. Rose, William Stewart, p. 40 ; author's opinion of his very entertaining poem reviewed in the Quarterly Review, No. XLII. note 23, p. 120. Rowland, Orlando, his madness, st. xxiii. note 52, p. Q 224 INDEX. 135 ; Charlemagne prevented from going personally in search of him by his barons, st. xxiii. ; Astolphus, Richard, and Alard, proceed to Spain in quest of Orlando, st. xxx. j hear of him near Valentia bellow- ing like a Bedlamite, st. xxxi. j Astolphus madder than him with love of Stella, till she cures him with nut of Brazil, st. Ivii. ; Rinaldo inquires in vain for him on his landing in Persia, where he had dreamed of his being, st. lix. Ix. S. Satirical poetry, p. 4. 6. Sannazaro, example of sdruccioli verses from the Arcadia of, note 95, p. 163. Schema, vide Bracciolini, quotation from, note 33, p. 12*. Schlegel, extract from his translation of the Mids. Night's Dream, note 95, p. 179. Schiller, example of German decasyllabics like our own heroic verse, note 95, p. 179. Sciolti versi, Trissino's unsuccessful poem of Italia Liberata in that measure, p. 6, 7 ; Tasso, when his intellect was impaired, composed his poem of Le Sette Giornate del Hondo Creato in that measure, note 4, p. 104>. Scott (Sir Walter), happy lyric digressions in his narra- tive poems, p. 4; his edition of Swift, note 21, p. 119, f; his Marmion quoted for the character of Douglas, Earl of Angus, note 79, p. 148, 149; and INDEX. 225 of his son Gawin Douglas, Bishop of Dunk eld, p. 150, 15 1; many English have little relish for the humour of those parts of the novels generally imputed to him, which are written in the Scottish dialect, p. 10. Scricca, or the Scric, King of Cafria, st. xv. ; beauty of his daughter, st. xvi.; verse from Dumourier's Richardet, where he is called Scric, note 43, p. 130. Sdruccioli versi, dodecasyllabics like our heroic mea- sure, with a triple rhyme formed by the tenth syllable and two supernumerary unaccented ones, st. xciv. note 95, p. 160. 166. Secchia Rapita, vide TassonL Serassi, author of the Life of Tasso, note 8, p. 108; his opinion of the beauties of the Furioso, p. 15. Shakespeare, his words and phrases incorporated in this book, argument, st. ii. xiii. xv. xxvi. Ivi. xciii. quoted, note 21, p. 119, t; note 25, p. 121 ; notes 41, 42, p. 130; note 44, p. 131; note 55, p. 138; note 56, p. 138; note 75, p. 147; note 88, p. 155; note 94, p. 157, 158; quotation from Wolsey's so- liloquy in Henry VIII. consisting chiefly of hendeca- syllables, note 95, p. 161 ; quotations from his works, of dactylic ending of decasyllabics, note 95, p. 167, 168. Shenstone, line adopted verbatim from, st. Ixxxvi. note 91, p. 157. Shent, st. x.; authority for the verb shend and shent, note 37, p. 126, 127. INDEX. Sidney, Pope's opinion of his attempt to introduce the Latin versification into English poetry, note 95, p. 180. Sismondi, vide Morgante; his opinion, in his own eloquent words, of the Ricciardetto, p. 44, 45. Slang, st.lxxxi. ; philological observations on that word, note 86, p. 153, 154. Sling, comparison concerning King David's use of his, in killing Goliath, st. Ixxvii. Sonnet on the changes wrought by time as to the pro- prieties of language, note 21, p. 119. Spade, to call a spade, a spade, not now permitted in decent company, note 21, p. 119. Spence's Anecdotes quoted for an opinion of Dryden concerning his Macflecno, note 16, p. 112; his vulgar use of the phrases " to keep company with," to " be company," &c. note 21, p. 117, 118j Dr. Young told him that Addison was at times very taciturn, ib. p. 117. Spenser, a canto of his Fairy Queen very indecorous, p. 36 ; quoted as authority by Johnson, note 37, p. 126, 127; his Alexandrines in the Fairy Queen, note 54, p. 136; quotations from, note 59, p. 139; note 77, p. 148. Sorcery, strange result of the witch Nera's, st. Ixxxix. Southey, his Vision of Judgment referred to, note 95, p. 1S1 ; his Roderic the Last of the Goths, ib ; his collection of curious hexamaters, ib. Souza Bottelha, the Count de, his beautiful and pa- INDEX. 227 triotic edition of the Lusiad, note 95, p. 170; his scholarlike and respectable character, ib. Statl (la Baronne de), her truly extraordinary genius, note 72, p. 146. * 3j her style ought to be con- sidered as classical and authoritative, ib. Stanyhurst, his mad version of Virgil, note 95, p. 181 ; specimen of, ib. Star, antiquity of comparisons to, note 45, p. 131. Steevens, vide Malone. Sternhold and Hopkins singular, and perhaps only beauty of their translation in fourteen syllable iam- bics quoted, note 95, p. 165. Strabo quoted for Artemisia's wifely love, note 73, p. 146. Striccia, Master Stritch, one of Nera's giant body guards, st. Ixxii. ; both clothed in skin of snake, ib. Suidas quoted for the history of Artemisia, note 73, p. 146. Swift, his words borrowed, st. vi. note 34, p. 124 ; the justice he renders to the conciseness of Pope, note 13, p. 109} ludicrous triple rhymes in the eight syllable iambic measure quoted from, note 95, p. 159; ib. p. 182. Swine-herd cheated by that bibliomane and modern Diomed, the Muse's father, st. xi. note 38, p. 127* 128, 129. Switch, the direful weapon of Nera's two giants, st. Ixxii. Ixxx. Ixxxiii. 228 INDEX. T. Taciturnity frequent in agreeable and witty men, note 21, p. 117} which renders them what the French czttjournalier, ib. Tasso (Bernardo), his Amadigi, p. 5 ; cannot be held to belong to the same class of poetry with the Mor- gante, &c. ib.; why he preferred, in his poem, the ottava rima to the blank verse of Trissino, p. 6, 7. Tasso (Torquato), his favourable opinion of the style of the Morgante, p. 1 1 3 the admirable plan and execution of his immortal poem, p. 15, 16; striking part of Lord Byron's Prophecy of Dante concerning him and Ariosto, note 8, p. 1 06 j melancholy anecdote concerning Tasso, ib. p. 107, 108; quotation from, note 95, p. 138; verbatim translation from, note 95, p. 166. Tassoni, author of the Secchia Rapita, born in 1565, died 1635, p. 20; proofs of his great superiority to Bracciolini, p. 21, 22. Telemachus, cured of love by the nut of Brazil, st. liii. Terence translated by Forteguerri, p. 34; character of that work, ib. ; the dialogue of Terence inimitable, ib. ; passages from the works of Terence, Horace, Shakespeare, and Pope, applicable to the affairs of human life, occur very frequently, so as to have be- come in a manner proverbial, p. 17, 18. Terzetti, mode of rhyming used in Dante's great work, and in the capitoli of Berni, example of, note 20, INDEX. 229 p. 116; happily imitated by Lord Byron in his Pro- phecy of Dante, note 8, p. 106, 107. Theocritus, lines suggested by one of his, st. xli.j that line quoted, note 70, p. 145 j an imitation of that line by Virgil, ib. Thomson, Alexandrines in his Castle of Indolence, note 54, p. 136 5 quaere, if any hendecasyllabics in his Seasons? note 95, p. 160. Thule, used vaguely for the most northern part of the island, note 21, p. 118. Tiraboschi, his practical reason for proving the su- periority of the Secchia Rapita over the Scherno of Bracciolini, p. 21, 22. Tooke, Home, his system of etymology, note Q5, p. 185. Totvneley, his translation, into French verse, of Hudi- bras, note 17, p 112; specimen of, ib. 113, 114; first edition of, London, 1757, another, Paris, 1820, ib. p. 112. Tribe, vide Club. Trissino, his Italia Liberata in versi sciolti, p. 6; would not have met with success if written in any other measure, 7 Triteme (Abbe), not quoted as authority in any poem strictly mock heroic, p. 20. Tronchi versi of the Italians resemble exactly in their scanning our common heroic measure of ten accented iambics, or five feet, note 95, p. 169; instance of, being the Ixxixth stanza of Ricciardetto, quoted, ib. ; 230 INDEX. example of Portuguese versi tronchi in the Lusiad, ib. p. 170. * Kf. Turpino., the archbishop, not quoted as their authority by the mock-heroic poets, p. 20. U. Undine, by La Motte Fouque, a poem without feet, note 2, p. 103. Ulrica, Queen of Sweden, Voltaire's verses to, note 95, p. 183. Utopia, its situation between Persia and Ethiopia, st. lix. ; note 80, p. 151. V. Variorum notes ; the notorious urbanity of style in some of them, note 86, p. 153. Vega (Lope de), quotation from, note 95, p. 17J. Venus might have been in love with Despina's brother, st. xv. ; rivalled by Stella when she dances, st. xxxv. Verse, a necessary, though not the most essential com- ponent part of poetry, note 2, p. 103. Villars (Mr. de), author of the Comte de Gabalis, p. 27- Virgil and Homer, machinery of, p. xvii. p. 25 ; quota- tions from the former, note 47, p. 132; note 51, p. 134 ; note 70, p. 145. Vocabolario della Crusca, none existed when Boiardo wrote, p. 12; the plan, as well as that of Johnson, INDEX. 231 better than that of the Academic Frar^aise, note 72, p. 146. * C3-. Voltaire, his ridicule of the Morgante, p. 8; the cha- racter he gives of Hudibras, p. 28, note 17, p. 112; the machinery of the Henriade condemned, p. 24, 25; his tirade on marriage inserted, note 67, p. 142, 143 ; imitated in English, p. 143, 144. Vulgar tongue, the Italian or Tuscan often so called, st. xi. Vulgarity of language, st. iii.j note 30, p. 122, 123; note 21, p. 117, 118; st. xlix.j note 74, p. 147; st. Ixxxi.; note 86, p. 153, 154. W. Waller, note 95, p. 177. Welchman, a satire on the moral character and favourite food of that people, note 48, p. 133. Wench, authorities for a respectable sense of the word, note 25, p. 120, 121. Whale, painted skipping on a lofty mount, st. iv. Wieland, his literal adoption of a happy expression of Shakespeare's, note 41, p. 130. Wit and humour connected with local peculiarities of phrase and manners, p. 9, 10; distinct in many respects, analogous in others, p. 9; wit imperial, st. xxvii. xxviii.j note 55, p. 138. Witch, vide Nera. Worm, poetice for an enormous serpent, st. Ixii. ; apud Milton, Par. Lost, for the devil, note 81, p. 151. R 232 INDEX. Y. Young, Dr. cited by Spence for an anecdote of Addi- son, note 21, p. 117. Z. Zipoli (Perloni), the anagram of Lorenzo Lippi, author of the Malmantile, p. 20. Zerbino, prince of Scotland, note 63, p. 1 4O. THE END. 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