of southern genius. It is impossible not to be delighted with this mode of ending the hostility of two contending parties, whose difference of opinion must appear to every one, at first sight, as hopelessly irreconcileable; by assuring the respective advocates of the Scandinavian scalds and the Moorish minstrels that both are in the right as far as they go, and that the cause of their difference is merely this, that neither has ascended so high as to find the common principle from which both proceed. It is further to be observed (and this too is very important) that in this reunion of the two derivative streams of Romance, their several ingredients were mixed in very different proportions according to the genius and habits of the different nations of the west that received them, or of the times and circumstances under which they were receiv ed. This diversity has given rise to an infinite variety of conjectures; but,the great point once settled, these are comparatively trivial, if not of easy solution.*N Of this latter description are the doubts respecting the immediate origin of those venerable fictions (Magnanime Mensogne) which are considered by later writers as the parents of two distinct families of romance-the chronicle of Geoffry of Monmouth, and that of Archbishop Turpin. Our present concern is with the latter of these, as it was the first, and for a long while continued to be the only, source of Italian fable. With the Race of King Arthur it never seems to have meddled, and the third romantic family, that of Amadis, which had the honour of contributing to it some of its later ornaments, would, if we had time for it, require distinct consideration. The Magnanimous Lie,' which bears with the name of Turpin the apparent impress of ecclesiastical authority, is generally supposed to have been really the invention of a monk of the eleventh century. Whether he had himself any foundation in yet more ancient legends for the fables which he has detailed it is useless. to inquire. The earliest Italian romance on the subject of Charlemagne and his peers, must have been full two centuries later. It is not founded upon Turpin, but is supposed to be a translation from some Latin original now lost. The old romance of Les Quatre Fils Aymon, and a few others connected with it, are pointed out as the concurrent sources of the Italian Epopée. The earliest poem in the Italian language formed on this model, (the Reali di Francia is in prose) is entitled Buovo d' Antona--it is written in the ottava rima, and, though the author is unknown, We are aware that we tread on tender ground, and that the names of Percy, Ritson, Leyden, and, above all, that of Ellis, among our own antiquaries as well as of several ingenious French critics, may by some be opposed to an hypothesis which our author (M. Ginguené) adopts without appearing to know that it was ever called in question. But we are inclined to suspect that a certain confusion in the use of general terms is the principal, if not the only source, of the apparent diversity of theories, and to believe that Warton's, in the main, has never yet been invalidated. it contains internal evidence which is thought sufficient to fix it at some period between the death of Dante and that of the historian Giovanni Villani*. Do we not here, then, detect M. Ginguene at least in a probable error, which it is singular enough that he repeats almost in the very passage that exposes it, in stating Bocaccio absolutely as the inventor of the ottava rima? Later than the Buovo d' Antona, but still of an uncertain date, and by an unknown author, is the poem of La Spagna, which is framed upon the model of Turpin. Poor and meagre as it is, it yet presents certain points of interest which it almost necessarily derives from its original. Even in the coars coarse narrative of Turpin,' says M. Ginguené, and he says truly,' there exists a fund of interest which nothing can destroy. The prodigious efforts of Roland, Oliver, and the other Paladins surprised in the defiles of Ronceveaux to repulse, at the head of only 20,000 men, the successive assaults of three corps d'armée of 100,000 each; the calm and imperturbable courage of these intrepid warriors; their glorious deaths; that in particular of Roland, who consents not, until the last extremity, to blow his terrible horn in sign of distress; who expires surrounded with a heap of enemies slain by his hand, and after having broken on a rock his sacred Durandal that it might not fall into the power of the infidels; even his farewell to that formidable weapon, the companion and instrument of so many exploits-all these circumstances, and many others of this great and celebrated scene, in whatever manner re¶ated, are always secure of their effect.'-Tom, iv. p. 19 192. The Morgante Maggiore of Pulci, which is chiefly valued by its national critics on account of the purity of its Tuscan dialect, and which almost all foreigners (M. Sismondi among the rest) have agreed in abandoning to unqualified condemnation on ac count of its tiresome and unmanageable prolixity, its grotesque mixture of jest and earnest, of superstitious reverence and shocking impiety, its flatness in the serious and vulgarity in the jocular, even this strange composition is occasionally impressed with the undeniable marks of high poetical genius; and, if in the general progress of the poem these are of too rare occurrence to rescue it from the anathema to which it is exposed, yet they abound in such profusion towards its close as to deserve a far different judgment. M. Sismondi must therefore pardon us if we imagine that the fastidiousness of a classical taste has, in this instance, frightened him from the discharge of his critical duty, and that he is in fact ignorant of the work which he passes over with so slight and contemptuous a notice. M. Ginguené, on the other hand, who has not shrunk from the task of examining and minutely analyzing a considerable part of the poem, confesses the pathos and even sublimity of the concluding scene, though he also, 1321-1348. even we think, is rather too cautious in admitting all the beauties of its introduction and accompaniments. The fault of Pulci, in the midst of these beauties, is that which is common t to him with almost all the writers of a half-polished age-the not knowing where to stop but by pruning the excrescences and abridging the details, we may often arrive at a foundation of something well worth the trouble taken in getting at it. It is thus with the oration which Orlando delivers to his little band of followers on the eve of the battle, the remorse of Charlemagne on witnessing the fatal effects of his blind confidence in Ganellon, and the solemn miracle which follows it; but we have already devoted more space to this poem than would be justified upon any other principle than a conviction that its merits have hitherto been undervalued, even by indulgent critics. Our own impression is, that the poet did not sit down with the intention of mere buffoonery, but that buffoonery lay in his way and he found it. His design may be collected from the circumstances under which his heterogeneous fable was composed. He was gay or grave according to the temporary bent of his temper, or according to that in which he expected to find the company before whom he recited his occasional cantoes. That he is more childish and more frequent in his burlesque humours than his great follower Ariosto, is to be ascribed perhaps to the coarser genius of the age, perhaps to the disposition of the writer, probably to both; but nobody ever called Ariosto a mere buffoon, or suspected that it was his design to laugh at all romantic inventions. Shortly after Pulci had amused the guests of Lorenzo de'Medici by this half-comic and half-serious melodrame, another poet, whose true appellation, Francesco Bello, has been lost in the nick-name of the blind man of Ferrara,' (Il Cieco di Ferrara) undertook to entertain his patrons, the Gonzagas of Mantua, in a similar manner. His poem of Mambriano is not so well known as the Morgante, but, says M. Ginguené, mérite cependant de l'être.' We cannot call this judgment in question, having never met with the work; but we refer our readers to M. Ginguené's analysis which is not destitute of entertainment. Both the poems last noticed owe, nevertheless, their greatest celebrity to the circumstance of being the precursors of the 'Orlando Innamorato' of Bojardo, and its exalted offspring the 'Furioso' of Ariosto. It is hardly possible, by any critical observations, to bring the English reader better acquainted with these productions of the romantic épopée than he is already through Mr. Hoole's version of the latter, or his prefatory remarks and frequent illustrations of the former, poem. We are, at the same time, sensible of the general langour which pervades that version, so different from the spirit which animates the original; and we consider the Orlando Furioso as one of those few poems esteemed universally classical, of which we still want an adequate impression in the English language. All the romantic poems which preceded Ariosto were manifestly uninfluenced by any of the known and established laws of poetry. The art by which they were managed was little better than that of story-telling in verse; and even the Divine Orlando' is perhaps too generally considered in the same light, notwithstanding the assertions and arguments of his Italian critics. The poem of Ariosto, observes M. Sismondi, 'is but a fragment of the chivalrous and amorous history of Charlemagne; it has no more either of beginning or end than any other period detached from the general course of time. This want of unity is essentially injurious to its interest and impression as a whole; but the avidity with which all nations and all ages read Ariosto, even when his fables are robbed, by translation, of the charm of poetry, sufficiently proves that he has been able to bestow on them, in detail, the interest which he has failed of communicating to the entire assemblage. Above all others, he has inspired that interest which is engendered by valour. In spite of the habitual absurdity of chivalrous combats, of the constant disproportion between cause and effect, and of the air of r raillery which seems to accompany all his descriptions of battles, Ariosto always knows how to excite a sort of indescribable enthusiasm of bravery, of intoxication of heroism, which makes every reader burn to arm himself a knight. One of man's greatest enjoyments consists in the development of all his powers, of all his resources; the great art of the romance writer is that of awakening confidence in ourselves, of accumulating all the force of nature and even of magic in opposition to his hero, and displaying the superiority of individual will and courage over all the powers that are combined for his destruction.' The world into which Ariosto transports us is also one of our enjoy ments. This world, essentially poetical, in which all the vulgar interests of life are suspended, in which the only laws are those which love and honour enjoin, the only actions those which they prompt and stimulate in which no factitious want, no cold calculation, benumbs the soul; in which all the pains and uneasiness produced by variety, by the distinctions of rank or of riches, are forgotten; this world of our own creation forms an agreeable relief from the world of reality: we love to traverse it for the sake of withdrawing ourselves completely from the solicitudes which are everywhere else our portion. True, it teaches us nothing, for the difference between chivalrous and real existence is so great that the smallest application can never be made from the one to the other: it even constitutes a remarkable characteristic of this description of poetry that it is impossible to derive from it any sort of instruction. Yet we may find a peculiar species of enjoyment, even in an occupation of the mind which does not pretend to the dignity of a lesson, and a "baseless vision" is most conformable to the very essence of poetry, which ought never to be the means, but is in itself alone its own proper end and object. Tom. ii. p. 67. 474 Notwithstanding, however, this general accusation of want of method, M. Ginguené has pointed out a real unity of action, at least, in the Orlando Furioso. Its true hero is Ruggiero, and the poem therefore ends, in strict conformity with all the acknowledged laws of the epic, in the marriage of that fabled ancestor of the House of Este.' The secret end of the poet,' says M. Sismondi, (who agrees with M. Ginguené,) is thus explained, and brought before the eyes of the reader. Nevertheless, I regret the conviction which this explanation brings with it, these noble monuments of human genius shrink in the imagination when they convey to it only the idea of an ingenious flattery. It is enough for poets to consecrate the few verses, in the way episode, to the celebration of their benefactors, without constituting the entire plan of their noblest works a mere scaffolding to display the prises of those who are undeserving of glory.' of Whether this remark does not savour rather of unnecessary aussterity than of the spirit of indulgent criticism, we must leave to our readers; for ourselves, we shall only say that it would be undoubtedly just if the end of such a poem as the Orlando were ever in view of the readers. But since it has cost a great deal of critical labour to discover that it has any end at all, it seems to be a matter of comparative indifference what that end, in reality, is; and no reader, we apprehend, need be seriously disturbed in his enjoyment either of the gay or of the pathetic passages of his author by reflecting that the union of Ruggiero and Bradamante is the end of the poem, and that its object is a compliment to the Duke Alfonso or the cardinal Hippolyto. The other poetical qualities of this great artist are appreciated as they deserve, particularly his versification. That versification is much more remarkable for grace, sweetness, and elegance, than for majesty-its beauties are particularly eminent in the introductory stanzas of every canto, which are always ornamented by the richest poetry. For perfect harmony of language, no poet before or since can be compared to him. He paints whatever he treats of, and the eyes of the reader follow the poet in all his recitals. Since he is constantly sporting with his subject, with his readers, even with his style itself, he seldom attains, and never supports himself at the elevation of epic poetry. He even seeks the grace of facility in negligence. Often he begins a new stanza by repeating some of the phrases with which he finished the preceding, as in story-telling we go back upon our words to give ourselves time for recollection.* Often he throws about his expressions without caution, and as if by mere chance. We even feel that he has not chosen that which is most fit for --- Ma quivi giunse In fretta un messagier che gli disgiunse. |