*

is recorded only to the confusion of the critic, whose palinodia the Italian makes no effort to discover, and would not, perhaps, accept. As to the opposition which the Jerusalem encountered from the Cruscan academy, who degraded Tasso from all competition with Ariosto, below Bojardo and Pulci, the disgrace of such opposition must also in some measure be laid to the charge of Alfonso, and the court of Ferrara. For Leonard Salviati, the principal and nearly the sole origin of this attack, was, there can be no doubt,† influenced by a hope to acquire the favour of the House of Este: an object which he thought attainable by exalting the reputation of a nativo poet at the expense of a rival, then a prisoner of state. The hopes and efforts of Salviati must serve to show the contemporary opinion as to the nature of the poet's imprisonment; and will fill up the measure of our indignation at the tyrant jailer. In fact, the antogonist of Tasso was not disappointed in the reception given to his riticism; he was called to the court of Ferrara, where, having endeavoured to heighten his claims to favour, by panegyrics on the family of his sovereign.§ he was in turn abandoned, and expired in neglected poverty. The opposition of the Cruscans was brought to a close in six years after the commencement of the controversy; and if the academy owed its first renown to having almost opened with such a paradox, || it is probable that, on the other hand, the care of his reputation alleviated rather than aggravated the imprisonment of the injured poet. The defence of his father and of himself, for both were involved in the censure of Salviati, found employment for many of his solitary hours, and the captive could have been but little embarrassed to reply to accusations, where, amongst other delinquencies, he was charged with invidiously omitting, in his comparison between France and Italy, to make any mention of the cupola of St. Maria del Fiore at Florence. The late biographer of Ariosto seems as if willing to renew the controversy by doubting the interpretation of Tasso's selfestimation related in Serassi's life of the poet. But Tiraboschi had before laid that rivalry at rest, ft by showing, that between Ariosto and Tasso it is not a question of comparison, but of preference.

ses talens, j'aurois montré que lo bon sens n'est pas toujours ce qui domine chez lui," p. 182. Boileau said he had not changed his opinion; "J'en ai si peu changé, dit-il," &c. p. 181.

But

*La manière de bien penser dans les ouvrages de l'esprit, sec, dial. p. 89, edit. 1692. Philanthes is for Tasso, and says, in the outset, "de tous les beaux esprits que l'Italie a portés, le Tasse est peut-être oelui qui pense le plus noblement." Bohours seems to speak in Eudoxus, who closes with the absurd comparison: "Faites valoir le Tasse tant qu'il vous plaira, je m'en tiens pour moi à Virgile," &c. Ibid. p. 102.

t La Vita, &c. lib. iii. p. 90, tom. ii. The English reader may see an account of the opposition of the Crusca to Tasso, in Dr. Black, Life, &c. cap. xvii. vol. ii.

For further, and, it is hoped, decisive proof, that Tasso was neither more nor less than a prisoner of state, the reader is referred to "Historical Illustrations of the IVth Canto of Childe Harold," pag. 5. and following.

§ Orazioni funebri ... delle lodi di Don Luigi, Cardinal d'Este... delle lodi di Donno Alfonso d'Este. See La Vita, lib. iii. p. 117.

It was founded in 1582, and the Cruscan answer to Pellegrino's Caraffa, or epica poesia, was published in 1584.

"Cotanto potè sempre in lui il veleno della sua pessima volontà contro alla nazion Fiorentina." La Vita, lib. iii. pp. 96, 98. tom. ii.

**La Vita di M. L. Ariosto, scritta dall' Abate Girolamo Baroffaldi Giun. ere, &c. Ferrara, 1807, lib. iii. p. 262. See Historical Illustrations, &c. p. 26.

†† Storia della Lett. &c. lib. iii. tom. vii. par, iii. p. 1220, sect. 4.

XI.

ARIOSTO.

"The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust,

The iron crown of laurel's mimick'd leaves."

Stanza xli. lines 1 and 2.

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

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

XII.

ANCIENT SUPERSTITIONS RESPECTING LIGHTNING.

"For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weares

Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves."

Stanza xli. lincs 4 and 5.

The eagle, the sea calf, the laurel, and the white vine, were amongst the most approved preservatives against lightning: Jupiter chose the first, Augustus Cæsar the second, and Tiberius never failed to wear a wreath of the third when the sky threat

"Mi raccontarono que' monaci, ch' essendo caduto un fulmine nella loro chiesa schianiò esso dalle tempie la corona di lauro a quell' immortale poeta." Op. di Bian coni, vol. iii. p. 176. ed. Milano, 1802; lettera al Signor Guido Savini Arcifisiocritico, Full' indole di un fulmine caduto in Dresda l'anno 1759.

"Appassionata ammiratore ed invitto apologista dell' Omera Ferrarese." The itle was first given by Tasso, and is quoted to the confusion of the Tassisti, lib. iii. pp. 262. 265 La Vita di M. L. Ariosto, &c.

"Parva sed apta mini, sed nulli obnoxia, sed non
Sordida, parta meo sed tamen are 'domus."

Aquila, vitulus marinus, et laurus, fulmine non feriuntur. Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. cap. 55.

Columella, lib. x.

VOL. III.-P

¶ Sueton. in Vit. August. cap. x..

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

XIII.

"Know that the lightning sanctifies below.”

Stanza xli. line 8.

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

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

XIV.

THE VENUS OF MEDICIS.

"There, too, the Goddess loves in stone."

Stanza xlix, line 1.

The view of the Venus of Medicis instantly suggests the lines in the Seasons, and the comparison of the object with the description proves not only the correctness of the portrait, but the peculiar turn of thought, and, if the term may be used, the sexual imagination of the descriptive poet. The same conclusion may be deduced from another hint in the same episode of Musidora; for Thomson's notion of the privi

*Sueton. in Vit Tiberii, cap. lxix. † Note 2. p. 409. edit. Lugd. Bat. 1667, Vid. J. C. Bullenger, de Terra Motu et Fulminib. lib. v. cap. xi.

§ Ουδεὶς κεραυνωθεὶς ἀτιμός ἐστι, ὅθεν καὶ ὡς θεὸς τιμᾶται. Plut. Sympos. vid. J. C. Bulleng, ut sup.

|| Pauli Diaconi, de Gestis Langobard. lib. iii. cap. xiv. fo. 15. edit. Taurin. 1527. ¶ I. P. Valeriani de fulminum significationibus declamatio, ap. Græv. Antiq. Rom. tom. v. p. 593. The declamation is addressed to Julian of Medicis.

leges of favoured love must have been either very prinutive, or rather deficient in delicacy, when he made his grateful nymph inform her discreet Damon that in some happier moment he might, perhaps, be the companion of her bath : —

"The time may come you need not fly."

The reader will recollect the anecdote told in the Life of Dr. Johnson. We will not leave the Florentine gallery without a word on the Whetter. It seems strange that the character of that disputed statue should not bo entirely decided, at least in the mind of any one who has seen a sarcophagus in the vestibule of the Basilica of St. Paul without the walls, at Rome, where the whole group of the fable of Marsyas is seen in tolerable preservation; and the Scythian slave whetting the knife is represented exactly in the same position as this celebrated masterpiece. The slave is not naked; but it is easier to get rid of this difficulty than to suppose the knife in the hand of the Florentine statue an instrument for shaving, which it must be, if, as Lanzi supposes, the man is no other than the barber of Julius Caesar. Winkelmann, illustrating a bas relief of the same subject, follows the opinion of Leonard Agostini, and his authority might have been thought conclusive, even if the resemblance did not strike the most careless observer.*

Amongst the bronzes of the same princely collection is still to be seen the inscribed tablet copied and commented upon by Mr. Gibbon. Our historian found some difficulties, but did not desist from his illustration: he might be vexed to hear that his criticism has been thrown away on an inscription now generally recognised to be a . forgery.

XV.

MADAME DE STAËL.

"In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie."

Stanza liv, line 1.

This name will recall the memory, not only of those whose tombs have raised the Santa Croce into the centre of pilgrimage, the Mecca of Italy, but of her whose eloquence was poured over the illustrious ashes, and whose voice is now as mute as those she sung. CORINNA is no more; and with her should expire the foar, the flattery, and the envy, which threw too dazzling or too dark a cloud round the march of genius, and forbad the steady gaze of disinterested criticism. We have her picture embellished or distorted, as friendship or detraction has held the pencil: the impartial portrait was hardly to be expected from a contemporary. The immediato voice of her survivors will, it is probable, be far from affording a just estimate of her singular capacity. The gallantry, the love of wonder, and the hope of associated fame, which blunted the edge of censure, must cease to exist.-The dead have no sex; they can surprise by no new miracles; they can confer no privilege: Corinna has ceased to be a woman-she is only an author: and it may be foreseen that many will repay themselves for former complaisance, by a severity to which the extravagance of previous praises may perhaps give the colour of truth. The latest posterity, for to the latest posterity they will assuredly descend, will have to pronounce upon her various productions; and the longer the vista through which they are seen, the more accurately minute will be the object, the more certain the justice, of the decision. She will enter into that existence in which the great writers of all ages and nations are, as it were, associated in a world of their own, and, from that superior sphere, shed their eternal influence for the control and consolation of mankind. But the individual will gradually disappear as the author is more distinctly seen: some one, therefore, of all those whom the charms of involuntary wit, and of easy hospitality, attracted within

* See Monim. Ant. Ined. par. i. cap. xvii. n. xlii. pag. 50; and Storia delli Arti, &c. lib. xi. cap. i. tom. ii. pag. 314. not. B.

Nomina gentesque Antiquæ Italiæ, p. 204, odit. oct.

the friendly circles of Coppet, should rescue from oblivion those virtues which, although they are said to love the shade, are, in fact, more frequently chilled than excited by the domestic cares of private life. Some one should be found to portray the unaffected graces with which she adorned those dearer relationships, the performance of whose duties is rather discovered amongst the interior secrets, than seen in the outward management, of family intercourse; and which, indeed, it requires the delicacy of genuine affection to qualify for the eye of an indifferent spectator. Some one should be found, not to celebrate, but to describe, the amiable mistress of an open mansion, the centre of a society, ever varied, and always pleased, the creator of which, divested of the ambition and the arts of public rivalry, shone forth only to give fresh animation to those around her. The mother tenderly affectionate and tenderly beloved, the friend unboundedly generous, but still esteemed, the charitable patroness of all distress, cannot be forgotten by those whom she cherished, and protected, and fed. Her loss will be mourned the most where she was known the best; and, to the sorrows of very many friends and more dependants, may be offered the disinterested regret of a stranger, who, amidst the sublimer scenes of the Leman lake, received his chief satisfaction from contemplating the engaging qualities of the incomparable Corinna.

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

*The free expression of their honest sentiments survived their liberties. Titius, the friend of Antony, presented them with games in the theatre of Pompey. They did not suffer the brilliancy of the spectacle to efface from their memory that the man who furnished them with the entertainment had murdered the son of Pompey: they drove him from the theatre with curses. The moral sense of a populace, spontane ously expressed, is never wrong. Even the soldiers of the triumvirs joined in the execration of the citizens, by shouting round the chariots of Lepidus and Plancus, who had proscribed their brothers, De Germanis non de Gallis duo triumphant Consules; a saying worth a record, were it nothing but a good pun. [C. Vell. Paterculi Hist. lib. ii. cap. lxxix. pag. 78, edit. Elzevir. 1639. Ibid. lib. ii. cap. lxxvii.]