CHAPTER I.

Lord Nevil was very desirous that Mr. Edgarmond should partake the conversation of Corinne, which far surpassed her improvised verses. On the following day, the same party assembled at her house; and, to elicit her remarks, he turned the discourse on Italian literature, provoking her natural vivacity by affirming that England could boast a greater number of true poets than Italy. "In the first place," said Corinne, "foreigners usually know none but our first-rate poets: Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Guarini, Tasso, and Metastasio; but we have many others, such as Chiabrera, Guidi, Filicaja, and Parini, without reckoning Sannazer Politian, who wrote in Latin. All their verses are harmoniously colored; all more or less knew how to introduce the wonders of nature and art into their verbal pictures. Doubtless they want the melancholy grandeur of _your_ bards, and their knowledge of the human heart; but does not this kind of superiority become the philosopher better than the poet? The brilliant melody of our language is rather adapted to describe external objects than abstract meditation; it is more competent to depict fury than sadness; for reflection calls for metaphysical expressions; while revenge excites the fancy, and banishes the thought of grief. Cesarotti has translated Ossian in the most elegant manner: but in reading him, we feel that his words are in themselves too joyous for the gloomy ideas they would recall; we yield to the charm of our soft phrases, as to the murmur of waves or the tints of flowers. What more would you exact of poetry? If you ask the nightingale the meaning of his song, he can explain but by recommencing it; we can only appreciate its music by giving way to the impression it makes on us. Our measured lines, with rapid terminations, composed of two brief syllables, glide along as their name (_Sdruccioli_) denotes, sometimes imitating the light steps of a dance; sometimes, with graver tone, realizing the tumult of a tempest, or the clash of arms. Our poetry is a wonder of imagination: you ought not in it to seek for every species of pleasure."--"I admit," returned Nevil, "that you account as well as possible for the beauties and defects of your national poetry; but when these faults, without these graces, are found in prose, how can you defend it? what is but vague in the one becomes unmeaning in the other. The crowd of common ideas, that your poets embellish by melody and by figures, is served up cold in your prose, with the most fatiguing pertinacity. The greatest portion of your present prose writers use a language so declamatory, so diffuse, so abounding in superlatives, that one would think they all dealt out the same accepted phrases by word of command, or by a kind of convention. Their style is a tissue, a piece of mosaic. They possess in its highest degree the art of inflating an idea, or frothing up a sentiment; one is tempted to ask them a similar question to that put by the negress to the Frenchwoman, in the days of hoop-petticoats, 'Pray, Madam, is all _that_ yourself?' Now, how much is real, beneath this pomp of words, which one true expression might dissipate like an idle dream?"--"You forget," interrupted Corinne, "first Machiavel and Boccaccio, then Gravina, Filangieri, and even, in our own days, Cesarotti, Verri, Bettinelli, and many others, who knew both how to write and how to think.[1] I agree with you, that, for the last century or two, unhappy circumstances having deprived Italy of her independence, all zeal for truth has been so lost, that it is often impossible to speak it in any way. The result is, a habit of resting content with words, and never daring to approach a thought. Authors, too sure that they can effect no change in the state of things, write but to show their wit--the surest way of soon concluding with no wit at all; for it is only by directing our efforts to a nobly useful aim that we can augment our stock of ideas. When writers can do nothing for the welfare of their country; when, indeed, their means constitute their end; from leading to no better, they double in a thousand windings, without advancing one step. The Italians are afraid of new ideas, rather because they are indolent than from literary servility. By nature they have much originality; but they give themselves no time to reflect. Their eloquence, so vivid in conversation, chills as they work; besides this, the Southerns feel hampered by prose, and can only express themselves fully in verse. It is not thus with French literature," added Corinne to d'Erfeuil: "your prose writers are often more poetical than your versifiers."--"That is a truth established by classic authorities," replied the Count. "Bossuet, La Bruyére, Montesquieu, and Buffon can never be surpassed; especially the first two, who belonged to the age of Louis XIV.; they are perfect models for all to imitate who can;--a hint as important to foreigners as to ourselves."--"I can hardly think," returned Corinne, "that it were desirable for distinct countries to lose their peculiarities; and I dare to tell you, Count, that, in your own land, the national orthodoxy which opposes all felicitous innovations must render your literature very barren. Genius is essentially creative; it bears the character of the individual who possesses it. Nature, who permits no two leaves to be exactly alike, has given a still greater diversity to human minds. Imitation, then, is a double murder; for it deprives both copy and original of their primitive existence."--"Would you wish _us_," asked d'Erfeuil, "to admit such Gothic barbarisms as Young's 'Night Thoughts,' or the Spanish and Italian _Concetti_? What would become of our tasteful and elegant style after such a mixture?" The Prince Castel Forte now remarked: "I think that we all are in want of each other's aid. The literature of every country offers a new sphere of ideas to those familiar with it. Charles V. said: 'The man who understands four languages is worth four men,' What that great Genius applied to politics is as true in the state of letters. Most foreigners understand French; their views, therefore, are more extended than those of Frenchmen, who know no language but their own. Why do they not oftener learn other tongues? They would preserve what distinguishes themselves, and might acquire some things in which they still are wanting."

[1] Cesarotti, Verri, and Bettinelli, three modern authors, have instilled more thought into Italian prose than has been bestowed on it for many years.