PART I.

_CARLO GOZZI AND PIERO ANTONIO GRATAROL._

1. The ancestry and social standing of Count Carlo Gozzi--His collision with Piero Antonio Gratarol, Secretary to the Venetian Collegio--How this quarrel led to the composition of Gozzi's Memoirs--Their importance as a document for the social history of Venice in the eighteenth century.--2. The interweaving of this episode in Gozzi's Life with his literary warfare against Goldoni, which culminated in the production of his ten dramatic fables.--3. Sketch of Gratarol's life, and his relation to Andrea and Caterina Tron--Gozzi's _liaison_ with the actress Teodora Ricci--Gozzi's comedy, _Le Droghe d'Amore_--Turned by Mme. Tron into a satire upon Gratarol--Gratarol flies from Venice to Stockholm, is proscribed by the Republic, and loses all his fortune--His _Narrazione Apologetica_--Gozzi takes up the pen in self-defence--The Inquisitors of State forbid the publication of his autobiographical polemic--Gratarol's death in Madagascar--Circumstances which induced Gozzi in 1797, after the fall of the Republic of St. Mark, to complete and publish his Memoirs.--4. Gozzi's literary style and personal character--The false conception of the man and his work which has been diffused by Paul de Musset.

I.

In the year 1797 there appeared at Venice a book entitled _Memorie inutili della vita di Carlo Gozzi, scritte da lui medesimo e pubblicate per umiltà_, "Useless Memoirs of the Life of Carlo Gozzi, written by himself and published from motives of humility." Its author, though he bore the title of Count, and belonged to an honourable family in Venice, was not of patrician descent. That is to say, none of his lineal ancestors had acquired the right of voting in the Grand Council or of holding the highest offices of state. They ranked with the citizens of the Republic, who took no direct part in the government, but who were permitted to discharge important functions as secretaries of several departments and as ambassadors of the second class. By his mother he drew half of his blood from one of the oldest and proudest of Venetian noble families, the Tiepolos. Thus, socially, if not politically, birth placed him almost on a level with the best Venetian aristocracy.

In the year 1797 he was seventy-seven; and although he had been a man of some mark in his early days, the public had lost sight of him for the last seventeen years. His reputation depended upon a large number of dramatic pieces, satirical poems, and prose compositions, mostly of a controversial kind. Two main episodes in his literary life conferred a slightly dubious notoriety upon his name. The first of these was the long and bitter war he waged against the two playwrights, Chiari and Goldoni, between the years 1756 and 1762. The other was an unfortunate series of events which brought him into collision with a certain Pier Antonio Gratarol in 1777. Gratarol, like his adversary, was a Venetian citizen, allied by descent to the great patrician family of Contarini. Unlike Gozzi, he early embarked on a political career, was one of the secretaries of the Collegio, and looked forward to the highest appointments which were open to a man of his rank. The collision with Count Gozzi, which I shall have to describe with some minuteness, ended in Gratarol's voluntary exile from Venice, the confiscation of his property by the State, and a public scandal of sufficient importance to attract the attention of serious historians.[2] Had it not been for this tragi-comic episode in his past life, Gozzi would never have written his Memoirs; and had the memory of the scandal not been revived some years after Gratarol's death, when the old Republic of S. Mark had fallen in the crash of the French Revolution, he would never have published them.

This autobiography is distinctly an apologetical work, a portrait drawn by Gozzi in self-defence, and intended to vindicate himself from the aspersions cast by Gratarol upon his character. Its main object is to set forth in the fairest light his own conduct during the unlucky collision to which I have alluded. Yet though so limited in aim, the interest which it possesses for us at the present time, is far wider than belongs to that unhappy squabble, long since buried in oblivion. Gozzi's conception of an _Apologia pro vita sua_ was a comprehensive one. He resolved to reveal his character under all its aspects, from his childhood until the date 1777, dealing now with matters of general importance, now with the private affairs of his home, touching upon the literature of his age, discussing fashions, criticising philosophy, entering into minute particulars regarding theatres and actors, describing his love-affairs with a frankness worthy of Rousseau, and painting a series of lively portraits in which a large variety of individuals from all classes are presented to our notice. The result is that his autobiography, although in the strictest sense of that term an occasional production, forms one of the most valuable documents we possess for a study of Venetian society during the decadence of the Republic. Gozzi was gifted with a penetrative and observant mind, strong sense of humour, and a power of brilliant description. On the faults of his style and the defects of his character, I shall speak hereafter. At present it is enough to indicate the importance of the Memoirs as furnishing a vivid picture of Venetian life in the eighteenth century. Venice, at that period, was fortunate in autobiographers. She possessed Goldoni and Casanova as well as Gozzi, not to mention smaller folk like Da Ponte, the poet of Mozart's _Don Giovanni_. But when we compare the three life-records of Goldoni, Casanova, and Gozzi, by far the deepest historical interest, in my opinion, belongs to the last. Casanova's Memoirs are almost excluded from general use by the nature of their predominant pre-occupation. Moreover, they deal but partially with Venice, and only with limited aspects of its social life. Goldoni's, though more humane, and in all that concerns tone impeccable, turn too exclusively upon the history of his dramatic works to be of great importance as an historical document. Moreover, the scene is laid in several provinces of Italy and transferred before its close to France. Gozzi, on the contrary, never quits the soil of Venice. Except when he served as a soldier for three years in the Venetian province of Dalmatia, he does not appear to have travelled further than to Pordenone on one side and to Padua on the other. Of strong aristocratic instincts, but condemned to comparative poverty by the reckless expenditure of his parents and grandparents, Gozzi enjoyed opportunities of studying the society of Venice from several points of view. His enthusiasm for literature and partiality for professional actors brought him acquainted with the scholars and the Bohemians of that epoch. His management of the encumbered estates of his family introduced him to advocates, solicitors, brokers, Jews, tenants, and all manner of strange people. His birth made him the companion of patricians. His military service involved him in the wild pleasures and perils of scapegrace lads upon a foreign soil. Consequently, the records of a life so varied in experience, while strictly confined within the narrow circuit of Venetian society, could not fail to be rich in details for the student. It may be regretted that Gozzi chose to write in a didactic spirit. We could willingly have exchanged his long-winded excursions into the sphere of moral philosophy for a few more graphic sketches in the style of his Dalmatian adventures.

II.

This biographical and historical interest, far more than Gozzi's quarrel with Goldoni or his collision with Gratarol, is the reason why I thought it worth while to translate a book which has become excessively rare in the original. Nothing can be duller or more contemptible, to my mind, than the chronicle of literary quarrels. The Goldoni-Gozzi episode would be devoid of permanent attraction were it not for the curious light thrown by it upon the obscure subject of impromptu comedy, and for the ten extraordinary _Fiabe Teatrali_ from Gozzi's pen to which it gave rise. Again, the Gratarol-Gozzi episode, as we shall presently see, is almost humiliating in the pettiness of its details, and painful through its tragic termination.

The Memoirs contain a full and tolerably accurate account of the Gratarol incident. Yet I cannot dispense with a summary of this affair, based upon a comparison of Gozzi's story with that of Gratarol in his _Narrazione Apologetica_. The extreme importance of the event in the lives of both men, and the fact that it constitutes the subject of Gozzi's autobiography in quite as serious a sense as that in which the Persian war forms the subject of Herodotus' history, render this unavoidable.

III.

Pier Antonio Gratarol was a young man between thirty and forty in the year 1776. He had grown up with an ample fortune and without a father's control; had imbibed French ways of thinking and French customs; had married, and after marriage had separated from his wife.[3] He represented that class of intellectual and political Liberals whom Gozzi, with his Conservative prejudices, regarded as dangerous to the well-being of the State. He was an open libertine in his relations with women, and did not strive to conceal those principles of personal liberty which the _philosophes_ were spreading throughout Europe. At the same time he represented a family which had served the Republic in distinguished offices for many generations; he possessed excellent abilities, and had every reason to expect a brilliant future. There was nothing in his conduct or in his domestic circumstances to distinguish him unfavourably from a multitude of gay livers and free-thinkers in the corrupt Venice of that epoch. He had recently become eligible for the post of ambassador at a foreign Court; and was already nominated as Resident in Naples. This nomination required, however, to be confirmed by the Grand Council; and circumstances, which need not be enlarged upon, rendered the grant of money for his embassy a matter of debate.[4] Unfortunately, Gratarol was a person of vain, imperious temper, puffed up with the sense of his own merits, and incapable of correcting his antipathies. His French tendencies--political, moral, social, literary--fashionable for the most part--prejudiced the minds of influential people in the highest departments of the government against him. Finally, he had made an implacable enemy of a great lady, who at that time exercised almost dictatorial control over the councils of the State. This was Caterina Dolfin Tron, the wife of Andrea Tron, Procuratore di San Marco, whose immense influence in the Council of Ten, the Consulta, and the Senate enabled him to do what he liked with the Grand Council.[5] Caterina's husband was popularly known as _Il Padrone_, or the Master of Venice, and he doted on her with a blind affection. She was a woman of brilliant parts, imbued, like Gratarol, with advanced French notions, meddlesome in public matters, aspiring to manage the politics of Venice and to dictate laws to society from her own reception-rooms. Gratarol began by paying her wise attentions; but for some reason unknown to us, he had lately dropped his courtship and indulged in satirical comments upon Caterina's private conduct. She vowed to effect his ruin, and circumstances enabled her to do so.

Gozzi, meanwhile, had for the last five years or so assumed the position of titular protector to a married actress called Teodora Ricci. He does his best to persuade us that the _liaison_ was one of friendship; but it is clear that, upon whatever footing he stood toward the Ricci, he felt a real affection for this woman. For her he composed the dramatic works of his second or Spanish manner. He attended her in public, introduced her to the houses of his friends, and stood godfather to her second child. We are, in fact, met here by an obscurity not unlike that which involves the more famous connection of Congreve with Mrs. Bracegirdle. Gratarol, pursuing the usual course of his amours, made the Ricci's acquaintance, became her lover, compromised her reputation, and wounded Gozzi so deeply in his sense of honour, that he broke off familiar relations with the actress.

Such was the position of affairs when Gozzi, who wrote assiduously for the theatre, produced a drama modelled on a Spanish piece by Tirso da Molina. It was called _Le Droghe d'Amore_, and contained a minor part, which might well have passed either for a sketch of manners or for a personal satire on Gratarol. Gozzi vehemently and persistently denied that he had any intention of caricaturing his rival on the stage; and if we trust what he relates about the composition of the play in question, it is hardly possible that he can have had Gratarol in view when he designed it. At the same time, we are bound to concede that the offensive part of Don Adone fitted nicely on to Gratarol. Mme. Ricci, smarting under Gozzi's withdrawal from her intimacy, took for granted that a satire was intended. This woman's hysterical imagination turned a mere _jeu d'esprit_ of her old friend into a formidable weapon of attack against her new lover. Through her dangerous interference it became an instrument, in the hands of other parties, to annoy Gozzi and to overwhelm Gratarol. She began by poisoning the latter's mind with gossiping insinuations. Gratarol's fretful vanity and sense of self-importance made him boil with fury at the thought of being put upon the stage. He moved heaven and earth to get the play suspended; imprudently, as it turned out, because this step brought him face to face with his real enemy, Mme. Tron. The manager of the theatre, to whom Gozzi had given his comedy, took the manuscript at once to that lady. This unscrupulous person now saw her opportunity for inflicting vengeance upon Gratarol. She induced the manager to redistribute the parts so that the _rôle_ of Don Adone should be assigned to an actor who resembled Gratarol. She taught this man how to imitate Gratarol's dress and gestures, and turned what may in fact have been an innocent production of Gozzi's pen into a satire of the most insulting pungency. At that point the _Droghe d'Amore_ passed out of the control of those whom it privately concerned.

After this, Gratarol, driven mad by wounded self-conceit, floundered from one imprudence into another. He applied to the highest tribunal of the State, and laid an information against Gozzi. Whether the Inquisitors did not choose to cancel the license already granted for the _Droghe d'Amore_, or whether they were influenced by Mme. Tron, does not greatly signify. At any rate, the comedy continued to be acted. Gratarol grew more and more irritated, uttered indignant invectives against the tyrants of the State, and displayed a spirit of insubordination which was perilous in Venice. Mme. Tron followed up her advantage, and caused his appointment to the embassy at Naples to be suspended. Thereupon Gratarol made up his mind to quit Venice. He knew that this act would expose himself to outlawry and his family to ruin. A civil servant of the Republic had no legal right to sever himself from his engagements without permission. The mere fact of doing so caused him to be treated as a contumacious rebel. But instead of assuming an indifferent attitude, instead of biding his time in patience and letting the storm blow over--which it certainly would have done, since a popular reaction had already begun to operate in his favour--he departed for Padua on the 11th of September 1777, proceeded to Ceneda, crossed the frontier on the 25th, travelled to Munich, thence to Brunswick, and finally to Stockholm, where he arrived in March. Meanwhile a proclamation was issued against him at Venice. This curious document is a relic from the savage days of the Middle Ages.[6] It set a price upon his head, offered rewards to any one who should bring him alive to Venice or should prove his assassination, cancelled all contracts made by him during twelve months before the date of December 22, 1777, confiscated his property during his lifetime, and ordered the whole of it to be sold by public auction. The latter portions of the ban were carried into effect. Everything which belonged to Gratarol was sold by the Avogadori;[7] and what seems really scandalous in this transaction is that his furniture and jewels passed into the possession of an Avogadore, Zorzi Angaran, while his landed estates fell to the share of the Avvocato fiscale dell' Avogaderia, Galante, at the ridiculously low sum of 2000 ducats.[8] Even his wife, who possessed a dowry of 25,000 ducats, had to institute long and costly lawsuits for the recovery of what belonged to her and formed no part of the outlaw's estate.

Caterina Dolfin Tron, aided by her victim's rashness and impatience, had succeeded in her plan to ruin him. But a retribution awaited this lady in the form of an eloquent invective hurled by Gratarol against his enemies from Stockholm. The so-called _Narrazione Apologetica_ was printed there in 1779, and soon found its way to Venice. It contained a detailed account of the events which had induced him to take flight, arraigned his powerful enemies in terms of the bitterest sarcasm, exposed their private foibles, and flashed a sharp light upon the political corruption of the decadent Republic. Gozzi, of course, came in for his share of abuse;[9] but Gratarol's most telling shafts were directed against Mme. Tron and the patrician ring which tyrannised over Venice. It is believed that the scandal of this pamphlet was one reason why Andrea Tron failed to be elected Doge in 1779.

On perusing Gratarol's _Narrazione Apologetica_, Count Carlo Gozzi determined to clear his own character and to lay his version of the story before the public. With this view he composed a lengthy _Epistola Confutatoria_, taking up each of Gratarol's points in detail, and discussing his arguments with a strange mixture of acuteness, fury, and contemptuous severity. He also conceived the notion of writing his Memoirs, in order that the whole tenor of his life might be clearly understood.[10] The Confutation and the larger part of the Memoirs were finished in 1780. But the Government decided that Gratarol's scandalous pamphlet should be left unanswered. No Venetian pen was allowed to notice it;[11] and Gozzi received information that the Inquisitors of State would take the matter up if he attempted to show further fight. The authorities acted with prudence in this matter. Nobody but Gozzi had anything to gain by his refutation of Gratarol. With regard to the corruption of Venice, the despotism of a few leading patricians, and the back-stairs influence of Mme. Tron, Gratarol had only told the truth. He had told it indeed emphatically, bitterly, and probably with some exaggeration. Yet, unhappily, it was the truth. No amount of apologetical rhetoric could have broken down his arguments. A public discussion would have disturbed the public mind, and many dark secrets and dirty jobs must certainly have come to light.

Gozzi had to choose between the _piombi_ or the sacrifice of his already finished manuscripts. Of course he did not hesitate. Both Confutation and Memoirs were thrown at once aside; and they might even now have been lying in some neglected corner of his ancient mansion had it not been for the events which have to be related.

Gratarol never returned to Venice. From Sweden he passed to England, where he was hospitably received and befriended by members of our aristocracy. Failing, however, to get any appointment in London, he crossed to North America, travelled southwards to Brazil, and again left that country in the train of some political adventurers. The party were betrayed and robbed by the captain of their vessel, and cast ashore upon the coast of Madagascar. Here Gratarol perished miserably in October 1785. His English friends sent information of this event to the Venetian Government; but the evidence was judged insufficient, and the restitution of his estates to two female cousins, who were his only heirs, was refused until the fall of the Republic. When that took place, Gratarol's friends immediately republished the _Narrazione Apologetica_ at Venice, and appealed to General Bonaparte for justice. This was in 1797.

Gozzi, who had now nothing to fear from Inquisitors of State, and whose reputation was again exposed to calumny, took his manuscripts from their drawer, dusted them, and placed them in the hands of a publisher. In the month of July 1797 he issued a manifesto to the Venetian public, proclaiming his intention.[12] "Availing myself of the beneficent freedom now permitted to the press, I have drawn my manuscript from the tomb in which it has lain during the past seventeen years." He refers to the recent republication of Gratarol's _Narrazione_, and declares that this alone has forced him to resuscitate the memory of bygone quarrels and offences. At the same time he pays a high tribute to Gratarol's work. "This book, which appeared at Stockholm in 1779, and which I had forgotten, without however forgetting the unjust tricks and jobs by which its truly pitiable author was overwhelmed with ruin, contains a great number of indubitable truths, and it is only to be regretted that he dictated it under the influence of blind anger and venomous resentment, instead of philosophic calm."

It appears that at this time Gozzi did not intend to publish his _Epistola Confutatoria_, written in 1780, and certainly dictated under the influence of anger as hot, hatred as fierce, and resentment as venomous as any which inspired his adversary. Indeed, it may here be observed that Gratarol, though he calls Gozzi a hypocrite, a huckster, an impostor, and so forth, is more measured in his language than the latter. Yet, while Gozzi was passing the sheets of his Memoirs through the press,[13] Gratarol's friends issued another book entitled _Last Notices regarding Pietro Antonio Gratarol, with documents relating to his death_. In this they expressed a hope that Gozzi would not proceed with the publication announced by his manifesto, and incautiously printed a document alluding to Gozzi in the following by no means flattering terms: "the infernal hypocrisy of a satirical liar."[14] Furthermore, upon the 29th of August, having obtained a decree for the restitution of Gratarol's property to his cousins, they published this edict together with a preface, signed Widiman,[15] in which they had the folly to rake up the whole tedious story of Gratarol's wrongs again. Once more Gozzi was annoyed with well-worn phrases like the following: "The persecuting furies of a haughty woman, the talent and the passion of a very famous author, made him (Gratarol), to the horror of all right-minded people, become the object of scorn and ridicule upon a public theatre prostituted to the uses of a vile and infamous buffoon." This was more than Gozzi could stand. Firmly holding to the opinion that it was only Gratarol's folly and Mme. Tron's vindictiveness which had caused the scandal of _Le Droghe d'Amore_, he now resolved to publish everything which could establish the truth of his own story. Therefore he incorporated the _Epistola Confutatoria_ in the third volume of the Memoirs, and printed the notorious comedy for the first time at the end of the book. Meantime he invited Gratarol's friends to inspect the MS. of this play, which he declared to be the sole and original autograph, in order that they might convince themselves that his statements regarding its composition were accurate. Having now made up his mind to supplement the two parts of his book with a third, he carried down his Memoirs to the date of March 1798, when they came to a sudden termination. All three volumes bear the date 1797; but their pagination and some other trifling matters lead me to believe that the first two were printed in that year, the third in the following spring.

IV.

The circumstances under which Gozzi's _Memorie_ were produced sufficiently account for their peculiar form, or rather formlessness. He wrote hurriedly, with a polemical object in view, and paid no attention to style. This he confesses in the manifesto.[16] "I have not striven to express myself with the exactitude, the raciness, and the elegances of our language." As a literary performance, this autobiography is remarkably unequal, a thing of rags and patches, some of which are of fine silk or velvet, others of rough sackcloth. Their main defect as regards composition is prolixity. Gozzi does not know when to stop, and he uses three phrases where one would have sufficed. He is also very incoherent, spinning interminable periodic sentences, which sometimes do not hang together grammatically or logically. While insisting so magisterially upon the purity of Italian diction, he indulges in uncouth Lombardisms, and slips at times into Venetian dialect. We must remember that he grew up practically without education. He acquired his knowledge, cultivated his taste, and formed his style by reading without discrimination and by writing without fixed purpose. This accounts for the digressive, irregular, improvisatory manner of his prose. It has its own merits, however, of vehemence, a copious vocabulary, dramatic vigour in narration, and occasionally graphic descriptions.

It may be asked why he called his Memoirs "useless." Partly no doubt out of an ironical self-consciousness, which marked his peculiar species of humour; but partly also as a slap in the face to his readers. He tells them candidly in one of his prefaces that he considers the moral reflections with which the book is filled to be both sound and valuable, but that the false science of the age is certain to render them of no effect.[17] In like manner, when he asserts that the Memoirs were published out of humility, this is partly true and partly false. Gozzi piqued himself on being what I may call a Stoic-Democritean philosopher. It was his pride to bear everything with endurance and to laugh at everything, himself and his own concerns included, with contemptuous indulgence. Yet he deserved the stinging epigram which Goldoni uttered on his character: "A smile upon his lips and venom in his heart." His light-heartedness and risibility were often assumed to hide bitter resentment or boiling indignation. No man had less of genuine humility than Gozzi, or more of the "pride which apes humility." _Umiltà_ upon his title-page has much the same effect as _Umiltà_ in huge Gothic letters beneath the coronets and crests of the Borromeo family above their haughty palace-portals. As a single instance, I might select the supercilious condescension with which he invariably treats his friends the actors. They are _canaille_, to be consorted with by a gentleman merely for amusement. His repeated boast that he gave his literary work away, and his sneers at his brother Gasparo for making money, do not savour of a really humble spirit. At the bottom of all he says about his foolhardiness in Dalmatia there lurks a proud self-satisfaction.

To what extent was he truthful? That is a difficult question to answer. I believe that in the main he tried to be, and was, veracious throughout the Memoirs; but that he considered a certain economy of statement, a certain evasion of direct facts, and a certain forensic chicanery to be permissible in openly controversial composition. This renders his account of the Gratarol episode somewhat suspicious, particularly when we remember that he was writing with the _Narrazione Apologetica_ before his eyes. It is clear that he wished to conceal his real age, that he falsified the date of his departure for Dalmatia, and that he somewhat misstated the nature of his intimacy with Mme. Tron. In each of these cases it was his object to put himself in as favourable a light as possible face to face with Gratarol, first by making it appear that he was ten years or so younger than his actual age when he began the liaison with Mme. Ricci, and secondly by slurring over the fact of a partial collusion with Gratarol's deadly enemy. It would take up too much space to expand the arguments by which I have arrived at these conclusions; but the notes to my translation will make each point clear in its proper place.

On the whole, Gozzi strikes me as rather inclined to the vices of too open speech and cynicism than to those of dissimulation and hypocrisy. He can hardly have been a lovable man. His language about his mother proves that. She treated him ill, it is true, and gave him but a scanty share of her maternal kindness. Yet this does not justify the freezing sarcasms with which he refers to her. They are no doubt humorous, but their humour is of a savage kind. Toward the rest of his family he behaved with fairness, candour, and uprightness. He devoted himself to the task of repairing their ruined fortunes, and discharged the duties of solicitor and estate-agent for all of them through a long series of years. He bore their bad tempers and frivolities with good-humoured contempt, and did not even resent being satirised by Gasparo in a comedy upon the public stage of Venice. Gasparo, his weak but genial elder brother, he truly loved, although, with characteristic acidity, he always lets us understand what a poor creature he was. Women had not the privilege of being highly appreciated by Gozzi. He treats them in all his writings as inferior creatures, and exposes their frailties with ruthless severity. Either he only knew the worst side of the fair sex, or was incapable of seeing the best. To men he shows himself more just and sympathetic. Though he made but few intimate friends, these remained firmly attached to him till death.

We must divest our minds of the false conception of Gozzi's character with which Paul de Musset hoaxed the French critics and Vernon Lee. He was no dramatic dreamer and abstract visionary, but a keen hard-headed man of business, caustic in speech and stubborn in act, adhering tenaciously to his opinions and his rights, acidly and sardonically humorous, eccentric, but fully aware of his eccentricities, and apt to use them as the material of burlesque humour. Nobody would have laughed more loudly at De Musset's fancy picture of his fairy-haunted palace than Gozzi would have done, or have more keenly relished the joke of turning his practical self into a sprite-tormented idealist.[18]

The Memoirs lie now before English readers, and Carlo Gozzi will be known to them for the first time--certainly for the first time as he really was. It is not necessary, therefore, to spin out this introduction. Otherwise, it would have been interesting to compare the portraits painted of themselves by those four eminent Italian contemporaries--Goldoni, Gozzi, Casanova, and Alfieri. Four characters more diverse in quality, and more admirably placed upon the literary canvas, could hardly, I think, be found in any other nation or in any other century.