8 The sterling bullion of one British line, Drawn to French wire, would through whole pages shine; derived their pretty thoughts from French madrigals, and modelled their little minds, as they borrowed their dress from French puppets. I mean not to say that Italian was utterly neglected during this long period, because I am aware that at all times it was considered as an accomplishment ornamental to all, and indispensably necessary to those who visit Italy. But though the language of Italy was known, its literature was neglected; so that not its historians only were forgotten, but of all the treasures of its divine poesy little was ever cited or admired excepting a few airs from the opera, or some love-sick and effeminate sonnets selected from the ininor poets. French literature was the sove object of the attention of our writers, and from it they derived that cold correctness which seems to be the prevailing feature of most of the authors of the first part of the eighteenth century. "Nor was this frigidity the only or. the greatest evil that resulted from the then prevailing partiality for French literature. The spirit of infidelity had already infected some of the leading writers of that volatile nation, and continued to spread its poison imperceptibly, but effectually, till the latter years of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, when most of the academicians had, through interest or vanity, ever the predominant passion in a French bosom, ranged themselves under the banners of Voltaire, and had became real or pretended sceptics. The works of the subalterns, it is true, were much praised but little read by their partisans; and Helvetius, Freret, Du Maillet, with fifty others of equal learning and equal fame, now slumber in dust anb 'silence on the upper shelve of public libraries, the common repository of deceased authors. But the wit and ribaldry of their chief continued to amuse and to captivate the gay, the voluptuous, and the ignorant; to dictate the ton, that is, to prescribe opinions and style to the higher circles; and by making impiety current in good company, to give it the greatest recommendation it could possess in the eyes of his countrymen, the sanction of Fashion. "Such was the state of opinion in France when two persons of very different tastes and characters in other respects, but equally enslaved to vanity and to pride, visited that country-1 mean Hume and Gibbon, who, though Britons in general are little inclined to bend their necks to the yoke of foreign teachers, meanly condescended to sacrifice the independence of their own understanding and the religion of their country to the flatteries and the sophisms of Parisian atheists. These two renegadoes joined in the views of their foreign associates, undertook to propagate atheistic principles among their countrymen, and faithful to the engagement, endeavoured in all their works to instil doubt and indifference into the minds of their readers, and by secret and almost imperceptible arts, gradually to undermine their attachment to revealed religion. Hints, socers, misrepresentation, and exag geration, concealed under affected candour, pervade almost every page of their very popular but most per nicious histories; and if the mischief of these works, however great, be not equal to the wishes of their authors, it is entirely owing to the good On Italian Literature. good sense and the spirit of religion "To return.-Gray, who seems of taste and of Italian, and have dis- 66 The great ad 'It, is indeed much to be regretted that a language so harmonious in sound, so copious in words, so rich in literature, and at the same time so intimately connected with the ancient dialect of Europe and its modern derivatives, as to serve as a key both to one and to the others, should have been forced from its natural rank, and obliged to yield its place to a language far inferior to it in all these respects, and for many reasons not worth the time usually allotted to it in fashionable education. mirers of French, that is, the French critics themselves, do not pretend to found its supposed universality on its intrinsic superiority. In fact, not to speak of the rough combinations of letters, the indistinct articulation of many syllables, the peculiar sound of some vowels, the suppression, not of letters only, but of whole syllables, and the almost insuperable difficulties which. arise from these peculiarities to foreigners studying this language; the perpetual recurrence of nasal sounds, the most disagreeable that can proceed from human organs, predominating as it does throughout the the whole language, is sufficient alone to deprive it of all claim to sweetness and to melody. Some authors, I know, and many French critics discover in it a natural and logical construction, which, as they pretend, gives to it, when managed by a skilful writer, a clearness and a perspicuity which is scarcely to be equalled in Latin and Greek, and may be sought for in all modern dialects. This claim has been boldly advanced on one side and feebly contested on the other, though many of my readers, who have perhaps amused themselves with French authors for many a year, may perhaps have never yet observed this peculiar excellence, nor discovered that the French language invariably follows the natural course of our ideas, and the process of grammatical construction." "I mean not to dispute this real or imaginary advantage; especially as the discussion unavoidably in volves a long metaphysical question relative to the natural order of ideas and the best corresponding arrangement of words; but I must observe, that to be confined to one mode of construction only, however excellent it may be, is a defect; because it deprives poetry and eloquence of one of the most powerful instruments of harmony and of description, I mean Inversion: and because it removes the distinction of styles, and brings all composition down to the same monotonous level. In fact, French poets have long complained of the tame uniform genius of their language, and French critics have been obliged, however reluctantly, to acknowledge that it has no poetic style; and if the reader wishes to see how well founded these complaints are, and how just this acknowledgment, he need only consult the ingenious transla tor of Virgil's Georgics by the Abbé de Lille. In the preface he will hear the critic lamenting the difficulties imposed upon him by the nature of his language; and in the versification he will admire the skill with which the poet endeavours, (vainly indeed,) to transfuse the spirit, the variety, the colouring of the original into the dull, lifeless imitation. If he has failed, he has failed only comparatively; for his translation is the best in the French language, and to all the excellencies of which such a translation is susceptible, adds the peculiar graces of ease and propriety. He had all the talents necessary on his side, taste, judgment and enthusiasm; but his materials were frail, and his language, Phabi nondum patiens, sunk under the weight of Roman genius. If other proofs of the feebleness of the French language, and of its inadequacy to the purposes of poetry, were requisite, we need only open Boileau's translation of Longinus, and we shall there find innumerable instances of failure, which, as they cannot be ascribed to the translator, must originate from the innate debility of the language itself. "In consequence of this irremediable defect the French have no poetical translation of Homer nor of Tasso; nor had they of Virgil or of Milton, till the Abbé De Litle attempted to introduce them to his countrymen in a French dress. But, both the Roman and the British poet seem alike to have disdained the trammels of Gallic rhime, and turned away indignant from the translator, who presumed to exhibit their majestic forms masked and distorted to the public. The exertions of the Abbé only proved to the literary world, that On Italian Literature. that even his talents and ingenuity Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet. In fact this language has retained a "I have hinted at the difficulty of the French language, which is in reality so great as to become a serious defect, and a solid ground of objection. This difficulty arises, in the first place, from the general complication of its grammar, the multiplicity of its rules, and the frequency of exceptions; and in the next place, from the nature of several sounds peculiar, I believe, to it. Such are some vowels, particuJarly a and u; and such also many diphthongs, as ieu, eu, oi, not to mention the mouillé, the e muet, and various syllables of nasal and indistinct utterance, together with the different sounds of the same vowels and diphthongs in different combinations. I speak not of these sounds as agreeable or disagreeable to the ear, but only as difficult, and so much so as to render it almost impossible for a foreigner ever to pronounce French with ease and strict propriety. Here again Italian, has the advantage. Its sounds are all open and labial; it flows naturally from the organs, and requires nothing more than time and expansion. Its vowels have invariably the same sound, and that sound may be found in almost every language. The nose and the throat, those bagpipe instruments of French utterance, have no share in its articulation; no grouped consonants stop its progress; no indistinct murmurs choke its closes: it glides from the lips with facility, and it delights the ear with its fulness, its softness, and its harmony. As its grammar ap. proaches nearer Latin, it is more congenial to our infant studies, and may therefore be acquired with the greater facility. "In speaking of French literature I wish to be impartial; and most willingly acknowledge that our rivals are a sprightly and ingenious nation; that they have long cultivated the arts and sciences, and cultivated them with success; that their literature is an inexhaustible. source of amusement and instruction; and that several of their writers rank among the great teachers and the benefactors of mankind. But after this acknowledgment, I must remind them that the Italians were their masters in every art and science, and that whatever claims they may have to literary merit and reputation, they owe them entirely to their first Here indeed Voltaire instructors. himself, however jealous on other occasions of the prerogatives of his own language, confesses the obligation, and candidly declares that France is indebted to Italy for her arts, her sciences, and even for her civilization. In truth, the latter of country had basked in the sunshine of science at least two centuries, ere one solitary ray had beamed upon the former; and she had produced poets, historians and philosophers, whose fame emulates the glory of the ancients, ere the language of France was committed to paper, or deemed fit for any purpose higher than the diaries of a Joinville, or the songs of the Troubadours. To enter into a regular comparison of the principal authors in these languages, and to weigh their respective merits in the scale of criticism would be an occupation equally amusing and instructive, but at the same time it would require more leisure than the traveller can command, and a work far more comprehensive than the present, intended merely to throw out hints which the reader may verify and improve at discretion, as the subject may hereafter invite. I must therefore confine myself to a very few remarks, derived principally from French critics, and consequently of considerable weight, because extorted, it must seem, by the force of truth from national vanity. The authority of Voltaire may not perhaps be looked upon as decisive, because however solid his judgment, and however fine his taste, he too often sacrificed the dictates of both to the passion or the whim of the moment, and too frequently gave to interest, to rancour, and to party, what he owed to truth, to letters, and to mankind. But, it must be reinembered that these defects, while they lower his authority as a critic, also obscure his reputation as an historian, and deprive French literature of the false lustre which it has acquired from his renown. And indeed, if impartiality be essential to history, Voltaire must forfeit the appellation of historian, as his His toire Generale is one continued satire upon religion, intended by its deceitful author not to inform the understanding, but to pervert the faith of the reader. Hence the Abbé Mably, in his ingenious reflections on history, though not very hostile to the unbelieving party, censures the above-mentioned work with some severity, without condescending to enter into the details of criticism. 66 The same author speaks of the other historians of his language with contempt, and from the general sentence excepts the Abbé Vertot and Fleury only; exceptions which prove at the same time the critic's judgment and impartiality; for few writers equal the former in rapidity, selection, and interest, and none surpass the latter in erudition, good sense, and simplicity. The same Abbé prefers the History of the Council of Trent, by the well known Father Paolo Sarpi, to all the bistories compiled in his own language, and represents it as a model of narration, argument, and observation. We may subscribe to the opinion of this judicious critic, so well versed in the literature of his own country, without the least hesitation, and extend to Italian history in general the superiority which he allows to one only, and one who is not the first of Italian historians, either in eloquence or in impartiality. "In one species of bistory,indeed, the Italians justly claim the honour both of invention and of pre-eminence, and this honour, not France only but England must, I believe, concede without contest. I allude to critical biography, a branch of history in the highest degree instructive and entertaining, employed in Italy at a very early period, and carried to the highest perfection by |