Chapter II: Early Italian Critics (3)

Not merely northern Humanists like Reuchlin, Erasmus, Eobanus Hessus,
and Hutten, not merely Greeks from Gemistus Pletho to Musurus and
Lascaris, but foreign vernacular writers like Ressendi, Juan de la
Mena, Marot, Martial d’Auvergne receive notice.

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But this real knowledge on Giraldus’ part, and the fairness of his spirit, only serve to accentuate the drift in the course and direction of this, the most important general summary of its kind that we meet between the _Labyrinthus_ and the seventeenth century. [Sidenote: _But narrowness of view._] Giraldus, though he does not absolutely exclude the vernaculars, is perfectly convinced that poetry, and indeed literature generally, means—first of all, and as far as its aristocracy goes exclusively—writing in Latin; nay, with him even translation from the classical languages is a more important thing than original composition in the vulgar tongue. [Sidenote: _Horror at preference of vernacular to Latin._] His contempt of this latter is thinly though decently veiled in the passage on drama (_ed. cit._, p. 40), where, speaking of the writers of comedy, and rightly preferring Ariosto to Bibbiena, he says, “sed enim vernaculo sermone id plerique opus aggressi pauci mea sententia assecuti sunt;” speaks (with a sort of visible shake of the head, as over a good man lost) of Ariosto himself as one who “Latino carmine aliquando ludit, sed nunc totum se vernaculis tradidit, atque inter cetera furentem Orlandum dare curat in publicum;”[93] patronisingly remarks of Trissino’s projected _Sophonisba_, that if the whole of it is as good as the acts that the author recites, “erit, _licet vernacula ipsa_, Latinorum tamen non indigna lectione,” wonders at this George who “est ipse et Græce et Latine bene doctus, at nunc fere in vernaculis conquiescit,” and ends with an impatient “Verum de vernaculis jam satis,” and a mutter about _tonsores sellulariique_. He speaks still less ambiguously later (ibid., p. 85), where cobblers and other dregs of the people are added to barbers and mechanics in general (as a tail to a list headed by Boiardo, Pulci, Politian, and Lorenzo de' Medici!), and at last liberates his real feeling in a sentence, which many very excellent men in all European countries would have indorsed till nearly the end of the eighteenth century, “Ex quo nescioqui viri alioqui docti _in eam hæresim_ incidere ut non modo vernaculas velint Latinis litteris æquare verum etiam anteponere, quin et id etiam litteris prodidere.” “Whence some persons, in other respects learned, have fallen into such a heresy that they not only choose to make the vernaculars equal with Latin, but even to set them above it—nay, they have actually given literary expression to the doctrine.” A terrible thing to Humanists, and, alas! one to which they have since had to make up their minds! Unfortunately, the two great classical languages now pay, and for some time to come are likely to continue paying, the penalty of this idle miscalculation and _outrecuidance_ on the part of their mistaken partisans; and it is the first duty of all lovers of letters _now_ to fight for their maintenance in due place.

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Footnote 93:

The supposed _date_ of the conversation is, as usual in such case,
thrown a good deal back.

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But still the almost invincible equity of the man displays itself even in his judgment of these unhappy schismatics; and he seems to make some difference between the vernacular dialects and the _Sermo Etruscus_. On Berni, Alamanni, the two “gentlewomen-poetesses,” as the Italians call them, Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Gambara, Speroni, La Casa, Aonio Paleario, Molza, he has things amiable and acute at once to say.

But his heart is not here, nor in the mention of the poor barbarous foreigners who may perhaps have some better excuse than “Latins” for not writing in the Latin tongue. [Sidenote: _Yet a real critic in both kinds._] It is of those who do so write—Italians first of all but also others—that he really thinks as “the poets of his time.” He can find room for a mere grammarian (though a very excellent grammarian) like William Lilly: he speaks of him _magnificentissime_, and if this notice contrasts rather comically with the brief and cold reference to Erasmus, it is fair to remember not merely that Erasmus was by no means _persona grata_ to the Roman orthodox, but that his poetical work is really nothing as compared with his exquisite prose.

He begins with the two Mirandolas, Pontanus, Marullus, and Sannazar, and is copious though not uncritical on them all: _non numquam nimis lascivire et vagari videtur_, he says of Pontanus. [Sidenote: _Short_ précis _of the dialogues_.] Recalled by his interlocutor to still earlier writers, he has the judgment of “the Panormitan”[94] (Beccadelli), which has been noticed, and a by no means unremarkable one, dwelling ominously on the “facility” of Mapheus Vegius, the egregious person who took upon himself to write a thirteenth _Æneid_. Many forgotten worthies (among whom Filelfo and the better Aretines, Charles and Leonard, are the least forgotten) lead us (for Bembo and Sadolet have had their position earlier, and will have it again) to a famous pair, Mantuan and Politian. Giraldus is decisive and refreshing on Mantuan. This loudly over-praised poet is _extemporalis magis quam poeta maturus_, and as to his being _alter Maro_, why “Bone Deus! quam dispar ingenium!”[95] He is much more favourable to the author of the _Nutricia_ and the _Manto_, but does not forget his swashing blow even here. Politian seems to him to have written _calore potius quam arte_, and to have used little diligence either in choosing his subjects or correcting his work. The Strozzi and Urceus Codrus follow, with many minor lights, from the notices of whom the judgment on Ludovicus Bigus Pictorius of Ferrara stands out as applicable, unfortunately, to some greater men and many as small or smaller. “Cum pius deflexit ad religionem, ut vita melior ita carmine deterior visus est.” Then one of the regulation pieces of flattery as to the Augustan character of the rule of _Leo Maximus_ conducts us to notices of Naugerius and Vida, where the moderate and deserved praise of the first would contrast oddly (if we did not know how the pseudo-classical tradition for two hundred years and more said vehement “ditto” to Giraldus) with the extravagant eulogies on the polished emptiness of the latter. And then a great _turba_ comes, among which the two Beroalds, Acciauoli and, among blind poets, Bello, the author of the _Mambriano_, chiefly take the eye.

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Footnote 94:

He allows him (p. 18, ed. cit.) “sweetness and wit,” but says _nescio
quare_ as to the contemporary praise of the _Hermaphroditus_, and adds
plumply, _nec poeta bonus nec bonus orator_. The simple fact is that,
if the subjects of this notorious book were decent, nobody would see
anything but quite ordinary merit in their treatment.

Footnote 95:

Ed. cit., p. 25.

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We have noted the condescension to such poor vernacular creatures as Ariosto, Bibbiena, and (with a long interval certainly) Trissino and the author of the first _Rosmunda_. It is succeeded by another review of persons long relinquished to dusty shelves and memories, with a few better known names like Molza and Longolius. The praise of the great Fracastorius is much more moderate than we might have expected—probably Giraldus did not like his subject—and then there is a curious passage on “fancy” verses, leonine, serpentine, and others, leading to yet another, in which the worse side of the Renaissance—its contempt for the Middle Ages—is shown by a scornful reference to _Architrenios et Anti-claudianos_, which finishes the first dialogue. The second is of a wider cast, but needs less minute account here, though it is at least as well worth reading. It begins with the Greeks, who did so much for Italy, from Gemistus Pletho and Chrysoloras downwards, then takes the Spaniards and Portuguese, then our own countrymen, then the Germans and French. Here comes the description of Erasmus as _inter Germanos Latinus inter Latinos aliquando Germanus_; and here Giraldus frankly confesses that he is not going to say anything about persons like Œcolampadius, Bucer, Sturm, and Melanchthon, since they were not contented to confine themselves to good literature, and would know too much, and trouble Israel with Luther. But a good word is spared, justly, for the author of the _Basia_, with a reversion to still younger men, among whom Palingenius, Julius Cæsar Scaliger, and Castelvetro are the best known, and with the final fling at the vernaculars above given.

Such a book, with its wonderful width of range[96] and its sometimes equally wonderful contraction of view, is worth, to the historian of real criticism, a dozen long-winded tractates hunting the old red-herrings of critical theory. [Sidenote: _Their great historic value._] The _De Poetis Nostrorum Temporum_ gives us one of those veritable and inestimable rallying-points of which our History should be little more than a reasoned catalogue, connected by summary of less important phenomena. Referring duly to it, we find ourselves at the standpoint of a man who has really wide knowledge, and who, when his general assumptions do not interfere, has a real critical grasp. But the chief of these assumptions is not merely that the vernaculars have not attained equality with the classics—this, allowing for inevitable defects of perspective and other things, would not be fatal—but that they cannot attain such equality, much less any superiority. The point of view—to us plain common-sense—that if Sannazar and others wrote in Latin about Christian subjects, they should use Christian Latin, seems to Giraldus the point of view of a kind of maniac. Without the details and developments of Vida, he is apparently in exact accordance with that excellent Bishop. Cicero and Virgil, not to mention others, have achieved for literature a medium which cannot be improved upon, and all those who adopt any other are, if not exactly wicked, hopelessly deceived and deluded. This is the major premiss for practically every syllogism of our critic. Where it does not come in—between vernacular and vernacular, between Latin and Latin of the classical type—he can judge just judgment. Where it comes in, the more perfect his logic, the more inevitably vitiated is his conclusion.

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Footnote 96:

As a rough but not misleading gauge of this it may be mentioned that
Herr Wotke’s _Namenregister_ contains for less than 100 printed pages,
between four and five hundred entries, including, besides those
noticed in the text, names like those of Olympia Morata and Bilibald
Pirkheimer, Castiglione and Alciati, Conrad Celtes and Paulus Jovius,
Cardinal Perotti and Jacob Wimpheling. In fact, hardly any one in
Europe who had to do with _belles lettres_ seems to have been outside
the cognisance, in closer or vaguer kind, of Giraldus.

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