Chapter XII (1)

MISCELLANEOUS FEELINGS RESPECTING SICILY, ITS MUSIC, ITS RELIGION, AND ITS MODERN POETRY.

DANTE’S EVENING.--AVE MARIA OF BYRON.--THE SICILIAN VESPERS.--NOTHING
“INFERNAL” IN NATURE.--SICILIAN MARINER’S HYMN.--INVOCATION FROM
COLERIDGE.--PAGAN AND ROMAN CATHOLIC WORSHIP.--LATIN AND ITALIAN
COUPLET.--WINTER’S “RATTO DI PROSERPINA.”--A HINT ON ITALIAN
AIRS.--BELLINI.--MELI, THE MODERN THEOCRITUS.

Time flies, and friends must part. In closing our Blue Jar, a rosy light seems to come over it, at once beautiful and melancholy; for terminations are farewells, and farewells remind us of evenings, and of the divine lines of the poet:--

Era già l’ ora, che volge ’l desio
A’ naviganti, e intenerisce ’l cuore
Lo dì ch’ an detto a’ dolci amici A Dio:
E che lo nuovo peregrin d’ amore
Punge, se ode squilla di lontano,
Che paia ’l giorno pianger che si muore.

’Twas now the hour, when love of home melts through
Men’s hearts at sea, and longing thoughts portray
The moment when they bade sweet friends adieu;
And the new pilgrim now, on his lone way,
Thrills as he hears the distant vesper bell,
That seems to mourn for the expiring day.

Divine, indeed, are those lines of Dante. Why didn’t he write all such, instead of employing two volumes out of three, to show us how much less he cared to be divine than infernal? Was it absolutely necessary for him to have so much black ground for his diamonds?

And another poet who took to the black, or rather the burlesque, side of things, how could he write so beautifully on the same theme, and resist giving us whole poems as tender and confiding, to assist in making the world happy? The stanza respecting the Ave Maria is surely the best in _Don Juan_:--

Ave Maria! blessed be the hour!
The time, the clime, the spot where I so oft
Have felt the moment in its fullest power
_Sink o’er the earth_, so beautiful and soft,
While swung the deep bell in the distant tower,
Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft,
And not a breath _crept through the rosy air_,
And yet the forest leaves _seemed stirr’d with prayer_.

Not, we beg leave to say, that we are Roman Catholic, either in our creed or our form of worship; though we should be not a little inclined to become such, did the creed contain nothing harsher or less just than the adoration of maternity. We have been taught to be too catholic in the true sense of the word (Universal) to wish for any ultimate form of Christianity, except that which shall drop all the perplexing thorns through which it has grown, and let the odour of its flower be recognised in its spotless force without one infernal embitterment.

But it will be said that there are infernal embitterments even in the sweetest forms of things, whether we will have them or no--massacres in bee-hives, Dantes among the greatest poets, _Sicilian_ Vespers. Think of those, it will be said. Think of the horrible massacre known by the name of the “Sicilian Vespers.” Think of the day in your honeyed, Hyblæan island, when the same hour which

Sinks o’er the earth, so beautiful and soft,

with not a breath in its rosy air, and with the leaves of its trees moving as if they were lips of adoring silence, was the signal for an indiscriminate slaughter of men, women, and children; ay, babes at the breast, and mothers innocent as the object of vesper worship. Was there nothing infernal in that? Is there nothing hellish, and of everlasting embitterment in the recollection?

No. And again a loud and happy No, of everlasting sweetness.

The infernal and the everlasting bitter imply the same things. There is nothing infernal that has a limit; therefore there is nothing infernal in nature. Look round, and show it if you can. Nature will have no unlimited pain. The sufferer swoons, or dies, or endures; but the limit comes. Death itself is but the dissolution of compounds that have either been disordered or worn out, and therefore cannot continue pleasantly to co-exist. Horrible was this Sicilian massacre; horrible and mad; one of the wildest reactions against wickedness in human history. The French masters of the island had grown mad with power and debauchery, and the islanders grew mad with revenge. It was the story in little of the French Revolution; not the Revolution of the Three Days, truly deserving the title of Glorious for its Christian forbearance; but the old, untaught, delirious, Robespierre Revolution. Dreadful is it to think of the vesper bell ringing to that soft worship of the mother of Jesus, and then of thousands of daggers, at the signal, leaping out of the bosoms of the worshippers, and plunging into the heart of every foreigner present, man, woman, and child. But there came an end; soon to the body; sooner or later, to the mind. The dead were buried; the French government in the island was expelled, and a better brought in. The evil perished, good came out of it; and myriads of vespers have taken place since then, but not one like that. Yes, myriads of vespers--a vesper every day, ever since--from the year 1282 to this present 1848,--all gentle, all secure from the like misery, all more or less worthy of the beautiful description of the poet. If the massacre called the Sicilian Vespers had been infernal, it would have been going on now! and nature has not made such hellish enormities possible. The only durability to which she tends is a happy one. Her shortest lives (generally speaking) are her least healthy; her greatest longevities are those of healthy serenity. Supposing the earth to be animated (as some have thought it), we cannot conceive it to be unhappy, rolling, as it has done for ages, round the sun, with a swiftness like the blood in the veins of childhood. Eternity of existence is inconceivable on any ground of analogy, except as identical with healthy prevalence; and healthy prevalence, with sensation, is inconceivable apart from sensations of pleasure.

Gone long ago are the bad Sicilian Vespers; but the good Sicilian Vespers, the beautiful Sicilian music, the beautiful Sicilian poetry, these remain; and, as if in sweet scorn of the catastrophe, they are particularly famous for their gentleness. To be told that a Sicilian air is about to be sung, is to be prepared to hear something especially sweet and soft. Every Protestant as well as Roman Catholic lover of music knows the _Sicilian Mariner’s Hymn_; and is a Catholic, if not a Roman worshipper, while he sings it. Fancy it rising at a distance out of the white-sailed boat in the darkling blue waters, when the sun has just gone down, and the rock on the woody promontory above the chapel, whose bell gave the notice, is touched with rose-colour. Nay, fancy you forget all this, and think only of the honest simple mariners singing this hymn, at the moment when their wives and children are repeating the spirit of it on shore, and all Italy is doing the same:

O sanctissima, O purissima,
Dulcis Virgo Maria!
Mater amata, intemerata,
Ora pro nobis!

O most holy, O most spotless,
Mary, Virgin glorious!
Mother dearest, maiden clearest--
Oh, we pray thee, pray for us.

The sweetest of English poets could not resist echoing this kind of evening music in a strain of his own; but though he did it in the course of an invocation, it is rather a description than a prayer. It is, however, very Sicilian:--

INVOCATION.

_Sung behind the scenes in Coleridge’s tragedy of “Remorse;” to be
accompanied, says the poet, by “soft music from an instrument of glass
or steel.”_

Hear, sweet spirit--hear the spell!
Lest a blacker charm compel;
So shall the midnight breezes swell
_With thy deep long-lingering knell_;

(Observe the various yet bell-like intonation of that last verse, and the analogous feeling in the repetition of the rhyme.)

_And at evening evermore,
In a chapel on the shore_,
Shall the chanters, _sad and saintly_,
Yellow tapers burning faintly,
Doleful masses chant for thee,
_Miserere, Domine_!

Hark! the cadence dies away
On the yellow moonlight sea:
The boatmen rest their oars, and say,
_Miserere, Domine_!

The tapers are yellow in the chapel, and the moonlight yellow out of doors--one of those sympathies of colour which are often finer than contrast.

Coleridge was so fond of sweet sounds, that he makes one of the characters in this play exclaim,--

If the bad spirit retain’d his angel’s voice,
Hell scarce were hell.

The Pagans of old were of the same opinion, for they made Pluto break his inexorable laws at the sound of the harp of Orpheus, his eyes, in spite of themselves, being forced to shed “_iron_ tears,” as Milton finely calls them. The notes, as the poet says,

_Drew_ iron tears down Pluto’s cheek,
And made Hell grant what Love did seek.

“The grim king of the ghosts” would not have shed them if he could have helped it. So Moschus, in his _Elegy on the Death of Bion_, expresses his opinion that if his deceased friend would sing a pastoral to the Queen of Pluto, “something _Sicilian_” as he emphatically calls it (Σικὲλικόν τι), she could not have the heart to deny his return to earth. One should like to know the hymns which the Pagans actually sung to Proserpina and her mother Ceres, and how far they coincided, perhaps in some instances were identical, with strains now sung in the Catholic churches. Some of the oldest chants are supposed to be of Greek origin; and indeed it would be marvellous if _all_ the ancient music had been swept away, considering how many ceremonies, vestments, odours, processions, churches themselves, and, to say the truth, opinions, were retained by the new creed from the old--wisely in many instances, most curiously in all. Very naturally, too; for the knees are the same knees with which all human beings kneel, Pagan or Christian; and the sky is the same to which they look up, whether inhabited by saints or goddesses. Nor is there anything “blasphemous” (as zealous Protestants are too quick to assert) in the Roman Catholic tendency to use the same kind of language towards the one, as was held and hymned towards the other; for blasphemy signifies what is injurious to the character of the divinity, and nothing is injurious to it except the attribution of injustice and cruelty. If theological opinions, of whatever creed, offended in nothing worse than an excess of zeal towards the beauty of the maternal character, or in behalf of the supposition that the spirits of the good and pious interested themselves in our welfare, the human heart would be little disposed to quarrel with them, in times even more enlightened than the present. There is a couplet extant in Italy, remarkable for being both Italian and Latin. It might have been addressed by a Pagan of the Lower Roman Empire, to the goddess Proserpina, when _she_ was the guardian angel of Sicily, or to the Virgin Mary, by a modern Roman Catholic; and we find nothing horrible in this. On the contrary, it seems to fuse the two eras gently and tenderly together, by the same affecting link of human want and natural devotion. This is the couplet:--

In mare irato, in subita procella,
Invoco te, nostra benigna stella.

In sudden storms, and when the billows blind,
Thee I invoke, star sweet to human kind!

When we spoke, in a former chapter, of the beautiful Sicilian story of Proserpina, we forgot (a very ungrateful piece of forgetfulness) to add, that one of the loveliest tributes ever paid to it by genius, is the _Ratto di Proserpina_--Winter’s opera so called. There is every charm of the subject in it,--the awfulness of the greater gods, the genial maternity of Ceres, the tender memory of her daughter, the cordial re-assurances given her by Mercury, the golden-age dances of the shepherds. What smile of encouragement ever surpassed that of the strain on the words _Cerere tornerà_, in the divine trio, _Mi lasci, O madre amata_? What passionate mixture of delight and melancholy, the world-famous duet of _Vaghi colli_? Why does not some publisher make an _Elegant Extracts_ of such music from composers that will survive all fashion, and have comments written upon them, like those on poets? What would we not give to see such an edition of the finest airs of all the great inventive melodists, the Pergoleses and Paisiellos and their satellites, and all the inventive harmonists too, the Bachs, Corellis, and Beethovens, each with _variorum_ notes from the best critics, and loving indications of the beauties of particular passages? Publications of this kind are yet wanting, to the honour, and glory, and thorough household companionship of the art of music: and it is a pity somebody does not take the opportunity of setting about them, when there are critics, both in and out of the profession, qualified to do them justice.[17]

We cannot close our Jar better than with a taste of “the modern Theocritus,” Giovanni Meli, who deserves his title, and whose very name, as we said before, signifies honey. _Meli_ is honey, both in modern Sicilian and in ancient Greek; and the poet may be a descendant of the Greek possessors of the island; nay (to carry the fancy out), possibly of Theocritus himself! Who is to prove, on the beautiful negative principle, that he was not?

Meli was an abbate at Palermo, a doctor of medicine, public professor of chemistry in the University there, and member of several academies. So are his titles set forth in the edition of his poems in seven volumes, which we have had the pleasure, since these chapters were first written, of picking up at a book-stall in Holborn. They are not very pastoral-sounding titles; yet the more knowledge the better, even for the shepherd; and the shepherd-poet turns it all to account, just as chemistry itself improves the field and the flowers. One of the friends whom Theocritus himself has immortalised, was a physician. We have it on the authority of a gentleman who knew the Abbate Meli, that he was as good a man as he was a charming poet. He seemed to live only (he says) to do good and to give pleasure: and he was as much beloved by the poor, as his company was in request among the prosperous. To say that Meli was to be of the party, was to give an evening assembly of friends its highest zest. His virtues were anything but narrow. He was temperate, but not ascetic. He balked no genial inspiration; was a modern Anacreon as well as Theocritus; evinced a liberal turn of mind in every respect, without offence; and could write hymns full of natural piety, as well as drinking and love songs. He was also a deeply read man, and a solid thinker. One of his longest poems is a banter upon the various assumptions of philosophy respecting the system of the world. Heartily do we wish it were in our power to give as good an account of the poems as of their titles; but though they have a glossary for the benefit of “the Italians,” we cannot yet boast such a knowledge of them as qualifies us to say much in evidence, beyond their general merits. These we can discern well enough, like glimmerings of nymphs and flocks among the trees; and very like Theocritus indeed is his genius; very true to nature and to manners, impulsive in its style, not afraid of colloquialisms and homely traits, but with an air of grace over all, and the right happy aroma of the subtle and the suggestive. The moment you open his first eclogue, you meet with a picture truly Theocritan. A herdsman asks a shepherdess if she has seen a cow of his which is missing, and he thus accosts her:--

O Pasturedda, di li trizzi ad unna,
Chi fai pinnata di la manu manca,
Pri’ un t’ appighiari ssa facciuzza biunna.

“O shepherdess with the waving locks, who make a penthouse over your eyes with your left hand, for fear of embrowning your pretty face,” &c.

Meli was poor, till, doubtless, he thought himself rich on receiving a small pension from the late King Ferdinand; for which (says the author of an interesting article on the “Dialects and Literature of Southern Italy,” in the _British Quarterly Review_) “the poet expressed his gratitude in respectful, but not adulatory terms.”

The dialect of Sicily is remarkable for preferring close sounds to broad ones. It converts the Tuscan _l_’s into _d_’s, and its _e_’s and _o_’s into _i_’s and _u_’s. Thus, “bella” becomes _bedda_; “padre,” _patri_; “mare,” _mari_; “sono,” _sunnu_; “colorito,” _culuritu_, &c. This is reversing the state of things in the days of Theocritus, when the Dorian inhabitants of Sicily were accused of doing nothing when they spoke but “yawn” and “gabble.”[18] But it is attributed to the Arabs, when they were masters of the island. It has, probably, been injurious to the cause of music, and hindered the Sicilians from producing as many fine composers as their Neapolitan neighbours. Thus much, lest the reader should start at the strange, though pretty, look of Meli’s Italian, the poet having wisely chosen to speak in the tongue of those, from whose natures and homes he copied.

The reader will see at once this leading difference between the Italian language and the Sicilian form of it, in the following opening stanzas of one of Meli’s canzonets, accompanied by a Tuscan version from the pen of Professor Rosini:--

Sti silenzii, sta virdura, Questa ombrifera verdura,
Sti muntagni, sti vallati, Queste tacite vallate,
L’ ha criatu la Natura L’ ha create la Natura
Pri li cori innamurati. Sol per l’ alme innamorate.

Lu susurra di li frunni, Il susurro delle fronde,
Di li sciumi lu lamentu, Del rio garrulo il lamento,
L’ aria, l’ ecu chi rispunni, L’ aria, l’ eco che risponde,
Tuttu spira sentimentu. Tutto spira sentimento.

“These quiet and green places, these mountains and valleys, were
created by Nature on purpose for loving hearts.

“The whispering of the leaves, the murmuring of the waters, the
falling and rising of the wind--everything inspires the innermost
feelings.”

So, in the beginning of Eclogue the Second, a countryman, who seems fatigued, accosts another who is sitting at his door, and asks him whether his dogs are gentle, and he may venture to come in. The good householder begs him to stand a minute or two on the rock-stone, and he will call the dogs off. “Come here, Scamper,” says he, “_thumping the ground there with your tail_. Quiet, Wasp, quiet! Down, Lion! Now you can come in, and rest yourself; and I hope you’ll stop and take something. I have a new cheese at your service, and a piping hot loaf, just out of the oven, made of capital bread,” &c.

The graphic animation of this exordium, particularly the passage we have marked in Italics, is quite in the spirit of Theocritus. But we are obliged to stop short in it for want of understanding the next sentence.

Theocritus could satirize a king. In the following passage in his _Winter Idyll_, Meli is perhaps covertly sticking his sly pen into a monk. A good old grand-sire is proposing to have what we should now call a Christmas dinner; and he consults his family as to what shall be the principal dish--what meat he shall kill:--

Ora è lu tempu,
Ch’unu di li domestici animali
Mora pri nui; ma mi dirriti: quali?
Lu voi, la vacca, l’_asinu_, la crapa
Sù stati sempri a parti tuttu l’annu
Di li nostri travagghi; e na gran parti
Duvemu an iddi di li nostri beni;
Vi pari, chi sarria riconoscenza
Digna di nui, na tali ricompenza?

Ma lu porcu? lu porcu è statu chiddu,
Chi a li travagghi d’ autri ed a li nostri
E statu un ozziusu spettaturi;
Anzi abbusannu di li nostri curi;
Mai s’ è dignatu scotiri lu ciancu
Da lu fangusu lettu, a proprii pedi
Aspittannu lu cibbu, e cu arroganza
Nui sgrida di l’ insolita tardanza.
Chistu, chi nun conusci di la vita,
Chi li suli vantaggi, e all’ autri lassa
Li vuccuni chiù amari, comu tutti
Fussimu nati pri li soi piaciri;
Chi immersu tra la vili sua pigrizzia
Stirannusi da l’ unu e l’ autru latu
Di li suduri d’ autru s’ è ingrassatu;
Si: chistu mora, e ingrassi a nui: lu porcu,
Lu vili, lu putruni--
Si: l’ ingrassatu a costu d’ autru, mora.

Lettu già lu prucessu; e proferuta,
Fra lu comuni applausu e la gioja,
La fatali sintenza; attapanciatu,
Strascinatu, attacatu, stramazzatu
Fù lu porcu a l’ istanti; un gran cuteddu
Sprofundannusi dintra di la gula,
Ci ricerca lu cori, e ci disciogghi
Lu gruppu di la vita: orrendi grida,
Gemiti strepitusi, aria ed oricchi
Sfardanu e a li vicini, e a li luntani,
Ed anchi fannu sentiri a li stiddi
La grata nova di lu gran maceddu.
Saziu già di la straggi lu cuteddu
Apri niscennu, spaziusa strata
A lu sangu, ed a l’ anima purcina;
L’ unu cadennu dintra lu tineddu,
Prometti sangunazzi; e l’ autra scappa,
E si disperdi in aria tra li venti,
O com’ è fama, passa ad abitari
Dintru lu corpu di un riccuni avaru,
Giacchì nun potti in terra ritruvari
Chiù vili e schiufusu munnizzaru.

“The bull, cow, _donkey_, and goat have all shared in the labours of the year, and assisted to keep us; so that to slaughter one of those would hardly be grateful. But the pig! What think you of the pig? _He_ has been nothing but a lazy spectator--a fellow living on those labours; nay, an abuser of the care we take to keep him; for he scorns to stir from his muddy bed, expects his food to be laid at his feet, and even has the arrogance to cry out against us if we are not in a hurry. Nothing of life knows he but its luxuries; he leaves all his cares to us, as if we were born for nothing else but to heap him with enjoyments. Plunged in the vilest indolence, he contents himself with turning from one side to the other, and growing fat with the sweat of our brows. Oh, he must die by all means, and fatten us in our turn. The hog--the vile wretch--the poltroon--the corpulent selfish rascal--Death to him!

“No sooner said than done. The sentence is carried by acclamation. The pig is grappled with, dragged along, tied and bound, slain utterly, through and through. The huge knife, profoundly plunged into that gullet of his, goes to his heart amid horrid shrieks and dinning lamentations, which bear the news of the great deed to friends afar off, and to the very stars in heaven. Blood and soul, in a flood ample as the way made for them, follow the withdrawing blade,--_l’ anima purcina_, the spirit of pork; the blood into a hogshead, promising black puddings; the soul, either into the passing winds, or, as others think, into the body of some greedy chuff of a millionaire, that vilest and most repulsive of muck-worms.”

Meli’s first volume consists entirely of bucolics; the second of odes, sonnets, and canzonets; the third chiefly of verses in the manner of Berni, of satires, and dithyrambics; the fourth is occupied with a long Bernesque poem, called the _Fairy Galanta_, seemingly full of national as well as critical matters; the fifth and sixth with another on Don Quixote; and the seventh with elegies and fables. By this the reader may judge of the diversity of his genius, and its tendency to the sprightly; with which, however, a fund of thinking is always mixed up. He was evidently forced to conceal a great deal of deep thought and indignant sympathy in the garb of a jester. He did this, however, so well, expressed so much horror at the French revolution, and showed himself such a friend of all who had anything good in them, that in a country notorious for its arbitrary government, he was in favour with the court and aristocracy; and the circumstance, upon the whole, does them credit. Princes in Sicily are as common as country squires in England; but they have beautiful titles, and it is pleasant to read the list of his subscribers. Among them, here and there, is the name of an Englishman ludicrously set forth. Thus we have _Sua Altezza Reale_, &c., to wit:--

His Royal Highness Prince Don Leopoldo Borbone--A hundred copies.

His Excellency the Signor Prince della Trabia--Ten copies.

Her Excellency the Signora Princess della Trabia.

The Most Illustrious Signor Marquis Cardillo--A hundred copies.

_Mister Becker_ (probably Baker)--Two copies.

My Lord the Great Chamberlain Don Gasparo Leone.

The Most Illustrious Signor Duke di Campobello.

Don Francesco Orlando.

Don Antonino Sirretta.

Don Giuseppe _Benthilley_ (probably Mr. Joseph Bentley).

Don Giuseppe Romano.

Lieutenant-Colonel Don Filippo Cellano.

The Most Illustrious Marquis della Gran Montagna.

Don Antonino Lucchese Pepoli.

Her Excellency the Signora Princess of Pandolfina. (What a noble
word!)

The Most Illustrious Marquis of Altavilla.

Her Excellency the Signora Princess of Paternò.

Her Excellency the Signora Duchess della Grazia.

Don Michèle _Beaumont_.

His Excellency the Reverend Lord Gravina, Bishop of Flaviopolis.

The Most Illustrious Count Don Giuseppe de Monroy, of the Princes of
Pandolfina.

His Excellency the Signor Prince of Villafranca.

The Most Illustrious Prince of Villadorata.

The Most Illustrious Don Vincenzo Jacona di Catania, Baron of
Castellana.

But we shall never have done playing this beautiful tune of a nomenclature.

The most agreeable specimen of Meli remains to be given. It is done to our hand by the reviewer before mentioned; and is done so well, that we are spared the difficulty of attempting it after him. We therefore give it in his own prose version. It luckily happens to be one that furnishes direct comparison with Meli’s prototype, and with the Latin and English followers of that original. Most readers of Pope will recollect a passage in which he describes a coquettish girl, who attracts her lover’s attention while pretending not to do so. But see how the natural thoughts originally suggested by Theocritus are subjected to the artificial manner. The principal idea you have, is not of the things, but of the words, and of their classical construction:--

STREPHON. Me gentle _Delia_ beckons _from the plain_,
Then, hid in shades, _eludes_ her eager _swain_;
But _feigns a laugh_, to see me search around,
And by that laugh _the willing fair_ is found.

DAPHNIS. The sprightly _Sylvia_ trips along the green:
She _runs_, but hopes she _does not run_ unseen:
While a kind glance at her pursuer flies,
_How much at variance are her feet and eyes_!
--POPE’S _Pastorals_.

Very epigrammatic that, and as unlike pastoral as the ball-rooms could desire! It was a horrible spoiling of Virgil:--

Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella,
Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri.
--_Eclog._ iii. v. 64.

Thus translated by Dryden:--

My Phillis me with pelted apples plies;
Then tripping to the woods the wanton hies,
And wishes to be seen before she flies.

The Latin poet, too, in the flight of the damsel, added a charming idea to the one suggested by Theocritus; if, indeed, the Greek did not give the first hint of it himself--

Βάλλει καὶ μαλοίσι τὸν αἰπόλον ἁ Κλεάριστα,
Τὰς αἷγας παρέλευντα, και ἁδὺ τι ποππυλιάδει.
--_Idyll_ v., v. 88.

Literally, “Clearista pelts the goatherd with apples, as he goes by with his goats, and then hums something sweet.”

The goatherd here does not seem to stop. It is not certain that he and the damsel are acquainted; though he wishes to imply that she loves him. In case they are intimate, we are to suppose that she intends him to imagine her saying something very pleasant, though he is too far off to hear it; but in the other case, Virgil probably understood her to pretend that she had not pelted the apples at all; for which reason she falls to humming a tune, with an air of innocent indifference.

Be this as it may, nobody will deny the truly natural and Theocritan style in which the modern Sicilian has enlarged upon the old suggestion.

“Meli,” says the reviewer, “introduces a group of fishing-girls, chattering and joking, and telling of their loves, in the absence of their parents. Their very names, Pidda, Lidda, and Ridda, sound congenial to their condition. To an invitation to go and romp on the sands, Lidda prudishly replies that she is afraid of meeting some rude swain. Ridda also tells a story of having seen a fisherman concealed behind the rocks, who addresses her in an amorous song, which frightened her out of her senses. But Pidda, who is the eldest of the three, loses patience at this affected simplicity, and exclaims--

Eh via--muzzica ccâ stu jiditeddu;
E vaja franca, ca nni canuscemu;
Avemu tutti lu ’nnamurateddu.

Literally,--‘Come, poor innocents, bite my little finger; but let that pass; we know each other, and that each of us has her sweetheart.’

“Lidda, at last, casts off her shyness, and sings the following pretty ditty--

Quannu a Culicchia jeu vogghiu parrari,
Ca spissu spissu mi veni lu sfilu,
A la finestra mi mettu a filari;
Quann’ iddu passa, poi rumpu lu filu;
Cadi lu fusu; ed eu mettu a gridari,
‘Gnuri, pri carità proitimilu.’
Iddu lu pigghia; mi metti a guardari;
Jeu mi nni vaju suppilu suppilu.

“When I wish to speak to my sweetheart, which occurs pretty often, I
seat myself at the window to spin; and when he is passing underneath,
I manage to break the thread; the spindle falls (out of the window),
and I cry out, dolefully, ‘Oh, friend, be so kind as to pick it up for
me!’ He does so, and looks at me, when I feel out of my wits for joy.”

We shall not close our Jar with anything less good than this. There are still, indeed, divers good things of ancient Sicilian poetry--one or two in particular--which we are wrong not to have given the English reader some taste of (as far as we could), while writing our chapters on them; and also some passages from modern travellers, which, as illustrating other points of our subject, we think would have been found welcome by the reader. These, therefore, we have put by themselves in the following pages, under a title which shows them to have been part of our stock; and so, submitting them to his judgment, conclude by wishing both him and his all the good things in the world.

OVERFLOWINGS OF THE JAR.

THE JOURNEY TO THE FEAST.

(FROM THEOCRITUS.)

This, instead of an “overflowing,” ought to have been a constituent part of the Jar, because it supplies what has been wanting to complete our specimens of Theocritus; namely, a sample of the happiest and most enjoying portion of his genius. The original is one of his finest productions. The chief part of it relates what befell him on his way to a friend’s house out of town, to join a party at harvest-home. He overtakes a brother poet, who, in respect to his condition in life, might have been to Theocritus what a Burns from the plough might have been to a “gentleman,” had any such rival poet existed in Burns’ time. This inspired rustic, who (with the propriety noticed in our remarks on the subject) speaks as well as the gentleman himself, is represented as reciting a poem of his composition, to beguile the way. Theocritus, in return, recites a composition of his own; and the whole piece concludes with a description of the luxurious orchard nest which awaited our author on his arrival at the house he was going to:--

Once on a time myself and Eùcritus
Went out of town, taking Amyntas with us,
To join a feast of Ceres, that was given
By Phrasidàmus and Antìgenes,
Sons of Lycòpeus, and descended too
(If that is anything) from Clitias,
Ay, and from Calcon, who with his strong foot
Dug from the rock the fount there, at Burinna,
Where you perceive such a thick bower of elms
And poplars, making quite a roof o’erhead.

We had not got half way, nor yet discern’d
The tomb of Brasilas, when we overtook,
Travelling along, a favourite of the Muse,--
A goatherd, of the name of Lycidas;
And goatherd well he seem’d; for on his shoulders
Hung a right simple goatskin, hairy and thick,
Smelling as if ’twas new; about his body
Was an old jerkin, tied with platted straw;
And in his hand he bore a crooked stick
Made of wild olive. Placidly he turned,
A little smile parting his kindly lips,
And with a genial eye accosting me,
Said, “Ah, Theocritus! and where go you
At noon, when all the lizards are asleep,
And not a lark but sobers? Is’t a feast
You’re making haste to, or some vintager’s,
That thus you dash the pebbles with your sandals?”

“Lycidas,” answered I, “the world, my friend,
Shepherds, reapers, and all, count you a poet
Of the first pastoral order,--which delights me:
Nevertheless, I hope you see another.
It _is_ a feast we’re going to. Some friends
Keep one to-day to holy Mother Earth,
For gratitude, their garners are so full.
But come;--as we are going the same way,
And love the same good pastime, let’s indulge
Each other’s vein a little; for my lips
Breathe also of the Muse; and people call me
Greatest of living song;--a praise, however,
Of which I am not credulous,--no, by Earth;
For there’s Philetas, and our Samian too,
Whom I no more pretend to have surpass’d,
Than frogs the grasshoppers.”

Well;--we agreed;
And Lycidas, with one of his sweet smiles,
Said, “You must let me give you, when we finish,
This olive-stick, for you have proved yourself
A scion truly from the stock of Jove.
I also hate the builder that pretends
To rival mountain-tops, and just as much
Those dunghill cocks that tear their throats in vain
With trying to outcrow Homer himself!
But come, let us begin, Theocritus.--
Well,--I’ll be first then. Tell me if you like
This little piece, friend, which I hammered out
The other day as I was pacing Ætna.”

Lycidas here commences his recitation of the following verses, which are in honour of a friend who has gone abroad, and include the Legend of Comatas:--

“Ageanax, if he forgets me not
His faithful friend, shall safely cross the seas
To Mitylene, both when the south wind,
Warned by the westering Kids,[19] adds wet to wet,
And when Orion dips his sparkling feet.
Let halcyons smooth the billows, and make still
The west wind and the fiercer east, which stirs
The lowest sea-weeds;--halcyons, of all birds
Dear to the blue-eyed Nymphs, and fed by them.
Let all things favour the kind voyager,
And land him safely;--and that day, will I,
Wearing a crown of roses or white violets,
Quaff by my fireside Pteleatic wine;
And some one shall dress beans; and I will have
A noble couch, to lie at ease upon,
Heaped up of asphodel and yielding herbs;
And there I’ll drink in a divine repose,
Calling to mind Ageanax, and drain
With clinging lips the goblet to the dregs:
And there shall be two shepherds to play to me
Upon the pipe; and Tityrus, standing by,
Shall sing how Daphnis was in love with Xenia,
And used to walk the Mountain, while the oaks
Moaned to him on the banks of Himera;
And how he melted in his love away,
Like snows on Athos, or on Rhodope,
Or Hæmus, or the farthest Caucasus;--
And Tityrus shall sing also, how of old
The goatherd by his cruel lord was bound,
And left to die in a great chest; and how
The busy bees, up coming from the meadows
To the sweet cedar, fed him with soft flowers,
Because the Muse had filled his mouth with nectar.
Yes, all those sweets were thine, blessed Comatas
And thou wast put into the chest, and fed
By the blithe bees, and passed a pleasant time.
Would that in my time also thou wert living,
That we might keep our flocks upon the Mountain,
And I might hear thy voice, while thou shouldst lie
Under the oak-trees or the pines, and modulate
Thy pipe deliciously, divine Comatas.”

Here ended he his song, and thus in turn
I took up mine:--“Dear Lycidas, the Nymphs
Have taught me also, while I kept my flocks,
Excellent subjects; and the best of all
I’ll tell you now, since you are dear to them.”

Theocritus here commences his recitation in turn, the subject of which is an unsuccessful passion of his friend Aratus, supposed to be the contemporary poet of that name, author of the _Phænomena_:--

“--’Twas on the unlucky side the Loves sneezed to me,
For I love Myrto, as the goats love spring,
But to no purpose. Meanwhile too, Aratus,
My best of friends, becomes in love with Pholoe.
Aristis has long known it,--good Aristis,
To whom Apollo’s self would not disdain
To play his harp from his own golden seat.--
O Pan, who gained by lot the lovely grounds
Of Homole,--Oh, send her to his arms,
Her, or another girl as beautiful!
Oh, do but so, and the Arcadian youth
Shall scourge thee not with squills, when they have miss’d
Their hunted game:--but if thou dost it not,
Thou shalt be flayed, and sent to sleep in straw:
In mountains and by rivers of the north
Mid winter shalt thou pass; and then in summer
Be changed to utmost Æthiopia, there
To tend thy flocks under the Blemyan rock,
Where thou canst see not Nile.[20]--But you, ye Loves,
With your sweet apple cheeks, leave the moist nooks
Of Hyetis and Byblis and fly up
To Venus’s own heaven, and thence, ah thence,
Shoot with your arrows for me this desir’d one,
Shoot,--since she pities not my friend and guest.
Riper is she than the moist pear; and yet
The women say to her, ‘Alas, alas,
Your flower will wither, Pholoe, on the stalk!’
Come then, Aratus; let us lie no more
At these proud doors, nor wear our feet with journeys;
But let another, if he chooses, start
With sleepless eyes to hear the crowing cock;
And leave such labours to the wrestler Molon.
Care we for nought but comfort: let us seek
Some ancient dame, who, muttering o’er a charm,
Shall keep away from us all things unkindly.”

I ended; and with one of his old smiles,
He gave me his poetic gift, the olive-stick;
And turning to the left, struck off for Pyxa.
We then went on to Phrasidamus’s,--
Eucritus, I, and the good little Amyntas,--
And gladly rested upon deep thick couches
Of lentisk, and of vine-leaves freshly cut.
Above our heads a throng of elms and poplars
Kept stirring; and from out a cave o’ the Nymphs
A sacred runnel, pouring forth, ran gurgling.
Hot in the greenest leaves, labour’d away
Those chatterers the cicadas; the sad tree-frog
Kept his good distance in the thorny bush;
The larks and linnets sang; the stock-dove mourned;
And round the fountain spun the yellow bees:
All things smelt rich of summer, rich of autumn:
Pears were about our feet, and by our side
Apples on apples roll’d; the boughs bent down
To the very earth with loads of damson plums;
And from the casks of wine of four years old,
We broke the corking pitch.--O ye who keep
Parnassus’ top, ye Nymphs of Castaly,
Did ever Chiron, in the rocky cave
Of Pholos, set such goblets before Hercules?
Did ever that old shepherd of Anapus,
Great Polyphemus, who could throw the rocks,
Compose such nectar to go dance withal,--
As on that day ye broached for us, O Nymphs,
Before the altar of Earth’s generous Mother?
Oh, may I riot in her heaps again
With a great winnow; while she stands and smiles,
Holding, in either hand, poppies and wheat.

ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF BION.

(FROM MOSCHUS.)

The chief characteristic both of this Sicilian poet Moschus and his friend Bion was a tender and elegant sweetness. We have endeavoured to modulate our version accordingly.

This is the pastoral poetry of books, as distinguished from that of real life; yet it has a real echo in the minds of those who can pass from one region to the other; nor is it wanting in some touches exquisitely human, as we have seen in the famous passage already quoted from the Elegy respecting the (supposed) difference between the transitory nature of man and the rejuvenescence of flowers:--

Moan with me, moan, ye woods and Dorian waters,
And weep, ye rivers, the delightful Bion;
Ye plants, now stand in tears; murmur, ye groves;
Ye flowers, sigh forth your odours with sad buds;
Flush deep, ye roses and anemones;
And more than ever now, O hyacinth, show
Your written sorrows;[21]--the sweet singer’s dead.

Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Ye nightingales, that mourn in the thick leaves,
Tell the Sicilian streams of Arethuse,
Bion the shepherd’s dead; and that with him
Melody’s dead, and gone the Dorian song.

Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Weep on the waters, ye Strymonian swans,
And utter forth a melancholy song,
Tender as his whose voice was like your own;
And say to the Œagrian girls, and say
To all the nymphs haunting in Bistony,
The Doric Orpheus is departed from us.

Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
No longer pipes he to the charmed herds,
No longer sits under the lonely oaks,
And sings; but to the ears of Pluto now
Tunes his Lethean verse; and so the hills
Are voiceless; and the cows that follow still
Beside the bulls, low and will not be fed.

Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Apollo, Bion, wept thy sudden fate:
The Satyrs too, and the Priapuses
Dark-veiled, and for that song of thine the Pans,
Groan’d; and the fountain-nymphs within the woods
Mourn’d for thee, melting into tearful waters;
Echo too mourn’d among the rocks that she
Must hush--and imitate thy lips no longer;
Trees and the flowers put off their loveliness;
Milk flows not as ’twas used; and in the hive
The honey moulders,--for there is no need,
Now that thy honey’s gone, to look for more.

Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Not so the dolphins mourn’d by the salt sea,
Not so the nightingale among the rocks,
Not so the swallow over the far downs,
Not so Ceyx called for his Halcyone,
Not so in the eastern valleys Memnon’s bird
Scream’d o’er his sepulchre for the Morning’s son,
As all have mourned for the departed Bion.

Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Ye nightingales and swallows every one
Whom he once charm’d and taught to sing at will
Plain to each other midst the green tree boughs
With other birds o’erhead. Mourn too, ye doves.

Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Who now shall play thy pipe, O most desir’d one!
Who lay his lip against thy reeds? who dare it?
For still they breathe of thee and of thy mouth,
And Echo comes to seek her voices there.
Pan’s be they; and ev’n he shall fear perhaps
To sound them, lest he be not first hereafter.

Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
And Galatea weeps, who loved to hear thee,
Sitting beside thee on the calm sea-shore;
For thou didst play far better than the Cyclops,
And him the fair one shunn’d: but thee, but thee,
She used to look at sweetly from the water.
But now forgetful of the deep, she sits
On the lone sands, and feeds thy herd for thee.

Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
The Muse’s gifts all died with thee, O shepherd,
Men’s admiration, and sweet women’s kisses.
The Loves about thy sepulchre weep sadly,
For Venus loved thee, much more than the kiss
With which of late she kiss’d Adonis, dying.
Thou too, O Meles, sweetest-voiced of rivers,
Thou too hast undergone a second grief;
For Homer first, that sweet mouth of Calliope,
Was taken from thee; and they say thou mournedst
For thy great son with many-sobbing streams,
Filling the far-seen ocean with a voice.
And now, again, thou weepest for a son,
Melting away in misery. Both of them
Were favourites of the fountain-nymphs; one drank
The Pegasean fount, and one his cup
Fill’d out of Arethuse; the former sang
The bright Tyndarid lass, and the great son
Of Thetis, and Atrides Menelaus;
But he, the other, not of wars or tears
Told us, but intermix’d the pipe he play’d
With songs of herds, and as he sung he fed them;
And he made pipes, and milk’d the gentle heifer,
And taught us how to kiss, and cherish’d love
Within his bosom, and was worthy of Venus.

Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Every renowned city and every town
Mourns for thee, Bion;--Ascra weeps thee more
Than her own Hesiod; the Bœotian woods
Ask not for Pindar so; nor patriot Lesbos
For her Alcæus; nor th’ Ægean isle
Her poet; nor does Paros so wish back
Archilochus; and Mitylene now,
Instead of Sappho’s verses, rings with thine.
All the sweet pastoral poets weep for thee,--
Sicelidas the Samian; Lycidas,
Who used to look so happy; and at Cos,
Philetas; and at Syracuse, Theocritus;
All in their several dialects: and I,
I too, no stranger to the pastoral song,
Sing thee a dirge Ausonian, such as thou
Taughtest thy scholars, honouring us as all
Heirs of the Dorian Muse. Thou didst bequeath
Thy store to others, but to me thy song.

Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
Alas, when mallows in the garden die,
Green parsley, or the crisp luxuriant dill,
They live again, and flower another year;
But we, how great soe’er, or strong, or wise,
When once we die, sleep in the senseless earth
A long, an endless, unawakeable sleep.
Thou too in earth must be laid silently:
But the nymphs please to let the frog sing on;
Nor envy I, for what he sings is worthless.

Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
There came, O Bion, poison to thy mouth,
Thou didst feel poison; how could it approach
Those lips of thine, and not be turn’d to sweet!
Who could be so delightless as to mix it,
Or bid be mix’d, and turn him from thy song!

Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily.
But justice reaches all;--and thus, meanwhile,
I weep thy fate. And would I could descend
Like Orpheus to the shades, or like Ulysses,
Or Hercules before him: I would go
To Pluto’s house, and see if you sang there,
And hark to what you sang. Play to Prosèrpina
Something Sicilian, some delightful pastoral,
For she once play’d on the Sicilian shores,
The shores of Ætna, and sang Dorian songs,
And so thou wouldst be honour’d; and as Orpheus
For his sweet harping, had his love again,
She would restore thee to our mountains, Bion.
Oh, had I but the power, I, I would do it.

THE SHIP OF HIERO.

“We find an ample but interesting description, in Athenæus, of a magnificent and prodigious galley, that had twenty benches of rowers, contained an extraordinary number of persons, and was not only provided with dreadful means of assault, but with all that could delight the mind, and charm the sense. Baths of bronze and of Taurominian marble, stables, a gymnasium, small gardens planted with various trees and watered by pipes, the twining vine and ivy, a library, and a sun-dial, were all in this galley. It had three decks; the second of which was inlaid with variegated mosaic-work, containing the whole history of Homer’s _Iliad_. Every necessary for repose by night, and banqueting by day, was provided with a regal luxury.

“As much timber was brought from the forest of Ætna, for the building of this galley, as would have sufficed for sixty ordinary galleys. It had three masts; and, on the upper deck, it was fortified round with a wall, and eight towers like a citadel. Each of the towers contained four combatants, completely armed, and two archers. Within, the towers were provided with missiles and stones, and on the walls stood a kind of artillery-machine, invented by Archimedes, which threw stones of three hundred-weight, and a lance twelve ells in length, to the distance of a stadium, or six hundred feet.

“Each side of the wall was provided with sixty young men, well armed; and there were shooters even in the mast-cages.[22] Round the upper deck was an iron rim; where there were machines placed which would act immediately against an enemy’s ship, hold it fast, and draw it to the galley. A tree sufficiently large for the mainmast was long sought for in vain, till a hog-driver found one in _Brettia_, or _Bruttium_, the present South Calabria. The lower deck could be pumped by a single man, with the aid of a machine which the Greeks called κοχλίον, the Latins _cochlea_, and which we, after its inventor, name the screw of Archimedes.

“When the wonderful work was completed, it was discovered that some of the havens of Hiero would not contain it, and that in others it was not safe. Hiero therefore sent the galley to King Ptolemy (Ptolomæus Philadelphus, I suppose), as a present, to Alexandria.

“You will pardon me this borrowed but abbreviated description, taken from Athenæus, as it appears to me not only interesting in itself, but usefully instructive to those who have formed no just idea of the mechanics of the ancients. To such persons, I recommend the chapter in Athenæus which contains this description, as well as others, in which greater ships of the Ptolemies are described; and of one which was built by Ptolomæus Philopater, that, rowers and warriors included, could contain seven thousand men.”--STOLBERG’S _Travels through Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Sicily_ (translated by HOLCROFT), vol. iv. p. 177.

SERENADES IN SICILY AND NAPLES.

“We reached Alcamo in the evening; a well-built town, that contains above 8,000 inhabitants. It was built in the year 828, on the fruitful hill _Bonifacio_, by the Saracen _Adalcamo_, or _Halcamo_, who came from Africa; but its site was removed by the Emperor Frederick the Second to the plain in which it now stands.

“Alcamo boasts of having produced famous men; and, among others, _Ciullo del Camo_, who is generally called _Vincentio di Alcamo_. He was the contemporary of Frederick the Second, and is supposed by some to be the first who wrote poetry in the Italian language; at least, he was one of the first Italian poets. As it was Sunday, we were not surprised to see a great part of the inhabitants tumultuously crowding the streets, for this is a custom through all Italy. They begin on the Saturday evening, after the labour of the week is over, to collect in the market-places and streets. He who should be unacquainted with their manners, would imagine that some extraordinary event or insurrection had caused them to assemble; for they usually speak all together, with loud voices, rapid articulation, and animated gestures. In the midst of their violent contentions, you every moment expect they will seize each other by the throat, and are agreeably surprised to hear them end in a loud laugh.

“Thus it was at Alcamo, where the streets seemed to be in an uproar till after midnight, when singing and music began; yet, as early as three in the morning, the people were going about, crying aloud the bread and meat, which they sold to the workmen that were preparing for their labour in the fields. The Sicilians, like the Italians, need but little sleep, and willingly part with that little for any diversion; hence the custom of serenading ever has and ever will prevail. Horace, in the ninth ode of his first book, speaks of the serenades of his days. He has been, hitherto, misinterpreted by some commentators; and, although the manners of the south of Italy and of Sicily might have pointed out what the poet intended to describe, yet I should probably still have misunderstood him, if a lucky accident had not informed me of the true meaning of the verse.

“A volume of the _Gazette Littéraire de l’Europe_ fell into my hands at Naples, a journal which gave extracts from the commentator, Abbate Galiana, a writer who died some years ago at Naples, a man of understanding, and famous for his numerous works. I do not believe that the whole of his commentary has yet been made public.

“The ode of which I am speaking begins--

‘Vides ut alta stet nive candidum
Soracte.’
--HORACE, 1. i. Od. 9.

‘Behold Soracte’s airy height,
Made heavy with a weight of snow.’
--FRANCIS.

“The verses

‘Lenesque sub noctem susurri
Composita repetantur hora.’

‘An assignation sweetly made,
With gentle whispers in the dark.’
--FRANCIS.

have generally been understood as if the poet spoke of social friends who met together in the evening. But why should they speak in whispers? And why at an appointed hour? Is not the unexpected visit of a friend often the most pleasant?

“Others came nearer to the meaning, without attaining it. They supposed the poet had spoken of two lovers conversing together. Let us hear our acute Neapolitan.