Chapter VIII (2)

38. Meantime, a people very celebrated in dramatic literature was forming its national theatre. A few attempts were made in Spain to copy the classical model. But these seem not to have gone beyond translation, and had little effect on the public taste. Others in imitation of the Celestina, which passed for a moral example, produced tedious scenes, by way of mirrors, of vice and virtue, without reaching the fame of their original. But a third class was far more popular, and ultimately put an end to competition. The founders of this were Torres Naharro, in the first years of Charles, and Lope de Rueda, a little later. “There is very little doubt,” says Bouterwek, “that Torres Naharro was the real inventor of the Spanish comedy. He not only wrote his eight comedies in redondillas in the romance style, but he also endeavoured to establish the dramatic interest solely on an ingenious combination of intrigues, without attaching much importance to the development of character, or the moral tendency of the story. It is besides probable, that he was the first who divided plays into three acts, which, being regarded as three days’ labour in the dramatic field, were called jornadas. It must therefore be unreservedly admitted, that these dramas, considered both with respect to their spirit and their form, deserve to be ranked as the first in the history of the Spanish national drama; for in the same path which Torres Naharro first trod, the dramatic genius of Spain advanced to the point attained by Calderon, and the nation tolerated no dramas except those which belonged to the style which had thus been created.”[798]

[798] P. 285. Andrès thinks Naharro low, insipid, and unworthy of the
praise of Cervantes. v. 136.

|Lope de Rueda.|

39. Lope de Rueda, who is rather better known than his predecessor, was at the head of a company of players, and was limited in his inventions by the capacity of his troop and of the stage upon which they were to appear. Cervantes calls him the great Lope de Rueda, even when a greater Lope was before the world. “He was not,” to quote again from Bouterwek, “inattentive to general character, as is proved by his delineation of old men, clowns, &c., in which he was particularly successful. But his principal aim was to interweave in his dramas a succession of intrigues; and as he seems to have been a stranger to the art of producing stage effect by striking situations, he made complication the great object of his plots. Thus mistakes, arising from personal resemblances, exchanges of children, and such like commonplace subjects of intrigue, form the groundwork of his stories, none of which are remarkable for ingenuity of invention. There is usually a multitude of characters in his dramas, and jests and witticisms are freely introduced, but these in general consist of burlesque disputes in which some clown is engaged.”[799]

[799] P. 282.

|Gil Vicente.|

40. The Portuguese Gil Vicente may perhaps compete with Torres Naharro for the honour of leading the dramatists of the peninsula. His Autos indeed, as has been observed, do not, so far as we can perceive, differ from the mysteries, the religious dramas of France and England. Bouterwek, strangely forgetful of these, seems to have assigned a character of originality, and given a precedence, to the Spanish and Portuguese Autos which they do not deserve. The specimen of one of these by Gil Vicente in the History of Portuguese Literature, is far more extravagant and less theatrical than our John Parfre’s contemporary mystery of Candlemas Day. But a few comedies, or, as they are more justly styled, farces, remain; one of which, mentioned by the same author, is superior in choice and management of the fable to most of the rude productions of that time. Its date is unknown: Gil Vicente’s dramatic compositions of various kinds were collectively published in 1562; he had died in 1557, at a very advanced age.

41. “These works,” says Bouterwek of the dramatic productions of Gil Vicente in general, “display a true poetic spirit, which however accommodated itself entirely to the age of the poet, and which disdained cultivation. The dramatic genius of Gil Vicente is equally manifest from his power of invention, and from the natural turn and facility of his imitative talent. Even the rudest of these dramas is tinged with a certain degree of poetic feeling.”[800] The want of complex intrigue, such as we find afterwards in the Castilian drama, ought not to surprise us in these early compositions.

[800] Hist. of Portuguese Lit. p. 83-111. It would be vain to look
elsewhere for so copious an account of Gil Vicente, and very
difficult probably to find his works. See too Sismondi, Hist. de la
Litt. du Midi, iv. 448.

|Mysteries and moralities in France.|

42. We have no record of any original dramatic composition belonging to this age in France, with the exception of mysteries and moralities, which are very abundant. These were considered, and perhaps justly, as types of the regular drama. “The French morality,” says an author of that age, “represents in some degree the tragedy of the Greeks and Romans; particularly because it treats of serious and important subjects; and if it were contrived in French that the conclusion of the morality should be always unfortunate, it would become a tragedy. In the morality, we treat of noble and virtuous actions, either true, or at least probable; and choose what makes for our instruction in life.”[801] It is evident from this passage and the whole context, that neither tragedy nor comedy were yet known. The circumstance is rather remarkable, when we consider the genius of the nation, and the politeness of the court. But from about the year 1540 we find translations from Latin and Italian comedies into French. These probably were not represented. Les Amours d’Erostrate, by Jacques Bourgeois, published in 1545, is taken from the Suppositi of Ariosto. Sibilet translated the Iphigenia of Euripedes in 1549, and Bouchetel the Hecuba in 1550; Lazarus Baif, two plays about the same time. But a great dramatic revolution was now prepared by the strong arm of the state. The first theatre had been established at Paris about 1400 by the Confrairie de la Passion de N. S., for the representation of scriptural mysteries. This was suppressed by the parliament in 1547, on account of the scandal which this devout buffoonery had begun to give. The company of actors purchased next year the Hotel de la Bourgogne, and were authorised by the parliament to represent profane subjects, “lawful and decent” (licites et honnêtes), but enjoined to abstain from “all mysteries of the passion, or other sacred mysteries.”[802]

[801] Sibilat, Art Poëtique (1548), apud Beauchamps, Recherches sur le
Théâtre Français, i. 82.

In the Jardin de Plaisance, an anonymous undated poem, printed at
Lyons probably before the end of the fifteenth century, we have
rules given for composing moralities. Beauchamps (p. 86) extracts
some of these; but they seem not worth copying.

[802] Beauchamps, i. 91.

|German theatre.|

|Hans Sachs.|

43. In Germany, meantime, the pride of the meister-singers, Hans Sachs, was alone sufficient to pour forth a plenteous stream for the stage. His works, collectively printed at Nuremberg in five folio volumes, 1578, and reprinted in five quartos at Kempten, 1606, contain 197 dramas among the rest. Many of his comedies in one act, called Schwanken, are coarse satires on the times. Invention, expression, and enthusiasm, if we may trust his admirers, are all united in Hans Sachs.[803]

[803] Hans Sachs has met with a very laudatory critic in the
Retrospective Review, x. 113, who even ventures to assert that
Goethe has imitated the old shoemaker in Faust.

The Germans had many plays in this age. Gesner says, in his
Pandectæ Universales: Germanicæ fabulæ multæ extant. Fabula decem
ætatum et Fusio stultorum Colmariæ actæ sunt. Fusio edita est 1537,
chartis quatuor. Qui volet hoc loco plures ascribat in vulgaribus
linguis, nos ad alia festinamus.

|Moralities and similar plays in England.|

44. The mysteries founded upon scriptural or legendary histories, as well as the moralities, or allegorical dramas, which, though there might be an intermixture of human character with abstract personification, did not aim at that illusion which a possible fable affords, continued to amuse the English public. Nor were they confined, as perhaps they were before, to churches and monasteries. We find a company of players in the establishment of Richard III. while Duke of Gloucester; and in the subsequent reigns, especially under Henry VIII., this seems to have been one of the luxuries of the great. The frugal Henry VII. maintained two distinct sets of players; and his son was prodigally sumptuous in every sort of court-exhibition, bearing the general name of revels, and superintended by a high priest of jollity, styled the abbot of misrule. The dramatic allegories, or moral plays, found a place among them. It may be presumed that from their occasionality, or want of merit, far the greater part have perished.[804] Three or four, which we may place before 1550, are published in Hawkins’s Ancient Drama, and Dodsley’s Old Plays; one is extant, written by Skelton, the earliest of a known author.[805] A late writer, whose diligence seems to have almost exhausted our early dramatic history, has retrieved the names of a few more. The most ancient of these moral plays he traces to the reign of Henry VI. They became gradually more complicated, and approached nearer to a regular form. It may be observed that a line is not easily defined between the scriptural mysteries and the legitimate drama; the choice of the story, the succession of incidents, are those of tragedy; even the intermixture of buffoonery belongs to all our ancient stage; and it is only by the meanness of the sentiments and diction that we exclude the Candlemas-Day, which is one of the most perfect of the mysteries, or even those of the fifteenth century, from our tragic series.[806] Nor were the moralities, such as we find them in the reign of Henry VIII., at a prodigious distance from the regular stage; deviations from the original structure of these, as Mr. Collier has well observed, “by the relinquishment of abstract for individual character, paved the way, by a natural and easy gradation, for tragedy and comedy, the representations of real life and manners.”[807]

[804] Collier’s Annals of the Stage, i. 34, &c.

[805] Warton, iii. 188.

[806] Candlemas-Day, a mystery, on the murder of the Innocents, is
published in Hawkins’s Early English Drama. It is by John Parffre,
and may be referred to the first years of Henry VIII.

[807] Hist. of English Dramatic Poetry, ii. 260. This I quote by its
proper title; but it is in fact the same work as the Annals of the
Stage, so far as being incorporated, and sold together, renders it
the same.

|They are turned to religious satire.|

45. The moralities were, in this age, distinguished by the constant introduction of a witty, mischievous, and profligate character, denominated the Vice. This seems originally to have been an allegorical representation of what the word denotes; but the vice gradually acquired a human individuality, in which he came very near to our well-known Punch. The devil was generally introduced in company with the vice, and had to endure many blows from him. But the moralities had another striking characteristic in this period. They had always been religious, but they now became theological. In the crisis of that great revolution then in progress, the stage was found a ready and impartial instrument for the old or the new faith. Luther and his wife were satirised in a Latin morality represented at Gray’s Inn in 1529. It was easy to turn the tables on the clergy. Sir David Lyndsay’s satire of the Three Estatis, a direct attack upon them, was played before James V. and his queen at Linlithgow in 1539;[808] and in 1543 an English statute was made, prohibiting all plays and interludes, which meddle with the interpretation of Scripture. In 1549, the council of Edward VI. put a stop by proclamation to all kinds of stage-plays.[809]

[808] Warton, iv. 23.

[809] Collier, i. 144.

|Latin Plays.|

|First English Comedy.|

46. Great indulgence, or a strong antiquarian prejudice, is required to discover much genius in these moralities and mysteries. There was, however, a class of dramatic productions that appealed to a more instructed audience. The custom of acting Latin plays prevailed in our universities at this time, as it did long afterwards. Whether it were older than the fifteenth century seems not to be proved; and the presumption is certainly against it. “In an original draught,” says Warton, “of the statutes of Trinity College at Cambridge, founded in 1456, one of the chapters is entitled, “De Præfecto ludorum qui imperator dicitur,” under whose direction and authority Latin comedies and tragedies are to be exhibited in the hall at Christmas.”[810] It is probable that Christopherson’s tragedy of Jephthah, and another by Grimoald on John the Baptist, both older than the middle of the century, were written for academical representation. Nor was this confined to the universities. Nicolas Udal, head master of Eton, wrote several plays in Latin to be acted in the long nights of winter by his boys.[811] And if we had to stop here, it might seem an unnecessary minuteness to take notice of the diversions of schoolboys, especially as the same is recorded of other teachers besides Udal. But there is something more in this. Udal has lately become known in a new and more brilliant light, as the father of English comedy. It was mentioned by Warton, but without any comment, that Nicolas Udal wrote some English plays to be represented by his scholars, a passage from one of which is quoted by Wilson in his Art of Logic dedicated to Edward VI.[812] It might have been conjectured, by the help of this quotation, that these plays were neither of the class of moralities or mysteries, nor mere translations from Plautus and Terence, as it would not have been unnatural at first to suppose. Within a few years, however, the comedy from which Wilson took his extract has been discovered. It was printed in 1565, but probably written not later than 1540. The title of this comedy is Ralph Roister Doister, a name uncouth enough, and from which we should expect a very barbarous farce. But Udal, an eminent scholar, knew how to preserve comic spirit and humour without degenerating into licentious buffoonery. Ralph Roister Doister, in spite of its title, is a play of some merit, though the wit may seem designed for the purpose of natural merriment rather than critical glory. We find in it, what is of no slight value, the earliest lively picture of London manners among the gallants and citizens, who furnished so much for the stage down to the civil wars. And perhaps there is no striking difference in this respect between the dramatic manners under Henry VIII. and James I. This comedy, for there seems no kind of reason why it should be refused that honourable name, is much superior to Gammar Gurton’s Needle, written twenty years afterwards, from which it has wrested a long-established precedence in our dramatic annals.[813]

[810] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iii. 205.

[811] Udal was not the first, if we could trust Harwood’s Alumni
Etonenses, who established an Eton theatre. Of Rightwise, who
succeeded Lily as master of St. Paul’s, it is said by him, that he
was “a most eminent grammarian, and wrote the tragedy of Dido from
Virgil, which was acted before Cardinal Wolsey with great applause
by himself and other scholars of Eton.” But as Rightwise left Eton
for King’s College in 1508, this cannot be true, at least so far as
Wolsey is concerned. It is said afterwards in the same book of one
Hallewill, who went to Cambridge in 1532, that he wrote “the
tragedy of Dido.” Which should we believe, or were there two Didos?
But Harwood’s book is not reckoned of much authority beyond the
mere records which he copied.

[812] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iii. 213.

[813] See an analysis with extracts of Ralph Roister Doister, in
Collier’s Hist. of Dram. Poetry, ii. 445-460.

SECT. III.

_Romances and Novels--Rabelais._

|Romances of chivalry.|

47. The popularity of Amadis de Gaul gave rise to a class of romances, the delight of the multitude in the sixteenth century, though since chiefly remembered by the ridicule and ignominy that has attached itself to their name, those of knight-errantry. Most of these belong to Spanish or Portuguese literature. Palmerin of Oliva, one of the earliest, was published in 1525. Palmerin, less fortunate than his namesake of England, did not escape the penal flame to which the barber and curate consigned many also of his younger brethren. It has been observed by Bouterwek that every respectable Spanish writer, as well as Cervantes, resisted the contagion of bad taste which kept the prolix mediocrity of these romances in fashion.[814]

|Novels.|

48. A far better style was that of the short novel, which the Italian writers, especially Boccaccio, had rendered popular in Europe. But, though many of these were probably written within this period of thirty years, none of much distinction come within it, as the date of their earliest publication, except the celebrated Belphegor of Machiavel.[815] The amusing story of Lazarillo de Tormes was certainly written by Mendoza in his youth. But it did not appear in print till 1586. This is the first known specimen in Spain of the picaresque, or rogue style, in which the adventures of the low and rather dishonest part of the community are made to furnish amusement for the great. The Italian novelists are by no means without earlier instances; but it became the favourite, and almost peculiar class of novel with the Spanish writers about the end of the century.

[814] Hist. of Spanish Literature, p. 304. Dunlop’s Hist. of Fiction,
vol. ii.

[815] I cannot make another exception for Il Pellegrino by Caviceo of
Parma, the first known edition of which, published at Venice in
1526, evidently alludes to one earlier; diligentemente in lingua
tosca corretto, e nuovamente stampato et historiato. The editor
speaks of the book as obsolete in orthography and style. It is
probably, however, not older than the last years of the fifteenth
century, being dedicated to Lucrezia Borgia. It is a very prolix
and tedious romance, in three books and two hundred and nineteen
chapters, written in a semi-poetical diffuse style, and much in the
usual manner of love stories. Ginguéné and Tiraboschi do not
mention it; the Biographie Universelle does.

Mr. Dunlop has given a short account of a French novel, entitled
Les Aventures de Lycidas et de Cleorithe, which he considers as the
earliest and best specimen of what he calls the spiritual romance,
unmixed with chivalry or allegory, iii. 51. It was written in 1529,
by Basire, archdeacon of Sens. I should suspect that there had been
some of this class already in Germany; they certainly became common
in that country afterwards.

|Rabelais.|

49. But the most celebrated, and certainly the most brilliant performance in the path of fiction, that belongs to this age, is that of Rabelais. Few books are less likely to obtain the praise of a rigorous critic; but few have more the stamp of originality, or show a more redundant fertility, always of language, and sometimes of imagination. He bears a slight resemblance to Lucian, and a considerable one to Aristophanes. His reading is large, but always rendered subservient to ridicule; he is never serious in a single page, and seems to have had little other aim, in his first two volumes, than to pour out the exuberance of his animal gaiety. In the latter part of Pantagruel’s history, that is, the fourth and fifth books, one published in 1552, the other, after the author’s death, in 1561, a dislike to the church of Rome, which had been slightly perceived in the first volumes, is not at all disguised; but the vein of merriment becomes gradually less fertile, and weariness anticipates the close of a work which had long amused while it disgusted us. Allusions to particular characters are frequent, and, in general, transparent enough with the aid of a little information about contemporaneous history, in several parts of Rabelais; but much of what has been taken for political and religious satire cannot, as far as I perceive, be satisfactorily traced beyond the capricious imagination of the author. Those who have found Montluc, the famous bishop of Valence, in Panurge, or Antony of Bourbon, father of Henry IV., in Pantagruel, keep no measures with chronology. Panurge is so admirably conceived, that we may fairly reckon him original; but the germ of the character is in the gracioso, or clown, of the extemporaneous stage; the roguish, selfish, cowardly, cunning attendant, who became Panurge in the plastic hands of Rabelais, and Sancho in those of Cervantes. The French critics have not in general done justice to Rabelais, whose manner was not that of the age of Louis XIV. The Tale of a Tub appears to me by far the closest imitation of it, and to be conceived altogether in a kindred spirit; but in general those who have had reading enough to rival the copiousness of Rabelais have wanted his invention and humour, or the riotousness of his animal spirits.

SECT. IV.

_Struggle between Latin and Italian Languages--Italian and Spanish
polite Writers--Criticism in Italy--In France and England._

|Contest of Latin and Italian languages.|

50. Among the polished writers of Italy, we meet on every side the name of Bembo; great in Italian as well as in Latin literature, in prose as in verse. It is now the fourth time that it occurs to us; and in no instance has he merited more of his country. Since the fourteenth century, to repeat what has been said before, so absorbing had become the love of ancient learning, that the natural language, beautiful and copious as it really was, and polished as it had been under the hands of Boccaccio, seemed to a very false-judging pedantry scarce worthy of the higher kinds of composition. Those too who with enthusiastic diligence had acquired the power of writing Latin well, did not brook so much as the equality of their native language. In an oration delivered at Bologna in 1529 before the emperor and pope, by Romolo Amaseo, one of the good writers of the sixteenth century, he not only pronounced a panegyric upon the Latin tongue, but contended that the Italian should be reserved for shops and markets, and the conversation of the vulgar;[816] nor was this doctrine, probably in rather a less degree, uncommon during that age. A dialogue of Sperone relates to this debated question, whether the Latin or Italian language should be preferred; one of the interlocutors (probably Lazaro Buonamici, an eminent scholar) disdaining the latter as a mere corruption. It is a very ingenious performance, well conducted on both sides, and may be read with pleasure. The Italians of that age are as clever in criticism as they are wearisome on the commonplaces of ethics. It purports to have been written the year after the oration of Romolo Amaseo, to which it alludes.

[816] Tiraboschi, x. 389.

|Influence of Bembo in this.|

51. It is an evidence of the more liberal spirit that generally accompanies the greatest abilities, that Bembo, much superior to Amaseo in fame as a Latin writer, should have been among the first to retrieve the honour of his native language by infusing into it that elegance and selection of phrase which his taste had taught him in Latin, and for which the Italian is scarcely less adapted. In the dialogue of Sperone quoted above, it is said that “it was the general opinion no one would write Italian who could write Latin; a prejudice in some measure lightened by the poem of Politian on the tournament of Julian de’ Medici, but not taken away till Bembo, a Venetian gentleman, as learned in the ancient languages as Politian, showed that he did not disdain his maternal tongue.”[817]

[817] P. 430. (edit. 1596).

|Apology for Latinists.|

52. It is common in the present age to show as indiscriminating a disdain of those who wrote in Latin as they seem to have felt towards their own literature. But the taste and imagination of Bembo are not given to every one; and we must remember, in justice to such men as Amaseo, who, though they imitate well, are yet but imitators in style, that there was really scarce a book in Italian prose written with any elegance, except the Decamerone of Boccaccio; the manner of which, as Tiraboschi justly observes, however suitable to those sportive fictions, was not very well adapted to serious eloquence.[818] Nor has the Italian language, we may add, in its very best models, attained so much energy and condensation as will satisfy the ear or the understanding of a good Latin scholar; and there can be neither pedantry nor absurdity in saying, that it is an inferior organ of human thought. The most valid objection to the employment of Latin in public discourses or in moral treatises, is its exclusion of those whose advantage we are supposed to seek, and whose sympathy we ought to excite. But this objection, though not much less powerful in reality than at present, struck men less sensibly in that age, when long use of the ancient language, in which even the sermons of the clergy were frequently delivered, had taken away the sense of its impropriety.[819]

[818] x. 402.

[819] Sadolet himself had rather discouraged Bembo from writing Italian,
as appears from one of his epistles, thanking his friend for the
present of a book, perhaps Le Prose. Sed tu fortasse conjicis ex
eo, illa mihi non placere, quod te avocare solebam ab illis
literis. Faciebam ego id quidem, sed consilio, ut videbar, bono.
Cum enim in Latinis major multo inesset dignitas, tuque in ea
facultate princeps mihi longe viderere, non tam abstrahebam te
illinc, quam huc vocabam. Nec studium reprehendebam in illis tuum,
sed te majora quædam spectare debere arbitrabar. Epist. lib. ii. p.
55.

|Character of the controversy.|

53. This controversy points out some degree of change in public opinion, and the first stage of that struggle against the aristocracy of erudition, which lasted more or less for nearly two centuries, till, like other struggles of still more importance, it ended in the victory of the many. In the days of Poggio and Politian, the native Italian no more claimed an equality, than the plebeians of Rome demanded the consulship in the first years of the republic. These are the revolutions of human opinion, bearing some analogy and parallelism to those of civil society, which it is the business of an historian of literature to indicate.

|Life of Bembo.|

54. The life of Bembo was spent, after the loss of his great patron Leo X., in literary elegance at Padua. Here he formed an extensive library and collection of medals: and here he enjoyed the society of the learned, whom that university supplied, or who visited him from other parts of Italy and Europe. Far below Sadolet in the solid virtues of his character, and not probably his superior in learning, he has certainly left a greater name, and contributed more to the literary progress of his native country. He died at an advanced age in 1547; having a few years before obtained a cardinal’s hat on the recommendation of Sadolet.[820]

[820] Tiraboschi, ix. 296. Corniani, iv. 99. Sadolet. Epist. lib. xii.
p. 555.

|Character of Italian and Spanish style.|

55. The style of some other Italian and Spanish writers, Castiglione, Sperone, Machiavel, Guevara, Oliva, has been already adverted to when the subject of their writings was before us; and it would be tedious to dwell upon them again in this point of view. The Italians have been accustomed to associate almost every kind of excellence with the word cinquecento. They extol the elegant style and fine taste of those writers. But Andrès has remarked with no injustice, that if we find purity, correctness, and elegance of expression in the chief prose writers of this century, we cannot but also acknowledge an empty prolixity of periods, a harsh involution of words and clauses, a jejune and wearisome circuity of sentences, with a striking deficiency of thought. “Let us admit the graces of mere language in the famous authors of this period; but we must own them to be far from models of eloquence, so tedious and languid as they are.”[821] The Spanish writers of the same century, he says afterwards, nourished as well as the Italian with the milk of antiquity, transfused the spirit and vigour of these ancients into their own compositions, not with the servile imitation of the others, nor seeking to arrange their phrases and round their periods, the source of languor and emptiness, so that the best Spanish prose is more flowing and harmonious than the contemporary Italian.[822]

[821] Andrès, vii. 68.

[822] Id. 72.

|English writers.|

|More.|

|Ascham.|

56. The French do not claim, I believe, to have produced at the middle of the sixteenth century any prose writer of a polished or vigorous style, Calvin excepted, the dedication of whose Institutes to Francis I. is a model of purity and elegance for the age.[823] Sir Thomas More’s Life of Edward V., written about 1509, appears to me the first example of good English language; pure and perspicuous, well-chosen, without vulgarisms or pedantry.[824] His polemical tracts are inferior, but not ill-written. We have seen that Sir Thomas Elyot had some vigour of style. Ascham, whose Toxophilus, or dialogue on archery, came out in 1544, does not excel him. But his works have been reprinted in modern times, and are consequently better known than those of Elyot. The early English writers are seldom select enough in their phrases to bear such a critical judgment as the academicians of Italy were wont to exercise.

[823] Neufchâteau, Essai sur les Meilleurs Ouvrages dans la langue
Française, p. 135.

[8244] This has been reprinted entire in Holingshed’s Chronicle; and
the reader may find a long extract in the preface to Todd’s edition
of Johnson’s Dictionary. I should name the account of Jane Shore as
a model of elegant narration.

|Italian criticism.|

|Bembo.|

57. Next to the models of style, we may place those writings which, are designed to form them. In all sorts of criticism, whether it confines itself to the idioms of a single language, or rises to something like a general principle of taste, the Italian writers had a decided priority in order of time as well as of merit. We have already mentioned the earliest work, that of Fortunio, on Italian grammar. Liburnio, at Venice, in 1521, followed with his Volgari Eleganzie. But this was speedily eclipsed by a work of Bembo, published in 1525, with the rather singular title, Le Prose. These observations of the native language, commenced more than twenty years before, are written in dialogue, supposed to originate in the great controversy of that age, whether it were worthy of a man of letters to employ his mother-tongue instead of Latin. Bembo well defended the national cause; and by judicious criticism on the language itself, and the best writers in it, put an end to the most specious argument under which the advocates of Latin sheltered themselves,--that the Italian, being a mere congeries of independent dialects, varying not only in pronunciation and orthography, but in their words and idioms, and having been written with unbounded irregularity and constant adoption of vulgar phrases, could afford no certain test of grammatical purity or graceful ornament. It was thought necessary by Bembo to meet this objection by the choice of a single dialect; and though a Venetian, he had no hesitation to recognise the superiority of that spoken in Florence. The Tuscan writers of that century proudly make use of his testimony in aid of their pretensions to dictate the laws of Italian idiom. Varchi says, “The Italians cannot be sufficiently thankful to Bembo, for having not only purified their language from the rust of past ages, but given it such regularity and clearness, that it has become what we now see.” This early work, however, as might be expected, has not wholly escaped the censure of a school of subtle and fastidious critics, in whom Italy became fertile.[825]

[825] Ginguéné, vii. 390. Corniani, iv. 111.

58. Several other treatises on the Italian language appeared even before the middle of the century; though few comparatively with the more celebrated and elaborate labours of criticism in its latter portion. None seem to deserve mention, unless it be the Observations of Ludovico Dolce (Venice 1550), which were much improved in subsequent editions. Of the higher kind of criticism which endeavours to excite and guide our perceptions of literary excellence, we find few or no specimens, even in Italy, within this period, except so far as the dialogues of Bembo furnish instances.

|Grammarians and critics in France.|

59. France was not destitute of a few obscure treatises at this time, enough to lay the foundations of her critical literature. The complex rules of French metre were to be laid down; and the language was irregular in pronunciation, accent, and orthography. These meaner, but necessary, elements of correctness occupied three or four writers, of whom Goujet has made brief mention; Sylvius, or Du Bois, who seems to have been the earliest writer on grammar; Stephen Dolet, better known by his unfortunate fate, than by his essay on French punctuation;[826] and though Goujet does not name him, we may add an Englishman, Palsgrave, who published a French grammar in English as early as 1530.[827] An earlier production than any of these is the Art de Plaine Rhétorique, by Peter Fabry, 1521; in which, with the help of some knowledge of Cicero, he attempted, but with little correctness, and often in absurd expressions, to establish the principles of oratory. If his work is no better than Goujet represents it to be, its popularity must denote a low condition of literature in France.[828] The first who aspired to lay down anything like laws of taste in poetry, was Thomas Sibilet, whose Art Poétique appeared in 1548. This is in two books; the former relating to the metrical rules of French verse, the latter giving precepts, short and judicious, for different kinds of composition. It is not, however, a work of much importance.[829]

[826] Goujet, Bibliothèque Française, i. 42, 81.

[827] Biogr. Univ., Palsgrave.

[828] Goujet, i. 361.

[829] Goujet, iii. 92.

|Orthography of Meigret.|

60. A more remarkable grammarian of this time was Louis Meigret, who endeavoured to reform orthography by adapting it to pronunciation. In a language where these had come to differ so prodigiously as they did in French, something of this kind would be silently effected by the printers; but the bold scheme of Meigret went beyond their ideas of reformation; and he complains that he could not prevail to have his words given to the public in the form he preferred. They were ultimately less rigid; and the new orthography appears in some grammatical treatises of Meigret, published about 1550. It was not, as we know, very successful; but he has credit given him for some improvements which have been retained in French printing. Meigret’s French grammar, it has been said, is the first that contains any rational or proper principles of the language. It has been observed, I know not how correctly, that he was the first who denied the name of case to those modifications of sense in nouns which are not marked by inflexion; and the writer to whom I am indebted for this adds, what is more worth attention, that this limited meaning of the word case, which the modern grammars generally adopt, is rather an arbitrary deviation from their predecessors.[830]

[830] Biogr. Univ., Meigret, a good article. Goujet, i. 83.

|Cox’s Art of Rhetoric.|

61. It would have been strange, if we could exhibit a list of English writers on the subject of our language in the reign of Henry VIII., when it has, at all times, been the most neglected department of our literature. The English have ever been as indocile in acknowledging the rules of criticism, even those which determine the most ordinary questions of grammar, as the Italians and French have been voluntarily obedient. Nor had they as yet drunk deep enough of classical learning to discriminate, by any steady principle, the general beauties of composition. Yet among the scanty rivulets that the English press furnished, we find “The Art or Craft of Rhetoryke,” dedicated by Leonard Cox to Hugh Faringdon, abbot of Reading. This book, which, though now very scarce, was translated into Latin, and twice printed at Cracow in the year 1526,[831] is the work of a schoolmaster and man of reputed learning. The English edition has no date, but was probably published about 1524. Cox says: “I have partly translated out of a work of rhetoric written in the Latin tongue, and partly compiled of my own, and so made a little treatise in manner of an introduction into this aforesaid science, and that in the English tongue, remembering that every good thing, after the saying of the philosopher, the more common the better it is.” His Art of Rhetoric follows the usual distribution of the ancients, both as to the kinds of oration and their parts; with examples, chiefly from Roman history, to direct the choice of arguments. It is hard to say how much may be considered as his own. The book is in duodecimo, and contains but eighty-five pages; it would of course be unworthy of notice in a later period.

[831] Panzer.