C.
Florence, 5th February 1843.
My dear Friend,
Let me add my thanks to the rest of the world for the mental enjoyment afforded by your Beatrice. My share is the greater for the handsome and honourable mention you make of me. I am proud of your approbation and good opinion, and am doubly grateful for the rank in your esteem which you have so generously bestowed on me. The book has met with unusual success here. It has converted many. Whether the name has attracted the public, or the compactness has excited the idle, or the cheapness the economic, or all together, I know not, but it has been much read and admired. Italians and Tramontani are all full of it. I think in general they are grateful for the light; although it destroys a romantic illusion, which has been much cherished, especially on this spot, but which they cannot now entertain, except at the expense of adhering to an absurdity, or rather many absurdities. Some, however, are too far committed, and have too much vanity to acknowledge themselves wrong—the vulgar and the selfish in particular.
For my own part, I have found the Ragionamento in part a renewal and condensation of what I had already learned from your former works, divided and spread through them. In this first Ragionamento you have not given the demonstration (I suppose it will follow in a succeeding one) of Boccaccio’s fault respecting May-Day, which is so complete and curious in the Misteri Platonici....
The most important of your decisions is confirmed and strengthened in this volume: I mean your identification of Beatrice and Filosofia. Your three reasons at the top of p. 20 are new and unanswerable. How completely Dante blindfolds the superficial reader (which I was, till you taught me to fathom him) by making one believe that the lady at the window was mundane philosophy, and that Beatrice, or Divine Science, reproaches Dante in Purgatory for having yielded to her attractions for a short time....
I am so engrossed by your work that I am carried away and not answering your very kind and most friendly letter. A thousand thanks for it. I know how your time is filled, and have always wondered how you can get through all. I fear even writing you, but you desired me to send you all I think of Beatrice. My letter would be long indeed if I touched on all its beauties: I should copy the book. There are many additional discoveries in the weaving of this mystic web which the book is rich in. You still surprise those whom you have already convinced. You are certainly an extraordinary Unraveller—a Disentangler—and I will say that, notwithstanding the dry task of unpicking knots, tight-drawn on purpose to resist skill and force, you have performed it with a skill and elegance that render it exciting and delightful to follow.
You desire all my “opposizioni.” Lord help me! Can I find an error or two of the press?...
I am longing for the next Ragionamento; I don’t know if others want much more to convince them, but in general the first part seems to have had that effect.
Mr Lyell judges me, as you do, too partially. All I have learned I owe to you; and I confess to you that I have often found it difficult, even with your powerful help, to remove the substantial screen which Dante has built up purposely to conceal and protect his secret. But, when I think of you, who have, alone and single-handed, knocked over so many formidable barriers, and shown us the gardens and roses, the groves, the apples, the laurels, the olives, the flowers, the stags, and all the magic machinery of secret romance, I am lost in thinking how you found your way in such a labyrinth, and what immense and curious courses of reading you must have gone through, turning all you obtained to the accomplishing your will and determination to penetrate an untrod region, without a track or vestige to guide you. I wish I had the ability to write a description of your Misteri. Perhaps I could be of use in lending a hand merely, as I have studied them much; but my tools are paint-brushes, and I am not practised in the art of writing. My education has been too defective for me ever to have ventured in print. A weak defender is more dangerous than a strong opponent, and all I could hope would be perhaps to hit on some thought that might have escaped others; but without some help from the third heaven (which a good friend of mine knows of) I should not be able to clothe it so as to render it decent.
I observe what you say on the subject of necessary reserve on certain subjects. You are quite right. You cannot be too careful in your situation and with your family. From your letter I see that your opinions are nearer mine than I supposed. But, as I am living out of the world and am perfectly free from it, I can safely be as explicit as I please. I have no reserve, and, if ever the cause require a word beyond the customary and necessary limits, call upon me to say it, or say anything for me against priestcraft and kingcraft. That is my religion.
I don’t wonder at Mr Lyell’s exultation at your Beatrice. There are some master-touches amongst the new proofs, both in matter and manner, both close reasoning and light....
The three pomegranates in Giotto’s fresco are so uncertain in their appearance, from injury and time, that I was doubtful about them, but a word from you decides the question in my mind. They are chipped and much obliterated; and, from their seeming a sort of double outline, and no shade or colour but the yellow drapery on which they are painted, I took them for an embroidery on the breast of the Barone. Some remains of fingers and stalk, however, had led the Florentines to consider them as melograni, and they were puzzling their brains to find a meaning....
Your whole-length portrait of yourself is full of nature and character, and therefore it must be very like: I thank you for it. And here is mine:—a little thin old man, 54, formerly dark, now very grey. Fond of fun, but not often tempted to indulge in it, and seldom depressed. Living alone in an old tower with two dogs only—a servant coming daily for a few hours. Disliking much to go into company, and especially to dress in cold weather, being slovenly even in my younger days. I live very temperately and never take wine. I am very active, more from lightness than strength, for I feel the effects of years and illness. Just now I boast, for I have had extraordinary health this autumn and winter. I paint a little, and read a good deal. I ought to do more in both, with opportunities and perfect liberty, but I am slow and stupid. My memory, too, is weaker than it was.
Lord Vernon has twice desired me to present his best compliments and remembrances to you. He hopes you have received his book (through Molini). There is an outline in it from my tracing of Dante’s head, and, though it is not very correct, it is the best yet done....
When will your new edition of Iddio e l’Uomo come out? I admired it much in its former state. Forgive the length of this letter, and remember me to Eastlake and Keightley.
Believe me, with sincere affection,
Your faithful friend,
Seymour Kirkup.
No. 4.—Letters (or Extracts from Letters) from Giuseppe Mazzini—Eleven to Rossetti, and one to another Correspondent
The following are the only letters from Mazzini that remain among my father’s papers—except some other three or four, too trifling to be printed. The originals are naturally in Italian; the translation is mine. Letters A. and B. relate to a certain Galassi and Vantini, whom I do not remember, but the letters explain themselves well enough. Mention is also made of a “little book” by my father, which was Rome towards the Middle of the Nineteenth Century. Letters C, D, and E, refer to a school which was got up in London, by some leading resident Italians interested in the lot of their fellow-countrymen, for the instruction of the poorer and hitherto much neglected members of the colony—organ-grinders, plaster-cast vendors, models, waiters, journeymen, etc. The ice-cream purveyor did not exist at that remote date. This school, held in the Hatton Garden quarter, went on for some few years, dignified by the countenance of Mazzini, and greatly indebted to the practical work of (among others) Filippo Pistrucci, who was a painter, teacher, writer, and improvisatore, brother of the celebrated medallist. Rossetti of course concurred, but without taking any very active part. Letters F, G, and H, refer mainly to a MS. which my father wished to send to Paris—being, I take it, the selection of his poems, many of them youthful, which were published at Lausanne, under the title Versi. There is also some mention of the Conte Giuseppe Ricciardi, named on p. 91 of the present book. He belonged to the Mazzinian sect, but sometimes kicked against the traces, and one can see in the correspondence that the great chief found him on occasion a little exacting and tenacious. Letter I has reference to a fête which Signor Giovanni Antonio Delavo, who had erected a villa on the site of the Battle of Marengo, got up on the anniversary of the conflict. He had induced my father to write a poem for that commemoration; and Mazzini, it seems, was invited to obtain the insertion, in some English newspaper, of the poem, or of some other writing connected with the occurrence. In this letter, and in the following one (J), the observations about political events deserve notice. The final letter (K) seems to belong to a late date in 1848, and to imply that various Italians, including Mazzini himself, had addressed the Swiss Diet in consequence of some complications arising out of the Italian military reverses, in conflict with the Austrians, towards the close of that memorable year of unmeasured hopes and cruel disappointments.
A few notes of my own on minor points are appended to the correspondence.
Besides the eleven letters to my father, I give one letter, of far larger purport, which is quite unconnected with my family. It was lately purchased by a daughter of mine, simply as an autograph. On the purport of this document I need not enlarge, as it speaks for itself. It stands numbered at the close “15” in Mazzini’s handwriting, and would seem therefore to be one missive in a sustained correspondence. The recipient (or some one) has written upon it in Italian, “Letter from Giuseppe Mazzini”; moreover, the peculiar handwriting is quite unmistakable. It bears no date, and, for reasons readily surmisable, no postmark. In the course of the letter the addressee is spoken of as “My Corso”: I presume, therefore, that his surname may have been Corso, but this might also be a Christian name, or might merely mean “Corsican.” A name is written by Mazzini on the back of the letter; it has been partly inked over, and looks to me more like “Mr Clare” than anything else.
The letter shows that the addressee had some relations with Vincenzo Gioberti, the celebrated Churchman and Minister of State, whose leading work, Il Primato d’Italia, was published in 1845. Perhaps 1846 or thereabouts may be the date of the letter. It mentions Tommaseo, a multifarious man of letters, whom English people may remember as having written the inscription on Casa Guidi, Florence, for Mrs Browning; Buonarroti, a member of the house of the great Michelangelo; and Bozzelli, the Liberal politician in Naples, who came to precarious power in 1848. My father has mentioned him on p. 98. Libri appears to be the Librarian of that name, settled in Paris, who succumbed under a charge of serious frauds. The names of Malmusi and Bianco are not recognized by me.