LESSER CONTEMPORARIES OF PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO
There is an infinite space between the three great men whose works we have just enumerated, and even the most esteemed of their contemporaries; and, though these latter have preserved, until the present day, a considerable reputation, yet we shall only pause to notice their existence, and the epoch to which they belong. Perhaps the most remarkable are the three Florentine historians of the name of Villani. Giovanni, the eldest, who died in the first plague, in 1348; Matteo, his brother, who died in the second plague, in 1361; and Filippo, the son of Matteo, who continued the work of his father to the year 1364, and who wrote a history of the literature of Florence, the first attempt of this kind in modern times. Two poets of this age shared with Petrarch the honours of a poetic coronation: Zanobi di Strada, whom the emperor Charles IV crowned at Pisa in 1355, with great pomp, but whose verses have not reached us; and Coluccio Salutati, secretary of the Florentine Republic, one of the purest Latinists, and most eloquent statesmen whom Italy in that age produced. The latter, indeed, did not live to enjoy the honour which had been accorded him by the emperor, at the request of the Florentines. Coluccio died in 1406, at the age of seventy-six, before the day appointed for his coronation, and the symbol of glory was deposited on his tomb; as, at a subsequent period, a far more illustrious crown was placed on the tomb of Tasso.
Of the prose writers of Tuscany, Franco Sacchetti, born at Florence about the year 1335, and who died before the end of the century, after filling some of the first offices in the republic, approaches the nearest to Boccaccio. He imitated Boccaccio in his novels, and Petrarch in his lyric poems; but the latter were never printed, while of his tales there have been several editions. Whatever praise be due to the purity and eloquence of his style, we find his pages more valuable as a history of the manners of the age, than attractive for their powers of amusement, even when the author thinks himself most successful. His 258 tales consist, almost entirely, of the incidents of his own time, and of his own neighbourhood; domestic anecdotes, which in general contain little humour; tricks, exhibiting little skill, and jests of little point; and we are often surprised to find a professed jester vanquished by the smart reply of a child or a clown, which scarcely deserves our attention. After reading these tales, we cannot help concluding that the art of conversation had not made, in the fourteenth century, an equal progress with the other arts; and that the great men, to whom we owe so many excellent works, were not so entertaining in the social intercourse of life as many persons greatly their inferiors in merit.
Two poets of this time, of some celebrity, chose Dante for their model, and composed after him in terza rima, long allegories, partly descriptive, partly scientific. Fazio de’ Uberti, in his Dettamondo, undertook the description of the universe, of which the different parts, personified in turns, relate their history. Federigo Frezzi, bishop of Foligno, who died in 1416, at the Council of Constance, has, in his Quadriregio, described the four empires of Love, Satan, Virtue, and Vice. In both of these poets we meet, occasionally, with lines not unworthy of Dante; but they formed a very false estimate of the works of genius, when they regarded the Divina Commedia not as an individual poem, but as a species of poetry which anyone might attempt.
The passionate study of the ancients, of which Petrarch and Boccaccio had given an example, suspended, in an extraordinary manner, the progress of Italian literature, and retarded the perfection of that tongue. Italy, after having produced her three leading classics, sank, for a century, into inaction. In this period, indeed, erudition made wonderful progress; and knowledge became much more general, but sterile in its effects. The mind had preserved all its activity, and literary fame all its splendour; but the unintermitted study of the ancients had precluded all originality in the authors. Instead of perfecting a new language, and enriching it with works in unison with modern manners and ideas, they confined themselves to a servile copy of the ancients. A too scrupulous imitation thus destroyed the spirit of invention; and the most eminent scholars may be said to have produced, in their eloquent writings, little more than college themes. In proportion as a man was qualified by his rank, or by his talents, to acquire a name in literature, he blushed to cultivate his mother-tongue. He almost, indeed, forced himself to forget it, to avoid the danger of corrupting his Latin style; and the common people thus remained the only depositaries of a language which had exhibited so brilliant a dawn, and which had now again almost relapsed into barbarism.[e]