A Manual of Italian Literature

by Francis Henry Cliffe

The Jesuit Tiraboschi produced a voluminous History of Literature and his work has both judgement and research to give it permanent value.

The humanitarian tendencies of the Eighteenth Century found an eloquent exponent in the Marquis Beccaria, a native of Milan. From a youth he was inclined to the study of Philosophy, and he was much influenced in his intellectual development by the contemporary French writers, especially by Montesquieu. The first work with which he appeared before the public was a pamphlet on the state of the Currency. In conjunction with some friends, he published a journal called Il Caffé which advocated the humane and enlightened principles to which he was devoted. But the great work by which he is remembered is the treatise Dei Delitti e delle Pene, published in 1764. In this book he ventured to proclaim the doctrine that the penalty should not exceed the offence. Barbarous sentences were passed in that age, not only in Italy, but all over the world, for misdemeanours which do not call for greater rigour than a few months' imprisonment. Criminals were broken on the wheel, prisoners were tortured on the rack. All these frightful abuses were attacked by Beccaria with the eloquence of burning indignation, and he had the satisfaction of finding an abundant harvest follow the sowing of the seed. Torture was abolished in France shortly after the accession of Louis XVI, and even in the worst excesses of the Reign of Terror nobody dared to suggest its revival. Many judicial murders were committed, but none of the victims were tortured. It is frightful to think what atrocities might have been perpetrated if that odious and irrational practice had still been in force. Beccaria died in 1793.

Gaetano Filangieri resembled Beccaria in his ambition to improve the laws, and his great work, La Scienza della Legislazione, obtained an immense reputation for its author. He was the scion of a noble Neapolitan family, and the Minister Tannucci showed some inclination to carry out his ideas. But he died when he was only thirty-six in 1788. Perhaps he was fortunate in not living to see the evil times in store for his country.

Francesco Algarotti may be described as a sort of diluted Bettinelli, but he had the merit of introducing Foreign writers to the Italian public and of spreading the knowledge of Italian in Foreign countries. Frederick the Great, who took delight in patronising the literature of every nation except his own, received Algarotti hospitably at Potsdam and conferred upon him the title of Count. He was a most fertile writer and he took pleasure, not only in literary criticism, but also in scientific investigation, and he was the first to make the discoveries of Newton familiar in the Peninsula. His poems make but a faint impression upon the modern reader, but they were such as the age of Frugoni admired. In character he was discreet and amiable, hence his personal popularity. His health gradually failed him and he died of consumption at Pisa, in 1764, at the age of 51. Frederick the Great had a handsome monument erected to his memory.

Antonio Cocchi was a fertile writer on scientific and miscellaneous subjects, but it is the melancholy fate of scientific writers to be superseded by their successors, however well they may have written. He was born in 1695, and died in 1758.

Girolamo Tagliazucchi was Professor of Greek at the University of Turin, and did much to spread the study of good literature.

Giovenale Sacchi, a Barnabite Monk, wrote books on music, dancing, and poetry in a style of great purity and elegance. He was, however, charged by the more austere spirits of his Order with devoting his attention to subjects too frivolous and profane, and he had to endure many persecutions. He died in 1789.

Antonio Cesari, a Priest of the Oratory, was born at Verona on the sixteenth of January, 1760. He was an ardent admirer of the prose writers of the Fourteenth Century, and it was his constant endeavour to purify the Italian language from the Frenchified idioms it had contracted in his day. Unlike Bettinelli, he was a devoted adherent of Dante, and he wrote a book to point out his beauties, but he dwells more upon the merits of the poet's style than upon the grandeur of his conceptions. Cesari was a good translator, and he was particularly successful in his rendering of the Comedies of Terence. In all his works we find a deep and fervent spirit of patriotism, a fore-runner of the wave of independence and devotion to their fatherland that swept over the Italians of the Century that must now engage our attention.