Its character. 12. Bouterwek and Sismondi have given some account of this rather remarkable dramatic work. But they hardly do it justice, especially the former, who would lead the reader to expect something very anomalous and extravagant. It appears to me, that it is as regular and well-contrived as the old comedies generally were: the action is simple and uninterrupted; nor can it be reckoned very extraordinary, that what Bouterwek calls the unities of time and place should be transgressed, when for the next two centuries they were never observed. Calisto and Melibœa was at least deemed so original and important an accession to literature, that it was naturalised in several languages. A very early imitation, rather than version, in English, appears to have been printed in 1530.[539] A real translation, with the title Celestina (the name of a procuress who plays the chief part in the drama, and by which it has been frequently known), is mentioned by Herbert under the year 1598. And there is another translation, or second edition, in 1631, with the same title, from which all my acquaintance with this play is derived. Gaspar Barthius gave it in Latin, 1624, with the title, Pornobosco-didascalus.[540] It was extolled by some as a salutary exposition of the effects of vice—
Quo modo adolescentulæ
Lenarum ingenia et mores possent noscere,—
and condemned by others as too open a display of it. Bouterwek has rather exaggerated the indecency of this drama, which is much less offensive, unless softened in the translation, than in most of our old comedies. The style of the first author is said to be more elegant than that of his continuator; but this is not very apparent in the English version. The chief characters throughout are pretty well drawn, and there is a vein of humour in some of the comic parts.
[539] Dibdin’s Typographical Antiquities. Mr. Collier (Hist. of Dramatic Poetry, ii. 408) has given a short account of this production, which he says “is not long enough for play, and could only have been acted as an interlude.” It must therefore be very different from the original.
[540] Clement, Bibliothèque Curieuse. This translation is sometimes erroneously named Pornodidascalus; the title of a very different book.
Juan de la Enzina. 13. The first edition of the works of a Spanish poet, Juan de la Enzina, appeared in 1501, though they were probably written in the preceding century. Some of these are comedies, as one biographer calls them, or rather, perhaps, as Bouterwek expresses it, “sacred and profane eclogues, in the form of dialogues, represented before distinguished persons on festivals.” Enzina wrote also a treatise on Castilian poetry, which, according to Bouterwek, is but a short essay on the rules of metre.[541]
[541] Bouterwek, Biogr. Univ., art. Enzina. The latter praises this work of Enzina more highly, but whether from equal knowledge I cannot say. The dramatic compositions above mentioned are most scarce.
Arcadia of Sannazzaro. 14. The pastoral romance, as was before mentioned, began a little before this time in Portugal. An Italian writer of fine genius, Sannazzaro, adopted it in his Arcadia, of which the first edition was in 1502. Harmonious prose intermingled with graceful poetry, and with a fable just capable of keeping awake the attention, though it could never excite emotion, communicate a tone of pleasing sweetness to this volume. But we have been so much used to fictions of more passionate interest, that we hardly know how to accommodate ourselves to the mild languor of these early romances. A recent writer places the Arcadia at the head of Italian prose in that age. “With a less embarrassed construction,” he says, “than Boccaccio, and less of a servile mannerism than Bembo, the style of Sannazzaro is simple, flowing, rapid, harmonious; if it should seem now and then too florid and diffuse, this may be pardoned in a romance. It is to him, in short, rather than to Bembo, that we owe the revival of correctness and elegance in the Italian prose of the sixteenth century; and his style in the Arcadia would have been far more relished than that of the Asolani, if the originality of his poetry had not engrossed our attention.” He was the first who employed in any considerable degree the sdrucciolo verse, though it occurs before; but the difficulty of finding rhymes for it drives him frequently upon unauthorised phrases. He may also be reckoned the first who restored the polished style of Petrarch, which no writer of the fifteenth century had successfully emulated.[542]
[542] Salfi, Continuation de Ginguéné, x. 92. Corniani, iv. 12. Roscoe speaks of the Arcadia with less admiration, but perhaps more according to the feelings of the general reader. But I cannot altogether concur in his sweeping denunciation of poetical prose, “that hermaphrodite of literature.” In many styles of composition, and none more than such as the Arcadia, it may be read with delight, and without wounding a rational taste. The French language, which is not well adapted to poetry, would have lost some of its most imaginative passages, with which Buffon, St. Pierre, and others now living have enriched it, if a highly ornamented prose had been wholly proscribed; and we may say the same with equal truth of our own. It is another thing to condemn the peculiar style of poetry in writings that from their subject demand a very different tone.
Asolani of Bembo. 15. The Asolani of Peter Bembo, a dialogue, the scene of which is laid at Asola in the Venetian territory, were published in 1505. They are disquisitions on love, tedious enough to our present apprehension, but in a style so pure and polite, that they became the favourite reading among the superior ranks in Italy, where the coldness and pedantry of such dissertations were forgiven for their classical dignity and moral truth. The Asolani has been thought to make an epoch in Italian literature, though the Arcadia is certainly a more original and striking work of genius.