Opposition to him. 51. The practical lawyers, whose prejudices were nourished by their interests, conspired with the professors of the old school to clamour against the introduction of literature into jurisprudence. Alciati was driven sometimes from one university to another by their opposition; but more frequently his restless disposition and his notorious desire of gain were the causes of his migrations. They were the means of diffusing a more liberal course of studies in France as well as Italy, and especially in the great legal university of Bourges. He stood not however alone in scattering the flowers of polite literature over the thorny brakes of jurisprudence. |Agustino.| An eminent Spaniard, Antonio Agustino, might perhaps be placed almost on a level with him. The first work of Agustino, Emendationes Juris Civilis, was published in 1544. Andrès, seldom deficient in praising his compatriots, pronounces such an eulogy on the writings of Agustino, as to find no one but Cujacius worthy of being accounted his equal, if indeed he does not give the preference in genius and learning to the older writer.[765] Gravina is less diffusely panegyrical; and in fact it is certain that Agustino, though a lawyer of great erudition and intelligence, has been eclipsed by those for whom he prepared the way.
[765] Vol. xvi. p. 148.
CHAPTER VIII.
HISTORY OF THE LITERATURE OF TASTE IN EUROPE FROM 1520 TO 1550.
Sect. I. 1520-1550.
Poetry in Italy—In Spain and Portugal—In France and Germany—In England—Wyatt and Surrey—Latin Poetry.
Poetry of Bembo. 1. The singular grace of Ariosto’s poem had not less distinguished it than his fertility of invention and brilliancy of language. For the Italian poetry, since the days of Petrarch, with the exception of Lorenzo and Politian, the boasts of Florence, had been very deficient in elegance; the sonnets and odes of the fifteenth century, even those written near its close, by Tibaldeo, Serafino d’Aquila, Benivieni, and other now obscure names, though the list of poets in Crescimbeni will be found very long, are hardly mentioned by the generality of critics but for the purpose of censure; while Boiardo, who deserved most praise for bold and happy inventions, lost much of it through an unpolished and inharmonious style. In the succeeding period, the faults of the Italian school were entirely opposite; in Bembo, and those who, by their studious and servile imitation of one great master, were called Petrarchists, there was an elaborate sweetness, a fastidious delicacy, a harmony of sound, which frequently served as an excuse for coldness of imagination and poverty of thought. “As the too careful imitation of Cicero,” says Tiraboschi, “caused Bembo to fall into an affected elegance in his Latin style, so in his Italian poetry, while he labours to restore the manner of Petrarch, he displays more of art than of natural genius. Yet, by banishing the rudeness of former poetry, and pointing out the right path, he was of no small advantage to those who knew how to imitate his excellencies and avoid his faults.”[766]
[766] Vol. x. p. 3.
Its beauties and defects. 2. The chief care of Bembo was to avoid the unpolished lines which deformed the poetry of the fifteenth century in the eyes of one so exquisitely sensible to the charms of diction. It is from him that the historians of Italian literature date the revival of the Petrarchan elegance; of which a foreigner, unless conversant with the language in all its varieties, can hardly judge, though he may perceive the want of original conception, and the monotony of conventional phrases, which is too frequently characteristic of the Italian sonnet. Yet the sonnets of Bembo on the death of his Morosina, the mother of his children, display a real tenderness not unworthy of his master; and the canzone on that of his brother has obtained not less renown; though Tassoni, a very fastidious critic, has ridiculed its centonism, or studious incorporation of lines from Petrarch; a practice which the habit of writing Latin poetry, wherein it should be sparingly employed, but not wholly avoided, would naturally encourage.[767]
[767] Tiraboschi, ibid. Corniani, iv. 102.