[556] Salfi, xiv., 11.
Style of Galileo. 3. It will not be expected that we can mention many Italian books, after what has been said, which come very precisely within the class of polite literature, or claim any praise on the ground of style. Their greatest luminary, Galileo, wrote with clearness, elegance, and spirit; no one among the moderns had so entirely rejected a dry and technical manner of teaching, and thrown such attractions round the form of truth. Himself a poet and a critic, he did not hesitate to ascribe his own philosophical perspicuity to the constant perusal of Ariosto. This I have mentioned in another place; but we cannot too much remember that all objects of intellectual pursuit are as bodies acting with reciprocal forces in one system, being all in relation to the faculties of the mind, which is itself but one; and that the most extensive acquaintance with the various provinces of literature will not fail to strengthen our dominion over those we more peculiarly deem our own. The school of Galileo, especially Torricelli and Redi, were not less distinguished than himself for their union of elegance with philosophy.[557]
[557] Salfi, xiv., 12.
Bentivoglio. 4. The letters of Bentivoglio are commonly known. This epistolary art was always cultivated by the Italians, first in the Latin tongue, and afterwards in their own. Bentivoglio has written with equal dignity and ease. Galileo’s letters are also esteemed on account of their style as well as of what they contain. In what is more peculiarly called eloquence, the Italians of this age are rather emulous of success than successful; the common defects of taste in themselves, and in those who heard or read them, as well as, in most instances, the uninteresting nature of their subjects exclude them from our notice.
Boccalini’s News from Parnassus. 5. Trajan Boccalini was by his disposition inclined to political satire, and possibly to political intrigue; but we have here only to mention the work by which he is best known, Advices from Parnassus (Ragguagli di Parnaso). If the idea of this once popular and celebrated book is not original, which I should rather doubt, though without immediately recognising a similarity to anything earlier (Lucian, the common prototype, excepted), it has at least been an original source. In the general turn of Boccalini’s fictions, and perhaps in a few particular inventions, we may sometimes perceive what a much greater man has imitated; they bear a certain resemblance to those of Addison, though the vast superiority of the latter in felicity of execution and variety of invention may almost conceal it. The Ragguagli are a series of despatches from the court of Apollo on Parnassus, where he is surrounded by eminent men of all ages. This fiction becomes in itself very cold and monotonous; yet there is much variety in the subjects of the decisions made by the god, with the advice of his counsellors, and some strokes of satire are well hit, though more perhaps fail of effect. But we cannot now catch the force of every passage. Boccalini is full of allusions to his own time, even where the immediate subject seems ancient. This book was published at Venice in 1612; at a time when the ambition of Spain was regarded with jealousy by patriotic Italians, who thought that pacific republic their bulwark and their glory. He inveighs, therefore, against the military spirit and the profession of war, “necessary sometimes, but so fierce and inhuman that no fine expressions can make it honourable.”[558] Nor is he less severe on the vices of kings, nor less ardent in his eulogies of liberty; the government of Venice, being reckoned, and not altogether untruly, an asylum of free-thought and action, in comparison with that of Spain. Aristotle, he reports in one of his despatches, was besieged in his villa on Parnassus by a number of armed men belonging to different princes, who insisted on his retracting the definition he had given of a tyrant, that he was one who governed for his own good and not that of the people, because it would apply to every prince, all reigning for their own good. The philosopher, alarmed by this demand, altered his definition; which was to run thus, that tyrants were certain persons of old time, whose race was now quite extinct.[559] Boccalini, however, takes care, in general, to mix something of playfulness with his satire, so that it could not be resented without apparent ill-nature. It seems, indeed, to us free from invective, and rather meant to sting than to wound. But this, if a common rumour be true, did not secure him against a beating of which he died. The style of Boccalini is said by the critics to be clear and fluent, rather than correct or elegant; and he displays the taste of his times by extravagant metaphors. But to foreigners, who regard this less, his News from Parnassus, unequal, of course, and occasionally tedious, must appear to contain many ingenious allusions, judicious criticisms, and acute remarks.
[558] Ragg, 75.
[559] Ragg, 76.
His Pietra del Paragone. 6. The Pietra del Paragone by the same author is an odd, and rather awkward mixture of reality and fiction, all levelled at the court of Spain, and designed to keep alive a jealousy of its ambition. It is a kind of episode or supplement to the Ragguagli di Parnaso, the leading invention being preserved. Boccalini is an interesting writer on account of the light he throws on the history and sentiments of Italy. He is in this work a still bolder writer than in the former; not only censuring Spain without mercy, but even the Venetian aristocracy, observing upon the insolence of the young nobles towards the citizens, though he justifies the senate for not punishing the former more frequently with death by public execution, which would lower the nobility in the eyes of the people. They were, however, he says, as severely punished, when their conduct was bad, by exclusion from offices of trust. The Pietra del Paragone is a kind of political, as the Ragguagli is a critical miscellany.
Ferrante Pallavicino. 7. About twenty years after Boccalini, a young man appeared, by name Ferrante Pallavicino, who, with a fame more local and transitory, with less respectability of character, and probably with inferior talents, trod to a certain degree in his steps. As Spain had been the object of satire to the one, so was Rome to the other. Urban VIII., an ambitious pontiff, and vulnerable in several respects, was attacked by an imprudent and self-confident enemy, safe, as he imagined, under the shield of Venice. But Pallavicino, having been trepanned into the power of the pope, lost his head at Avignon. None of his writings have fallen in my way; that most celebrated at the time, and not wholly dissimilar in the conception to the News from Parnassus, was entitled The Courier robbed; a series of imaginary letters which such a fiction gave him a pretext for bringing together. Perhaps we may consider Pallavicino as rather a counterpart to Jordano Bruno, in the satirical character of the latter, than to Boccalini.[560]
[560] Corniani, viii., 205. Salfi, xiv., 46.