Dictionary Della Crusca. 8. The Italian language itself, grammatically considered, was still assiduously cultivated. The Academicians of Florence published the first edition of their celebrated Vocabolario della Crusca, in 1613. It was avowedly founded on Tuscan principles, setting up the fourteenth century as the Augustan period of the language, which they disdained to call Italian; and though not absolutely excluding the great writers of the sixteenth age whom Tuscany had not produced, giving in general a manifest preference to their own. Italy has rebelled against this tyranny of Florence, as she did, in the Social War, against that of Rome. Her Lombard, and Romagnol, and Neapolitan writers, have claimed the rights of equal citizenship, and fairly won them in the field of literature. The Vocabulary itself was not received as a legislative code. Beni assailed it by his Anti-Crusca the same year; many invidiously published marginal notes to point out the inaccuracies; and in the frequent revisions and enlargements of this dictionary, the exclusive character it affected has, I believe, been nearly lost.
Grammatical works.—Buonmattei Bartoli. 9. Buonmattei, himself a Florentine, was the first who completed an extensive and methodical grammar, “developing,” says Tiraboschi, “the whole economy and system of our language.” It was published entire, after some previous impressions of parts, with the title, Della Lingua Toscana, in 1643. This has been reckoned a standard work, both for its authority, and for the clearness, precision, and elegance with which it is written; but it betrays something of an academical and Florentine spirit in the rigour of its grammatical criticism.[561] Bartoli, a Ferrarese Jesuit, and a man of extensive learning, attacked that dogmatic school, who were accustomed to proscribe common phrases with a Non si può (It cannot be used), in a treatise entitled Il torto ed il diritto del Non si può. His object was to justify many expressions thus authoritatively condemned, by the examples of the best writers. This book was a little later than the middle of the century.[562]
[561] Tiraboschi, xi., 409. Salfi, xiii., 398.
[562] Corniani, vii., 259. Salfi, xiii., 417.
Tassoni’s remarks on Petrarch. 10. Petrarch had been the idol, in general, of the preceding age; and above all, he was the peculiar divinity of the Florentines. But this seventeenth century was in the productions of the mind a period of revolutionary innovation; men dared to ask why, as well as what, they ought to worship; and sometimes the same who rebelled against Aristotle, as an infallible guide, were equally contumacious in dealing with the great names of literature. Tassoni published in 1609 his Observations on the Poems of Petrarch. They are not written, as we should now think, adversely to one whom he professes to honour above all lyric poets in the world, and though his critical remarks are somewhat minute, they seem hardly unfair. A writer like Petrarch, whose fame has been raised so high by his style, is surely amenable to this severity of examination. The finest sonnets Tassoni generally extols, but gives a preference, on the whole, to the odes; which, even if an erroneous judgment, cannot be called unfair upon the author of both.[563] He produces many parallel passages from the Latin poems of Petrarch himself, as well as from the ancients and from the earlier Italians and Provençals. The manner of Tassoni is often humorous, original, intrepid, satirical on his own times; he was a man of real taste, and no servile worshipper of names.
[563] Tutte le rime, tutti i versi in generale del Petrarca lo fecero poeta; ma le canzoni, per quanto a mi ne pare, furono quelle, che poeta grande e famoso lo fecero, p. 46.
Galileo’s remarks on Tasso. 11. Galileo was less just in his observations upon Tasso. They are written with severity and sometimes an insulting tone towards the great poet, passing over generally the most beautiful verses, though he sometimes bestows praise. The object is to point out the imitations of Tasso from Ariosto, and his general inferiority. |Sforza Pallavicino.| The Observations on the Art of Writing by Sforza Pallavicino, the historian of the council of Trent, published at Rome, 1646, is a work of general criticism containing many good remarks. What he says of imitation is worthy of being compared with Hurd; though he will be found not to have analysed the subject with anything like so much acuteness, nor was this to be expected in his age. Pallavicino has an ingenious remark, that elegance of style is produced by short metaphors, or metaforette as he calls them, which give us a more lively apprehension of an object than its proper name. This seems to mean only single words in a figurative sense, as opposed to phrases of the same kind. He writes in a pleasing manner, and is an accomplished critic without pedantry. Salfi has given rather a long analysis of this treatise.[564] The same writer, treading in the steps of Corniani has extolled some Italian critics of this period, whose writings I have never seen; |And other critical writers.| Beni, author of a prolix commentary in Latin on the poetics of Aristotle; Peregrino, not inferior, perhaps, to Pallavicino, though less known, whose theories are just and deep, but not expressed with sufficient perspicuity; and Fioretti, who assumed the fictitious name of Udeno Nisieli, and presided over an academy at Florence denominated the Apatisti. The Progymnasmi Poetici of this writer, if we may believe Salfi, ascend to that higher theory of criticism which deduces its rules, not from precedents or arbitrary laws, but from the nature of the human mind, and has, in modern times, been distinguished by the name of æsthetic.[565]
[564] Vol. xiii., p. 440.
[565] Corniani, vii., 156; Salfi, xiii., 426.
Prolusiones of Strada. 12. In the same class of polite letters as these Italian writings, we may place the Prolusiones Academicæ of Famianus Strada. They are agreeably written, and bespeak a cultivated taste. The best is the sixth of the second book, containing the imitations of six Latin poets, which Addison has made well known (as I hope) to every reader in the 115th and 119th numbers of the Guardian. It is here that all may judge of this happy and graceful fiction; but those who have read the Latin imitations themselves, will perceive that Strada has often caught the tone of the ancients with considerable felicity. Lucan and Ovid are, perhaps, best counterfeited, Virgil not quite so well, and Lucretius worst of the six. The other two are Statius and Claudian.[566] In almost every instance the subject chosen is appropriated to the characteristic peculiarities of the poet.