Filicaja. 2. Florence was the mother of one who did most to invigorate Italian poetry, Vincenzo Filicaja; a man gifted with a serious, pure, and noble spirit, from which congenial thoughts spontaneously arose, and with an imagination rather vigorous than fertile. The siege of Vienna in 1683, and its glorious deliverance by Sobieski, are the subjects of six odes. The third of these, addressed to the king of Poland himself, is generally most esteemed, though I do not perceive that the first or second are inferior. His ode to Rome, on Christina’s taking up her residence there, is in many parts highly poetical; but the flattery of representing this event as sufficient to restore the eternal city from decay is too gross. It is not on the whole so successful as those on the siege of Vienna. A better is that addressed to Florence on leaving her for a rural solitude, in consequence of his poverty and the neglect he had experienced. It breathes an injured spirit, something like the complaint of Cowley, with which posterity are sure to sympathize. The sonnet of Filicaja, “Italia mia,” is known by every one who cares for this poetry at all. This sonnet is conspicuous for its depth of feeling, for the spirit of its commencement, and above all, for the noble lines with which it ends; but there are surely awkward and feeble expressions in the intermediate part. Armenti for regiments of dragoons could only be excused by frequent usage in poetry, which, I presume, is not the case, though we find the same word in one of Filicaja’s odes. A foreigner may venture upon this kind of criticism.
3. Filicaja was formed in the school of Chiabrera; but, with his pomp of sound and boldness of imagery, he is animated by a deeper sense both of religion and patriotism. We perceive more the language of the heart; the man speaks in his genuine character, not with assumed and mercenary sensibility, like that of Pindar and Chiabrera. His genius is greater than his skill; he abandons himself to an impetuosity which he cannot sustain, forgetful of the economy of strength and breath, as necessary for a poet as a race-horse. He has rarely or never any conceits or frivolous thoughts; but the expression is sometimes rather feeble. There is a general want of sunshine in Filicaja’s poetry; unprosperous himself, he views nothing with a worldly eye; his notes of triumph are without brilliancy, his predictions of success are without joy. He seems also deficient in the charms of grace and felicity. But his poetry is always the effusion of a fine soul; we venerate and love Filicaja as a man, but we also acknowledge that he was a real poet.
Guidi. 4. Guidi, a native of Pavia, raised himself to the highest point that any lyric poet of Italy has attained. His odes are written at Rome, from about the year 1685 to the end of the century. Compared with Chiabrera or even Filicaja, he may be allowed the superiority; if he never rises to a higher pitch than the latter, if he has never chosen subjects so animating, if he has never displayed so much depth and truth of feeling, his enthusiasm is more constant, his imagination more creative, his power of language more extensive and more felicitous. “He falls sometimes,” says Corniani, “into extravagance, but never into affectation.... His peculiar excellence is poetical expression, always brilliant with a light of his own. The magic of his language used to excite a lively movement among the hearers when he recited his verses in the Arcadian society.” Corniani adds, that he is sometimes exuberant in words and hyperbolical in images.[973]
[973] Vol. viii., p. 224.
5. The ode of Guidi on Fortune, appears to me, at least, equal to any in the Italian language. If it has been suggested by that of Celio Magno, entitled Iddio, the resemblance does not deserve the name of imitation; a nobleness of thought, imagery, and language, prevails throughout. But this is the character of all his odes. He chose better subjects than Chiabrera; for the ruins of Rome are more glorious than the living house of Medici. He resembles him, indeed, rather than any other poet, so that it might not always be easy to discern one from the other in a single stanza; but Guidi is a bolder, a more imaginative, a more enthusiastic poet. Both adorn and amplify a little to excess; and it may be imputed to Guidi that he has abused an advantage which his native language afforded. The Italian is rich in words, where the sound so well answers to the meaning, that it is hardly possible to hear them without an associated sentiment; their effect is closely analogous to musical expression. Such are the adjectives denoting mental elevation, as superbo, altiero, audace, gagliardo, indomito, maestoso. These recur in the poems of Guidi with every noun that will admit of them; but sometimes the artifice is a little too transparent, and though the meaning is not sacrificed to sound, we feel that it is too much enveloped in it, and are not quite pleased that a great poet should rely so much on a resource which the most mechanical slave of music can employ.
Menzini. 6. The odes of Benedetto Menzini are elegant and in poetical language, but such as does not seem very original, nor do they strike us by much vigour or animation of thought. The allusions to mythology which we never find in Filicaja, and rarely in Guidi, are too frequent. Some are of considerable beauty, among which we may distinguish that addressed to Magalotti, beginning, “Un verde ramuscello in piaggia aprica.” Menzini was far from confining himself to this species of poetry; he was better known in others. As an Anacreontic poet, he stands, I believe, only below Chiabrera and Redi. His satires have been preferred by some to those of Ariosto; but neither Corniani nor Salfi acquiesce in this praise. Their style is a mixture of obsolete phrases from Dante, with the idioms of the Florentine populace; and though spirited in substance, they are rather full of common-place invective. Menzini strikes boldly at priests and governments, and, what was dangerous to Orpheus, at the whole sex of women. His Art of Poetry, in five books, published in 1681, deserves some praise. As his atrabilious humour prompted, he inveighs against the corruption of contemporary literature, especially on the stage, ridiculing also the Pindaric pomp that some affected, not, perhaps, without allusion to his enemy Guidi. His own style is pointed, animated, sometimes poetical, where didactic verse will admit of such ornament, but a little too diffuse and minute in criticism.
Salvator Rosa—Redi. 7. These three are the great restorers of Italian poetry after the usurpation of false taste. And it is to be observed, that they introduced a new manner, very different from that of the sixteenth century. Several others deserve to be mentioned, though we can only do so briefly. The Satires of Salvator Rosa, full of force and vehemence, more vigorous than elegant, are such as his ardent genius and rather savage temper would lead us to expect. A far superior poet was a man not less eminent than Salvator, the philosophical and every way accomplished Redi. Few have done so much, in any part of science, who have also shone so brightly in the walks of taste. The sonnets of Redi are esteemed; but his famous dithyrambic, Bacco in Toscana, is admitted to be the first poem of that kind in modern language, and is as worthy of Monte Pulciano wine, as the wine is worthy of it.
Other poets. 8. Maggi and Lemene bore an honourable part in the restoration of poetry, though neither of them is reckoned altogether to have purified himself from the infection of the preceding age. The sonnet of Pastorini on the imagined resistance of Genoa to the oppression of Louis XIV., in 1684, though not borne out by historical truth, is one of those breathings of Italian nationality which we always admire, and which had now become more common than for a century before. It must be confessed, in general, that when the protestations of a people against tyranny become loud enough to be heard, we may suspect that the tyranny has been relaxed.
Christina’s patronage of letters. 9. Rome was to poetry in this age what Florence had once been, though Rome had hitherto done less for the Italian muses than any other great city. Nor was this so much due to her bishops and cardinals, as to a stranger and a woman. Christina finally took up her abode there in 1688. Her palace became the resort of all the learning and genius she could assemble round her; a literary academy was established, and her revenue was liberally dispensed in pensions. If Filicaja and Guidi, both sharers of her bounty, have exaggerated her praises, much may be pardoned to gratitude, and much also to the natural admiration which those who look up to power must feel for those who have renounced it. Christina died in 1690, and her own academy could last no longer; but a phœnix sprang at once from its ashes. |Society of Arcadians.| Crescimbeni, then young, has the credit of having planned the Society of Arcadians, which began in 1690, and has eclipsed in celebrity most of the earlier academies of Italy. Fourteen, says Corniani, were the original founders of this society; among whom were Crescimbeni and Gravina and Zappi. In course of time the Arcadians vastly increased, and established colonies in the chief cities of Italy. They determined to assume every one a pastoral name and a Greek birthplace, to hold their meetings in some verdant meadow, and to mingle with all their compositions, as far as possible, images from pastoral life; images always agreeable, because they recall the times of primitive innocence. This poetical tribe adopted as their device the pipe of seven reeds bound with laurel, and their president or director was denominated general shepherd or keeper (custode generale).[974] The fantastical part of the Arcadian society was common to them with all similar institutions; and mankind has generally required some ceremonial follies to keep alive the wholesome spirit of association. Their solid aim was to purify the national taste. Much had been already done, and in great measure by their own members, Menzini and Guidi; but their influence, which was, of course, more felt in the next century, has always been reckoned both important and auspicious to Italian literature.
[974] Corniani, viii., 301. Tiraboschi, xi., 43. Crescimbeni, Storia d’Arcadia (reprinted by Mathias.)