A history of Italian literature

by Richard Garnett

Another excellent historian has been almost lost to Italy by the circumstances attending the publication of his book. GIOVANNI BATTISTA TESTA, an exile in England, published in 1853 his history of the Lombard League, at Doncaster, a place better affected to the horse of Neptune than to the olive of Pallas, and, thus producing invita Minerva, has been almost ignored. In fact, he is an admirable historian, lucid and delightful in his narrative, and his style is so fashioned upon the purest models, that he might seem to have come straight out of the sixteenth century. This might be reprehended as affectation, but the objection, if in any respect well founded, has no application to the excellent English version (1877), a book which cannot be too strongly recommended to historians desirous of acquiring the pregnant brevity so essential in this age of multiplication of books to all who would catch and retain the ear of posterity.

The friend and biographer of Manzoni, and imitator of his style in a successful novel, Margherita Pusterla, CESARE CANTÙ was a long-lived and industrious, and consequently a voluminous author. His position is well marked as almost the only considerable writer of his time who favoured political and ecclesiastical reaction, and the resulting unpopularity has led him to be unjustly depreciated as a man of letters; he is always interesting, always individual, and his principal works, the History of Italy from 1750 to 1850 and his History of Italian Heretics, though disfigured by party spirit, are important books. The latter is still the standard authority on the subject, though it will hardly be allowed to continue so.

An unique position among Italian historians is occupied by MICHELE AMARI (1805-89), the Orientalist and national historian of Sicily. Detesting the Neapolitan oppression of his native island, he look up the investigation of the Sicilian Vespers, and depicted this great event as not the consequence of a conspiracy subtly organised by John of Procida, but as a spontaneous uprising against intolerable oppression. The allusion did not escape the Neapolitan Government, and Amari found it expedient to withdraw to Paris, where he studied Arabic as a preparation for his yet more important History of Sicily under Moslem Dominion, published between 1854 and 1872. In the interim he had taken part in the Sicilian insurrection, and after the final expulsion of the Bourbons, was successively Minister of Public Instruction and professor of Arabic at Florence, continuing to write and edit books on his favourite subjects. No historian has a higher reputation for erudition and sagacity.

GIUSEPPE MICALI (1780-1844) devoted himself to a subject even more difficult than Amari’s, and one incapable of an authoritative solution of its numberless problems. His Storia degli Antichi Popoli Italiani is nevertheless a highly important work, which exploded much error, if it did not establish much truth.

A Neapolitan, CARLO TROYA (1784-1858) was to have written the History of Italy in the Middle Ages from 476 to 1321, which by his method of working might have required forty volumes, but he only arrived at Charlemagne and only filled sixteen. The book is, as Settembrini remarks, a thesaurus rather than a history, but cannot be opened without encountering valuable information and judicious criticism. Troya loved the Middle Age without idolising it; his liberal opinions, much against his will, made the indefatigable bookworm a Minister under one of the ephemeral Neapolitan constitutions, and there was sense as well as wit in the reply of the restored Ferdinand when advised to arrest him: “No! leave him in the Middle Ages!”

Three distinguished statesmen of the nineteenth century, Cesare Balbo, Gino Capponi, and Luigi Carlo Farini, respectively wrote histories of much worth; Balbo an abridged history of Italy, and Capponi one of the Florentine republic, while Farini chronicled the transactions of the States of the Church from 1814 to 1850. Farini’s is the most important and authoritative of these works, as he has made the field entirely his own. Balbo and Capponi, however, patricians and men of wealth, did even more for historical studies by their encouragement and pecuniary assistance than by their own writings. The great Ministers, Cavour, Ricasoli, and Minghetti claim a place in literary history as orators and pamphleteers.

For some reason difficult to understand, biography has not of late flourished in Italy. No country is so much overrun with little ephemeral memoirs of little ephemeral people, and there are many extremely valuable studies of particular episodes in the lives of celebrated men, of scientific rather than literary merit. The very important works of Villari, Pasolini, and Solerti belong to a later period than that now under review, which possesses only two biographies of decided literary pretensions, both autobiographic.

So important was the public career of MASSIMO D’AZEGLIO (1798-1866), a fervent patriot, but also a prudent statesman, for nobility of character second to no contemporary, that his memoirs might have been expected to have been very serious. On the contrary, they are eminently lively and gay, in part, perhaps, from their terminating at the beginning of 1846, before the author’s heaviest cares had come upon him. GIUSEPPE MONTANELLI (1813-62), one of the triumvirs in the inauspicious Tuscan revolution of 1849, though equally honest, was entirely deficient in the ballast that steadied D’Azeglio. But his very levity and inconstancy lend vivacity to his memoirs of the Tuscan affairs of his time, and the paradoxes of his character, faithfully depicted by himself, make a striking and memorable portrait. His style is unequal, but excellent when at its best.

NICCOLÓ TOMMASEO, a Dalmatian (1802-74) forms a connecting link between history and belles-lettres. With marvellous versatility he essayed history, politics, moral and speculative philosophy, biography, philology, criticism and poetry, distinguishing himself in all without producing great or enduring work in any. His greatest distinction, perhaps, was attained as an Italian grammarian and lexicographer; but as a critic he wielded great authority, and powerfully contributed to the development of literature. He was essentially the man of his own times, and seemed to resume their various aspects in himself, a sound Catholic and an ardent liberal; a classicist and a romanticist; a conservative and an innovator; impetuous yet moderate in his aims; frequently inconsistent with himself, yet ever controlled by an austere sense of duty; a fine and even brilliant writer, who yet could achieve no durable work. His account of his exile at Corfu, nevertheless, deserves to live for its style, although the theme is insufficient. Tommaseo was a man of marked character, disinterested, independent and impracticable; rejecting the public honours which he had well earned by his share in the defence of Venice, he spent his later years at Florence, where, although totally blind, he worked indomitably to the last. He should be endeared to England as the author of the fine inscription placed upon the house of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

The history of Italian poetry during the post-Napoleonic era, after deducting the great names of Leopardi and Giusti, is in the main the history of the romantic school. It has been remarked that this school is not congenial to the Italian genius, and that its temporary prevalence could only occur through the decay of the classical tradition and the inevitable reaction from the excesses of the Revolution. It was further prejudiced in Italian eyes by the ecclesiastical colouring which it could not help assuming. Most of the literary youth of Italy, though they might not be bad Catholics, were still better patriots, and although their compositions might be influenced by Scott and Goethe, were utterly averse to the mediæval development which the romantic idea was receiving in France and Germany. This was particularly the case with the first poet of eminence who imbibed romantic feeling from Manzoni and broke entirely with the already attenuated classicism of Monti and Foscolo. GIOVANNI BERCHET (1783-1851), although of French descent, was a devoted Italian patriot, whose first works of importance were published in London, where he had been obliged to seek refuge. He began by denouncing the conduct of the English Government towards the people of Parga, and followed this up by a succession of stirring ballads, mostly of patriotic tendency, and a longer poem, Fantasie, a vision of the past glories of the Lombard League. In style these poems resemble the romantic poetry of Germany and England, without a vestige of classical influence, but also with no trace of the worship of the past, except as an example to the present, or anything of the mystic spirit of genuine romanticism. Well timed as they were, their effect was extraordinary; but whether antique or contemporary in subject, they were essentially poems of the day, and such poetry cannot continue to be read unless it attains the level of Manzoni’s ode on the death of Napoleon and Tennyson’s on the death of Wellington. This Berchet knew. “My aim was not,” he said on one occasion, “to write a fine poem, but to perform a fine action.” His style is consequently defective; his poetry was not written to be criticised, but to inspire and inflame, and fully answered its purpose. “He has found,” says Settembrini, “all the maledictions that can possibly be hurled against the foreigner.” Upon Charles Albert’s conversion to the national cause, Berchet returned to Italy, and died a member of the Sardinian Parliament, universally honoured and beloved, nor will his countrymen forget him.