Be this as it will, the French criticism has carried it before the Italian, with the rest of Europe. This dextrous people have found means to lead the taste, as well as set the fashions, of their neighbours: and Ariosto ranks but little higher than the rudest Romancer in the opinion of those who take their notions of these things from their writers.
But the same principle, which made them give Tasso the preference to Ariosto, has led them by degrees to think very unfavourably of Tasso himself. The mixture of the Gothic manner in his work has not been forgiven. It has sunk the credit of all the rest; and some instances of false taste in the expression of his sentiments, detected by their nicer critics, have brought matters to that pass, that, with their good will, Tasso himself should now follow the fate of Ariosto.
I will not say, that a little national envy did not perhaps mix itself with their other reasons for undervaluing this great poet. They aspired to a sort of supremacy in letters; and finding the Italian language and its best writers standing in their way, they have spared no pains to lower the estimation of both.
Whatever their inducements were, they succeeded but too well in their attempt. Our obsequious and over-modest critics were run down by their authority. Their taste of letters, with some worse things, was brought among us at the Restoration. Their language, their manners, nay their very prejudices, were adopted by our polite king and his royalists. And the more fashionable wits, of course, set their fancies, as my Lord Molesworth tells us the people of Copenhagen in his time did their clocks, by the court-standard.
Sir W. Davenant opened the way to this new sort of criticism in a very elaborate preface to Gondibert; and his philosophic friend, Mr. Hobbes, lent his best assistance towards establishing the credit of it. These two fine letters contain, indeed, the substance of whatever has been since written on the subject. Succeeding wits and critics did no more than echo their language. It grew into a sort of cant, with which Rymer, and the rest of that school, filled their flimsy essays and rambling prefaces.
Our noble critic himself[50] condescended to take up this trite theme: and it is not to be told with what alacrity and self-complacency he flourishes upon it. The Gothic manner, as he calls it, is the favourite object of his raillery; which is never more lively or pointed, than when it exposes that “bad taste which makes us prefer an Ariosto to a Virgil, and a Romance (without doubt he meant, of Tasso) to an Iliad.” Truly, this critical sin requires an expiation; which yet is easily made by subscribing to his sentence, “That the French indeed may boast of legitimate authors of a just relish; but that the Italian are good for nothing but to corrupt the taste of those who have had no familiarity with the noble antients[51].”
This ingenious nobleman is, himself, one of the gallant votaries he sometimes makes himself so merry with. He is perfectly enamoured of his noble ancients; and will fight with any man who contends, not that his Lordship’s mistress is not fair, but that his own is fair also.
It is certain the French wits benefited by this foible. For pretending, in great modesty, to have formed themselves on the pure taste of his noble ancients, they easily drew his Lordship over to their party: while the Italians, more stubbornly pretending to a taste of their own, and chusing to lye for themselves, instead of adopting the authorised lyes of Greece, were justly exposed to his resentment.
Such was the address of the French writers, and such their triumphs over the poor Italians.
It must be owned, indeed, they had every advantage on their side, in this contest with their masters. The taste and learning of Italy had been long on the decline; and the fine writers under Louis XIV. were every day advancing the French language, such as it is (simple, clear, exact, that is, fit for business and conversation; but for that reason, besides its total want of numbers, absolutely unsuited to the genius of the greater poetry), towards its last perfection. The purity of the ancient manner became well understood, and it was the pride of their best critics to expose every instance of false taste in the modern writers. The Italian, it is certain, could not stand so severe a scrutiny. But they had escaped better, if the most fashionable of the French poets had not, at the same time, been their best critic.