It is evident that Corilla's business was a very profitable one. The highnesses, serenities, eminences, and other minor grandees were condemned to dreadfully dull lives in those days, and were delighted with any stimulant of a sufficiently mild nature and thoroughly safe quality. The world's rulers had long since learned that it was good to "patronise literature." It was in those days more than ever the fashion to do so. But literature had of late been exhibiting symptoms very disquieting to its courtly friends, who found it more than ever necessary to take precautions for having their literature of the right sort.
The "difficulty" between literature and princes is one of old date; and, truth to tell, the connection between them has rarely been creditable to either party. If Francis I. showed his paternal regard for learning by limiting the printing–presses in all France to twelve licensed machines, literature, even as represented by such men as the historian Robertson, has been flunky enough to extol him as "the father of letters!" How often has the clause—"but he protected literature and loved learned men"—been accepted in a historian's summing–up of the character of some royal scourge of humanity, as a set–off against a host of abominations wholly incompatible with any real appreciation of the value of human intellect! It is quite time that the historic claims of many princely "fathers of literature" to the lenient consideration of the world on this ground, should be more rightly appreciated. And the dealings of several of the Italian princes during the last three hundred years with those "dangerous classes" of their subjects, the men of the pen, form a very instructive manual of the royal art of patronising literature.
Cosmo I., Duke of Florence, by the grace of Charles V., was a most able practitioner in this line. He founded the Florentine Academy, and regulated its studies and duties in accordance with the great discovery, that the exercise of men's minds on words might be quite safe and harmless, if carefully disjoined from any application of their thoughts to things; nay, might even not only be harmless, but positively useful in promoting all those qualities which make men good subjects. And it is quite curious to observe with what unity of aim, means, and success, the policy so inaugurated by him has been carried out by those who came after him. Hence the innumerable "academies" which swarmed in every city of Italy, vieing with each other in the absurdity of their appellations and the frivolity of their pursuits. Hence the production of a literature which from generation to generation grew ever safer and safer, till it culminated in Arcadian shepherds and shepherdesses, and gave birth to a Corilla, who could be warranted to produce, in whatever heat of poetical estro and fervid flow of extempore song, only such strains as were fitted for noble ears to hear, and were calculated to "encourage the best sentiments in the masses."
ARCADIANS.
The literature thus produced to meet the special requirements of enlightened princely protectors, and perfectionated by the dwindling intellect of successive generations to a pitch of imbecility scarcely credible, instructively illustrates its own birth, descent, antecedents, and functions, by the consistent and intense falsity which saturates and gives its character to the entire mass of it. The exterior and avowed fictions, which turned companies of sober middle–aged gentlemen, nobles, magistrates, lawyers, physicians, and divines, into Arcadian shepherds, calling each other by such absurd aliases as "Parmenio Dirceo," "Prasilio Dedaleo," "Dorillo Dafneio," and a thousand such, were but the fitting corporeal manifestation of a spirit as fictitious. The essence of "Arcadian" citizenship was to think false thoughts, to speak no word which should be a representation of any real thing, to cut off with jealous care all possible communication between the world of "Arcady" and the world of reality, and to take good heed that no stray tone of the voice of literature should by chance address itself to any one genuine feeling of the heart of man, evoke a sincere thought, or appeal to a real interest. It is easy to see how admirably such a literature was adapted to fulfil the objects of the princely founders and patrons of "Academies."
Our Olympic Corilla's business therefore throve, as every business does that produces wares in demand. Shortly after her marriage, the now celebrated Improvisatrice made a professional tour through Italy, and was listened to with delight in the patrician saloons of Bologna, Modena, Parma, Venice, &c. Fresh triumphs, we are told, everywhere awaited her; and her readiness, nimbleness of wit and tongue, and facility, became the admiration of all Italy.
The land of the "dolce favella" still brings forth "improvisatori" and "improvisatrice;" and those who have had an opportunity of hearing performances of the sort will readily appreciate the quality and amount of talent needed for the production of them. A dull, unimpressionable or unimaginative mind would of course entirely fail at any such exercise. But it is extremely probable, that a profound and suggestive intellect richly laden with stores of thought, and habitually critical in the marshalling and effective presentment of those stores, would be found equally unsuccessful. A light nimble wit of exclusively objective tendency, unburdened by deep views of things, and unimpeded by habits of examination and reflection; a ready and copious memory, well furnished with common–places, a good command of the language and its inexhaustible rhyming capabilities—that mellifluous language, of which it may be said, that every child born to the use of it, "lisps in numbers, for the numbers come" naturally to its attempts to talk;—and finally, perhaps the most essential qualification of all for the exercise of the art, a practised dexterity in avoiding any such treatment of a given subject as might lead to difficulty, a competent degree of skill in keeping to generals, and in finding some thread of connection, by virtue of which matter that can be easily said and sung from the cut and dried assortment of common places in store, is forced by a gentle compulsion to serve the purpose of more or less pertinently illustrating the topic in hand;—these are the qualifications which form the equipment of the "improvisatore." Practice will of course infinitely increase the performer's capabilities. Of course, too, a clever and bright professor of the art will string his rhymes with more play of fancy, and a greater approach to some novelty of poetical thought, than a stupid one. But it is difficult to believe that anything worth even the value of the hour spent in hearing him was ever produced by a practitioner of improvisation. And the habit of encouraging and admiring such performances is doubtless, to a certain degree, pernicious to a people who need every possible incitement to lower their estimate of the value of words as opposed to that of things, instead of additional temptations to accept mere verbiage in the place of thought.
EUROPEAN REPUTATION.
But among the "distinguished circles" which patronised our Corilla, this was exactly the article wanted. Accordingly, when Pietro Leopoldo was to be married to Maria Luisa of Bourbon in 1765, Corilla was invited by the great Maria Theresa to go to Innspruck "to celebrate the nuptials." And we can well understand that she did so, eminently to the satisfaction of her imperial patrons. On returning well remunerated to Florence, she was appointed court poetess, and received a pension. And now her reputation had become clearly European in its extent, as far at least as that could be conferred by the courts of Europe. For Catherine the Second, thinking that she too would do the royal thing in civilised style, and patronise literature, sent an invitation to the poetess to come from Arcady to Russia, and be court poetess there,—not, it is to be hoped, to sing the "res gestæ" of the sovereign! But Corilla preferred to be a ducal poetess in "la bella Firenze," rather than an imperial one in Russia. And Catherine, though refused, nevertheless marked her appreciation of the claims of literature by conferring a pension on its court representative. Another invitation came to the happy shepherdess from Joseph the Second, who, radical reformer as he was, yet was quite monarchical enough to admire and approve Arcadian literature. Joseph was also refused; and he too sent magnificent presents to the recalcitrant Muse.