If we were to hazard any other preliminary remark of a general character, it should be, that the author appears to have a more intimate acquaintance with, and a great predilection for, the more modern and immediately popular writers of Italy, than for those who appear to us objects of greater curiosity and admiration. Thus, he dismisses Dante, Petrarca and Boccacio, in fewer pages than he devotes to Metastasio alone—an author whose chief merit he himself defines to be, the happy adaptation of his pieces to the musical recitative of the opera, and which, therefore, in a literary point of view, must be comparatively uninteresting. Again, Ariosto makes, in his hands, a very slender appearance by the side of Tasso—an appearance by no means proportioned to the size of the men, or to the interest which is felt in them, or to the scope for criticism in their different works. The account of the two modern Italian dramatists, Alfieri and Goldoni, though given much at length, is not certainly liable to the same kind of objection, as the information with respect to them is valuable from its novelty.
The present volumes contain a general view of the literature of the South of Modern Europe,—of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the Provençal. The author proposes, in another work, to examine that of the North, particularly of England and Germany. The publication now before us was (we are informed in the preface) originally composed to be delivered to a class of young persons at Geneva: and this circumstance, while it has added to its value and comprehensiveness as a book of reference, has made it less entertaining to the general reader. A body of criticism, like a body of divinity, must contain a great deal of matter less pleasant than profitable in the perusal. In our account of it, we shall direct the reader’s attention to what most forcibly arrested our own—premising merely, that among the writers to whom M. Sismondi is forward to acknowledge his obligations, are, Professor Boutterwek on modern literature in general, Millot’s history of the Troubadours, Tiraboschi and M. Guiguené on the Italian literature, Velasquez on the Spanish and Portuguese, and William Schlegel for the dramatic literature of all these nations. It is to this last author that he seems to be indebted for a great part of his theoretical reasoning and conjectural criticism on the general principles of taste and the progress of human genius.
The first volume commences with an account of the Provençal poetry, which is by no means the least interesting or curious part of this extensive and elaborate work. We shall endeavour to give some general idea of it to our readers. The language which prevailed in all the South of Europe, after the destruction of the Roman empire, was a barbarous mixture of Latin with the different languages of the Northern invaders. It was in the south of France that this language first took a consistent form, and became the vehicle of a gay and original poetry. The causes which contributed to invest it with this distinction, were, according to M. Sismondi, 1. The comparative exemption of the Francs from perpetual successive inroads of barbarous conquerors; and, 2. The collateral influence of the Moorish or Arabian literature, through the connection between the kingdoms of Spain and Provence. The description given by the author of the Arabian literature, which ‘rose like an exhalation,’ and disappeared almost as soon, is splendid in the extreme. In a hundred and fifty years, human genius is said to have produced more prodigies in that prolific region, than it has done in the history of ages in all the world besides. Arts and sciences had their birth, maturity and perfection;—almost all the great modern discoveries (as they have been considered) were anticipated, and again forgotten,—paper, printing, the mariner’s compass, glass, gunpowder, &c. In the exercise of fancy and invention, they infinitely surpassed all former or succeeding ages. As an instance of the prodigious scale on which these matters were conducted in the East, and of the colossal size to which their literature had swelled in all its branches, it is stated that the Thousand and One Stories forming the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment, constitute only a six-and-thirtieth part of the original collection. We suspect that there is some exaggeration in all this; though the brilliant theories of our author have, no doubt, very considerable foundation in fact. We hope there is none for the eloquent, but melancholy, reflections he makes on the sudden disappearance of so much intellectual magnificence from the face of the earth.
‘Such,’ he says, ‘was the lustre with which literature and sciences shone forth from the ninth to the fourteenth century of our era, in the vast regions which were subjected to Mahometism. The most melancholy reflections are attached to the long enumeration of names unknown to us, and which were nevertheless illustrious,—of works buried in manuscript in some dusty repositories—which yet for a time had a powerful influence on the culture of the human mind. What remains then of so much glory? Five or six persons only can visit the treasures of Arabian manuscripts shut up in the library of the Escurial; and some few hundreds besides, scattered over all Europe, have qualified themselves, by obstinate labour, to dig in the mines of the East—but these persons can only obtain, with the utmost difficulty, some rare and obscure manuscripts, and cannot raise themselves high enough to form a judgment on the whole of a literature of which they never attain but a part. Meantime, the extended regions where Mahometism reigned, and still reigns, are dead to all the sciences. Those rich plains of Fez and Morocco, illumined five centuries ago by so many academies, so many universities, and so many libraries, are now nothing but deserts of burning sand, for which tyrants dispute with tigers. All the gay and fertile shore of Mauritania, where commerce, the arts, and agriculture had been raised to the highest prosperity, are now the nests of pirates, who spread terror on the seas, and who relax from their labour in shameful debaucheries, till the plague, which returns yearly, comes to mark out its victims, and to avenge offended humanity. Egypt is nearly swallowed in the sands, which it once fertilized—Syria and Palestine are desolated by wandering Bedouins, less formidable, however, than the Pasha who oppresses them. Bagdad, formerly the abode of luxury, of power, and of knowledge, is ruined; the once celebrated universities of Cufa and Bassora are shut,—those of Samarcande and of Balch are also destroyed. In this immense extent of country, twice or three times as large as our Europe—nothing is found but ignorance, slavery, terror and death. Few of the inhabitants can read any of the writings of their illustrious forefathers;—few could comprehend them—none could procure them. The immense literary riches of the Arabs, of which we have given some glimpses, exist no more in any of the countries which the Arabs and Mussulmen rule.—It is not there that we must now seek either the renown of their great men or their writings. What has been saved of them, is entirely in the hands of their enemies—in the convents of the monks, or in the libraries of the Kings of Europe. And yet these countries have not been conquered. It is not the foreigner who has despoiled them of their wealth, wasted their population, destroyed their laws, their morals, and their national spirit. The poison was within them—it developed itself, and has annihilated all things.
‘Who knows if, some centuries hence, this same Europe, where the reign of literature and sciences is now transported—which shines with such lustre—which judges so well of times past—which compares so well the successive influence of antient literature and morals, may not be deserted, and wild as the hills of Mauritania, the sands of Egypt, and the vallies of Anatolia? Who knows whether, in a country entirely new, perhaps in the high lands where the Oronoko and the Amazon collect their streams, perhaps in the now impenetrable enclosure of the mountains of New Holland, there may not be formed nations with other morals, other languages, other thoughts, other religions,—nations who shall again renew the human kind, who shall study like ourselves the times past, and who, seeing with surprise that we have been, and have known what they shall know—that we have believed like them in durability and glory, shall pity our impotent efforts, and shall recal the names of Newton, of Racine, of Tasso, as examples of the vain struggles of man to attain an immortality of renown which fate denies him?’
The more immediate causes which gave birth to the poetry of the Provençals, and by consequence to all our modern literature, are afterwards detailed in the following passage, which is interesting both in point of fact, and as matter of speculation.
‘In Italy, at the time of the renovation of its language, each province, each small district, had a particular dialect. This great number of different patois, was owing to two causes; the great number of barbarous tribes with whom the Romans had successively been confounded by the frequent invasions of their country, and the great number of independent sovereignties which had been kept up there. Neither of those causes operated on the Gauls in the formation of the Romanesque. Three hordes established themselves there nearly at the same time,—the Visigoths, the Burgundians, and the Franks; and after the conquest of these last, no northern barbarians could again form a fixed establishment there, except the Normans, in a single province; no mixture of Germans, much less of the Sclavonians and Scythians, came again to produce a change in language and morals. The Gauls had then been employed in consolidating themselves into one nation, with one language, for four ages: during which Italy had been successively the prey of the Lombards, the Francs, the Hungarians, the Saracens, and the Germans. The birth of the Romanesque in Gaul, came thus to precede that of the Italian language. It was divided into two principal dialects:—the Provençal Romanesque, spoken in all the provinces to the south of the Loire, which had been originally conquered by the Visigoths and the Burgundians; and the Walloon Romanesque, in the provinces to the north of the Loire, where the Franks had the ascendant. The political divisions remained conformable to this first division of nations and languages. In spite of the independence of the great feudatories, northern France always formed one political body; the inhabitants of the different provinces met in the same national assemblies, and in the same armies. Southern France, on its side, after having been the inheritance of some of the successors of Charlemagne, had been raised, in 879, to the rank of an independent kingdom, by Bozon, who was crowned at Nantes, under the title of King of Arles or of Provence; and who subjected to his domination Provence, Dauphiny, Savoy, the Lyonese, and some counties of Burgundy. The title of kingdom gave place, in 943, to that of earldom, under Bozon II., without the dismemberment of Provence, or its separation from the House of Burgundy, of which Bozon I. had been the founder. This house was extinguished in 1092, in the person of Gillibert, who left two daughters only, between whom he divided his states. One, Faydide, married Alphonso, Count of Toulouse; and the other, Douce, married Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona. The union of Provence during two hundred and thirty years, under a line of princes who played no very brilliant part beyond their own territory, and who are almost forgotten by history, but who suffered no invasion; who, by a paternal administration, augmented the riches, and extended the population of the state, and favoured commerce, to which their maritime situation invited them, sufficed to consolidate the laws, the manners, and the language of the Provençals. It was at this epoch, but in a deep obscurity, that in the kingdom of Arles, the Provençal Romanesque took completely the place of the Latin. The latter was still made use of in the public acts; but the former, which was spoken universally, began also to be made use of in literature.
‘The succession of the Count of Barcelona, Raymond Berenger, to the sovereignty of Provence, gave a new turn to the national spirit, by the mixture of the Catalonians with the Provençals. Of the three Romanesque languages, which the Christian inhabitants of Spain then spoke, the Catalonian, the Castillian, and the Gallician, or Portuguese, the first was almost absolutely like the Provençal; and though it has since been much removed from it, especially in the kingdom of Valencia, it has always been called after the name of a French province. The people of the country call it Llemosin or Limousin. The Catalans, therefore, could make themselves well understood by the Provençals; and their intercourse at the same court served to polish the one language by means of the other. The first of these nations had already been much advanced, either by their wars and their intercourse with the Moors of Spain, or by the great activity of the commerce of Barcelona. This city enjoyed the most ample privileges: the citizens felt their freedom, and made their princes respect it,—at the same time that the wealth which they had acquired rendered the taxes more productive, and permitted the court of the Counts to display a magnificence unknown to other sovereigns. Raymond Berenger, and his successor, brought into Provence at once the spirit of liberty and chivalry, the taste of elegance and the arts, and the sciences of the Arabs. From this union of noble sentiments, arose the poetry which shone at the same time in Provence, and all the south of Europe, as if an electric spark had, in the midst of the thickest darkness, kindled at once in all quarters its brilliant radiance.
‘Chivalry arose with the Provençal poetry; it was in some sort the soul of every modern literature: and this character, so different from all that antiquity had known,—that invention, so rich in poetical effects, is the first subject for observation, which modern literary history presents us. We must not, however, confound feudalism with chivalry. Feudalism is the real world at this epoch—with its advantages and disadvantages, its virtues and its vices; chivalry is this world idealized, such as it has existed only in the invention of the romancers: its essential character is a devotion to woman, and an inviolable regard to honour; but the ideas which the poets manifested then, as to what constituted the perfection of a knight or a lady, were not entirely of their invention. They existed in the people, without perhaps being followed by them; and when they had acquired more consistence in their heroic songs, they reacted in their turn upon the people, among whom they originated, and thus approximated the real feudal system to the ideal notions of chivalry.
‘Without doubt, there can be few finer things than the bold and active kind of life which characterized the feudal times; than the independent existence of each nobleman in his castle; than the persuasion which he felt, that God alone was his judge and master; than that confidence in his own power which made him brave all opposition, and offer an inviolable asylum to the weak and unfortunate,—which made him share with his friends the only possessions which they valued, arms and horses,—and rely on himself alone for his liberty, his honour, and his life. But, at the same time, the vices of the human character had acquired a development proportioned to the vigour of men’s minds. Among the nobility, whom alone the laws seemed to protect, absolute power had produced its habitual effect,—an intoxication approaching to madness, and a ferocity of which later times afford no example. The tyranny of a baron, it is true, extended only a few leagues round his chateau, or the town which belonged to him: If any one could pass this boundary, he was safe; but, within these limits, in which he kept his vassals like herds of deer in a park, he gave himself up, in the plenitude of his power, to the wildest caprices; and subjected those who displeased him to the most frightful punishments. His vassals, who trembled before him, were degraded below the human species; and, in the whole of this class, there is hardly an instance of any individual displaying, in the course of ages, a single trait of greatness or virtue. Frankness and good faith, which are essentially the virtues of chivalry, are indeed, in general, the consequence of strength and courage; but, in order to render an adherence to them general, it is indispensable that punishment or shame should be attached to their violation. But the seignoral lords were placed in their chateaus above all fear; and opinion had no force in restraining men who did not feel the relations of social life. Accordingly, the history of the middle ages furnishes a greater number of scandalous perfidies than any other period. Lastly, the passion of love had, it is true, taken a new character, which was much the same in reality and in the poetry of the time. It was not more passionate or more tender than among the Greeks and Romans, but it was more respectful; something mysterious was joined to the sentiment. Some traces of that religious respect were preserved towards women, which the Germans felt towards their prophetesses. They were considered as a sort of angelic beings, rather than as dependants, submitted to the will of their masters: It was a point of honour to serve and to defend them, as if they were the organs of the divinity on earth; and at the same time there was joined to this deference, a warmth of sentiment, a turbulence of passions and desires, which the Germans had known little of, but which is characteristic of the people of the South, and of which they borrowed the expression from the Arabians. In our ideas of chivalry, love always retains this religious purity of character; but in the actual feudal system, the disorder was extreme; and the corruption of manners has left behind it traces more scandalous than in any other period of society. Neither the sirventes nor the canzos of the troubadours, nor the fables of the trouveres, nor the romances of chivalry, can be read without blushing: the gross licentiousness of the language is equalled only by the profound corruption of the characters, and the profligacy of the moral. In the South of France, in particular, peace, riches, and the example of courts, had introduced among the nobility an extreme dissipation: they might be said to live only for gallantry. The ladies, who did not appear in the world till after they were married, prided themselves in the homage which their lovers paid to their charms: they delighted in being celebrated by their troubadour: they answered in their turn, and expressed their sentiments in the most tender and passionate verses. They even instituted Courts of Love, where questions of gallantry were gravely debated, and decided by their suffrages. In short, they had given to the whole of the South of France the movement of a carnival, which contrasts singularly with the ideas of restraint, of virtue, and of modesty, which we connect with the good old times. The more we study history, the more we shall be convinced that chivalry is an almost purely poetical invention. We never can arrive by any authentic documents at the scene where it flourished: it is always represented at a distance, both in time and place. And while contemporary historians give us a distinct, detailed, complete idea of the vices of courts and of the great, of the ferocity or licentiousness of the nobles, and the degradation of the people; one is astonished to see, after a lapse of time, the same ages animated by the poets with fictitious and splendid accounts of virtue, beauty, and loyalty. The romancers of the twelfth century placed the age of chivalry in the reign of Charlemagne; Francis I. placed it in their time: We at present believe we see it flourishing in the persons of Du Guesclin and of Bayard, at the courts of Charles V. and Francis the I. But when we come to examine any of these periods, though we find some heroic characters in all of them, we are soon forced to confess that it is necessary to remove the age of chivalry three or four centuries before any kind of reality.’ p. 91.