reflecting the image not of the Greeks and of the Romans, but of themselves.
Three memorable men, of the finest and most contrasted genius, appeared in one country and at one period. With that contempt for the language of the people in which the learned participated, busied as they were at the restoration of letters by their new studies and their progressive discoveries, Petrarch contemned his own Italian “Rime,” and was even insensible to the inspiration of a mightier genius than his own—that genius who, with a parental affection, had adopted the orphan idiom of his father-land; an orphan idiom, which had not yet found even a name; for it was then uncertain what was the true language of Italy. Dante had at first proposed to write in Latin; but with all his adoration of his master Virgil, he rejected the verse of Virgil, and anticipated the wants of future ages. A peculiar difficulty, however, occurred to the first former of the vernacular literature of Italy. In the state of this unsettled language—composed of fragments of the latinity of a former populace, with the corruptions and novelties introduced by its new masters—deformed by a great variety of dialects—submitted, in the mouths of the people, to their caprices, and unstamped by the hand of a master—it seemed hopeless to fix on any idiom which, by its inherent nobleness, should claim the distinguished honour of being deemed Italian. Dante denied this envied grace to any of the rival principalities of his country. The poet, however, mysteriously asserted that the true Italian “volgare” might be discovered in every Italian city; but being common to all, it could not be appropriated by any single one. Dante dignified the “volgare illustre” which he had conceived in his mind, by magnificent titles;—it was “illustrious,” it was “cardinal,” it was “aulic,” it was “courtly,” it was the language of the most learned who had composed in the vulgar idiom, whether in Sicily, in Tuscany, in Puglia, even in Lombardy, or in the marshes of Ancona! This fanciful description of the Italian language appeared enigmatical to the methodical investigations of the cold and cautious Tiraboschi. That grave critic submitted the interior feeling of the poet to the test of facts and dates. With more erudition than taste, he marked the mechanical gradations—the stages of every language, from rudeness to refinement. The mere historical investigator could conceive no other style than what his chronology had furnished. But the spirit of Dante had penetrated beyond the palpable substances of the explorer of facts, and the arranger of dates. Dante, in his musings, had thrown a mystical veil over the Italian language; but the poet presciently contemplated, amid the distraction of so many dialects, that an Italian style would arise which at some distant day would be deemed classical. Dante wrote, and Dante was the classic of his country.
The third great master of the vernacular literature of Italy was Boccaccio, who threw out the fertility of his genius in the volgare of nature herself. This Shakspeare of a hundred tales transformed himself into all the conditions of society; he touched all the passions of human beings, and penetrated into the thoughts of men ere he delineated their manners. Even two learned Greeks acknowledged that the tale-teller of Certaldo, in his variegated pages, had displayed such force and diversity in his genius, that no Greek writer could be compared with his “volgare eloquenza.”
The Italian literature thus burst into birth and into maturity; while it is remarkable of the other languages of Europe, that after their first efforts they fell into decrepitude. Our Saxon rudeness seems to have required more hewing and polishing to be modelled into elegance, and more volubility to flow into harmony, than even the genius of its earliest writers could afford. Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio were the contemporaries of Gower, of Chaucer, and of “the Ploughman;” they delight their nation after the lapse of many centuries; while the critics of the reign of Elizabeth complained that Piers Ploughman, Chaucer, and Gower then required glossaries; and so, at a later period, did Ronsard, Baif, and Marot in France. In prose we had no single author till the close of the sixteenth century who had yet constructed a style; and in France Rabelais and Montaigne had contracted the rust and the rudeness of antiquity, as it seemed to the refinement of the following generation.
It cannot be thought that the genius of the Italians always excelled that of other countries, but the material which those artists handled yielded more kindly to their touch. The shell they struck gave a more melodious sound than the rough and scrannel pipe cut from the northern forests.
Custom and prejudice, however, predominated over the feelings of the learned even in Italy. Their epistolary correspondence was still carried on in Latin, and their first dramas were in the language of ancient Rome. Angelo Politian appears to have been the earliest who composed a dramatic piece, his “Orfeo,” in “stilo volgare,” and for which he assigns a reason which might have occurred to many of his predecessors—“perchè degli spettatori fusse meglio intesa,” that he might be better understood by the audience!
The vernacular idiom in Italy was still so little in repute, while the prejudice in favour of the Latin was so firmly rooted, that their youths were prohibited from reading Italian books. A curious anecdote of the times which its author has sent down to us, however, shows that their native productions operated with a secret charm on their sympathies; for Varchi has told the singular circumstance that his father once sent him to prison, where he was kept on bread and water, as a penance for his inveterate passion for reading works in the vernacular tongue.
The struggle for the establishment of a vernacular literature was apparent about the same period in different countries of Europe; a simultaneous movement to vindicate the honour and to display the merits of their national idiom.
Joachim de Bellay, of an illustrious literary family, resided three years with his relative the Cardinal at Rome; the glory of the great vernacular authors of Italy inflamed his ardour; and in one of his poems he developes the beauty of “composing in our native language,” by the deeper emotions it excites in our countrymen. Subsequently he published his “Defense et Illustration de la Langue Françoise,” in 1549, where eloquently and learnedly he would persuade his nation to write in their own language. Ferreira, the Portuguese poet, about the same time, with all the feelings of patriotism, resolved to give birth to a national literature; exhorting his countrymen to cultivate their vernacular idiom, which he purified and enriched. He has thus feelingly expressed this glorious sentiment—
| Eu desta gloria so’ fico contente Que a minha terra amei, e a minha gente. |
In Scotland we find Sir David Lyndsay, in 1553, writing his great work on “The Monarchie,” in his vernacular idiom, although he thought it necessary to apologise, by alleging the example of Moses, Aristotle, Plato, Virgil, and Cicero, who had all composed their works in their own language.
In our own country Lord Berners had anticipated this general movement. In 1525, when he ventured on the toil of his voluminous and spirited Froissart, he described it as “translated out of Frenshe into our maternal English tongue;” an expression which indicates those filial yearnings of literary patriotism which were now to give us a native literature.
The predominant prejudice of writing in Latin was first checked in Germany, France, and England by the leaders of that great Revolution which opposed the dynasty of the tiara. It was one of the great results of the Reformation, that it taught the learned to address the people. The versions of the Scriptures seemed to consecrate the vernacular idiom of every nation in Europe. Peter Waldo began to use the vernacular language in his version, however coarse, of the Bible for the Vaudois, those earliest Reformers of the Church; and though the volume was suppressed and prohibited, a modern French literary historian deduces the taste for writing in the maternal tongue to this rude but great attempt to attract the attention of the people. The same incident occurred in our own annals; and it was the English Bible of Edward the Sixth which opened the sealed treasures of our native language to the multitude. Calvin wrote his great work. “The Institute of the Christian Religion,” at the same time in the Latin language and in the French; and thus it happens that both these works are alike original. Calvin deemed that to render the people intelligent their instructor should be intelligible; and that if books are written for a great purpose, they are only excellent in the degree that they are multiplied. Calvin addressed
