of these ages. But Chaucer's excellence lay in fertile and graceful invention; and in the vivid and humorous delineation of manners(the peculiar inheritance which our wealthy ancestors bequeathed to English poetry)-rather than in the high perfection of language or melody of verse. The foreign element, the French, with which Chaucer, or perhaps the fashion of the time, the Norman blood and the French wars, enriched our language, is not yet blended and harmonized; it lies, as it were, in separate and distinct masses, not yet having passed through the amalgamating process of common usage. The difficulties of Chaucer's versification are perhaps most reasonably traced to the uncertain state of pronunciation, or rather accentuation-the letters or syllables which afterwards became mute, still retaining their proper sounds, as in French and in other languages. It is remarkable, we have said, and it was a singularly happy circumstance in the development of European literature, that the first creative impulse of poetry was over in most of these nations, before the revival of classical learning absorbed the general mind of the educated classes. Poetry might have suffered some constraining and chilling effect, from that which could confer only pure and unmingled benefit on the development of prose. Even if it had retained its independent originality of language, of imagery, of sentiment, it might have become too much enamoured of the beautiful but uncongenial forms of the classics; Virgil, instead of being transformed into the romantic companion of Dante, through the wild regions which expanded before the fancy of the Christian poet, might have been the stately and unapproachable model to which he would have paid the homage of servile imitation. Petrarch happily chose to perfect, by his own translucent language, unrivalled harmony and exquisite tenderness, the fanciful graces, the amatory idealism of the Provençal poets, rather than to rival the elegies of Ovid or Tibullus. But the style of which the classical writers furnished such inimitable models, was the great thing wanting to prose. It is indeed after all extraordinary, that in Italy, where these studies were pursued with the greatest zeal and success, they should have produced such little effect. Order, distribution, selection, the harmonious structure of periods, found their way but slowly into Italian prose. It required a long process of classical training before Machiavelli broke up its involved and long-drawn periods into a more terse and compressed manner; nor had even the example of Machiavelli the influence which might have been expected, in the general formation of an Italian prose style. It is impossible to compress, and unnecessary to follow, Mr. Hallam's luminous account of the state of Latin erudition and the revival of Greek at the commencement of the fifteenth century; or his view of the early progress of science during the same pe riod. The following observations relating to the last point are, however, especially worthy of our reader's attention :— ; It is an interesting question, What were the causes of this enthusiasm for antiquity which we find in the beginning of the fifteenth century?-a burst of public feeling that seems rather sudden, but prepared by several circumstances that lie farther back in Italian history. The Italians had for some generations learned more to identify themselves with the great people that had subdued the world. The fall of the house of Swabia, releasing their necks from a foreign yoke, had given them a prouder sense of nationality; while the name of Roman Emperor was systematically associated by one party with ancient tradition and the study of the civil law, barbarously ignorant as its professors often were, had at least the effect of keeping alive a mysterious veneration for antiquity. The monuments of ancient Italy were perpetual witnesses; their inscriptions were read; it was enough that a few men like Petrarch should animate the rest; it was enough that learning should become honourable, and that there should be the means of acquiring it. The story of Rienzi, familiar to every one, is a proof what enthusiasm could be kindled by ancient recollections. Meantime the laity became better instructed; a mixed race, ecclesiastics, but not priests, and capable alike of enjoying the benefices of the church or of returning from it to the world, were more prone to literary than theological pursuits. The religious scruples which had restrained churchmen in the darker ages from perusing heathen writers, by degrees gave way, as the spirit of religion itself grew more objective, and directed itself more towards maintaining the outward church in its orthodoxy of profession, and in its secular power, than towards cultivating devout sentiments in the bosom. The love of Greek and Latin absorbed the minds of these Italian scholars, and effaced all regard to every other branch of literature. Their own language was nearly silent; few condescended so much as to write letters in it; as few gave a moment's attention to physical science, though we find it mentioned, perhaps as remarkable, in Victorin of Feltre, that he had some fondness for geometry, and had learned to understand Euclid. But even in Latin they wrote very little that can be deemed worthy of remembrance, or even that can be mentioned at all. The ethical dialogues of Francis Barbaro, a noble Venetian, on the married life (de re uxoria), and of Poggio on nobility, are almost the only books that fall within this period, except declamatory invectives or panegyrics, and other productions of circumstance. Their knowledge was not yet exact enough to let them venture upon critical philology; though Niccoli and Traversari were silently occupied in the useful task of correcting the text of manuscripts, faulty beyond description in the later centuries. Thus we must consider Italy as still at school, active, acute, sanguine, full of promise, but not yet become really learned, or capable of doing more than excite the emulation of other nations.'-vol. i. pp. 141-144. The Spanish ballads, which chiefly belong to the period from 1400 to 1440, bring us back to what, with many readers, will be metal more attractive:'-Mr. Hallam pauses to consider the characteristics of modern romantic poetry. He assigns, with other writers, chivalry, gallantry, and religion, as the three great leading elements which distinguish modern from classical poetry. The effect of gallantry towards women is developed in the following passage: The popular taste had been also essentially affected by changes in social intercourse, rendering it more studiously and punctiliously courteous, and especially by the homage due to women under the modern laws of gallantry. Love, with the ancient poets, is often tender, sometimes virtuous, but never accompanied by a sense of deference or inferiority. This elevation of the female sex through the voluntary submission of the stronger, though a remarkable fact in the philosophical history of Europe, has not, perhaps, been adequately developed. It did not originate, or at least very partially, in the Teutonic manners, from which it has sometimes been derived. The love songs again, and romances of Arabia, where others have sought its birth-place, display, no doubt, a good deal of that rapturous adoration which distinguishes the language of later poetry, and have, perhaps, in some measure, been the models of the Provençal troubadours; yet this seems rather consonant to the hyperbolical character of oriental works of imagination, than to a state of manners where the usual lot of women is seclusion, if not slavery. The late editor of Warton has thought it sufficient to call "that reverence and adoration of the female sex which has descended to our own times, the offspring of the Christian dispensation." But until it can be shown that Christianity establishes any such principle, we must look a little farther down for its origin. 'Without rejecting, by any means, the influence of these collateral and preparatory circumstances, we might ascribe more direct efficacy to the favour shown towards women in succession to lands, through inheritance or dower, by the later Roman law, and by the customs of the northern nations; to the respect which the clergy paid them (a subject which might bear to be more fully expanded); but, above all, to the gay idleness of the nobility, consuming the intervals of peace in festive enjoyment. In whatever country the charms of high-born beauty were first admitted to grace the banquet or give brilliancy to the tournament, -in whatever country the austere restraints of jealousy were most completely laid aside,-in whatever country the coarser, though often more virtuous, simplicity of unpolished ages was exchanged for winning and delicate artifices,-in whatever country, through the influence of climate or polish, less boisterousness and intemperance prevailed,—it is there that we must expect to find the commencement of so great a revolution in society.'-vol. i. pp. 176, 177. We apprehend that the error of the very able editor of Warton is, that of assigning an influence too direct and immediate to Christianity. Christianity was the first principle of that which, in chivalrous gallantry, assumed an highly artificial form. The equalization equalization of the sexes, as that of ranks, arose out of the common hope of immortality, the blessing of Christian faith, imparted without respect of persons to both. The Roman law itself softened, and became more generous to the female sex, after the reign of Constantine. The respect paid to women by the clergy, though abused, even in the days of the Apostles-(we allude to a passage in St. Paul, certainly not expressed in the tone of chivalrous gallantry)—and still more so in the less pure and disinterested ages of the church, was almost an inevitable consequence of the elevation of the female character, the natural homage to the importance with which they were endowed by the new dispensation. It would be curious to inquire how far the worship of the Virgin, though both in time and in place far more extensive, coincident in its universality and general predominance with the growth of chivalrous respect for women, may have contributed to this result. To the strictly evangelical Christian, who studies his faith in the gospel alone, there is something in the part assigned to the females, in the sacred narrative, which instils a kind of involuntary respect, if not veneration. The thought which has been embodied in the well-known line, 'Last by the cross and earliest by the tomb,' is inseparably mingled up with that solemn and mysterious scene, and cannot fail to blend with all the sacred feelings which it inspires. But when that intuitive homage had grown into prostrate deification, when the whole Christian world united to hymn the 'Vergine bella, che di sol vestita, Coronata di stelle, al sommo Sole Piacesti si, che in te sua luce nascose ;' when, too, gallantry so constantly spoke the language of religion, and devotion of gallantry, this may have been at least one of the subsidiary causes which contributed to the high-toned adoration of the female character. For, after all, it was a poetical and highly aristocratical sentiment. It was not so much to woman, as to the high-born beauty, the lady-love, who presided in the tournament, and shone in hall or bower, that gallantry assumed its respectful tone. If, in fact, the offspring of Teutonic manners, it ought to appear, where Mr. Hallam justly observes it is not to be found, in Beowulf, in the oldest Teutonic fragments, or in the Nibelungen Lied. In these poems, 'love may appear as a natural passion, but not as a conventional idolatry.' If again it were the genuine and immediate offspring of Christianity, it ought certainly to have been more general throughout the Christian world, more equably disposed through society, and developed at an earlier period. Though it appears occasionally in the earlier romances, usually called called Breton or Armorican, and sometimes elevates the tone of the Provençal poetry-it reaches this height in Amadis, and the prose romances of that class. But as Amadis is undoubtedly Portuguese, and the same manners prevailed, no doubt, through the whole Peninsula, the courtly Saracens of Spain may have contributed very much to the predominant fashion. In this sense, there may be some truth in its Arabian origin; for probably the manners of the court of Cordova or Grenada, were as far removed from those of the Arabian desert, or of the fierce warriors of Medina, as those of the Frankish monarchs, or the Counts of Toulouse, from the Germans of Tacitus, or the Goths of Jornandes. All these causes, then, remotely contributed to its origin; but its mature development (as far, indeed, as it actually existed beyond the regions of poetic romance) must be ascribed to a very peculiar and artificial state of society; it was poetry, but poetry which entered, at least in some degree, into real life, and exercised a lasting influence upon manners. The south of France may be considered its native province, and the manners of France retained its influence, till, like other feudal prejudices, it was cast off by the vulgar violence of democratic revolution-when the days of chivalry' came to an end. Mr. Hallam considers the year 1440 as nearly coincident with the complete development of an ardent thirst for classical, and especially Grecian, literature in Italy, as the year 1400 was with its first manifestation.' It cannot be denied that this exclusive devotion of the general mind to classical studies, was accompanied by almost a general dearth of original production. This was more decidedly the case in Italy than elsewhere. The genealogy of sonnetteers from Petrarch to Lorenzo de' Medici, was never interrupted; but there are few names which are heard of beyond the general collections of poetry, and very few single pieces which stand out from the general monotony of thought and expression, which prevails throughout those closely-printed volumes, to which the youthful passion for Italian poetry has tempted us of yore to devote some idle time, in the hope of gleaning some neglected beauty, some exquisite turn of thought, or some new grace of expression. The chivalrous poems, the descendants of the early popular prose romance, the Reali di Francia, and the progenitors of the Orlando Innamorato, and Orlando Furioso, were as yet cold and prolix, without much fertility of invention, without gaiety, fire, richness of imagery, or harmonious flow of verse. But we overleap this period, as relates to other countries as well as Italy; nor can we pause to examine the author's luminous view of the origin, the first, and at the same time, the most perfect effects of printing. This question has recently called forth several volumes |