PPpppiiii«iiiHi.^i^^ 
 
Pl3 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
DATE DUE 
 
 ( ' 
 
 Ij^J^^S 
 
 T^-^\ 
 
 PRINTED IN U S.A. 
 
 PQ 40e3!pi3"l887""' '■"'"'^ 
 
 ^iiiiiWiiiiiililM^^^^ '" "*■ 
 
 3 1924 027 447 543 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027447543 
 
STUDIES 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ITALY 
 
 VERNON LEEpaA.Bt^^-^S^f^ 
 
 A New Edition 
 
 T FISHER UNWIN 
 26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 MDCCCLXXXVII 
 

 5^< 
 
 ..^ 
 
 (^// rights reserved.y» 
 
 ^ 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Introduction ..... 
 
 1 
 
 II. The Arcadian Academy .... 
 
 7 
 
 III. The Musical Life ..... 
 
 65 
 
 IV. Metastasio and the Opera .... 
 
 141 
 
 V. The Comedy of Masks .... 
 
 231 
 
 VI. Goldoni and the Eealistic Comedy 
 
 245 
 
 VII. Carlo Gozzi and the Venetian Fairy Comedy 
 
 273 
 
 iT^III. Conclusion ..... 
 
 . 291 
 
 Appendix (List of Names and Authorities) 
 
 297 
 
STUDIES OF THE 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IN ITALY. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 This book is at first sight heterogeneous and anomalous : hetero- 
 geneous, because it treats two subjects which are rarely treated by one 
 individual, and never treated under one binding, literature and music ; 
 anomalous, because it is far from dealing vfith all that goes to make up 
 the Italian Eighteenth Century, while it deals with not a few men and 
 things belonging to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Why not 
 deal exclusively and completely with either music or literature ? Why 
 not study the satirist Parini by the side of the playwright Goldoni, 
 rather than study the cumptiser Jommelli, who seems to have no con- 
 nection with him ? Why examine the comedies of the time of Salvator 
 Kosa and pass over the tragedies of Alfieii ? Why linger over forgotten 
 composers and singers while scientific and philosophic writers, whose 
 works are still read and discussed, remain unmentioned ? 
 
 The book is seemingly most incoherent in subject, and most incomplete 
 and digressive in treatment. But the apparent incoherence of subject is 
 in reality unity of treatment; and the apparent incompleteness and 
 irrelevance of treatment is in reality completeness and restriction of the 
 subject. The book deals both with literature and with music, because the 
 point of view of the writer is neither exclusively literary nor exclusively 
 musical, but generally assthetic; because the object of the writer has been 
 to study not the special nature and history of any art in its isolation, but 
 to study the constitution and evolution of the various arts compared with 
 one another; and the arts whose constitution and evolution can be 
 studied in a work on the Italian Eighteenth Century happen to be the 
 drama and music, just as the arts which might be studied in a work on 
 the Athenian fifth century b.c. would be the drama and sculpture. The 
 writer of this book is neither a literary historian nor a musical critic, but 
 an ajsthetician ; and both literature and music belong to the eesthetician's 
 domain. Thus far concerning the incoherence of subject : now with 
 respect to the incompleteness and irrelevance of the treatment The book 
 
Introduction. 
 
 does not treat of all that is contained in the Italian Eighteenth Century 
 because much of this does not belong inherently to Italy, but is merely a 
 portion of the universal character of the century itself, a character far 
 more spontaneous and strongly marked in other countries ; and it treats 
 of many things belonging to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 
 because all that was really national in the Italy of a hundred years ago, 
 the great musical and dramatic efflorescence, has its roots deep hidden in 
 Italian character and civilization, and germinates slowly throughout the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
 
 The notion of there having been a spontaneous efflorescence of national 
 art in Italy during the eighteenth century may amuse some persons and 
 will doubtless astonish many; but efflorescence of national art there was, 
 nevertheless — an efflorescence of national art which has remained hitherto 
 unperceived because the Italian Eighteenth Century has, as a rule, been 
 not only not studied, but not even seriously considered as a reality, except 
 by a few specialists who could see nothing but antiquarian details ; for, 
 with regard to the Italian Eighteenth Century, we are at present much 
 in the same condition as our ancestors of the days of Montesquieu and of 
 Robertson were with regard to the Middle Ages in general. They knew 
 that the middle ages had existed, they knew that certain wars had been 
 carried on and certain laws enacted during that period, but that the 
 middle ages had had any civilization of their own, much less any art, 
 never entered their minds: the word suggested a blank, and no one cares 
 to investigate into a blank. So also is it with the Italian Eighteenth 
 Century. There is a general notion in other countries that the eighteenth 
 century did exist in Italy, though the fact has never been brought home 
 to any one. There is also a vague knowledge of the fact that a certain 
 number of writers — some, like Goldoni and Alfieri, still read — others, like 
 Metastasio, remembered as names, belonged to the Italy at that period ; 
 but what was their connection with that time, or what was the civilization 
 which surrounded them, is a question which seems to occur to no English- 
 man, Frenchman, or German, as indeed it occurs to very few Italians. 
 The very few Italians who do trouble themselves on the subject are either 
 laborious bookworms, who find broken and minute fragments of the 
 eighteenth century as they do of every other century, but are unable to 
 unite them so as to constitute any definite shape ; or else they are philo- 
 sophical historians, who are interested in the eighteenth century only 
 inasmuch as it contains germs of the nineteenth ; who study Parini 
 Beccaria, Verri, and Pilangieri because they view them as precursors of 
 the social, political, and literary movement of our own day, but who turn 
 aside with contempt from Metastasio and Carlo Gozzi because they see in 
 
Introductio?i. 
 
 them no political forerunners of the present, and are incapable of recog- 
 nising in them the artistic product of the past. To foreigners, therefore, 
 the Italian Eighteenth Century is covered wth an historical mist, to be 
 rent and dispelled only by shock of the cannon of Montenotte and Lodi. 
 Any amount of artistic life may be safely hidden beneath that mist from 
 the English, French, and Germans who think it their duty to be well 
 versed in the art and literature of the Italian Middle Ages and Eenais- 
 sance; who are intimately acquainted with the exact pictorial character of 
 Liberale da Verona and Ugolino di Prate Ilario, and with the literary 
 value of Eicordano Malaspini and Giannozzo Manetti, but who do not 
 know that Metastasio wrote opera texts or that Marcello composed psalm 
 music ; who know very exactly whether Agnolo and Taddeo Gaddi were 
 or were not father and son, but who are not sure whether Pergolesi and 
 Paisiello may not have been the same person. The philosophical Italian 
 historians, on the other hand, take notice only of philanthropic poets and 
 of economic writers ; all that is art entirely escapes their notice. 
 
 Now it so happens that, inasmuch as it was a forerunner of our own 
 civilization, the Italian Eighteenth Century was poor, weak, and uninte- 
 resting, because in all this it was a mere insignificant copy of the English 
 and French Eighteenth Century. The political and philosophic ten- 
 dencies of the days of Montesquieu, of Voltaire, of Hume, and of Smith, 
 did indeed exist in Italy, both because they were naturally produced there 
 as elsewhere by the preceding civilization, and also because they were 
 largely imported from other countries; but they were so comparatively 
 feeble that Italian civilization would never have spontaneously made the 
 stride which it did, would never have got to its modern point, had it not 
 been borne along by the whirlwind of the French revolutionary invasion. 
 Parini, Alfieri, Beocaria, Filangieri, interesting and valuable though they 
 are in themselves, are wholly uninteresting and valueless considered as 
 the products of a spontaneous Italian civilization. They are essentially 
 cosmopolitan and eclectic. To understand them we must not seek in the 
 remoter layers of Italian life; we must look round at the general cha- 
 racter of the eighteenth century. Without Pope, without Rousseau, 
 without Montesquieu and Diderot, they are unintelligible; by their side 
 they gain in intelligibility but they lose in importance. Italy in the last 
 century got her philosophy and philosophic poetry, like her dress and her 
 furniture, from Paris and London ; but Italy in the last century got her 
 drama and her comedy neither from Paris nor from London, but from her 
 own intellectual soil, where they had been germinating for centuries ; and 
 Italy, in the eighteenth century, gave her own spontaneous national 
 music to the whole of Europe. 
 
 B 2 
 
Introduction. 
 
 In this national drama and national music lies for us the interest of 
 the Italy of a hundred years ago. Not only is this artistic efflorescence 
 the only really national and spontaneous thing which Italy then pos- 
 sessed, she being in all else inferior to other nations, but that Italian 
 artistic efflorescence was the only thoroughly national and spontaneous 
 artistic movement which took place anywhere in the eighteenth century. 
 The other nations had spontaneous philosophical life, but Italy alone had 
 artistic life. The plastic arts were dead everywhere, and had not yet 
 been galvanised by criticism into a spectral semblance of life. Poetry, 
 in France and in England, under Pope and Voltaire, was mere phi- 
 losophy decked out in Dresden china pastoral furbelows ; in Germany 
 it was, when it re-appeared late in the eighteenth century, only partly 
 spontaneous, and, in the main, philosophy again of a different sort, 
 and either draped in classic garments, manufactured on Winckelmann's 
 patterns, or trapped out with pseudo-mediaeval jingles. The sole vital 
 thing throughout the eighteenth century appeared to be philosophy: 
 Prance, England, and Germany were sterile of all else ; Italy alone pos- 
 sessed living and growing artistic organisms ; Italy alone had art which 
 was neither decrepit nor eclectic, art which had been germinating un- 
 noticed for centuries ; comedy whose seeds had been sown in the old 
 Latin and Oscan days, before Plautus and Terence were bom ; music 
 which had been slowly developing throughout the middle ages, and which 
 now blossomed out in matm-e perfection, spontaneous, Italian, absolutely 
 national, and which, even transplanted into the favourable soil of 
 Germany and cultivated by the greatest Germans, ceased not to be 
 Italian. During this eighteenth century, while all eyes were fixed upon 
 other countries, Italy, insignificant and backward, developed to maturity 
 the art germs which had remained dormant during her brilliant Middle 
 Ages and brilliant Renaissance; she possessed then what she had not 
 possessed in the time of Dante, nor of Lorenzo di Medici, nor of Ariosto 
 a drama as national as the English drama of the days of Shakespeare 
 and the Spanish drama of the days of Lope de Vega. For her in this 
 obscure period, was reserved the last great art, of which antiquity had not 
 dream'ed, which the Middle Ages had not divined, which the Eenaissauce 
 had but faintly perceived — Music. 
 
 Does it matter if the eighteenth century, strutting complacently in its 
 philosophic dignity and eclectic grandeur, did not perceive the artistic 
 movement which was going on in Italy ? if, in its satisfaction with the 
 plays of Voltaire and of Schiller, it mistook the national Italian stage for 
 the planks of a fair-booth ? Does not all pseudo-classic and eclectic art, like 
 its archetype Voltaire, mistake all real art, be it the art of ^schylus, of 
 
Introduction. 
 
 V\ 
 
 Shakespeare, or of Calderon, for mountebanks' ranting? The Italian 
 national stage did exist none the less. Does it matter if the nineteenth 
 century, critical and misled by critical theory, fixing its eyes on the 
 people who are the critical and theorising people above all others, fails to 
 perceive the Italian national efflorescence of music in the eighteenth 
 century, and considers as spontaneous German products the works of 
 Handel, and Gluck, and Mozart, although, every inch of Germany was 
 colonised by Italian musicians, and although there is not a form of melody r. 
 in the works of the great Germans of the eighteenth century which has 
 not its necessary predecessor and its absolute equivalent in the works of 
 their Italian masters and fellow pupils ? Are not critical theorists always 
 blinded and misled by critical theorisings ? The greatness and supremacy 
 of the Italian music of the eighteenth century did exist nevertheless. 
 
 And it is this national Italian drama, unnoticed by the puristic 
 eighteenth century; it is this national Italian music, still overlooked by 
 the critical nineteenth century; it is this spontaneous art, which consti- 
 tutes the real importance of Italy in the time of Pope, of Voltaire, and 
 of Lessing. The Italy of a century ago is interesting because, in a time 
 of mere philosophic speculation, it alone created artistic form, not eclectic, 
 but national and spontaneous; because to it belongs perhaps the last 
 great artistic efflorescence, which was not, like that which produced 
 Shelley and Keats, a reaction ; nor like that which produced Goethe and 
 Schiller, a revival; but was like the efflorescence of art to which we owe 
 Phidias, Eaphael, Dante, or Shakespeare, the culmination of a long and 
 unbroken series of artistic phenomena. 
 
 It is therefore from the sesthetical point of view that the Italian 
 Eighteenth Century appears to us interesting and worthy of study ; it is 
 the art of the day, musical and dramatic, which absorbs our attention. 
 But, in studying the art, we have incidentally been led to study the times. 
 Following the sound of the music of Pergolesi and Cimarosa, trying to 
 catch closer glimpses of the Bettinas and Lindoros of Goldoni, of the 
 Trufifaldinos and Brighellas of Carlo Gozzi, we have strayed into the 
 every-day world of Italy in the eighteenth century, the world of fine 
 ladies in stomachers and hoops, of dapper cavalieri serventi, of crabbed 
 pedants, of hungry Arcadian rhymesters, of Gallo-maniacs and Anglo- 
 maniacs — a world of some good, some evil, some folly, and much inanity; 
 rambling through which, in search of some composer or singer, of some 
 playwright or mask actor, we have occasionally seen at a distance noble 
 intellectual figures like Parini and Alfieri, and have stopped to look at 
 them, although they were not the objects of our pursuit; or we have 
 glanced at one or two faint forgotten celebrities like EoUi and Frngoni; 
 
Introduction. 
 
 r we have wandered into some assembly of drolly solemn pedants, 
 reaming of pastoral life and dinner-giring patrons; or again into the 
 rawing-room of some beautiful Sappho, some Faustina Maratti or Silvia 
 /'erza, seated, sentimental and coquettish, in a circle of enamoured 
 ioetasters. Often also we have idly followed the crowd of periwigged 
 .nd stomachered citizens through the squares and streets of old Italian 
 ities, or have watched them, chatting and card-playing, in their country 
 louses. Strolling about and prying in odd nooks and comers in hopes 
 if meeting a buffoon of Goldoni, or of hearing a snatch of song of 
 Fommelli, we have come across quaint little old-fashioned figures, droll 
 ittle old-world groups fit for Hogarth or for Watteau, and have stopped 
 md tried to sketch their grotesque outline. Thus has originated the fii'st 
 issay of our volume, that on the Academy of the Arcadi, which may serve 
 o give a general notion of the times that witnessed the artistic ef&o- 
 escence which is our principal subject. Our true work lies with the 
 lomposers, and singers, and playwrights, and actors; with Metastasio, and 
 jroldoni, and Gozzi; but these cannot be well understood unless we pre- 
 'iously reconstruct the society in which they lived, and unless we re- 
 issemble around them those men who, though seemingly indifferent or 
 iisignificant, yet indirectly influenced their lives, their art, and their fame. 
 "We deal with that part of the Italian Eighteenth Century which is 
 terling and imperishable; with art which, though now forgotten, still 
 emains and will once more be remembered; and our book is in so far 
 lerenely cheerful; but ever and anon, by the side of the imperishable, 
 irises the thought of that which has perished; and we may once or twice 
 brget for a moment the plays of Metastasio and Goldoni, and the music 
 )f Marcello and Pergolesi, forget our persuasion that they remain and 
 vill remain, as the impression comes home to us how deep an abyss 
 separates us from the men and women for' whom the plays were written 
 md the music composed, and how many faint and nameless ghosts 
 ;rowd round the few ejiduring things bequeathed to us by the past. 
 
THE ARCADIAN ACADEMY. 
 
THE AECADIAN ACADEMY. 
 
 I. 
 
 From the year 1680 to the year 1790, Italian literature is mainly 
 represented by Filicaia, Vico, Metastasio, Goldoni, Parini, Gaspavo 
 Gozzi, Vincenzo Monti, and Vittorio Alfieri, But these men merely 
 represent, they do not constitute, the intellectual life of the nation; for 
 that we must look in the innumerable academies, networks of molecular 
 life spreading all over Italy, and connecting all the classes of society 
 which possessed, or were supposed to possess, any knowledge of literature. 
 These academies were countless and multiform; they sprang up and died 
 out on all sides, growing out of pompous receptions in the palaces of 
 cardinals or of princesses, and out of disorderly carouses at literary 
 coffee-houses; they fairly exhausted the stock of intelligible appellations; 
 their names were allusions, riddles, jokes, or gibberish, such as the Trans- 
 formed (Trasformati) of Milan, among whom were Parini, the three 
 Verris, and Beccaria; the Frozen Ones (Gelidi) of Bologna; the Crazed 
 Ones (Intronati) of Siena; the Erithrean Shepherds of Naples; the 
 Phlegmatics, Frigids, Fervids, and Drunkards. They were all local — 
 very limited in numbers and fame — all except one, whose name resounded 
 with equal glory from Trent to Messina, from Savona to Treviso, which 
 comprised among its members all the great writers, philosophers, or 
 artists, all the noble lords, all the rich bankers, all the astute lawyers, al] 
 the well-known doctors, all the sainted priests, all the beautiful ladies, 
 that lived or travelled in Italy; and this academy was the Academy of 
 the Arcadians. By means of colonies established in all the Italian towns, 
 it caught, like a huge spider-web, everyone distinguished in any way 
 whatever. The establishment could profit by every sort of advantage of 
 which its members might be possessed: the use of literary talents was 
 obvious in a literary institution; artists could paint pictures and make 
 plans for the Academy; musicians could afford agreeable interludes in its 
 meetings; princes, senators, and ministers could grant diplomas and 
 honours; bankers might give or lend money; and last, but far from least, 
 ladies would form a pleasing leaven, a charming cement to all the 
 remainder. With views so liberal, and principles so grasping, what 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 (yonder was there if the institution flourished, if it spread in all quarters, 
 md if there appeared on the title-pages of half the books published in 
 [taly during the last century the pastoral pipe, and laurel and pine crown, 
 3mblematic of the Arcadian Academy? 
 
 In the course of our studies of the eighteenth century we were so con- 
 anually coming upon the Academy of the Arcadians, every person and 
 3very thing seemed so connected with it, it so pervaded the whole of the 
 [taly of those days, that we began to feel curiosity concerning this once 
 -enowned institution, and to wonder what had become of it in our own 
 lay. Had it been swallowed up in the convulsions which changed the 
 face of Italy, or were its broken fragments still crumbling away in silence ? 
 A.lthough we were in Eome, the head-quarters of the Academy, it was 
 iong before we could obtain any answer to this question. Most persons 
 [lad never heard the name of the Arcadians, while those who had, asso- 
 ciated it with vague impressions of absurdity and imbecility. However, 
 ittle by little we obtained a few scraps of infoi-mation on the subject, 
 mostly erroneous and contradictory, and invariably accompanied by not a 
 :ew expressions of contempt; and just as we were giving up all further 
 inquiry in despair we received an authorisation to visit the hallowed spot, 
 )nce the meeting-place of the Arcadians, and now the only remnant of 
 ;heir possessions. 
 
 The Bosco Parrasio is situate on the road winding up the Janiculum 
 jowards the Villa Pamphili, but so utterly forgotten are all things Arcadian 
 ;hat for a long time we wandered close to its gate, through the dirty 
 street leading to Ponte Sisto, up the battered Via Crucis of S. Pietro 
 Montorio, and down the slippery mule-path of the mills, asking vainly \ 
 ifter the villa of the Arcadians. No one had ever heard of such a place 
 is the Bosco Parrasio, nor of such beings as the Arcadians; the beggars 
 (fho hung about the gate of the monastery hard by, the sacristan of the 
 Sette Dolori, the dyers hanging out their skeins of scariet and blue wool, 
 the peasants loading their mules with sacks of flour, all answered iii the 
 same astonished negative. At the top of two shppery mounds, between 
 bhe Vigna Corsini and the mills, was a little garden, at whose gate stood 
 a portly priest: we determined on accosting him. True, there was no 
 reason why he should have heard of a place unknown in the whole neigh- 
 bourhood, but he was our last hope. So we repeated to him the old 
 hopeless question: "Did he happen to know where was the Bosco Par! I 
 rasio, the villa belonging to the Arcadian Academy?" The priest as ' 
 jolly, slovenly, and demonstrative a one as could be found, turned with 
 alacrity towards us—" The Bosco Parrasio? This is it." So, when we 
 least expected it, we were actually standing at the gate of the Italian 
 Parnassus, and, what surprised us still more, in the company of one of 
 
 the dignitaries of Arcadia. 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 We returned from this first visit with the most dismal impressions of 
 le Bosco Parrasio — of muddy paths, dripping bushes, flower-beds filled 
 ith decaying ilex-leayes, lichen-covered benches, crumbling plaster, and 
 louldering portraits — grim spectres looking down on the final ruin of 
 ircadia. Nor had the live inhabitants of the place conduced to raise our 
 pirits. The villa was inhabited by some peasants, whose furniture and 
 revisions filled the state-rooms. The Arcadian who did the honours of 
 iie place did not know one portrait from the other; could not recollect 
 is own, or anyone else's, pastoral name; and took an interest in nothing, 
 iive some beans spread out to dry, which he examined, criticised, and 
 alculated- the market value of," in company with the gardener's wife. 
 Inch was the first effect Arcadia produced on our imagination; but gra- 
 ually, as the remembrance of meanness and decay became fainter, the 
 isagreeable impression wore away, and left instead a whimsical interest 
 1 the forgotten Academy; the Bosco Parrasio impressed us no longer as 
 
 damp, decaying casino in the suburbs, but as a weird habitation of 
 terary goblins. The result of this new phase of humour was that 
 'e revisited the villa of the Arcadians, and found it strangely different 
 :om what it had at first seemed. It was now June, the time when 
 tome receives her crowning beauty before being made hideous by dust 
 nd decay, when the Campagna is one living, waving, chirping, humming 
 lass of green; when grass and flowers spring up in every interstice of 
 lie old pavement, in every crevice of the crumbling walls. The little 
 riangular strip of ground on the Janiculum was a tangle of flowers: 
 elated jonquils and daffodils drooped in the shade of the velvet-leaved 
 ledlar-trees ; jessamines, lupins, and wild geraniums were entwined 
 mong the box and yew hedges; garlands of tiny pink and yellow roses 
 rere slung from ilex to ilex, drooping over the marble slab carved with 
 lie Arcadian pipe: 
 
 Fistula cui semper decrescit arundinis ordo, 
 Nam calamus eera jungitur usque minor. 
 
 Jehind a clump of tapering laurels and pines was hidden a grotto, covered 
 ?ith long ferns and maiden-hair, trickling with the icy water of the Acqua 
 'aola. In front of the little yellow villa splashed a fountain, and the 
 ainiature amphitheatre was overran with ivy, morning glories, and 
 omatoes. The house, once the summer resort of Arcadian sonnetteers, 
 ras now abandoned to a family of market gardeners, who hung their hats 
 .nd jackets on the marble heads of improvvisatori and crowned poetesses; 
 ,nd threw their beans, maize, and garden tools into corners of the desolate 
 eception rooms, from whose mildewed walls looked down a host of cele- 
 rities — brocaded doges, powdered princesses, and scarlet -robed cardinals, 
 impering drearily in their desolation. Sad, haggard poetesses, in sea- 
 ;reen and sky-blue draperies, with lank, powdered locks, and meagre 
 
10 Tlie Arcadian Academy. 
 
 irms, holding lyres; fat, ill-shaven priests in white bands and mop ivigs; 
 lonnetteering ladies, sweet and vapid in dove-coloured stomachers and 
 imbroidered sleeves; jolly extemporary poets, flaunting in many-coloured 
 vaistcoats and gorgeous shawls; and among this crowd of rococo figures, 
 ooking down on the homely furniture, holy water vessels, hallowed box 
 iprigs, and smutty prints of saints and soldiers, here and there stood out 
 ;ome strongly-marked individuality: — Alfieri in semi-military dress, with 
 he collar of his own Order of Homer, glaring fiercely round him, his red 
 lair waving as if in the draught of a furnace ; the dapper Algarotti, phi- 
 osopher for ladies, versifier for kings, and hanger-on of celebrities, his 
 ong beaked face peeping out from a huge wig and pelisse; John V. of 
 Portugal, dark, apelike, his head covered with a mass of black horsehair, 
 lis body encased in shining armour; the Abate Metastasio, reclining on 
 lis sofa, fat, easy, elegant, languid with selfish, self-complacent senti- 
 nentality. It was strange to turn from this assembly of literaiy ghosts, 
 heir gala dresses and gala looks fading away in oblivion, to the bright, 
 loble nature surrounding the mouldering casino. Close beneath stretched 
 he Vigna Corsini, overrun with tall grass, poppies, and vines; further 
 iff, the pines of Villa Lante, St. Peter's with its background of the bald 
 ound Monte Mario, and far in the distance, Soracte, rising out of the 
 lazy blue plain. In front, stretched at the foot of the Janiculmn, lay 
 Home, bounded on one side by the ilexes of the Pincian and the Quirinal, 
 md on the other by the Tiber vrinding past the green Testaccio Mound. 
 Perhaps it was just in this contrast between the grand view and the blooming 
 farden, and the time-stained portraits of long-forgotten men and women, 
 vhose frail talents had withered and fallen to dust vrith time, that lay the 
 iharm of the Bosco Parrasio. We returned often and often to spend the 
 )urning afternoons in the shady garden, or in the cool, dismantled rooms, 
 foing home at sunset, carrying away bunches of flowers, tiny roses, 
 )olyanthuses gorgeous as an Oriental brocade, sapphire-coloured irises, 
 ixquisitely delicate in texture and perfume, tied up with long sprays of 
 naidenhair fresh from the trickling grotto; sketches, too, of some bro- 
 ;aded Lycidas or powdered Chloe, and above all, vague impressions, quaint 
 jnd sentimental, of the long-deceased and long-forgotten world of the last 
 lentury. 
 
 During the intervals of our visits we procured, not without great diffi- 
 ulty, old books relating to the Arcadian Academy. We sought for them 
 n dingy dens near the Piazza Navona, and on stone benches behind"-*^ 
 'antheon; among rows of musty, faded, worm-eaten, volumes, and among^ 
 leaps of soiled prints, engravings, and etchings. Thus, one by one we ' 
 lisGOvered many of the heavily-bound, childishly-printed books with the 
 [ivariable Imprimatur, and "Approbation of the Superiors," and the no 
 3ss invariable pages of dedicatory nonsense, in huge characters with 
 
. The Arcadian Academy. 11 
 
 idmills and ciipids as initial letters; the books which contained all that 
 aains of Arcadian glory, and whence we extracted the materials for the 
 lowing history of the once famous Academy of the Arcadians, round 
 ich centred the general intellectual life of the Italian eighteenth century, 
 which we would fain give some notion before proceeding to study its 
 icial artistic products. 
 
 II. 
 
 The grand literature and art which burst into full efflorescence at the 
 ginning of the sixteenth century had their origin in the strong, active, 
 jerful life of the previous age; the sixteenth century, the time of foreign 
 rasion, of Spanish and papal preponderance, of despair, brutahty, and 
 laticism, in its turn produced and bequeathed to the succeeding century 
 
 artistic and literary fruit — the crazy, meretricious architecture and 
 ilpture of the Jesuit churches; the theatrical and ecstatic Bolognese 
 inting; and the wild conceits and languid affectation of the literary 
 lool of Marini. These were the products of a time of unhealthy excite- 
 snt; they grew to maturity in one of national lethargy, and the poor 
 hausted seventeenth century was reviled not only for its own indolence " 
 d incapacity, but for the extravagance which it had inherited from its 
 sdecessor. The mystic sibyls and tragic martyrdoms of Guido and 
 )menichino became simpering sentimental ladies and romping opera 
 u'ders in the hands of Donato Creti, of Giro Ferri, and of Luca Giordano; 
 3 brilliant paradoxes of Marini and the elegant effeminacy of Guarini 
 rned into systematic nonsense and studied vapidness among their 
 ccessors: the sun cooled itself in the waters of rivers which were on fire; 
 e celestial sieve, resplendent with shining holes, was swept by the bristly 
 ck of the Apennines ; love was an infernal heaven and a celestial hell, 
 was burning ice and freezing fire, and was inspired by ladies made up 
 tirely of coral, gold thread, lilies, roses, and ivory, on whose lips sat 
 ipids shooting arrows which were snakes. In short, if in England the * 
 ge for conceits injured not a few excellent poets, in Italy it made the 
 rtune of scores of poetasters; for the indolent, ostentatious nobles, who 
 esided over the innumerable academies, required mad paradoxes and 
 pid hyperboles in their birthday odes and dedicatory sonnets as much 
 
 they required fluttering smirking goddesses for their gardens, and 
 iling masonry and waving stucco work for their chapels. Yet it 
 is during this despicable period of exhausted repose that took place 
 e partial renovation which produced the modern Italian world; it was 
 long these languid, pompous, artificial people of the seventeenth century 
 at modern society began to be formed, and it is in dealing with them 
 at we first find that we have to do, no longer with our remote ancestors, 
 
12 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 living in castellated houses, travelling on horseback, fighting in the streets,: 
 and carousing at banquets; but with the grandfathers of our grandfathers,, 
 steady, formal, hypocritical people, paying visits in coaches, going to 
 operas, giving dinner parties, and litigating and slandering rather than 
 assassinating and poisoning. As the century advanced and the stormy! 
 times of invasion and reformation were left further and further behind,! 
 Italy, indolent, pedantic, and ostentatious, saw the slow consohdation of 
 regular, formal governments; despotic, but not illegal, letting people do 
 what they chose except think and act for themselves ; while the spiiitualj 
 authorities, with their well-organised Jesuit schools and officially-managed 
 Inquisition, relaxed their sway, or rather let their zeal die out into self- 
 complacent meddlesomeness. Heresy had long been crushed, indifference 
 was rapidly spreading, and free thought was almost becoming a possibility;] 
 in short, the ponderous inert mass of Italian society was imperceptibly 
 slipping onwards. 
 
 At this time Eome was, with the exception of Venice, Genoa, and Lucca, 
 the only truly independent Italian State, and the only true republic remaining. 
 The Papal See had become a most perfect oligarchy; the sacred college 
 was mainly recruited among the nobility, and the pope was the doge or 
 gonfaloniere for life of an ecclesiastical senate. Eeligious zeal there was 
 no longer: the race of Caraffas and .Perettis had died out; poor monks 
 remained poor monks, and inquisitors remained inquisitors; the Pro- 
 testant and Catholic States were treated with the same bland civility; all 
 ideas of giving laws to Europe had been laid aside as folly. The popes 
 were elected sovereigns, whose only thought was to secure to their relatives 
 wealth and a chance of succession; the cardinals were rich senators aspir- 
 ing to sovereign power, and consoling their disappointment with pomp I 
 and ostentation. Still, this languid system of nepotism was not without its t 
 advantages: each pope brought with him his family and friends from 
 Bologna, Lombardy, or Venetia; Eoman life was kept up by a continual 
 influx of foreigners, and Eoman society obtained a more liberal and 
 active character than it could otherwise have had. The papal families 
 vied with each other in tasteless magnificence: the Borghese enlarged the! 
 great villa outside Porta del Popolo; the Odesoalchi of Como built the 
 vast yellow palace opposite the SS. Apostoli; the Altieri erected the huge] 
 clumsy structure near the Gesti; the Pistojese Eospighosi established' 
 themselves on the Quirinal, the Florentine Corsini on the Janiculum; 
 everywhere, in short, the strangers colonised Eome. To them are dae^ 
 those enormous palaces with spacious courts and low-stepped stairs, 
 bedizened with plaster dragons and flowerets and curls of masonry! 
 without, and with gilt Cupids, and brick and chalk-coloured frescoes, ' 
 within; and the many villas with straight walls of clipped ilex and box 
 and innumerable ill-restored, worthless statues in fantastic temples. ' 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 13 
 
 ey employed the frigid Maratta and the stiff Sacchi to cover their 
 lings with earthy-tinted Gods and Nymphs, and the clumsy Duquesnoy 
 J the theatrical Legros to ornament their chapels with gigantic saints in 
 ing marble robes. Thanks to them and their hangers-on, Eome was in 
 I middle of the seventeenth century a handsome modern-looking town, 
 most of the houses with shell, pinebranch, and other stucco ornaments 
 ich abound in what are now the dirtiest quarters, were then resplendent 
 ;h whitewash. The prince nephews were likewise patrons of music, 
 ich was then struggling to free itself from the inexorable composers 
 madrigals and canons ; theatres were built, and cardinals had won- 
 :ful private concerts, at which sang all the charming sirens of the 
 1, Milton's Baroni and Evelyn's Laurettos and Pasqualinos. But 
 3ve all the Roman aristocracy favoured literature and men of letters : 
 b a wedding could take place, not a cardinal could be' promoted, without 
 lumes of poems being published on the occasion, and the innumerable 
 ' ecclesiastics who hung on to the princes of the church were all poets, 
 imbers and perhaps founders of academies. In short, thanks to foreign 
 onisation and nepotism, there was in Rome a vast literary bustle 
 thout aim or result. 
 
 But, as the century of incapacity and indolence drew towards its close, . 
 iilian intellect began once more to stir; music, destined to attain to 
 tfection in the succeeding age, rapidly superseded the plastic arts; and 
 lew style of poetry, free from conceit and extravagance, soon showed 
 elf. It would certainly be difficult to find in any Italian verses of the 
 d of the seventeenth century the feeling and grace of the songs con- 
 ned in Salvator Rosa's music-book, but nevertheless a great literary 
 dval did take place. While Eedi let his droll humour riot in his 
 rlesque Triumph of Bacchus, and Menzini wrote, his sharp, harsh 
 tires, Filicaia and Guidi struck a note which had been mute for more 
 an two centuries; instead of addressing the descendants of the"un- 
 aqnered Hippolytus " and the " magnanimous Alfonso " of Ariosto and 
 sso, they addressed Italy, France, and Germany; they spoke to a 
 tion in the name of a nation, and their poetry has the nobility as well 
 the bombast of newly-obtained and as yet misunderstood independence. 
 ; the same time the conceits and fustian of the poets of the preceding 
 neration began to lose favour, and the simplicity and elegance of the 
 rly Italian classics began once more to be admired. In Rome especially 
 society of literary purists formed itself, which included some of the 
 )st gifted poets and some of the most eminent pedants of the day; 
 • literature had sunk so low that mediocrity could easily associate with 
 ent, nay, that talent and mediocrity might be found strangely united 
 a single individual. They found a staunch patrooess in Queen Christina 
 Sweden, who, in return for the amount of bombastic flattery usual in 
 
14 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 that day, receiyed them as friends and presided oyer their meetings m 
 her gardens. They even introduced her majesty's bad verses into their 
 own poems, a better proof than the most servile flattery that these wniers 
 of the seventeenth century were without station, fortune, or a literary 
 public. They turned their attention especially to extirpating what 
 remained of the metaphysical poetry of the previous age, and to rehabili- 
 tating Petrarch and his followers, Bembo, Molza, and Costanzo; and 
 their influence became daily greater and more acknowledged. However, 
 they did not succeed in bettering their own fortimes, for, on the death of 
 the munificent Christina, they lost their fixed meeting-place, and had to 
 send their servile muse to Don Livio Odescalchi to ask for an invitation 
 to Frascati, and to Cardinal Corsini to beg admission into his gardens — 
 a favour readily granted, for the Eomau nobles were idle, conceited, and 
 loved to play the Maecenas. However, one fortunate spring morning of 
 the year 1692, Fate decreed that they should find no better place of 
 meeting than the large pasture tracts behind the castle of Sant' Angelo, 
 usually known as the Prati di CasteUo. The party numbered fourteen, 
 and included some of the most illustrious men of letters then flourishing: 
 Alessandro Guidi, the humpbacked favourite of Queen Christina, 
 regarded by himself and his contemporaries as a second Pindar, and who 
 boasted that his poetical stables contained a hundred winged coursers, 
 ready to carry up his misshapen little person in the track of the horses 
 of the sun; Giambattista Felice Zappi, a young Imolese lawyer, of noble 
 birth and elegant person, of whose graceful though rather insipid poems 
 we shall speak more than once ; Silvio Stampiglia, historiographer and 
 writer of tragi-comical opera texts to the Emperor Leopold ; the Calabrian 
 jurist and critic Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina; the Abate Crescimbeni, 
 one of the stupidest and most self-important of Eoman pedants; and 
 nine others, mostly satellites of the two last-mentioned writers. The 
 Prati di Castello form a quiet, rm-al peninsula, separated by a bend of the 
 sluggish yellow river from the vast grey town, with its innumerable 
 cupolas and belfries shining in the sunlight; the ground is covered with 
 grass and mint; crushed and browsed by the shaggy Roman horses and 
 long-horned, white oxen; here and there a hedge of flowering thorn or a 
 clump of slender elms, and to the back, the round mass of the castle of 
 S. Angelo and the long extent of the Vatican terrace gardens. The 
 quiet pastoral scene impressed even our fourteen literati, for after they 
 had read and improvised verses, and applauded each other as indiscrimi- 
 nately as was their wont, one of them exclaimed: "It seems to-day as if 
 Arcadia were reviving for us! " His speech was hailed as an inspiration, 
 and it was immediately determined that, since Arcadia had been thus 
 happily resiiscitated, it should be kept alive by their care. The first and 
 most obvious necessity was to exchange their real names for such as 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 15 
 
 ould suit theiv new capacity of Arcadian shepherds, and fourteen 
 istoral names and surnames were forthwith written on as many slips of 
 iper, which were extracted, in the order that fate ordained, out of the 
 it of one of the company. This being done, the fourteen shepherds in 
 ack coats, white bands, and horsehair wigs, pastoral physicians, lawyers, 
 riests, and professors, set about framing the constitution of the newly- 
 ■eated state. It was republican, but paternal; the elected head of the 
 .ate was called custode (custos), and to him were giren two subordinate, 
 r yice-eustodi: such was the rudimentary form of government. 
 Scarcely was the existence of Arcadia known than everyone in Home 
 inged to be admitted into it, the learned literati and the stupid nobles 
 sing equally charmed with the notion. Meanwhile the Academy elected 
 s president, or, more properly speaking, the sheep looked out for a head 
 lepherd. The choice unanimously fell upon one of the least brilliant of 
 le members; yet the choice was a happy one, as events proved in after 
 Bars. Guidi was old, conceited, and too little interested in the institu- 
 on; Zappi, on the other hand, was too young and simple-minded; Silvio 
 tampiglia was a writer of plays, and had no connections in the ecclesi- 
 stical city; Leonio was insignificant, and the other unnamed ones still 
 lore so ; the choice therefore remained between Gravina and Crescimbeni. 
 rravina was a man of about thirty: tall, thin, with a fine worn, thoughtful 
 ice, thin lips, a long weak chin, dreamy eyes and a massive forehead, 
 hence his scant hair fell in light ringlets; he had a considerable fortune 
 ir a Eoman writer in those days, and held the chair of Jurisprudence at 
 le Sapienza. As a jurist his talent was undoubted, his great works on 
 ,oman law being read to this day, and having served, with those of Vico, to 
 roduce a new school of Judicial Philosophy, headed by Montesquieu; he 
 as besides a great classical scholar, his critical writings were ingenious, 
 is style elegant and noble; and his society was eagerly sought by all 
 le most intelligent men in Rome. Gian Mario dei Crescimbeni was a 
 riest of about forty, borli at Macerata in the March; he was small and 
 ngainly in figure, dark complexioned, with a nose of such huge propor- 
 ons as to gain him the familiar appellation of Nasica; his crabbed 
 spect was that of the pedant which he was. He had written on literature, 
 I a stiff, hard, low style, mere awkward compilations, and the only 
 riginal idea he was ever known to have stmck out was that the Divina 
 'ommedia was a comic poem and the Morgante Maggiore a serious one. 
 "et, in spite of all the recommendations of person, talents, learning and 
 Dsition on the one hand; and of all the disadvantages of ugliness, 
 iupidity, pedantry, and poverty on the other, the general choice fell not 
 pon the dignified and ingenious Gravina but upon the awkward and 
 jdantic Crescimbeni ; nor was the choice a wrong one. For Orescinibeni had 
 high conception of the honour and responsibility attached to the position 
 
16 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 of Custode Generale d^ Arcadia; he was a good-natured man, who could 
 flatter the great and soothe the humble, and whose only thought woujd 
 be to further the interests of the Academy which had honoured him with 
 its choice. Martello, writing some years later, describes him as discreet, 
 fair and modest, able to distinguish a good writer from a bad one, yet- 
 condescending even towards a raven . decked out in swan's feathers.* 
 Gravina, on the contrary, was neither entirely liked nor entirely respected 
 in Rome; his being a Neapolitan, though certainly no recommendation to 
 the Eomans, is not sufficient to account for the rather hostile feeling 
 which he inspired. " He is proud and eccentric according to the general ■ 
 belief" [che strano e altero e nel concetto altrui], writes Martello; he 
 was cold, conceited, and had an insatiable appetite for praise; to be 
 tolerated by him it was necessary to concur in all his notions, which were 
 often extravagant and pedantic, as, for instance, he affected to consider 
 Trissino's Italia lAberata equal to the Iliad and immeasurably superior 
 to Tasso's Jerusalem. " You must concur in all his notions," continues 
 Martello, "for the weakness of this great man is to imagine himself 
 possessed of all human wisdom. Praise him, and he will love you as a 
 son." Unfortunately the Eoman literati of established position found 
 such conditions intolerable, although profuse enough of praise towards 
 wealthy patrons; so Gravina remained as Opico Erimanteo, a mere 
 member of the Academy, distinguished only by his own talents; while 
 Crescimbeni, under the name of Alfesibeo Carlo, took possession of the 
 supreme rank of Custode Generale d'Arcadia. 
 
 However, as the Academy grew in numbers, Gravina came into greater i 
 notice, for the institution needed a code of laws, and this work naturally ' 
 fell to the great jurist and scholar; the result was considered worthy of 
 Cicero, both for wisdom and latinity. Meanwhile Crescimbeni, who could 
 not shine by his pen, set to work quietly and patiently at gaining members 
 and patrons for the Academy, with which his heart was bound up. Among | 
 the Roman nobles who aspired to the position of Maecenas, the most 
 conspicuous was Don Livio Odescalchi, of Comp, nephew of the proud 
 pope who had dared to thwart Louis XIV. He was the successor to 
 Queen Christina's position in Roman society; in his elegant palace 
 between the S8. Apostoli and the Corso he gave concerts at which (as 
 the irate Bourdelot complains) all the ecclesiastical musicians of Rome 
 sang profane music, and literary receptions at which verses were read! 
 and improvised by conspicuous writers; nay, he even invited whole 
 
 * Vi notai Crescimbeni e il suo Leonio, 
 Ch'ambo discreti, eqnauimi e modesti, 
 
 San chi sieda e chi no nel coro Aonio. 
 Ma gia non sono al van desio molesti 
 D'un eorvo che di cigno abbia le piume. 
 
 Pier Jacopo Martello, Sat. 3. 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 17 
 
 J 
 
 .demies to his splendid villa in the hills. Don Livio, who was always 
 ling to huy literary fame at the price of such invitations, immediately 
 lerstood how important it was to connect his name with that of the 
 ng academy, and Crescimbeni took care to foster this belief. Don 
 io appears to have been the only noble who invited the whole Academy 
 his country seat, Prince Corsini. and Cardinal Farnese deigning to 
 jive the hungry shabby literati in their vineyards and gardens, but not 
 ;heir palaces. • 
 
 [here seems at the end of the seventeenth century to have lingered among 
 Italian upper-classes a remnant of Spanish gravity and pomposity, which 
 appeared in the eighteenth century, when the true Italian character came 
 e more into notice, mingled perhaps with a little French levity. It is 
 )ossible to conceive how an institution like the Arcadian Academy could 
 'e assumed the importance which it did, except in the midst of that 
 tely and solemn civilisation, marked by strajght-walked gardens, heavy, 
 ; coaches, black clothes, and huge curly periwigs; or in any other place 
 n Eome, among its upstart princes and idle prelates, whose only 
 ught was ostentation of some sort. Sixty years later, in the days of 
 Idoni and Gaspare Grozzi, such an academy would have been regarded 
 1 mere whimsical congregation of crotchety pedants and blue-stockings, 
 ose only use was to make people acquainted with each other, and whose 
 ings were an avowed amusement, enlivened by music, small-talk, and 
 ds ; but between the years 1690 and 1710 things were viewed in a 
 y different light : the Arcadian Academy, besides reviving the 
 iplicity and innocence of the golden age, was to reform literature 
 oughout Italy ; it was to make or unmake the reputation of writers ; 
 fas to eradicate vice and ignorance ; it was to restore to Eome the 
 rious days of Augustus and of Leo X. ; it was to erect monuments to 
 gs and emperors, and to supply Homers for any chance Achilles who 
 jht tm-n up. All this was sincerely believed by Crescimbeni, Don 
 io Odescalchi, and probably nearly all the Eoman Arcadians, nor do 
 y ever seem to have suspected any ludicrous discrepancy between what 
 y were and what they were intended to be; these poetasters, priests, and 
 yers, living for the most part oif dedications, and their munificent 
 rons, the illiterate nobles, met in the prim box alleys and ilex groves 
 the Eoman villas, and fretted to read their own compositions, and 
 med over those of their companions, in the full persuasion that they 
 e engaged in most important work, and that the whole world watched 
 m with anxious interest. Everything had to be literary and solemn, 
 [ even Arcadian amusements took a ponderous and pompous shape, as 
 iroved by Crescimbeni's account of that celebrated and delightful game 
 ed the Giuoco del Sibillone, invented by the illustrious shepherd 
 uenico Trosi. " In this game of the Sibillone {i.e. great male sybil), 
 
 c 
 
18 Tlie Arcadian Academy. \ 
 
 othei-wise called game of the oracle" (writes the Custode Generalei 
 d'Arcadia), " one of the company is chosen to personate the oracle, and 
 answers in a single word whatever question may be pnt to him by 
 the spectators, which word is afterwards explained and shown to be suitable- 
 to the question by two others, who play the part of interpreters. Fo^ 
 the sake of enjoying this most noble and curious game, after some time 
 there came not only friends, but other persons, and we ourselves have 
 seen more than once gentlemen and ladies of the highest rank, and even 
 Cardinals ; and in truth this was an amusement worthy of any great 
 personage, because, as the interpreters were mostly men learned in every 
 science, their interpretations were usually full of rare information, 
 especially philosophical . . . nay, sometimes the interpreter would fulfil 
 his duty with wondrous perfection, speaking extempore in elegant Italian 
 verses, sometimes even in rhyme," 
 
 As the Academy increased in numbers and importance, Crescimbeni 
 took to publishing octavo volumes with lajrge margins, endless dedications, 
 and the syrinx surrounded by pine and laurel branches, the chosen emblem 
 of Arcadia, in which he chronicled the meetings of the Arcadians and 
 the Olympic Games, performances in which the clumsiness and sloth of 
 literary racers and wrestlers were displayed in honour of some illustrious 
 stranger. The cost of printing these works must have greatly surpassed 
 any small profits made from their dedications, and, as many of them were 
 published anonymously, we can ascribe their production only to the sincere 
 faith which Crescimbeni placed in his vocation, and his awe-stricken belief 
 in the institution which had placed him at its head. Later appeared 
 volumes containing lives of distinguished members, and others filled witl 
 biographies of the deceased ones. In these productions Crescimbeni was j 
 assisted by various other Academicians, whose style is rather less j 
 insufferable than his own, but who write about Arcadian matters with as 
 much solemnity as their chief From these works it appears that Arcadian 
 colonies were beginning to be founded all over Italy, and that scarcely a 
 single distinguished man of letters of any part of the country had been 
 missed by Crescimbeni's pastoral fishing apparatus. These books also 
 give an insight into the literary circles of Eome, inasmuch as they were 
 connected with the academy. The principal one had for its centre the 
 beautiful and accomplished Faustina, daughter of the famous painter 
 Carlo Maratta, and wife of the then scarcely less celebrated poet Felice 
 Zappi. Zappi was considerably older than his wife, but handsom^ 
 elegant, and highly talented, and there appears to have existed between 
 thorn an affection which never diminished, and of which Faustina's? 
 beautiful sonnet to an old love of her husband's is a proof such as one 
 rarely meets among the vapid Arcadian love poems. She was likewise; 
 skilled as a painter, and the Arcadian Academy still possesses a little 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 19 
 
 ■trait in which she has represented herself in the full maturity of her 
 luty, dressed in flowered yellow brocade, her black hair raised in a high 
 ttcture, and one long curl falling on her finely-modelled neck. The face, 
 h its straight, delicate features, and opaque, ivory complexion, has a 
 t of sedate, intellectual coquetry, like that of Pope's lady — " an equal 
 sture of good humour and sensible soft melancholy" — which makes 
 ) understand the courteous and admiring affection which Faustina 
 tratti Zappi inspired in the most eminent men of Italy, a feeling quite 
 like the flat gallantry of those times, and which Manfredi has well 
 pressed in a pretty sonnet : 
 
 Pnr con questi occhi al fin visto ho I'altero 
 Miracol di bellezza e d'onestate, 
 Cni sol per adombrar, mille fiate 
 Oltr' Amo ed Apennin spinto ho il pensiero. 
 
 E pur con qneste orecchie udito ho il vero 
 Pregio 6 il vivo stupor di nostra etate : 
 Or gli uni e I'altre omai paghi e beate 
 CMndansi pur, ch'altro da lor non chero. 
 
 Ne tu i gran templi e i simulacri tuoi 
 Vantarmi intatti ancor dal tempo edace, 
 Nell' ampie spoglie deUa terra doma ; 
 
 Chd gloria antica o nuova altra non puoi 
 Mostrar pari a costei, sia con tua pace, 
 Bella, invitta, superba, augusta Boma. 
 
 Eolli and Frugoni and all the principal Italian poets addressed Faustina 
 iratti under her Arcadian name of Aglauro Cidonia ; but their verses 
 re mostly inferior to their subject, and Felice Zappi himself, although 
 i vein was generally rather insipid and finikin, was, on the whole, the 
 eetest and most elegant of the poets who sang the charms of the 
 autiful painter and poetess. Faustina is the heroine of a romantic 
 jident, strange enough in the jog-trot literary Italy of those days. A 
 ung noblemen, violently enamoured of her and enraged at her 
 atemptuous treatment, determined to destroy her beauty in default of 
 r reputation, and threw in her face some dreadful liquid, probably vitriol, 
 which, however, only a single drop touched her, leaving on her temple 
 jlack patch, the size of a sticking-plaster mouche, an indelible record of 
 is semi-miracle, which she, of course, recorded in a sonnet. It is curious 
 th what simplicity Count Corniani, writing sixty years later, asks with 
 iignant surprise how such an atrocious attempt could go unpunished ; 
 t its author was perhaps the nephew of a Pope, and in the eighteenth 
 itury it is a great proof of the liberty enjoyed by Italians that the crime 
 ould not have been punished on the victim rather than on the criminal. 
 a old friend and constant visitor at the Zappi's was Pier Jacopo Martello, 
 10 resided for some time in Eome as Secretary to the Ambassador of the 
 )lognese Senate to the Holy See. Martello was, like most of his 
 
 c2 
 
20 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 contemporaries, a learned man — he had written Latin verses and treatises ; 
 but he had been in Paris and acquired a taste for French literature, which, 
 joined to his secular Bolognese education, gave him a light and genteel, 
 air compared with the solemn Eoman clod-hoppers. A volume of his 
 works contains a finely-wrought little engraving of his portrait, suspended, 
 with- a pastoral pipe on an oak tree : with his carefully crimped hair and 
 fur pelisse he has much the look of a dandy ; and his thin lips, heavy 
 eyelids, and scraggy profile, give the general impression of conceit, 
 inoffensive, intellectual, and benign. Martello was perhaps the first Italian 
 who made his fellow-countrymen acquainted with French literature, and 
 who, while the subtle and icy Gravina was constructing plays on what he 
 conceived to be the Greek model, wrote tragedies in the correct andi 
 polished French style, and in a species of Alexandrin, invented by himself,] 
 and of such uncouthness of sound as to do him little credit. Occasionally 
 the cheerful little Bolognese society at Faustina Zappi's house was 
 increased by the benign and elegant mathematician Francesco Zanotti \ 
 and his rough, merry brother, the painter and poet Giampietro. Then 
 there was the intimate of old Carlo Maratta, the famous violinist and 
 composer Arcangelo Corelli, whose works are still remembered and 
 admired, while Martello, the Zanottis, Zappi, and even the beautiful i 
 Faustina herself have long been forgotten. 
 
 But while colonies were being founded in all directions, and the 
 illustrious names — not only of princes, and senators, and cardinals, but 
 of the last Gonzagas and Estensi — were being exchanged for pastoral 
 appellations, danger threatened the Academy from within, and a spark; 
 was set alight which well-nigh blew Arcadia back again into chaos. The" 
 haughty and eccentric Gravina had not seen without a pang the growtl^ 
 of an institution which had declined having him at its head, nor the glory 
 which had thence accrued to his rival Crescimbeni. This ill-favoured, 
 awkward pedant had become the acknowledged head of the whole hierarchjj 
 of Italian literature, petted by cardinals and princes and flattered by 
 poets and ladies ; and meanwhile he, Gian Vincenzo Gravina, the greatedj 
 scholar and jmist in Rome, the author of luminous treatises and elegant 
 poems, the handsome, dignified, eloquent Gravina, was left to muse and 
 study in his rustUy-furnished rooms in Via Giulia, and to hold forth 
 thrice a week before the students of the Sapienza. Gravina's jealous 
 irritation was increased beyond all control by the ill success of his tragedie^ 
 which, as Martello informs us, no one would read; and the illwill pent up 
 for twenty years suddenly vented itself on the unlucky Crescimbeni. The 
 pretext for the quarrel is confused and obscure. Gravina accused Cresl 
 cimbeni of passing off the famous Arcadian Code as his own work; 
 Crescimbeni declared that Gravina had merely translated what he himseli 
 had suggested; which was in the right and which in the wrong none 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 21 
 
 n now tell, and no one perhaps nnderstood at the time ; but this much 
 certain, that a schism ensued, Crescimbeni retaining the main body of 
 e Arcadians while Gravina marched off at the head of the minority, 
 nd now appeared the influence of Gravina's undoubted talents ; one 
 rcadian after another abondoned Crescimbeni and rallied round his rival. 
 3tween the two parties poor Don Livio Odescalchi was perfectly lost ; 
 I felt bound to protect from heresy the Academy that was rendering him 
 imortal; but he could in no way discover which was the orthodox branch, 
 id which the schismatic, wavering between the authority of Crescimbeni, 
 ng and intimately connected with the institution, and the influence of 
 ravina, the most brilliant scholar of Eome. At length, and in despair, 
 on Livio let himself be won over ,by Gra,vina, but reluctantly, and 
 sting a half remorseful, glance back at Crescimbeni. Although he 
 stalled the Anti-Arcadia in one of his villas outside Porta del Popolo, 
 id even accepted the nominal title of Custode Generale, he yet tried to 
 lep on good terms with Crescimbeni, who takes care to inform us of this 
 ct (Vite degli Arcadi Morti), at the same time hinting darkly and 
 lemnly that the unhappy Prince was the victim of a conspiracy, of 
 lose existence he became aware very soon, but too late, alas ! to be saved. 
 L the midst of these awful events, which the scoffing Baretti ridiculed 
 th more coarseness than wit fifty years later, one of the original founders 
 the disturbed Academy, Domenico Petrosellini, had the levity to sing 
 e war between Gravina and Crescimbeni in a heroic-comic poem, which 
 id great success at the time, but is now extremly difficult to procure, 
 at the schism, begun about 1711, was not of long duration. Gravina's 
 Idness, intolerant and intolerable conceit, and real want of interest in 
 rcadian matters, little by little sent back the penitent schismatics to 
 e orthodox institution, and after some time the heresiarch found himself 
 unned no less by his own former disciples than by those of his opponent. 
 ) Gian Vincenzo Gravina hid his humiliation in his house near Palazzo 
 arnese, and soothed his disappointment by doing his best to make his 
 lung pupil Metastasio an eminent lawyer, instead of letting him waste 
 s powers on being a poet. 
 
 The Arcadian Academy appears already to have possessed some sort 
 fixed abode, called Serbaioio, a word that might be translated into 
 servoir or conservatory, and about which Baretti made the following 
 ^mological remarks: " Serbatoio, a "Greek word derived from the 
 [laldean, is in Eome equivalent to poetical Secretaries office, while "in 
 iorence it has the meaning of a closet in which are kept meat, vegetables, 
 mltry, and other eatables'' However, the Serbatoio appears to have 
 en a very humble apartment, judging by a letter of Giampietro Zanotti, 
 which he says : " I have been to the Serbatoio, a very little thing, 
 namented with very little things." Indeed, the only large thing that 
 
22 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 it contained was Crescimbeni's nose : " I assure you " (writes Zanotti to 
 his wife) "that it impressed me much more than the obelisk of the Piazza, 
 
 del Popolo Oh, what a nose ! A statue ought to be made 
 
 of it and placed in the Capitol. What is the cupola of St. Peter's or 
 the Colosseum compared to that nose? A wretched trifle. Let us pray 
 Heaven to preserve that nose yet a while, and let us give thanks for our 
 living now-a-days and seeing so grand a sight." The Bolognese painter 
 could not recover from the impression made by Crescimbeni's nose, and, 
 again spoke of -it in a letter of the 19th December, 1719: "Satm-dayj 
 last the lightning fell with tremendous crash on the Capitol, and, strange j 
 to say, broke a bench on which three lawyers were seated, without hurting 
 them. Think if it were to fall on to the Serbatoio d' Arcadia and hit the \ 
 nose of the Custode ! " 
 
 When Giampietro Zanotti wrote this rhapsody on Crescimbeni's nose 
 Gravina had already been removed from the scene of his shortlived glory 
 and long humiliation. Unable to brook the final victory of his rival he 
 had apparently accepted the invitation of the King of Sardinia to fill the 
 place of professor of civil law at Turin, when, in 1718, he suddenly died, 
 leaving the bulk of his fortune to his favourite pupil Pietro Bonaventural 
 Trapassi, the son of an ex-soldier and small druggist, who was later to 
 fill the world with his fame under the name of Pietro Metastasio. Soon 
 after Gravina's death, his friends, Vincenzo Leonio and Pier Jacopo 
 Martello, informed Crescimbeni that the deceased had charged them to 
 make known to the Custode Generale d' Arcadia that he deeply regretted 
 having provoked the schism in that institution, but that he had done so 
 from no want of respect towards it. This extraordinary posthumous self- 
 humiliation of one of the vainest of men may possibly have touched even 
 the rusty heart of his rival ; at all events, the merits of Gravina were 
 appreciated more universally than before, and by a general decree of the 
 Arcadian Acedemy the name of Gian Vincenzo Gravina, erased during 
 his lifetime from its registers as that of a malignant schismatic, was 
 inscribed once more in them a short time after his death. 
 
 Two events, more brilliant than even this one, were reserved for the last 
 years of Crescimbeni's reign. 
 
 In 1725 there arrived in Rome the most illustrious Signor Benedetto 
 Marcello, patrician of Venice and Provveditore of Pola, celebrated for 
 his patronage of poetry and music. Crescimbeni and his pedants, who 
 were utterly incapable of appreciating the musical genius of Marcello, and 
 who, in their happy state of self-delusion, doubtless considered musicians 
 as miserable buffoons, not worthy of a look from an empty-headed man 
 of letters, were yet capable of appreciating the great Venetian composet's 
 high rank. So Marcello was forthwith admitted to the inestimable hononf^ 
 of belonging to the Arcadian Academy, and, when his psalms were performfed 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 23 
 
 Cardinal Ottoboni's palace, Cresoimbeni and his colleagues embellisbed 
 s solemnity by reciting their own verses in the interludes of the music 
 a splendid instance of self-sufficient folly patronising genius. Marcello, 
 wever, was of very little importance compared with the heroic prince 
 .0 graced these performances with his presence ; and, if sonnets were 
 ide for the patrician who deigned to cultivate music, Olympic Games 
 re decreed in honour of the king who stooped to pay attention to poetry. 
 le king in question was Don John V. of Portugal, one of the most 
 entious, superstitious, and spendthrift princes of the day, and whose 
 rtrait at the Bosco Parrasio, representing him in full armour and a 
 lok horse-hair wig, from under which peers his swarthy, apelike 
 antenance, reveals one of the most brutish natures conceivable. Cres- 
 nbeni, however, was too much dazzled by the glory which surrounded 
 hn V. to perceive any of his Majesty's uncouth peculiarities, and the 
 ag, in return for the Olympic Games above mentioned, made a present 
 the Arcadian Academy of a triangular strip of ground on the Janiculum, 
 lich, being laid out with flowers and shrubs, was designated by the name 
 
 Parrhasian Grove, and became the summer resort of the shepherds in 
 ack broadcloth and full-bottomed wigs. — 
 
 Meanwhile the Academy was gradually changing, as one after another 
 
 the old members dropped away and new ones started up instead, 
 lessandro Guidi had not long survived Queen Christina and the seven- 
 enth century; .Silvio Stampiglia had for years been replaced in the im- 
 irial service by the Candiot dramatist and reviewer Zeno ; Carlo Maratta, 
 st of great painters, and Corelli, first of great violinists, had followed 
 ,ch other to the grave ; the intelligent and accomplished Martello had 
 so gone, leaving, however, a growing crop of French imitations and 
 lexandrin verses behind ; even Prince Livio Odescalchi, would-be Mae- 
 nas, had died, happy, doubtless, in expectation of immortal fame. 
 tiis gradual change in the members of the Academy indicated a much 
 ore important one in the whole republic of letters, nay, in the whole of 
 alian society. The men educated in the seventeeth century were rapidly 
 ring out, while those already educated in the eighteenth were beginning to 
 ke their place. The solemn period of stagnation, nepotism, and Spanish 
 lie was over, and the time of French influence, levity, tolerance, and national 
 constitution, had come. There remained, it is true, not only then, but 
 iroughout the whole eighteenth century, much that was childish, pedantic, 
 id servile : there were vast numbers of dunces who passed off for learned 
 en, and vast numbers of fools who got credit as poets ; worse still, there 
 ere truly learned men wasting their time on the most futile disputes, and 
 lal poets throwing away their talents on the most insignificant subjects ; 
 lere was, still worst of all, the basest adulation of princes, and prelates, 
 id fine ladies ; this was the miserable inheritance of the previous age. 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 by its side was what the previous age had not possessed — ^learning put 
 'orthy use, talent developed in the right way, and protection granted 
 irously and intelligently. But of these new characteristics we shall 
 ik later, when we come to treat of the time when they were more 
 ily developed than at the mere beginning of the century. We must, 
 ever, mention some of the new Arcadians, who went to tie Bosco 
 fasio before its laurels and ilexes had grown out of the state of bushes, 
 aolo Antonio RoUi is one of the most conspicuous of these more or 
 forgotten celebrities. He was born near Rome, in the valley of the 
 sr, about 1686; and, after having vainly attempted to make his fortune 
 ome by his talents for both written and extemporary poetry, went to 
 don, wrote libretti for Handel and his rival Porpora, translated 
 adise Lost, was put into the Dunciad for his pains, and pronounced 
 e a vermicelli-maker or pastry-cook, the only profession besides that 
 lusician for which the Britons of those days gave the Italians credit, 
 taly, on the contrary, Eolli got more consideration than money; his 
 ies were translated into Latin, and he himself, being a native of 
 i in Umbria, was dignified with the title of the modem Propertius. 
 lough Eolli was far from being a first-rate poet, this epithet was 
 ded upon more than the mere accident of his Umbrian origin and 
 ac tendencies, for, living when he did, he had a strange, rmaccount- 
 antique air about him, such as became common only much later. He 
 trifling and superficial, yet, among the colourless, insipid imitators of 
 area, he stood out as does a second-rate copy of some mythological 
 ire by Titian among a lot of hazy, woe-begone Guides and Sasso- 
 itos. While his contemporaries composed in loose, limp rhymes, he was 
 Srst to make Italian hendecasyllabics; while they were satisfied with 
 Darest, slightest outlines of conventional scenery, he went into minute 
 riptions of the split sides of figs, of the crackling of burning juniper 
 es, of the scent of Monte Porzio wine, and the weight of ripe melons; 
 3 they indited canzoni upon the beatification of saints, he wrote a 
 n to Venus, a patchwork of imitations from half the writers of anti- 
 T, but not without a pantheistic, pagan tone, such as was rare before 
 he; * indeed, his antique tendencies were carried to such a length that 
 
 * O bella Venere, figlia del Giorno, 
 Destami affetti puri nell' ammo, 
 E uu guardo volgimi dal tuo soggiomo. 
 Te non accolsero da' flutti infidi, 
 Nata dall' atro sangne Satmnio, 
 Di Cipro fertile gl' infami lidi: 
 A te non fmnano Tare iu Citera, 
 NJ ti circonda con le Bassaridi 
 De' fauni e satiri Timpm-a schiera. 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 25 
 
 he thought it prudent to head his worlcs by a declaration that, " by the 
 Divine Grace, I was born in the faith and in the bosom of the holy 
 Catholic Eoman Church, which I have everywhere and at all times pub- 
 licly professed." Eolli never departed further from the models of his times 
 than in the series of little poems addressed to his Egeria: she is certainly 
 not the Cynthia of Propertius, still less the Delia of TibuUus, yet she is 
 more closely related to them than to the colourless semi-nymphs, semi- 
 nuns, of Rolli's contemporaries; he makes no attempt to substitute the 
 conventional pseudo-classic details for modern ones, and it is perhaps the 
 very minuteness and distinctness with which he describes Egeria at her 
 . mirror, dressed in brocade trimmed with gold fringe, flowers and lace on 
 her powdered hair, waiting for her heavy gilt coach, which brings him 
 nearer to antiquity than his classical brethren. Eolli, though often 
 graceful and lively, and sometimes almost pathetic, was after all only a 
 second-rate poet, but a piece by him has become a sort of relic from being 
 connected with a great poet, — the canzonet " Solitario Bosco Ombroso" 
 having been a favourite with Frau Eath, who taught it to the little Goethe 
 even before he knew a word of Italian. 
 
 A more brilliant and universally admired poet than Eolli was the Abate 
 Carlo Innocenzo Frugoni, but his subsequent literary fate was worse than 
 that of Eolli, for, while the latter has been permitted to remain in inglo- 
 rious peace, Frugoni's name has been used as a bye-word by thousands of 
 Italians who have never read a line by him. Tk&t fimgoneria means high- 
 sounding nonsense, meaningless fustian, is well known by every student of 
 
 Le sagge favole sull' onde chiare 
 Poserti in vaga conca cemlea, 
 A fior del tremnlo tranqnillo mare; 
 PerchS 11 tuo vivido spirto sovrano 
 Penetra e seorre negli umor fluid! 
 Che padre rendono I'ampio Oceano, 
 II qual con I'umide ramose braceia 
 Lo porta e infonde nel grembo all' aride 
 Cose che mutano colore e faccia; 
 
 Tu quando i tiepidi venti amorosi 
 II dure ghiaccio sni monti sciolgono, 
 E i finmi a Tetide vanno orgogliosi ; 
 Tratta dai rapidi tuoi bianchi augelli 
 Scendi nel suolo che per te germlna 
 Erbette tenere e fior novelli. 
 Tu rendi a gli alberi e frutto e frondaj 
 Per te gli arati campi verdeggiano, 
 E cresce prodiga la messe bionda; 
 Per te di pampini veston le viti, 
 E il caro peso dei folti grappoli 
 Per te sostengono gli olmi mariti. 
 
Tlie Arcadian Academy. 
 
 n literature, but who and what Frugoni was, few have cared to inves- 
 1. He was, when we really get to see him, a lamentable instance of 
 ilent, not wasted, but ruined out and out by a disorderly character, a 
 lackle career, and a stupid public. Of noble Genoese family, Fru- 
 lad been forced into a monastery at sixteen; many years were wasted 
 iting out of it, with the help of the good-natured Pope; many more 
 nly attempting to recover the fortune which, on his embracing a 
 3tic life, had been seized by his relatives; and the remainder of 
 jni's days passed in trying to obtain a fixed mode of life, an attempt 
 ated by political events, by his antecedents and by his own reckless, 
 lerly habits, which would have been punished by any but the easy- 
 hierarchy of the eighteenth century. In the midst of all this, Fru- 
 1 brilliant, prolific, unsteady talents suffered as much as his worldly 
 ■, for their possessor seems to have been totally destitute of patience, 
 iire of improvement, and of judgment: he poured forth sonnet upon 
 t, ode upon ode, stanza upon stanza, without any thought of 
 pting a large work, or perfecting a small one. Perfectly satisfied 
 his facile vein and the easily excited applause of his hearers, and 
 r persuaded that he would be immortal, Frugoni's talents were, as we 
 said, not merely wasted, but irretrievably ruined, for in his works the 
 is not embedded in the bad, but sense is inextricably interwoven with 
 nse, and a grand thought or beautiful image is (we can find no other 
 gion) so mixed and amalgamated with trashiness as to be absolutely 
 verable. Yet his poems were very popular, nor was their popularity 
 ly undeserved, for they have a flow of versification, a magnificence of 
 I, and a splendour of colouring and imagery which dazzle the mind 
 ! it has time to reflect on the meaning. Frugoni's epithets always 
 up confused visions of beauty and wonder, and the mere sound of his 
 impresses you, but on trying to analyse one of his pieces you find 
 le evidently had no idea of what he was writing, and that he did 
 ng but heap together brilliant pieces of trash and gorgeous fragments 
 al value, which only serve to make the absurdity of the remainder 
 lamentable. However, Frugoni's time was not one of inanity, 
 dgh it may have been one of bad taste, and Frugoni himself was not 
 lane poet; on the contrary, his grandiloquent and highly-coloured 
 inse was probably enjoyed just in proportion as it differed from the 
 correct, languid truisms of the poets of the preceding generation, 
 oni was a man of real and brilliant talents, and talents like his, how- 
 nuch wasted and ruined they may be, cannot fail to excite what they 
 some measm-e deserve, momentary admiration and everlasting abuse, 
 third poet was beginning to be spoken of at Arcadian meetings, 
 ugh probably much less than either EoUi or Frugoni, and this was 
 ibate Pietro Metastasio. He had been early brought into notice by 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 27 
 
 the fact of his being the adopted son of Gravina, of ominous memory; 
 and after his benefactor's death he often appeared at the Bosco Parrasio, 
 first with a tiresome frigid elegy to the memory of the deceased, and then 
 with other trifles of which the great Crescimbeni deigned to approve. 
 People expected him to be another, though less dangerous, Gravina, and 
 praised him for his erudition; but unfortunately, having consumed his 
 protector's legacy, he got into idle ways at Naples, neglected the study 
 of the law, and abandoned the company of the wise and learned Arcadians 
 for that of composers and singers and similar riffraff. What would poor 
 Gravina have done if he could have foreseen such an end for his adopted 
 son? said the Arcadians at the Bosco Parrasio, and shook their heads at 
 the prodigal. One day, however, in the year 1724, news came from 
 Naples that a play called Dido, set to music by Sarro and written by 
 Gravina's pupil, had had the most extraordinary success, and soon after 
 the worthies at the Bosco Parrasio heard to their amazement that 
 Metastasio was the greatest dramatist Italy had ever produced, and the 
 greatest poet she had given the world since Tasso. 
 
 But there was another poet who, while infinitely less esteemed than any 
 of his contemporaries, was yet infinitely more flattered; and who, while 
 everyone knew that he would, nay must, be forgotten by the very next 
 generation, yet received what EoUi, Frugoni, or Metastasio would vainly 
 have sought for — an honour which, while the greatest Italy could give, 
 she yet ventured to offer only to an inferior sort of beings. The crown of 
 the Capitol had got to seem such a theatrical honour that it could be 
 given only to a kind of theatrical performer, and such was the Cavalier 
 Bernardino Perfetti, the greatest of the Italian improvvisatori. If we 
 have been speaking in a paradoxical style it has been from the very 
 nature of our subject, for never did there exist a stranger paradox than 
 one of these extemporary poets, possessed of a splendid endowment which 
 every other sort of poet would have despised, displaying his talent in an 
 exercise which was an avowed waste of it, and, while producing nothing 
 but commonplace nonsense, giving a greater impression of genius and 
 inspiration than the best of his worthier contemporaries. It is therefore 
 easier to condemn and ridicule such poets and poetry than to judge them 
 with fairness, or even to get a distinct notion of the case under judgment. 
 However, before speaking of Perfetti himself, we must make a few remarks 
 on the class to which he belonged. Italy appears at all times to have 
 produced extemporary poets ; and we meet them, male and female, almost 
 as often during the Eenaissance as during the eighteenth century. Lorenzo 
 de' Medici is said to have improvised his spirited " Falcon Hunt " at a 
 convivial meeting, and both he and his son Leo X. had regular 
 improvvisatori among their satellites ; but it seems probable that the gradual 
 institution of a number of academies, of which the eighteenth century was 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 cularly prolific, and the gradual spreading of literary interests among 
 Qore frivolous parts of society — another characteristic feature of the 
 ;eenth century — favoured the profession of extemporary poets, and 
 id it to become a perfectly independent one. For besides the poets 
 
 like EoUi and Frugoni, extemporised verses at a party or at table, 
 3ut thinking any more about them, and whose fame rested entirely 
 
 their written compositions, there was a class of men and of women 
 would improvise, not a couplet here or there, but whole poems of 
 jr or forty stanzas on any given subject and before assemblies con- 
 1 for the express purpose of hearing them; people who did not 
 
 and perhaps could not write, for the exercise of their profession 
 ired them incapable of anything but the most slovenly work, besides 
 iteming them to compose only under a kind of stimulus which they 
 lot when calmly writing at a table. To be a successful improvvisatore 
 Doetical faculties were undoubtedly required : great vivacity of mind 
 )rilliancy of imagination, besides extraordinary powers of expression 
 rersification, but besides this there were qualities which an ordinary 
 rarely possesses — a nervous excitability and a warmth of, we should 
 3t say, sensational feeling, which generally developed at the expense 
 e body and the mind. Most impromisatori showed signs of utter 
 iistion, such as was rapidly destroying the young Metastasio when 
 Princess Belmonte Pignatelli induced Gravina to forbid his impro- 
 a; any longer. How much depended upon the practice of improvising, 
 abit of getting into this extraordinary state of physical and intellectual 
 3ment, is shown by the fact that Lorenzo d'Aponte, the librettist of 
 irt, gradually developed the faculty in himself and in his brother; 
 1 Metastasio, who had possessed it when a mere child, afterwards 
 red that he could neither extemporise a single line nor understand 
 lie had ever been able to do so. That the product of these anomalous 
 ts must have been a very anomalous one is evident; and that the 
 ivvisatori talked a vast amount of trash, nay that there was in their 
 rmance no real originality or literary merit, is undeniable ; that, as 
 stasio, who in after-life could not endure the thing, tells us, the poems 
 produced were full of " Angelicas with the helmet of Orlando and 
 Idos wearing the nightcap of Arinida ; " that, as we learn from 
 ^th, the scraps of improvised poetry written down by persons of the 
 mce proved the vilest rubbish — all this is very true, and yet it is even 
 
 true that the performance of a good improvvisatore was a wonderful 
 rmance : the rapid out-pouring of sonorous verse, the succession of 
 e on image, flashing past the mind in vague splendour, the air of 
 ration, and the sensuous eloquence which is more potent than that of the 
 ning faculties — all this made the exhibition of a Perfetti or a Gorilla 
 thing fascinating; but a mere exhibition it was, like that of fireworks 
 
The Arcadian Academy, 29 
 
 or some strange theatre scene, and it was absurd to seek in it a poem or 
 any sort of real work of art.* Among the many accounts which remain 
 of the performance of the greatest improvvisatore of the last century we 
 choose the following one, written by the lively and intelligent President 
 de Brosses to his French friends from Rome in the year 1739 : " You 
 have heard of the class of poets who think nothing of composing an 
 extemporary poem on any subject one may propose to them. The subject 
 we gave to Perfetti was the Aurora Borealis. He meditated, looking 
 downwards, for at least half a quarter of an hour, to the sound of a 
 harpsichord preluding sotto voce. Then he rose, and began to declaim in 
 rhymed octaves, softly, and stanza by stanza, the harpsichord continuing 
 to play chords while he was declaiming, and preluding during the 
 intervals between the stanzas. At first they succeeded each other slowly 
 enough, but little by little the poet became more animated, and in 
 proportion to his doing so the harpsichord also played louder and 
 louder, till at length this extraordinary man declaimed like a poet full of 
 enthusiasm. The accompanier on the harpsichord and himself went on 
 together with surprising rapidity. When it was over, Perfetti seemed 
 fatigued; he told us that he does not like to have to improvise often, as 
 it exhausts his mind and body. His poem pleased me very much ; in 
 his rapid declamation it seemed to me sonorous, full of ideas and 
 
 imagery You may be sure, however, that it consisted in 
 
 reality of much more sound than sense: it is impossible that the 
 general construction should not be most often maimed and tortured, 
 and that the fiUing-up be not mere grandiloquent rubbish." Bernardino 
 Perfetti, thus described by the President de Brosses, was of noble 
 Sienese family, a knight of the order of St. Stephen and professor of 
 jurisprudence in his native city, nor does he seem ever to have exer- 
 cised his talents for improvising except for pleasure and glory. In 
 1725 the Grand-Duchess Dowager of Tuscany, Violante Beatrice of 
 Bavaria, sent for him to Rome, where she was a guest of Benedict XIII. 
 on occasion of the Jubilee. During this visit Perfetti excited such 
 admiration by his improvisations at the Clementine College, at the palace 
 of the Grand-Duchess, and at that of the French ambassador, Cardinal 
 Polignac, that the Pope, no doubt influenced by Crescimbeni and his 
 adherents, decided that the improvvisatore should receive the crown of 
 the Capitol) and gave the necessary instructions to the senators and 
 chief magistrates. Perfetti had, however, to undergo three consecutive 
 
 * The improvvisatori were probably aware of their shortcomings, and aware of 
 their right to be excused, as I gather from the following answer made by an 
 extemporary poet of the first years of this century to a Cardinal who cried out, " Too 
 many syllables : " " Chi f erra, inchioda, e chi cammina, inciampa ; S'improvvisa, 
 Bminenza, e non si stampa." 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 als in the palace of the Grand-Duchess, and in the presence of all 
 a,dia, twelve of whose members were chosen as judges. These twelve, 
 led into batches of four, proposed a theme to him on each evening; he 
 revised on them all with the greatest success; and the last evening, 
 a eveiyone thought that he was utterly exhausted, he suddenly rose 
 
 epitomised all the previous arguments in the light verse called 
 xciolo, and, according to Crescimbeni, " Strung together the themes 
 
 wondrous felicity, and in such a way that, without altering the order 
 leir succession, he formed out of the most different subjects a perfectly 
 tructed oration." The delegates of course decided that Perfetti was 
 worthy of the crown worn by Petrarch. This was a very serious 
 ion, and the character of Benedict XIII., of Crescimbeni, and, above 
 of the solemn, stately time, excludes all thought of the ceremony 
 g a mystification like that played off by the facetious Leo X. on 
 ■ Baraballo. The day after these trials Perfetti dressed himself after 
 ler, that is to say, after two in the afternoon, in a robe of black 
 ask, and betook himself to the palace of the Sapienza, where he was 
 ived by a magistrate, who carried him to the Capitol in one of the 
 it gold-embossed and painted coaches of the senators. In the hall of the 
 ■atii and Curiatii, bedizened with Arpino's clumsy frescoes and decked 
 for the occasion with draperies and plants, Perfetti was met by the 
 [ue representative of the Koman Senate, in his gold and purple robes, 
 1 his adjuncts, the Conservatori, the chief magistrates, innumerable 
 Bs, mace-bearers, and nobles, by the Grand-Duchess Dowager of 
 cany, the Princess Euspoli, sister of the Pope, and her daughter the 
 jhess Gravina, and by Arcadia represented by Crescimbeni and the 
 t illustrious members. In the midst of a crowd of cardinals, prelates, 
 f-wigged princes, and enamelled-cheeked ladies, Perfetti advanced to 
 foot of the senatorial throne, and the Senator Marchese Mario Fran- 
 mi, taking the laurel wreath from a page, who held it on a silver 
 iossed salver, placed it on the poet's head, making the following 
 sronian speech: " Eximium hoc laudis poeticae decus, qnod tuo 
 iti impono) sub felicissimis auspiciis S. S.D.N. Papae Benedicti XIII. 
 publici non minus erga argumentum quam obsequentissimi animi 
 lificatio erga amplissimam illam et plane regiam benevolentiam, qua 
 M-aris." Perfetti was not less glib in improvising Latin prose than 
 ian verse, and answered: "Poetica laurus immeritae imposita fronti, 
 3lsam S.S. Patris ac Principis Papae Benedicti XIII. munificentiamque, 
 samque senatus populusque Eomani erga me voluntatem testatur, 
 rum utraque aut honore dignoS invenit aut facit." Then the crowned 
 t was seated on a chair of state prepared for him, and seven Arcadians, 
 ded by Crescimbeni, repeated laudatory poems, to the accompaniment 
 I, tremendous noise of trumpets and di-ums, and the firing of a hundred 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 31 
 
 mortars. Afterwards the notary of the Senate drew up an Act by which 
 the citizenship and nobihty of Kome were conferred on the Cavalier 
 Perfetti and all his descendants. There is or was a picture of Perfetti at 
 the Bosco Parrasio, not in the black damask robe and laurel wreath, but 
 in a strange combination of many-coloured garments, green, red, and 
 yellow, with an open collar and loose blue necktie, and an orange-coloured 
 scarf rolled round his close-shaven head ; a mass of colour harmonising 
 well with the very swarthy complexion, brilliant eyes, and full, laughing 
 lips of the poet. This picture, gaudy and yet harmonious, rich and out- 
 landish, serves to help out our conception of the strange, theatrical, poetical 
 medley of talents which made up the successor of Petrarch. 
 
 III. 
 
 Crescimbeni's glorious reign ended soon after the donation of the Bosco 
 Parrasio and the coronation of Perfetti ; and the Arcadians of Eome and 
 of the colonies lamented in innumerable sonnets and elegies the veteran 
 founder and champion of the Academy. The raised seat beneath the 
 laurels of the Bosco Parrasio, left vacant by the death of Crescimbeni, 
 was filled by his friend and colleague the Abate Lorenzini. He had been 
 educated as a servant in the house of the poet Guidi, and had early 
 acquired a literary position, though less by his works, which cannot now 
 be found, than by his familiarity with writers, having contrived to keep 
 on good terms both with Crescimbeni and with Gravina. He was a large, 
 rawboned man, with a face at once sarcastic and good-humoured, and 
 strange, humorous, astonished-looking eyebrows. He had probably more 
 talent than Crescimbeni ; at all events a much juster appreciation of men 
 and things, and a tendency to regard Arcadian affairs as not so very 
 much more important than other human concerns. The accession of the 
 second Custode Generale marks a new phase in the history of the 
 Academy : during his government Arcadia extended its frontiers to the 
 utmost, and became supreme throughout the peninsula ; but, like Eome 
 and Venice, it did so at the expense of its original spirit and constitution. 
 The Academy became lost in its legions of members, and as people of 
 every sort, and in every part of Italy, became Arcadians, to be an Arcadian 
 soon meant merely to be a member of the society of one's native town, 
 and a holder of one's own principles, just as one would have been had 
 Arcadia never existed. In short, Arcadia ceased to be an academy and 
 became the whole literary and social life of the country. 
 
 And now let us stop and glance round the Italy of the eighteenth 
 century, a centuiy displaying in all countries so strange a mixture of 
 
The Arcadian Academy* 
 
 ngth and of weakness, of vigorous modes of thouglit which had not 
 force of habit, and of lazy modes of life which were enforced by 
 om ; of philanthropical aspirations and tyrannical institutions ; of 
 dness masked by frivolity and scepticism, and villany hidden beneath 
 mnity and moralising; of corruption and renovation, mingling and 
 lenting in unlovely fashion. In Italy this movement was less strongly 
 than in other countries, and especially less than in Prance, and not 
 ely because the race was less prone to exaggeration and excess. In 
 y there was, of course, a great deal to sweep away — vicious modes of 
 ight and life due to long inertion and protracted rule of Spaniards, 
 aits, and little local tyrants; but, on the other hand, there still 
 ained much of the influence of the Eenaissance. The Italians were 
 the great-grandsons of semi-barbarians, like the Germans and our- 
 es, hut of free, enlightened, and polished burghers; they had the 
 lembrance of commercial commonwealths, and not, like the French, 
 a hideous feudal system; there was no inequality of classes, no great 
 ery and great power opposed to each other for centuries ; and when 
 stream of progress of the eighteenth century reached Italy it joined 
 msibly with the remains of civilisation left in the country by antiquity 
 . the Eenaissance, and of which no amount of political and social 
 )rganisation could ever deprive it. The eighteenth century in Italy 
 1, therefore, not a violent reaction against feudalism as in Prance, nor 
 .inst Puritanism as in England, nor against foreign domination as in 
 •many ; it was a mere gradual waking up from lethargy and a shaking 
 of its bad effects. There was no war against nobles, or priests, or 
 jigners, and thence it is that Italy in that time seems scarcely to 
 ve in comparison with other countries, and its very movement, when 
 .mined, appears rather droll than revolting in the contrasts it brings 
 ight. 
 
 Jet us pass by the four great towns most visited by the travellers of 
 eighteenth century: Venice, crumbling gaUy away, a place where 
 jkford could dream Oriental dreams of luxuriousness and hidden 
 rors, and compare the motley population, not less than the cupolas 
 I minarets, to the strange world of Vathek which he carried in his 
 id ; Naples, feudal and antique, at once so backward in social 
 titutions and so happy in natural endowments, which could malce 
 ethe feel even more of a Greek than he naturally was — Naples, 
 ich from amongst intellectual and physical filth gave Italy in the 
 hteenth century her philosophy and her art, her Vico and her Pergo-' 
 i, her Pilangieri and her Cimarosa ; Florence, with her Frenchified 
 ers and intensely Italian people, painted in all her frivoKty by the 
 rolous Mann ; and Borne, of whose uneducated princes and half- 
 •barous lower classes the President de Brosses speaks like an earlier 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 33 
 
 and less eccentric Stendhal. Let us leave the great centres, each repre- 
 senting some extreme, of artificially produced vice, of artificially kept 
 up barbarism, of artificial credulity, and artificial pedantry; and let us 
 look at one of the innumerable smaller cities which attest the vigour 
 of the Italian spirit of earlier days, a vigour which foreign interference 
 or foreign pressure has succeeded neither in entirely extinguishing nor 
 in entirely warping. In these quiet mediteval towns, — where crumbling 
 monuments overshadow grass-grown streets, and only a few heavy gilt 
 coaches rumble across the time-worn pavement; where the popular vitality 
 is concentrated in the market-place, the barbers' shops, and the cofiee- 
 houses, — ^intellectual life sputters and crackles cheerily. The noble counts 
 and marquises, descended from republican merchants, feudal princes, or 
 mercenary generals, mix freely with the upper middle classes, their equals 
 in race, in education, in manners, and very nearly in fortune, and who 
 feel neither jealous nor idolatrous of their superiors in rank. The dull, 
 serene life of these inglorious grandees and placid burghers is wiled away 
 in the cultivation of science and erudition, literature and art; nobles 
 and commoners meet on equal footing; they study together in the same 
 colleges, where the master may be a patrician general like Marsigli, or a 
 plebeian professor like Zanotti; they help each other in editing in- 
 scriptions, publishing chronicles, and compiling guide-books and histories; 
 they make each other presents of their materials, or lampoon each other 
 most frightfully. The women are not left out of the literary bustle; of 
 course there are some who have been brought up by pious nuns who 
 could not or would not teach them reading or writing,* as there are 
 young men after Parini's model who remain in bed till twelve, and 
 read only wicked French novels, brought up in unconsciousness of clas- 
 sical studies by dingy priest tutors, who run errands and carry lapdogs 
 for their pupils' mothers. All this there is of course, for, unless we 
 placed the ignorant apathy by the side of the restless inquisitiveness, we 
 should give a false picture of the eighteenth century, whose charac- 
 teristic peculiarity was that it united the evil things that remain with 
 the good things that are coming. All this there is — ignorance, sloth, 
 and corruption ; but there are also good qualities. There are the innu- 
 merable ladies who, as soon as they have exchanged the convent for their 
 husband's house, become refined, literary, nay learned: poetesses, com- 
 posers, and presiders over intellectual society, the friends, patronesses, 
 and counsellors of the greatest writers in Italy, yet without aspiring to the 
 position of the Dottoressa Bassi, who lectured on Newton's Optics before 
 she was twenty. There are also the innumerable young men, elegant 
 dancers, and fencers, and sturdy players at racket, who in their youth 
 
 * This was the case with the grandmother of a Tuscan friend of ours, from whom 
 we have the anecdote. 
 
 D 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 spoken of by well-known writers as of excellent morals and great 
 irary acquirements, and who, later in life, when dancing and fencing 
 1 racket have been abandoned, collect libraries, write verses and 
 ires on surrounding frivolity, take interest in agriculture, imitate the 
 orgies in poems on the cultivation of rice or silk, and in a few places 
 !p up some amount of industry and commerce.* The domestic life is 
 finge enough ; the marriages are mostly made up by the families, 
 lugh, according to Baretti, not usually against the desire of the young 
 iple. The husband and wife are not permitted to be on bad terms, 
 i there is the inevitable cavaliere servente, chosen by the husband or 
 I wife's family, obsequious, useful, tiresome, meddlesome, treated with 
 itemptuous consideration; often much in the way of both husband and 
 e, as Goldoni shows him in the play, where Don Eoberto and Donna 
 laria run away from town and bury themselves in a village where 
 iety will not force cavalieri serventi on to them ; that he disturbs 
 lily peace or endangers family ties few even of the satirists, no, not 
 n Parini, will admit ; he is a respectable institution. Another insti- 
 ion is that of putting all the daughters for whom no eligible husbands 
 . be found into rich convents, where they can enjoy comparative 
 3dom ; and of making the younger sons enter the Church or some 
 itary order, unless they can turn magistrate or something similar. 
 B upper middle classes do without cavalieri serventi, convents, and 
 itary orders ; and make their sons lawyers, doctors, professors, or 
 ests, commerce, except in the sea-ports, being reduced to shopkeeping. 
 3 social life is a queer mixture of gaiety and dullness, unless we go 
 3 the madly spendthrift society of the dissolute Venetians or Prenchi- 
 L Lombards and Florentines ; the same people meet day after day ; 
 ryone is intimately acquainted with his neighbours. The literati — 
 I every educated person belongs more or less to them — sit in the book- 
 er's shop, and discuss new works and enter into a literary converaa- 
 1 with any stranger who comes in, as the amiable people at Padua did 
 h Goethe when he was in search of Palladio's works. They meet 
 D in the garden or palace of one of the company; and the lofty rooms, 
 ig with faded tapestry and portraits of worthies in black doublets and 
 
 In the little oligarchy of Lucca the principal families kept up their industrial 
 commercial connections until past the middle of the eighteenth century, somt 
 ie nobles possessing silk-manufactories and banking-houses even in Flanders 
 :se same Lucchese nobles,- who managed one of the finest theati'es in Italy off tlu 
 ings in their incredibly small State budget, were great publishers, and re-editec 
 whole Enoyclopidic when prohibited in France. It hiis often been remarkec 
 t the Italian nobles of the last century were comparatively better educated thai 
 r descendants, because the progress of Liberalism, while it raised the intellectua 
 idard of the inferior classes, frightened tho nobles into stolid opposition to al' 
 irovement, ami consequently into an illiterate and bigoted stagnation. 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 35 
 
 scarlet caps, or sMning with new gilt stucco and high-backed white and 
 gold chairs, are crowded with senators in full-bottomed wigs, poor 
 literary priests in rusty little cloaks, smart young men with their hair tied 
 in queues and their pockets crammed full of sonnets, and beautiful ladies 
 with rouged cheeks and long-sleeved brocade dresses ; they read and 
 recite verses, talk of the new books from Paris, and of the new opera 
 from Naples ; play at cards and sing. Often, in the long winter 
 evenings, they learn some French tragedy, translated or imitated by 
 one of the party, and act it with all possible solemnity ; nay the noble 
 ladies and gentlemen even dance ballets, as was particularly the fashion 
 at Verona, where Ippolito Pindemonti, Knight of St. John of Jerusalem, 
 gained such applause in performing the part of Pygmalion that he deter- 
 mined to turn ballet-dancer and unite his fortunes to those of the famous 
 Le Picq; a plan which, luckily for poetry, he was prevented from 
 executing. In some towns, Bologna for instance, the young men have 
 little tournaments ; in the winter, if it snow very hard, they drive 
 sledges, and, incredible though it may sound, the young ladies of the 
 highest birth go out on riding parties, dressed in almost masculine 
 fashion, no one taking offence thereat, and the poets telling them that 
 in this garb they look like Paris and Endymion.* In the autumn the 
 nobles retire for the vintage to their villas, from whose belvederes they 
 can see the old, silent, many-towered town, and their friends hurrying to 
 and fro on the dusty road. The villas are never without literary guests ; 
 some of them, like the splendid Villa Albergati, near Bologna, contain 
 Jarge theatres; and even in comparatively poor country houses there are 
 enthusiasts, like Count Giacomo Gozzi, who make their children act 
 when scarcely more than babies. A place of villeggiaiura, some shady 
 nook, or breezy hillside near a town, is a collection of five or six large 
 villas, whose owners live in each other's houses, meet twice and thrice a 
 day, play at cards, go out shooting together, read to each other, and 
 saunter about the primly laid-out grounds, or among the upturned fields 
 strewn with decaying leaves. The lawyers, and priests, and poor literati, 
 who have been unable to leave the stifling city, are not forgotten, and 
 presents of grapes, figs, mushrooms, and game are sent to them by beau- 
 tiful blue-stockings, and are duly acknowledged in verse and paid for 
 with sonnets on lapdogs and elegies on canary birds. Then there are 
 little musical farces performed in the open air, in suburbs or villages, 
 and to them rush all the listless villa inhabitants, and laugh at the 
 drollness of the music or the inexhaustible witticisms of the masks. 
 Once or twice a year the great theatre is put into order, the senators, 
 prelates, or delegated managers enter into treaty with some great per- 
 former, male or female, and the whole town is in a tumult of excitement. 
 
 * See Frugoni's eight enormous volumes. 
 d2 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 new opera is composed and brought out in the presence of all t 
 pulation and of innumerable visitors from neighbouring places; amid 
 shower of sonnets and flowers, occasionally interspersed with orang 
 d medlars thrown at the head of an offending composer, as he si 
 :ecting the performance at his harpsichord. Faction runs high f 
 'al singers : people at the coffee-houses fight with sedan-chair sticks 
 fend the reputation of their favourite, and in the theatre almost die 
 pture : the powdered Achilles or Eegulus becomes the tyrant of t] 
 ice, bullies the nobles and prelates, and condescends to permit i 
 lies to wear five portraits of him at a time. This annual music 
 thusiasm, while showing the life that remains in the people, serves 
 3 same time to dispel for the moment what is trivial and localin Italii 
 ilisation. 
 
 Such a state of society was admirably suited to produce a vast amom 
 worthless poetry. For, while literature had got to be considered as 
 ■t of social amusement, it had by no means gained the honourab 
 lependence of the other arts and sciences, and a man of letters, althoug 
 ibtless considering himself as the perfection of the human type, live 
 der in a more limited or in a less stable fashion than a surgeon, 
 nter, an architect, or even a singer : Benedetto Marcello's virtues 
 larking to a great poet that the position of literati was far less honou: 
 e than his own, as singers had always plenty of money while men ( 
 ;ers were usually starving. Nor was this entirely erroneous ; the ma 
 letters, who was neither a noble nor a well-endowed priest, nor a well 
 d lawyer or professor, and who, according to Baretti, had no chanc 
 reasonable remuneration for his literary productions, the profits ( 
 ich belonged entirely to the publisher ; — the man of letters who wa 
 rhing but a man of letters was necessarily more or less of an adver 
 er, living off flattery and humiliation. His life was spent in continue 
 irts to obtain some fixed employment, which, if he was nothing moi 
 n a poet, was naturally more or less a sinecure, and in the gift of som 
 at personage; most often the employment was promised and nc 
 en, or, if given, taken away from caprice, and the poet had to continu 
 vagabond life, hunting for dedication fees, translations, odd jobs, an 
 isional dinners. The happiest thing for such a poet was to live in th 
 1st of literary nobles, who would give him lodging and food for a mini 
 ax of flattery, instead of making him loiter about ministerial ante 
 mbers. Literature was a trade, but scarcely an independent o 
 ourable one, for what was sold were not books but dedications c 
 ks. Romance literature, that rich field for poor mediocrities, did no 
 it in Italy, the few novels that were read then being translations fror 
 rivaux, Le Sage, or Richardson. Theatrical literature could hardl 
 laid to exist either ; there was no tragic stage whatever, for then 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 37 
 
 were only singers and mask comedians; the few tragedies written for the 
 closet by men like Maffei and Martello, and the translations from the 
 French, amply sufficing for private performance. There was only the old 
 mask comedy, which consisted mainly of mere adaptations of old Italian 
 and Spanish plays, all the best scenes of which were left unwritten and 
 were filled up by the wonderful extemporary performance of the Brig- 
 hellas, Truflfaldinos, and Tartaglias who had taken possession of comedy 
 ever since the fall of Italian national literature and the reign of dialects 
 in the seventh century; nor was it till Goldoni that Italian written 
 comedy reappeared. There remained, it is true, the opera stage, which 
 was as splendid as its rivals were miserable, but in a time when the same 
 play could be set to different music twice or thrice by the same composer, 
 Metastasio's many operas were quite sufficient, being, as they were, a mine 
 of beautiful dramatic and lyric poetry. There remained, therefore, nothing 
 but the smaller forms of lyric poetry — the ode, the elegy, and above all 
 the sonnet ; and lucidly, as people could not live off such trifles, espe- 
 cially when the market was overstocked with them, the number of poets 
 who were not something else besides was — as indeed is still the case in 
 Italy — very small. 
 
 Here we have, then, a national literature in which the tragic and the 
 comic stage are respectively monopolised by two men, Metastasio and 
 G-oldoni; from which the epic is excluded by the very nature of the civili- 
 sation, which could afford neither natural nor imaginary historical colouring ; 
 in which the minor lyric forms, the ode, the canzone, the elegy, and the 
 sonnet, are not spontaneous, but maintained by mere scholarly habit, and 
 in which these latter forms are yet the commonest, because within the 
 reach of almost everyone. And what are the subjects of this lyric 
 poetry, whose forms, well-nigh petrified, belong to very different states of 
 civilisation ? All political subjects are excluded because there is no poli- 
 tical interest in a country cut up into little despotic governments, mostly 
 of foreign extraction; and in this line there remain only general lamenta- 
 tion over the decline of Italian arms and influence since the days of 
 ancient Eonie — lamentations which, if sometimes genuinely felt, are yet 
 too vague and aimless either to alarm the police or to interest the reader. 
 Then there are religious lyrics ; but in the eighteenth century religious 
 ardour is not sufficiently strong to be poetical, and when a man writes 
 canzoni to the Virgin and sonnets on Judas in the style of those of Betti- 
 nelli, and Lamberti, and Varano, we cannot help thinking him either 
 narrow-minded or hypocritical. After political and religious subjects 
 come personal ones, but the individual was not much more poetical than 
 the patriot or the believer ; neither married life nor conventional cava- 
 liere-serventism was prolific of inspiration, and, as to unhappy and ill- 
 fated affections, never surely were fewer to be found than among the 
 
2%e Arcadian Academy. 
 
 lian poets of the last century. Not that these good people were witi 
 such sorrows, but the time had passed when men did not shrink froi 
 sping in public over their dead lores, while consoling themselves wit 
 ng ones, like Dante, Petrarch, and Lorenzo de' Medici; and the tim 
 I not yet come when romanticism taught them to alleviate their woe 
 retailing them to the public, and to tear open their bleeding wound 
 the amusement of their readers. There were doubtless Werthers an 
 Qsalvos, but they preferred to keep their misfortunes hidden, and 1 
 te poems on the cultivation of silkworms, or on the absurdities ( 
 lants, rather than declare themselves ready to commit suicide for thei 
 arlottes, and to be kissed when corpses by their Elviras. Lyric poetr 
 we mean the poetry which is lyric in spirit as well as in metre- 
 uires the constant appearance of the poet himself, the constant layin 
 e of the poet's personal feelings ; and, whether from obtuseness of fee 
 ', reserve, or any other cause, the Italian poets of the last century coul 
 i and would not make themselves their own subject — so much so tha 
 Hi takes care to impress on his reader that his love poems are a 
 [ressed to ladies as purely imaginary as his feelings towards them- 
 lyrics were written in plenty, very correct and elegant in langnag( 
 [ very cool and vague in sentiment. There are the elegiac patrioti 
 Bes, in which, after a splendid description of ancient Rome, and th 
 dest lamentations over the fallen state of Italy, we are informed ths 
 man, the hero, the demigod has come from whom the country expeci 
 iverance from her woes, and this hero and demigod may be a vicero 
 Naples, a Venetian proccuratore, a Tuscan senator, or, as Manfrec 
 iks, Don Annibale Albani, " who with universal applause has jus 
 en his doctor's degree at Urbino." There are the long, intensely subth 
 . metaphysical canzoni to ladies taking the veil, who, either forced int 
 convent by their families or entering it from worldly disappointmer 
 . ennui, are supposed to be so many St. Catherines and St. Theresas 
 re are the sonnets for the same occasions, full of Cupids, Dianas, an 
 rishes, as profane as the fat cherubs and languishing saints overhea 
 )ng the stucco and gilding, and printed off by the dozen to be hande^ 
 ad to the guests with cakes and ices, while the powdered hair of th 
 ice is being shorn to the accompaniment of church music with fiddles 
 3S, and roulades. There is the still more numerous and nauseou 
 s of bridal poems, mostly written by priests, in which Venus, th 
 ces, Cupid, and every manner of personified feeling are introduced ti 
 g about the union of two persons who, in all probability, care nothinj 
 each other, and are merely following the will of their parents or th 
 jestions of their worldly wisdom ; when the marriage is an aristo 
 ic one, Italy is brought in as a spectator, and prophesies that a ne\ 
 ides will be born, and that the proud Turk will soon tremble at thi 
 
The Arcadian Academy, 39 
 
 name of the heroic infant. Sometimes —and this is often the case when 
 the poet is a superior one, and cares nothing for the marriage — the bride 
 and bridegroom are left behind after a few lines, and some classic fable 
 is brought forward in their stead; but even then the best we get are 
 poetical paraphrases of Albani, with loves climbing into trees, coquettish 
 nymphs, and languishing heroes. After this we meet poems on all sorts 
 of trifles — lapdogs, canaries, horses, gifts of fruit and wine, new hats, and 
 what not ; some of which, written under the influence of beautiful poetic 
 ladies by elegant frivolous poets like Frugoni, are certainly very pretty ; 
 and finally, to exhaust the stock of lyrics, we come to the sonnets destined 
 to be showered down on to successful performers, and which, although 
 often written by celebrated poets, are so trivial, vague, and verbose, that 
 we can only hope that they were used as curling papers by the singers, a 
 few of whose extemporary flourishes and embellishments contained infi- 
 nitely more genius, more art, and more poetry, than all the verses of all 
 their admirers. But, despite this miserable poverty of subject and 
 sterility of fancy, the amount of lyrics written in Italy during the last 
 century passes all belief : for every one who could hold a pen — men, 
 women, priests, nuns, lawyers, doctors, barbers — every one wrote poetry. 
 The works of each poet are excessively voluminous— five, six, seven, 
 eight, ten, fifteen huge volumes being quite usual, and the greater portion 
 of their contents, as well as that of the innumerable collections printed at 
 waddings, deaths, veil-takings, christenings, and the still more innumer- 
 able academical collections, consist of this uninteresting, vapid, verb6se, 
 intolerable rubbish. In the presence of all these myriads of sonnets, 
 odes, elegies, and canzoni per nozze, per monacazione, per gentil dama, per 
 musico, and per elevazione alia sagra porpora, we feel crushed and speech- 
 less, and regain the use of our faculties only to cry out at the indefati- 
 gable imbecility of the Italian eighteenth century. 
 
 There is no exaggeration in this, and yet there is no exaggeration 
 either in saying that of all the centuries during which Italian literature 
 has flourished the eighteenth century is one of the most honourable. 
 We have seen as yet only what the men of that time could not but fail 
 in, and in which they persisted so obstinately that they left behind them 
 the appalling mass of rubbish we have described ; but there were other 
 branches of literature in which the Italians of the last century as neces- 
 sarily succeeded, and in which they reached a far higher point than any 
 of their predecessors. The poetry which required individual activity of 
 life and feeling, in which all depended upon strength of passion and 
 abundance of movement, upon the poet's own individuality — this kind of 
 poetry had ceased to exist ; but in its stead appeared that other poetry 
 which depends upon contemplation and examination of types, whose 
 excellence is due to the knowledge of the minute shades and transitions 
 
40 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 of feeling, upon the power of the poet to divest himself of his own 
 character and to enter entirely into that of others : the epic, the lyric, 
 had become impossible, but tragedy, comedy, and satire had taken their 
 place. The reader must not, however, imagine that, because the litera,ry 
 forms requiring the development of the poet's own individuality had dis- 
 appeared, this was a period when, as in the time of Anne and of George 
 I. the real poetic artistic element had been replaced by thought, wit, and 
 elegance of expression ; on the contrary, in tragedy, comedy, and satire 
 there appeared the greatest wealth of the really tragic and humorous 
 elements, to the utter exclusion both of oratoricarpomp and brilliancy of 
 wit : the tragedy was real tragedy, the comedy real comedy, and more so 
 than either had been in the hands of the too eloquent Racine or the over 
 witty Moliere. It may also appear contradictory to our previous remark 
 on the absence of a regular stage in Italy to affirm that the dramatic 
 form was the one then, brought to perfection, yet this seeming paradox 
 can easily be explained. There was no tragic stage in Italy in Metas- 
 tasio's time, and it is to that very fact that Metastasio's excellence is 
 due ; for, had he attempted real tragedy, he would have produced at best 
 only a feeble repetition of the French oratorical plays. Instead of this 
 being the case, Metastasio was called upon to write dramas for music, for 
 music which was then in its heroic youth, simple, grand, pathetic, and, 
 above all, beautiful ; and which, in its vigorous movement towards per- 
 fection, could drag along with it the style of poetry arising from its 
 requirements. The opera was then still in its simplest condition; melody 
 did not attempt to follow dramatic action in concerted pieces, but was 
 restricted to short speeches and soliloquies, bursts of feeling or flights of 
 fancy, in which the poet gave the musician only a general framework, 
 while all the body of the play — the scenes of narration, dialogue, 
 altercation, and movement — were left to the musically noted speech 
 called recitative. The recitative required even more than did the 
 melody that the verbal expression should be as simple, concise, and 
 natural as that of the regular tragedy was the reverse ; and, above all, 
 it required that the action of the play should be rapid and strongly 
 marked. The noted declamation could not be united with a rhetorical 
 style of poetry, for the modulations of the recitative were suggested by 
 tlfe inflexions of the speaking voice, and the long carefully-constructed 
 periods of tragic oratory necessarily reduced these inflexions both in 
 variety and force. The requirements, therefore, of the music produced a 
 new style of drama, simpler, stronger, more pathetic, less eloquent, and 
 less formal than tragedy, while the tendency of the music itself, its 
 beauty, pathos, grandeur, and yet richness, did much to influence the 
 poet's conceptions. When we compare Metastasio's poetry with the 
 music to which it was set we feel, that, if the individual pieces were 
 
Tlie Arcadian Academy. 41 
 
 suggested by the words of the poet, those words were themselves sug- 
 gested by the general style of composition then prevailing. Metastasio's 
 principal characters, so distinct and yet so noble, so clearly and 
 delicately drawn, ardent or tender, pathetic or solemn, so full of life and 
 feeling, and yet never either realistic or sensational — Achilles, Regulus, 
 Timanthes, Aristea, Megacles, Dirce— are conceived in the same manner 
 as the music which Pergolesi, Leo, Jomelli, and Hasse made them sing ; 
 we meet again, what we meet so rarely, emotion used as an artistic means. 
 A similar paradox has to be explained with respect to Goldoni, who 
 found no regular comio" stage in Italy, and owed his peculiar excellence to 
 this fact, just as Metastasio did his to the non-existence of a regular 
 tragic stage. By a singular process of decentralisation, Italian literature, 
 ever since the breaking-up of the commonwealths and the rule of 
 foreigners in the sixteenth century, had become less and less national 
 and more and more provincial ; till, in the seventeenth century, all vitality 
 seemed to have been absorbed by the dialects, and the feebler the writ- 
 ings in the universal language of the country the more original and racv 
 became the poems and plays in Venetian, Milanese, Neapolitan, and 
 Sicilian.* Now to each of these dialects belonged a figure, a type or " 
 caricature of the particular provincial character formed by the people of 
 the province. When the Neapolitans gave the reins to their boisterous 
 humour it was in the character of Pulcinella or of the Fuego ; when the 
 Venetians wished to represent themselves they brought forward the 
 drolly cautious Pantaloon; when the Milanese wished to criticise the 
 Spanish airs of their nobles they made the simple, sensible, clownish 
 Meneghino their spokesman ; vyhen the Bolognese felt inclined to laugh 
 at the professors of their university they brought forward their blustering 
 pedantic Bottore ; in short, every province — nay, in some cases every 
 town — had its popular representative, unchanging in dress, manner, and 
 speech, as every such type must be. As this typical buffoon, or mask, 
 as he was called, for his unchanging costume easily gave rise to the 
 appellation, was brought on to the stage, so very soon there began to 
 appear actors who never played any part except that of the humorous 
 patron of their native town, and as soon as several of these actors — say a 
 Venetian Pantaloon, a Bolognese Dottore, a Brighella from Bergamo, 
 and a Truffaldino from Brescia — met on the same movable stage, the 
 comedy of masks; or, as it was called, the commedia deLV arte,\ was 
 created. Goldoni found this commedia delV arte in absolute possession of 
 
 * The most original Italian poem of the seventeenth century, Eedi's dithyramb, is 
 far less national than Tuscan, even in language. 
 
 f Arte here probably has the older meaning of trade, for it literally was a man's 
 trade to play Arlecchino or Brighella all his life. 
 
42 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 the theatre, and, as - many of his admirers and perhaps he himself 
 believed, he dethroned it. But he did so only in appearance, and when 
 Voltaire congratulated him upon having " freed Italy from the Goths " 
 he was much mistaken in thinking that Goldoni had done so in order to 
 install a semblance of French comedy in their place. In reality Goldoni's 
 refoi-ms were merely that he put a limit to the improvisation of the 
 actors, and that he divested the masks of their characteristic costume, 
 and even sometimes of their characteristic dialect : for Goldoni's action 
 merely represented that of his time, which tended once more to swallow 
 up the provincial in the national. Goldoni's comedy was to be for all 
 Italy, and no longer for a single province ; it was to show the life of the 
 whole country, and therefore what was unintelligible to the whole nation 
 and what was illustrative of only local life had to be eliminated to a 
 certain extent ; but Pantaloon remained Pantaloon, although stripped of 
 his red hose and black long-tailed hood, and put into the dress of a 
 Leghorn merchant or a country proprietor ; and Harlequin remained 
 Harlequin despite the loss of his parti-coloured clothes and the adoption 
 of modern dress ; the Italian comedy remained the same in spirit and 
 system, although it ceased to be called commedia delV arte. Goldoni did 
 not attempt to meddle with the arrangements by which the same types 
 were constantly reproduced by the same actor ; he did not introduce new 
 characters, but merely new combinations of characters ; he did not make 
 the stage a vehicle for satire ; in short, consciously or unconsciously, he 
 merely developed the Italian comedy without imitating the French one. 
 There were radical differences of origin and conception between the 
 French and Italian comedies, and to these are due the absolute difference 
 that exists between Moliere and Goldoni, a want of perception of which 
 has so often led to the grossest misjudgment of the latter by persons who 
 expected to find him like the former. French comedy was mainly a court 
 and drawing-room production, like all the other literary forms of the age 
 of Louis XIV. ; it had no roots among the people, and was constructed 
 to suit the wittiest, most caustic, and most elegant class of the wittiest 
 and most caustic of nations — to suit the contemporaries of Boileau and 
 La Eochefoucauld, of Mme. de Sevigne and La Bruyere, people all the 
 power of whose mind consisted in delicate appreciation of character and 
 ntat expression of paradoxes, brought to the highest point of perfection. 
 The Italian comedy, on the other hand, had arisen among the people, 
 and, what is more, among the provincial middle and lower classes, who 
 disdained the national speech, utterly ignored smartness of expression, 
 and asked only to be amused with humorous pictures of themselves- 
 simple, jovial, honest folk, with charity at the bottom of all their humour. 
 Moliere, in compliance with the wants of his audience, accepted a few 
 trumpery, mostly unnatural and uninteresting plots and situations, and 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 43 
 
 gave all Ms attention to the creation of original powerful types : Har- 
 pagon, the Malade Imaginaire, Tartuffe, the Fenimes Savantes, and, above 
 all, the Misanthrope and his companions, Cflimene and Philinte and 
 Oronte and Arsinoe, the heartless coquet, the easy-going, benevolent 
 man of the world, the dandified fool and the court prude ; each a bitter 
 satire, couched in the tersest and most brilliant language, which in itself 
 forms almost a series of epigrams. , Goldoni, who had no courtly wits 
 among his audience, accepted the old popular types given by each pro- 
 vince ; types neither very sharply marked nor very satirical, for the Italian 
 people is neither personal nor unkind in its buffoonery ; and lavished all 
 the richness of his fancy in contriving new plots, new scenes, new situa- 
 tions, new combinations of the old characters, in which a trifle — a fan 
 dropped, a dress expected, a promise not to be jealous, a promise to be 
 silent — produces in the simplest and most spontaneous way an infinite 
 concatenation of droll situations, of droll exclamations, of droll move- 
 ments. Moliere's characters, when not absolute and almost repulsive 
 caricatures, make us smile the subdued smile of perception of wit rather 
 than of drollery ; Goldoni's characters, even when so faintly marked as 
 to be no types at all, make us laugh the free happy laugh of unconcerned 
 amusement. Moliere's men and women, even the stupidest, a;re con- 
 tinually saying clever things which do not move us ; Goldoni's people, 
 even the cleverest, never say anything either epigrammatic or unamusing. 
 Moliere may be as much engaged in the closet as at the theatre, and 
 even there requires only subtle intonations and clever looks ; Goldoni, 
 however delightful when read, even out loud, cannot be fully appreciated 
 except on the stage, where alone we understand that inexhaustible energy 
 and movement, that amazing overflow of life and animal spirits, which 
 made the performance of the Barruffe Chiozzotte a kind of revelation to 
 Goethe. 
 
 The third branch of literature in which the Italians of the last century 
 were destined to succeed was satire, but satire also altered and made 
 into a separate category by national influence. The satire of Parini is 
 not much more like the satire of Boileau or of Pope than the tragedy of 
 Metastasio is like that of Kacine, or the comedy of Goldoni like that 
 of Moliere. Parini's great poem, the epic, as one might call it, of 
 satire, seems at first sight to be conceived in greater bitterness than any 
 other work of the same kind, since it is the satire of a whole class by a 
 man belonging to a totally different one; yet in reality there is no 
 animosity of any sort in the Giorno, because its writer is not actuated by 
 any personal dislike. Parini was doubtless a utilitarian, a philan- 
 thropist, more or less of a moral lawgiver, but he was not a moraliser 
 nor a stoic ; he had no abstract ideal of virtue, but he had a strong 
 aversion to what is bad or merely mean, and throughout his' poem we 
 
44 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 feel that what he wishes to brand is not so much the corrupt as the idle, 
 the vapid, the useless ; what he constantly brings before us is not the 
 wickedness of his hero's life, for it is not wicked, nor its absurdity, for it 
 is not ridiculous, but its want of everything manly and ennobling. What 
 Parini hates is the incompleteness, the emptiness of this dandy's exist- 
 ence ; the trifles turned into important concerns, the possession of use- 
 less objects, the feeble attempts at pleasure ; we understand how different 
 a life, how full of strong healthy action and enjoyment, of State service, 
 of literary employment, of domestic affection, of niral pleasures, the poet 
 conceived ; a life, alas, not granted to the poor sickly priest, obliged to 
 gain his livelihood like any other schoolmaster in the close hot town.* 
 At the same time Parini has great artistic feeling ; while satirising, he 
 does not distort ; on the contrary, it is extraordinary what grace he 
 lends to everything he touches. The luxnrious life of his giovin signore 
 becomes one of almost oriental splendour ; the hundred trifles strewn 
 about on his toilet table become so many little masterpieces ; the smart 
 stiff dress of the last century becasnes under Parini's fingers the daintiest, 
 most graceful of garbs, nay, the very movements and gestures become 
 beautiful and noble, and the young fop seems to forget his dancing- 
 master under the poet's orders. Add to this beautiful tendency a 
 wonderful swiftness of movement, and simple elegance of verse and 
 diction, a delicacy of colouring, and, above all, a subtle subdued ridicule, 
 never taking the sharp crude shape of an epigram, and we shall yet 
 have but an incomplete picture of the great Milanese satirist. 
 
 An inferior style of satire, and an inferior poet when compared to 
 Parini, nevertheless deserve to be mentioned among those which did 
 most honour to the eighteenth century. Count Gaspare Gozzi, better 
 known by his agreeable and amusing letters, wrote a few of those blunted 
 
 * Perhaps Parini might have been an Italian Cowper, with all the grandeur of form 
 of which Italian rural scenery could give, had he lived in the country. The famous 
 odes on the purity of the air, and on rustic life, contain nothing equal to the follow- 
 ing lines in the Giorno, so superior was Parini when using blank verse : 
 
 Poi sul dorso portando i sacri amesi, 
 Che prima ritrovar Cerere e Pale, 
 Va, col hue lento innanzi, al campo, e scuote 
 • Per lo angusto sentier da' curvi rami 
 
 II rugiadoso umor, che quasi gemma 
 I nascenti del sol raggi rifrange. 
 
 Then with his load of sacred implements, 
 
 Ceres' and Pales' earliest gifts to men, 
 
 He seeks his field, his tardy ox ahead ; 
 
 And in the narrow pathway brushes off 
 
 From the curved boughs the dewdrops, which like gems 
 
 Befract the rays of the just rising sun. 
 
The Arcadian Academy. . • 45 
 
 generalising satires called by the Italians sermoni, which in their line are 
 excellent. Gozzi has none of Parini's tendency to beautify, none of his 
 high intellectual aspirations ; he is a simple, honest, sensible man, averse 
 to all the corruption and affectation of his times ; and his poems, very 
 plain and elegant in metre and diction, contain clever descriptions of 
 Venetian life : of the crowd pouring into the square of St. Mark's on 
 summer evenings ; of the young dandies buying hair-pins for their 
 ladies ; of the barges going up the Brenta to the places of villeggiatura ; 
 little pictures with no attempt at caricature and of a pleasing sobriety of 
 colour; to which may be added the sketches, full of life and grace, con- 
 tained in some of his single lines, as those of the racket-player, the mask 
 actor, and similar then familiar figures of Italian life. 
 
 We ought perhaps to have mentioned the brother of Gasparo Gozzi by 
 the side of his rival Goldoni, but, although he had the audacity to enter 
 into competition with Italy's greatest comic writer. Carlo Gozzi can be 
 appreciated only when seen alone and when the vast superiority of 
 Goldoni is kept out of sight. Carlo Gq^zi thought that Goldoni wanted 
 to destroy the national theatre for the sake of imitating the French one ; 
 and, indignant at this supposed insult, he determined to show the public 
 that the most absurd nonsense, with the help of the old masks, was more 
 amusing than the best French comedy. His first attempt succeeded so 
 well that he continued to write in the style he had taken up for a mere 
 momentary purpose. His plays have long since been forgotten, as a 
 sort of posthumous retribution for his injustice towards a greater man 
 than himself ; yet these strange wild things, stories from the Arabian 
 Nights and from Basile's Neapolitan collection, such as are still told in 
 the Venetian States, made into tragi-comedies, with transformations, 
 deeds of heroism, and buffooneries, are not without their peculiar charm : 
 the wizards and enchanted princesses, the hlue monsters, the serpent ladies, 
 the kings transformed into stags, the Venetian Pantaloons and Lombard 
 Brighellas talking dialect in their Chinese and Persian dresses, the 
 mixture of heroism and jargon, of childishness and tragedy, all conduces 
 to make Carlo Gozzi's plays the quaintest, queerest, and in some respects 
 almost the most amusing products of his time ; it was chaos, but a chaos 
 contrived and arranged by a very fertile and original mind. 
 
 We have^ while glancing at the literature of Italy in the last century, 
 hurried through a space of upwards of thirty years since the death 
 of the great Crescimbeni, and we have also got a long way from 
 the Serbatoio d' Arcadia and its poetical inmates, for which misdemean- 
 ours we hope, by pleading our good intentions, to be forgiven by the 
 shades of the Arcadians, and also perhaps by the reader. Meanwhile the 
 best and speediest mode of showing our contrition, and of making amends, 
 is to retuni to the history of the Academy, and with that view to get 
 
46 Tlie Arcadian Academy. 
 
 back to the city which was the head-quarters of Arcadia after having 
 been the capital of the world. 
 
 The eighteenth century had got its pope. Prospero Lanabertini, 
 Archbishop of Bologna, mounted the throne of Julius II. and Sixtus V. 
 in the year 1740, under the name of Benedict XIV. to the great surprise 
 of everyone concerned, and of himself most of all. The first thing that 
 the new Pope did was, in no very decorous language, to reprove the 
 master of the ceremonies for instructing him to keep his cap on in the 
 presence of the cardinals ; the second, .to inform his nephews at Bologna 
 that they were on no account to come to Eome unless he sent for them, 
 which he took care never to do ; in short, Benedict astonished everyone 
 by showing that he was going to be a very different pope from his weak, 
 bigoted, ostentatious, formal predecessors. He had been a lawyer, and 
 continued a writer and a wit, a lover of science and literature, without 
 any pretensions to eminence ; he lived simply and spoke bluntly ; he 
 made friends with the heretics without making enemies of the Jesuits ; 
 he had the Eoman streets cleaned, and left the travertine of the Eoman 
 churches to get spongelike from neglect ; he reformed many abuses, and 
 hoped to reform many more ; he even designed to suppress a number of 
 the holidays which fostered the idleness of the lower classes, and to dimi- 
 nish the religious orders which burdened the country. He accepted with 
 alacrity the dedication of Voltaire's Mahomet at the veiy time Cardinal 
 de Tencin dared not open his doors to its author. In short, Benedict 
 XIV., a priest without bigotry, a sovereign without ostentation, revered 
 by Catholics, respected by Protestants, as Walpole's famous epigram runs, 
 was the typical pope of the middle of the eighteenth centuiy. before free 
 thought had grown into over-bold action, and attempt at radical reform 
 had produced violent reaction ; while the Austrians in Lombardy and 
 Tuscany were tolerant and reforming, and the Bourbons in Naples and 
 Parma were anti-feudal and anti-Jesuitical : in short, whUe the people 
 were still so loyal and obedient that the governments could amuse them- 
 selves with being a little radical and revolutionary. 
 
 A curious feature of Eome throughout the century was that everyone 
 who was not a noble or a soldier was a priest in dress and title ; married 
 men, lawyers, doctors, writers, even strangers, wearing the short black 
 dfess and little cloak, and being addressed by the title of Abate. The 
 priests had an amoimt of liberty bordering on licence, from the cardinals, 
 who had their boxes at the theatre, and gave gay parties to the low ahati, 
 who crowded the pit and loitered in the coffee-houses. If we may believe 
 Winckelmann, who was rather inclined to exaggeration, people might 
 express themselves very freely on religious subjects, and cardinals laughed 
 at the Inquisition.* There was much licence, but perhaps less hypocritical 
 
 * It was not so in Tuscany. Tommaso Crndeli, a physician and talented poet, was 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 47 
 
 vice, than among the priesthood of earlier and of later days ; and alto- 
 gether the Pope himself was by far the most devout and rigid, though 
 perhaps the most freespoken and least priggish, of the hierarchy. While 
 Benedict was most parsimonious in everything save works of public utility, 
 his cardinals vied with each other in profane splendour. Foremost among 
 them were the two brothers Albani, Annibale and Alessandro, rivals in 
 their attempts to obtain the tiara, in their collections of antiques, and in 
 their many quasi-bankruptcies ; next to them was Cardinal Pietro Gtto- " 
 boni, who was in a permanent state of bankruptcy ; an old, shabby, jollyy6a 
 disgrace to the Church, who, despite his beggary, had a splendid collection 
 of antiques, and gave magnificent private concerts or sacred operas, at 
 which all the great performers sang, out of liking for the disreputable 
 old fellow. Of the family of the last Pope but one there was the beautiful 
 young princess d' Arce Orsini, composer, poetess, and general patroness of 
 literati, a great improvement on the other Eoman ladies if we may believe 
 the President de Brosses. Another great Boman figure was the King 
 of England, James III. who had taken to devotion in his old days, and 
 lived dismally in his palace near the SS. Apostoli. And there remains 
 yet another figure in the Eome of those days, which, although then 
 scarcely noticed, was a more important one than all the cardinals and 
 pretenders. A German priest, a hanger-on first of Cardinal Archinto, 
 then of Cardinal Alessandro Albani, a sort of pedant after the German 
 fashion, a kind of humble companion, eating what the charity of his 
 employer gave him, and wedging his way into the company of his pro- 
 tector's grand friends ; a cynical, pleasure-loving, information-seeking 
 man, hanging on to the rich and intelligent painter Eaphael Mengs, and 
 who yet gave himself strange airs towards Eoman artists and antiquaries. 
 There he was, continually poring over books, though no lover of litera- 
 ture ; continually examining works of art, though no artist, clambering on 
 to the pedestals of statues and into the holes of excavations. What was 
 he about ? What was he trying to do ? The Eomans got the answer, 
 although they probably did not fully understand it, when there appeared the 
 first volumes of A History of Art among the Ancients, and when it became 
 known that, in the midst of the cockle-shell and mirror art of the eighteenth ? 
 century, Winckelmann had discovered the long-lost art of antiquity. ( 
 
 We returned to Eome with the full intention of resuming our task of 
 chronicling Arcadian affairs, but on examination we find that during the 
 
 accused, apparently merely because he had teen seen with " suspicious foreigners," 
 of the terrible crime of having derided the Church ; and, although in very bad 
 health, was shut up first in the Inquisition prisons, then for some years in the citadel 
 of Florence, despite the sympathy of the Minister Kichecourt, and the constant protec- 
 tion of the famous singer Broschi Farinello, then the omnipotent favourite of the 
 King of Spain. 
 
48 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 peaceful and prosperous reign of Lorenzini there is nothing to chronicle, 
 except it be the Olympic games and the admission of new members, 
 which would, we fear, be found rather tedious by our readers. But 
 at the beginning of the reign of Lorenzini's successor, Morei, Arcadia 
 began to be threatened, if not in her existence, at least in her glory. 
 
 'We have already remarked that little by little the limits of the 
 institution had been overstepped, so that in the middle of the eighteenth 
 century it had become boundless and shapeless, a mass of incoherent 
 social and literary life. Now practical philosophers, of whom there 
 
 "were great numbers to be found when the practical point was one 
 of no consequence — practical philosophers began to ask themselves 
 and each other what this huge shapeless institution could signify, and of 
 what earthly use Arcadia could be. Of course, as is usual in such cases, 
 they never took into consideration that Arcadia, inasmuch as it was the 
 largest of the many literary associations of the country, united by a 
 common bond people of all parts of Italy, and broke down those local 
 distinctions, kept up by prejudice and jealousy, which were so great an 
 obstacle to national feeling ; that, moreover, it levelled ranks and for- 
 tunes, and gave not only introductions into Milanese houses to Neapo- 
 litans, but, what was much more important, secured an entrance into 
 good society to low-born talent ; that, for instance, Goldoni, a Venetian, 
 could, as an Arcadian, gain admittance into Pisan circles merely by 
 going to the Serbatoio d' Arcadia of Pisa ; and that a poor peasant edu- 
 cated by charity, like Parini, could become acquainted in the Milanese 
 colony with the Counts Verri, with Beccaria, and with women like the 
 Countess Castiglione ; that by this means all the old stupid exclusive- 
 ness of the aristocracy was got rid of ; that men of letters became refined 
 by mixing in good society, and good society became ennobled by con- 
 taining men of letters ; that it gave a higher tone to social existence, 
 and a greater sociability to literary life, and that a great step in national 
 progress was thus made. All this the practical philosophers of course 
 entirely overlooked ; they did not care for the effects of the real nature 
 of the institution, but set about investigating those of its imaginary 
 one. They asked, 1st, "Whether pastoral life was consistent with civilisa- 
 tion ? 2ndly, Whether, if it were, the members of the Arcadian 
 Academy were more simple, peaceable, and virtuous than other people ? 
 3rdly, Whether literature had been reformed by the Arcadian Academy ? 
 The answers to these questions were obvious : pastoral life was incom- 
 patible with civilisation (Baretti proved it by pointing to the nomad 
 Tartars) ; the Arcadians were not in the least shepherds, indeed most of 
 them had never possessed a sheep or any animal save a lapdog ; and, 
 finally, literature was by no means reformed. If, then, Arcadia had not 
 cured the evil, it was evident that it must have fostered it, and that all 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 49 
 
 the artificiality of modern society, all the French idioms which were 
 creeping into the language, all the bad sonnets that were being written, 
 all was due to the enervating, stultifying influence of Arcadia.* A few 
 of these critics admitted that at the beginning things had been different, 
 and that the institution had entirely degenerated since the days of the 
 wise and far-sighted Crescimbeni, who would doubtless have been shocked 
 at the sight of the prevailing folly. To this charming practical unprac- 
 ticalness, this folly in the garb of wisdom, of which the last century 
 shows so many glorious examples, must be added the fact that the turning- 
 point in the eighteenth century, the moment when romanticism began to 
 exist, quite tiny, by the side of utilitarianism, had come, and that 
 Eonsseau had already suggested that there were real rustic life and 
 real shepherds, by no means resembling the Arcadian ones. A minority 
 began to cry out that truth and action were needed, and that Arcadia 
 was a humbug. Already Bettinelli had suggested that for the benefit of 
 literature Arcadia should be shut up for a hundred years, at the end of 
 which it was scarcely likely to be re-opened ; but Bettinelli had done so 
 in a work, the Virgilian Letters, in which existing literary opinions were 
 smartly lashed, and Dante was ridiculed, so that the whole of Italy rose 
 in indignation against it. Bettinelli had, however, begun the work; 
 a more formidable attack was coming from a strange, whimsical, origi- 
 nal being, whom we must stop to look at, for, although but little noticed 
 by his contemporaries, he did much to prepare the way for future genera- 
 tions. This enemy of Arcadia was Giuseppe .Baretti, a wonderful, wild, 
 coarse, tender, angry creature, a kind of maniac in the eyes of his con- 
 temporaries, who could imderstand the originality neither of his talent 
 nor of his character ; and who, not satisfied with attacking Goldoni, 
 Frugoni, Algarotti, the Verris, and nearly all the most eminent Italians, 
 did not shrink from making an onslaught on Voltaire in French and on 
 Smollett in English. He had travelled much, read much, known many 
 distinguished men, done everything, in short, that might be expected 
 to tame down a man and a critic, but which had, on the contrary, 
 merely increased his eccentric ferocity. He was decidedly clever ; " he 
 has but few hooks," said Johnson, " but, Sir, he grapples very forcibly 
 with them; " and his very superiority, inasmuch as it consisted in 
 extraordinary independence, in utter contempt for the world's opinion, 
 and intense loathing of everything weak and false, led him into num- 
 berless acts of injustice and ill breeding. He could not endure Frugoni 
 on account of his obscurity and emptiness ; he could not endure Goldoni 
 
 * We are sorry to say that modem Italian writers still talk in this strain, quite as 
 childish, though in the opposite sense, as Crescimbeni and Don Livio Odescalchi, 
 when they imagined Arcadia to be an infallible remedy for all evils. See Eanalli's 
 Storia delle Belle Arti. 
 
 B 
 
50 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 on account of his designs against the old national comedy ; he could not 
 endure Algarotti on account of his scientific friTOlity and his truckling 
 to Voltaire ; he could not endure Voltaire because he protected Goldoni 
 and Algarotti ; he could not endure the Verris and Beccaria because they 
 admired the French and set up a rival journal to his own. ^ Of living 
 Italian literati he admired only Metastasio, because Metastasio had no 
 apparent connection with either Prugoni, or Algarotti, or Voltaire, 
 or Goldoni, or the Verris ; and he personally esteemed only the two 
 Gozzis, Gasparo and Carlo, because they were eternally at war with 
 Prugoni, Algarotti, Goldoni, Voltaire, and the Verris. Above all, 
 Baretti abominated Arcadia, all its founders, members, and abettors, 
 because Arcadia had fostered all his enemies, and because it seemed to 
 him— wild, strong-minded, practical, ill-mannered philosopher that he 
 was — the most imbecile, effeminate, pedantic, frivolous, and utterly use- 
 less institution on earth. Now when Baretti once despised or disliked 
 anyone or anything that person or that thing was doomed in his eyes : 
 it had no merit, no excuse, it was to be abused, calumniated, scoffed at, 
 annihilated. 
 
 In 1763 Baretti started a species of literary review, more or less on 
 the model of The Spectator, to which he gave the ominous name of La 
 Frusta Lettsraria, the " Literary Whip." Like Steele and Addison he 
 contrived an awkward frame for this work, pretending to be an old 
 soldier, Aristarco Scannabue (Aristarchus Massacre-the-dunces), who 
 had lost an arm in Persia, was served by an idiotic slave named 
 Macouf (who afforded comparisons with Goldoni, Ghiari, Prugoni, and 
 the two Verris), and whose intimate, his Sir Roger de Coverley, was a 
 pipe-smoking, quiet, sensible, Bolognese priest, Don Petronio Zamber- 
 lucco. This seems dull enough, but it must be admitted that the Frusta 
 Letteraria was not only infinitely less pedantic than most other reviews 
 of that day, but that, in the midst of coarse ill-humoured injustice and 
 wild buffooneries, it contains much sound sense, good feeling, and 
 independent thought, and some really humorous notions. Unluckily 
 for Arcadia, the new Custode Generale Morei, who appears to have in- 
 herited much of Crescimbeni's reverence for the institution and want of 
 intelligence — unluckily Morei thought fit to publish just at that time a 
 (^neral History of Arcadia. Here was Baretti's opportunity. He had 
 already, in his English work on Italy, showered abuse on Arcadia ; but 
 now was the moment to let loose all his long pent-np contempt, disgust, 
 and hatred. Down he pounced on to Morei's book. He concentrated all 
 his modes of attack upon it : he reasoned, he laughed, he shouted, he 
 ranted ; he went through the usual argument as to the nature and effects 
 of pastoral life ; he decried Crescimbeni, Gravina, and the other founders 
 as pedantic idiots ; he battered Zappi about as an effeminate coxcomb ; 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 51 
 
 he trampled upon the early Arcadians ; he hooted at the story of the 
 foundation ; he went into convulsions of angry caricature over the narra- 
 tion of the schism ; he cried and shrieked at the present institution, and 
 sank down exhausted, but triumphant, with the assertion that every in- 
 telligent creature knew that Arcadia was the stupidest, most pedantic, 
 most mercenary, vilest institution in Italy. Baretti's onslaught had but 
 little effect on his countrymen. They did not believe in Arcadia any 
 more than himself ; but they were all Arcadians, and thought it rather 
 pleasant than otherwise to be called Mirtillo, Labindo, Polianzo, instead 
 of Francesco, Giacomo, or Antonio, and once a fortnight to read their 
 literary productions to so many Chloes, Lesbias, and Aglauros. 
 
 Arcadia was no longer of sufficient interest to be quarrelled about ; 
 that had been possible only in those far-off solemn days of Crescimbeni 
 and Gravina, before people read the Eneyclopedie and Voltaire's novels. 
 Yet Baretti's example was not entirely lost, for Baretti was a forerunner 
 of a new generation, which was soon to become the reigning one. What 
 distinguished Baretti from men of the class of Prugoni, Gozzi, and all 
 the other representatives of the then established literature, was that he 
 had travelled, and had brought home broader ideas on literary and social 
 points than those of his countrymen. The generality of Italians of the 
 middle of last century had never been out of their country, and knew of 
 no foreign ideas save those of the French, which, together with their 
 fashions, their language, and their dancing-masters, had become as 
 supreme as they could in a country which differed from France in spirit, 
 in tradition, and in tendency. But for this reason French ideas could 
 not thoroughly permeate the Italians; they listened, admired, but 
 accepted only a very small proportion of what was offered them ; they 
 did not abuse Voltaire, Eousseau, and the Eneyclopedie with the fanatical 
 rage of the English and of the Germans ; they found in them much 
 sense, much elegance, much usefulness, but also much profanity, much 
 indecency, and much violence. They regarded the French as Parini did 
 Voltaire, as " too much praised and too much blamed ; " jogging quietly 
 along on the road of progress, they could not keep pace with the French 
 in their wild rush onwards towards chaotic change. Add to this the 
 difference in national character, the impossibility of an Italian being 
 satisfied with wit, paradox, and elegance ; the difference in traditions, and 
 consequent impossibility of an Italian, with Dante, Ariosto, Tasso in the 
 past, and Metastasio, Goldoni, and Gozzi in the present, being satisfied 
 with the philosophical, colourless, emotionless, pseudo-classic literature of 
 France ; sum all this together, and it will be evident that as long as 
 there was only French influence in Italy there was comparatively very 
 little foreign influence at all. But, little by little, as the middle of the 
 eighteenth century was left behind, another influence — that of England — 
 
 e2 
 
52 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 began to be felt in Italy, first indirectly through the French, and then 
 directly from the English themselves. The Italians had, early in the 
 century, got acquainted with a few English writers— Milton, Pope, and 
 especially Addison— whom not only Baretti but Gasparo Gozzi largely 
 imitated. Richardson's novels had also reached Italy, and even sug- 
 gested plots to Goldoni ; but on the whole there was but little intellec- 
 tual communication between the two countries until after the year 1750. 
 Till then the English had been too insular, too coarse, too overbearing, to 
 see in the Italians anything more than opera singers and vermicelli 
 makers, and for the Italians to consider the English otherwise than as 
 stupid pedantic milordi, a fit prey for innkeepers and ciceroni. Besides 
 this, England could influence Italy and Germany, and strongly influence 
 even Prance, only when she had shaken off that French element which 
 permeated her literature from the time of Charles II. to that of 
 George III. The force of England lay in her intellectual originality, 
 in her being at the head of what was afterwards called the romantic 
 school, as opposed to the pseudo-classic French one. Dryden, Pope, 
 Addison, pleased the Italians and the Germans, as they pleased the 
 French ; but they could not strongly move any of them, for they 
 were not sufficiently unlike the long-established Racine, Boileau, and 
 La Bruyere., But when Shakespeare reappeared in the hands of Gar- 
 rick, when Sterne and Gray threw aside all the traditions of the age of 
 Anne, then England made a sudden and deep impression on foreign litera- 
 ture. This return to nature, to passion, to imagination, on the part of 
 Enghsh literature, shook the French literature world, loosening the foun- 
 dations of the merely elegant and clever school, which was to be finally 
 destroyed by Madame de Stael and Chateaubriand ; it threw the new- 
 born Gennan literature into full romanticism, and it made the Italians 
 feel that at last there were people who could sympathise with them, who 
 could see in Dante something beyond a monster, and in the comic masks 
 something more than barbarians ; making them acquainted at the same 
 time with a people who could be free without licence or profanity, and 
 philanthropical and utilitarian without rhetorical grandiloquence; whom 
 they could follow on the path of progress more safely and easily than they 
 could their over-excited French neighbours. Then it was that Italians 
 b^gan to go to England for their education and amusement, as even 
 Parini's giovin signore is supposed to have done, though without be- 
 coming acquainted with anything else than the racecourse. The Italians 
 could get acquainted with English life and thought only by going to 
 England, for the English travellers, although, according to Goethe, they 
 carried their tea-kettle up ^tna, came to Italy for the sake of art and 
 antiquity, but not at all to propagandise their political and literary 
 notions. In this point Baretti was the forerunner of the men of the 
 
Tlie Arcadian Academy. 53 
 
 generation of Pindemonti and Alfieri. He knew England and English 
 institutions twenty years before the rest of his countrymen, and his 
 independent utilitarian spirit, his hostility towards the French, towards 
 grandiloquence a,nA. persiflage, did much to form the school which cul- 
 minated in the Misogallo, the first assertion of Italian political feeling 
 since the time of Machiavelli. 
 
 So, gradually, as the nation moved onwai'ds in the wake of its neigh- 
 bours, as foreign, and especially English, or at least Anglo-French, influ- 
 ence became stronger, people grew either more indifferent or more hostile 
 towards Arcadia. At Milan its members themselves began to despise it. _ 
 The Verris and Beccaria had set up a journal called the Gaffe, in which, 
 together with literary topics, they discussed whether the aristocracy would 
 not do well to resume commerce. The journal succeeded. Young men 
 of the nobility studied agriculture and legislation, Pietro Verri and 
 Beccaria nobly carrying out their own recommendations, the former in 
 his works on political economy, the latter in his famous treatise against 
 the then existing criminal laws. Joseph II., then master of the Milanese, 
 did all he could to further this philosophical movement, being himself, 
 after a fashion, philosophical. In Naples the minister Tanucci, while 
 letting the young king grow up in the most woeful ignorance, set about 
 reforming the State in the arbitrary manner then in vogue, while Filangieri 
 spread liberal and philanthropical doctrines in the court of Ferdinand and 
 Caroline — doctrines which were to be paid for terribly in the year '99. 
 In Parma the French minister Du Tillot set up as a wiser and more 
 philosophical sort of Sully, building factories, suppressing convents, and 
 sending for Condillac to be tutor to the heir apparent, who, however, did 
 not profit much by his teachers, since he spent his life serving at mass 
 and ringing church bells. In Tuscany Peter Leopold changed the rather 
 barbarous laws dating from the early grand dukes, and expelled a few 
 dozen monks; finally, in Eome itself, after the death of Lambertini's 
 bigoted successor Eezzonico, Clement XIV., better known as Ganganelli, 
 signed the bull suppressing the Jesuits, although probably aware that he 
 was, in so doing, signing his own death warrant.* 
 
 While in the rest of the world philosophy reigned in more or less 
 boisterous fashion, Italy accepted quietly, prudently, rather timorously. 
 Even poetry was influenced by this philosophical tendency. Not only were 
 
 * See Mutinelli's violent diatribe, " Gil ultimi 50 anni della repubblica di Venezia," 
 written in 1854, in an Austrian and Papal spirit. About the year 1780 there were 
 masonic lodges at Venice, Padua, and Vicenza, unforbidden by the government, and 
 among whose members were many nobles. In 1768 the Venetians secularized several 
 monasteries, forbade ecclesiastical purchase and the begging of the mendicant 
 orders, and ordered that all monks should be tried by civil courts for temporal offences, 
 forbade novices under twenty-one years, and professions under twenty-five. 
 
54 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 utilitarian odes written in imitation of the one by Parini on the salubrity 
 of the air, or, more strictly speaking, on the bad Milanese drainage, but 
 poets, although probably not grown careless of dinners and pensions, began 
 to hold up their heads and talk of human dignity— a quaUty of which 
 they had never before suspected the existence. Here, again, Parini, as 
 the poet of civilisation, to use the modern phrase, was the general model. 
 He had said, what he doubtless sincerely believed, that " he was not bom 
 to knock at the hard doors of the great ; that the kingdom of the dead 
 should receive him a poor, but a free man — 
 
 me non nato a percnotere 
 Le dure illnstri porte, 
 Nudo acorra, ma libero, 
 n regno della morte — " 
 
 and men, quite destitute of his proud, honest spirit, repeated the senti- 
 ment in other words, while continuing their modest little raps at illus- 
 trious doors. Virtue began to be talked of no longer as a necessary 
 accompaniment of high birth, but as something infinitely to be preferred 
 to it ; poverty was declared to be a sort of advantage ; war was decried 
 as an abomination ; ladies were conjured not to give out their babies to 
 nurse ; late hours, fashionable dresses, and rouge were execrated; in short, 
 there was a general enthusiasm for nature and virtue, an enthusiasm which 
 seems to have had but little effect on things artificial and vicious. These 
 doctrines, of course, brought the fact that the Arcadian Academy was 
 not a Tery rustic or natural institution into great relief. It began to be 
 thought that all this verse-scribbling was not really poetical ; and the 
 excessive enthusiasm for Ossian, who had just been translated by Cesa^ 
 rotti, induced very unlucky comparisons between the Celtic bards and the 
 Roman abati, between the rocks of Morven and the Serlatoio d' Arcadia. 
 People began to suspect that Poetry positively refused to inhabit the halls 
 of an academy, and that she asked for crumbUng ruins, virgin forests, 
 and misty mountain-tops. In default of these places, where people 
 of fashion might find it inconvenient to visit her, the Muse was invited 
 to little quiet circles in palaces or villas, where, under the patronage of 
 some beautiful lady, and out of reach of hungry little priests, poetical 
 eiithusiasts might meet without fear of artificial or prosaic interests being 
 tiirust upon them. The colonies of Arcadia began to be neglected for the 
 drawing-rooms of women like the Countess Castiglione at Milan, the 
 Countess Grismondi at Brescia, the Marchesa Silvia Verza at Verona, the 
 Countess Roberti at Bassano, and, above all, of the lovely Isabella Teotochi 
 Albrizzi at Venice, where the most eminent poets, Parini, Pindemonti, 
 Pompei, Cesarotti, were constantly to be met, together with an occasional 
 classical sculptor or emotional singer like Canova or Pacchierotti. 
 Very delightful those little literary circles must have been, where the 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 55 
 
 most talented men lavished their intellectual gifts to please beautiful 
 and re&ned women ; little circles meeting in some cosy drawing-room 
 in the quiet dark town, or on the terraces and in the cypress and syca- 
 more alleys of the villas along the Brenta and between the Monti Berici ; 
 so delightful that their remembrance made those who long survived them, 
 and even ourselves, who have merely heard of them, feel quite elegiac 
 at the sight of the now desolate country-houses where they met, and of 
 the faded pictures of the ladies who presided over them. The poetry 
 which was produced in such societies was, of course, far less conventional, 
 verbose, and worthless than that of the large academical assemblies; less 
 was written, and that better, than in the days of Frugoni, but great excel- 
 lence was scarcely attained to. The poems of Pompei, Mazza, Masche- 
 roni, and even of Ippolito Pindemonti, who far surpassed his contem- 
 poraries,* give us the impression that, agreeable and elegant though they 
 are, their authors were more interesting than they. There was a general 
 mild, elegiac tone prevalent, which, though not without a certain charm, 
 was rather languid and insipid ; nor was there produced, towards the end 
 of the last century, any work to be compared with those of Metastasio, 
 G'oldoni, Parini, or even of the Gozzis. The spread of philosophical and 
 humanitarian ideas had no perceptibly good influence on literature, for, 
 although a tendency to take interest in individual sentiment had arisen, 
 it was neither sufficiently strong nor sufficiently spontaneous to produce 
 true lyric poetry; and the gradual adoption of foreign and the revival 
 of antique modes of thinking and feeling merely weakened the national 
 literature. Metastasio could not have written his operas, nor Goldoni 
 his comedies, had either been fresh from reading Ossian, and Homer, and 
 Gray, and Eousseau, and Gessner; so true is it that intellectual cultiva- 
 tion by no means implies intellectual productiveness. Imitation was in 
 vogue, as it must always be when anything striking first becomes known to 
 a whole people ; and by the side of the newly-acquired knowledge of foreign 
 literature came the newly-revived interest in antique art, the enthusiasm 
 for both mingling strangely towards the end of the last century, but without 
 a better effect than that of making people tolerate tiresome classicism 
 by the side of tiresome romanticism. In Italy the classical tendency was 
 on the whole the stronger of the two, although largely tinged with northern 
 romanticism ; Italians began to go to Eome with the express purpose of 
 seeing ruins and statues, which had hitherto interested only professed 
 archseologists, and more especially for thfi purpose of musing over them. 
 Winckelmann's Italian works, and those of his followers Fea and Visconti, 
 excited interest in antique art, while the gradually-spreading liberal 
 
 * His poem Antonio Foscarini would he a masterpiece were its subject a more 
 moral one. Yet even in nobility of feeling how superior is it not to a poem on a 
 somewhat similar subject by a living author, Prati's famous Edmenegarda ? 
 
56 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 doctrines revived interest in Roman history, which for two centuries had 
 been a kind of dead letter ; in short, romanticism, which, being in reality 
 only the revival of literary and artistic appreciation due to critical study, 
 included even classicism— romanticism made Eome once more a capital, 
 of which we personally are very glad, since it enables us to return once 
 more to Arcadia, and to show it in a more flourishing state than it had 
 been since the middle of the century. 
 
 This revival of Arcadia was marked in the year 1775 by an event 
 which brought back for a moment the glory of the Academy, and at the 
 same time cast great ridicule on it. The reputation, if not the talents, 
 of Perfetti had fallen to the share of a woman who became famous under 
 the Arcadian name of Gorilla Olimpioa. Maria Maddalena Morelli was 
 born at Pistoja about the middle of the last century, and her early years 
 are involved in such obscurity that, betwixt the enthusiastic lyrism of her 
 admirers and the vile scurrility of her lampooners, it is impossible to tell 
 whether she was a pattern of virtue or the very reverse. She married a 
 Spanish gentleman named Fernandez, whom, together with her children, 
 her enemies accused her, among other wickednesses, of having shamefully 
 abandoned. However, her iniquities could either not be proved or were 
 hushed up in consideration of her amazing talents, for we meet her every- 
 where received, honoured, and courted in the most signal way, despite an 
 ominous hum of contempt on the part of the less polite or more scrupu- 
 lous literati. She received several invitations from Joseph II., from the 
 Republic of Venice, and from the Bolognese Senate. Clement XIV., an 
 austere man for his time, gave her, in the most flattering manner, a per- 
 mission to read books prohibited by the Inquisition; and all the most 
 distinguished of the foreign visitors — Orloff, the Corsican chief Paoli, 
 and the Duke of Dorset — lavished honours on her. Her receptions were 
 much frequented by the most brilliant company, for, besides her poetic 
 talents, she was pretty despite a squint, amiable, and accomplished. She 
 was also a musician, for when Dr. Burney went to her house at Florence* 
 he heard her play the violin; and she was particularly gracious to Mozart 
 as a boy, for whom she even condescended to write a sonnet. In 1775 
 she was invited to Eome by her fellow Arcadians, and excited such enthu- 
 siasm that the Senator spontaneously sent her the diploma of citizenship ; 
 aftd the Abate Gioacohino Pizzi, Custode Generale d' Arcadia, crowned 
 her at a private meeting of the Academy. To this first ebullition of 
 admiration is also due a beautiful bust of Gorilla, presented by an English 
 
 * This house, with General MioUis's momimental, but not very intelligible, inscrip- 
 tion, " Qui visse Gorilla in secolo XVIII°." is at the comer of Via della Forca, a 
 street running towards S. Lorenzo, and Via Cerretani. It has an additional interest 
 for us on account of Mozart, who was so often her guest. 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 57 
 
 sculptor, Christopher Hewetson, to the Arcadians, in whose possession it 
 still remains. Judging from it and from a smutty portrait of her dressed 
 in brown brocade decorated with flowers, Gorilla Olimpica must have been 
 at that time a stout woman of thirty-five, handsome, lively, intellectual, 
 withal rather heavy and coarse in feature; she had besides a squinting 
 eye, which was supposed to make the immediate conquest of anyone 
 upon whom she chose to fix it while in the enthusiasm of improvising ; 
 and, if contemporary scandal may be credited, Gorilla had made frequent 
 use of this faculty. At any rate she turned the heads of many people in 
 Rome, filling them with madness of some sort or other — love, ambition, 
 or avarice — to serve her purposes. The young Prince Gonzaga Casti- 
 glione (the Prince Gastelforte of this rather realistic original of Gorinne), 
 a certain Monsignor Mazzei, and, above all, the Custode Generale 
 d' Arcadia, Pizzi, moved heaven and earth, begged, and promised, and 
 threatened, until the Pope consented to give Gorilla the crown which 
 had been worn by Perfetti. But times were changed since the solemn 
 reign of Grescimbeni. A Gustode Generale d' Arcadia was no longer 
 omnipotent over men's minds, a pope was no longer infallible in all his 
 decisions, an improvvisatore was no longer an inspired poet ; things could 
 no longer be looked at in the grave and dispassioned style of the year 
 1725 ; the coronation was regarded as a farce or a profanation, the 
 Arcadians as conceited pedants. Gorilla herself as an impudent adven- 
 turess, and, above all, the feelings of the Eomans were conceived to be 
 outraged by this arbitrary and undeserved bestowal of what was thought 
 once to have been a national reward. Gorilla's dubious antecedents, her 
 theatrical profession, the exaggeration and intrigue of her partisans, did 
 much to awaken public contempt and indignation : the ready buffoonery 
 of the Eoman people burst out in more or less scurrilous fashion ; it was 
 solemnly announced by Pasquino — that undaunted stone advocate of an 
 oppressed but not disheartened people — that 
 
 Ordina e vuole Monsignor Mazzei 
 Che sia la Gorilla cinta dell' alloro, 
 E che non le si tirin buccie ne pomidoro 
 Sotto multa di bajocchi sei. 
 
 Other epigrams averred that this coronation, like that of Baraballo, was 
 meant as a jest and ought to be taken as such : 
 
 Venez-y, riez-en ; et puis vous pourrez dire 
 Que tout cela n'a Ste fait que pour rire. 
 
 Pizza and Gorilla's other partisans seem to have taken fright at these 
 pasquinades, and, fearing perhaps that, despite the alleged fine of six 
 baiocchi on whomsoever should throw orange rinds and tomatoes at 
 the poetess, they might run the risk of some unpleasant scene if they 
 
58 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 performed the coronation in the daytime, they determined that the cere- 
 mony should take place at midnight. This precaution did not, however, 
 entirely suffice, for, as Gorilla was advancing to receive the crown of the 
 Capitol, a young priest pushed his way through the crowd of bystanders 
 and handed her a paper; the poetess, finding the missive to be in Latin, 
 handed it to Prince Gonzaga, who, under the impression that it contained 
 complimentary verses, read them out aloud, discovering, only too late, 
 that they were most infamously insulting to her. The ceremony of 
 coronation was hurried over, amid the acclamations of Gorilla's enthu- 
 siasts ; but the very next day a storm of invective burst out. Lampoons 
 against Gorilla, her partisans, a,nd even against the conniving Pope, 
 were pasted on all street corners and handed round in every house ; the 
 Abate Pizzi was accused of having plotted to introduce Gorilla at an 
 Arcadian meeting with a crown on, which was to be passed off for that of 
 the Gapitol; of having been induced to do so by the bribes of Prince 
 Gonzaga, and by his own desire to play in regard to Gorilla the part 
 played by Crescimbeni in regard to Perfetti ; the whole coronation was 
 decried as illegal, and punishment required for its perpetrators. Poor 
 Pizzi, in despair, wrote a solemn letter of explanation to the Pope, who 
 would appear to have ratified the whole proceeding. But rumour could 
 not so easily be put down, or satire so quickly silenced : a long, and 
 rather clever, but extremely irreverent, poem was published, in which, in 
 the strain of the Dies Irw, Gorilla lamented her unfortunate fate, cursed 
 all who had invented Oapitoline crowns, and especially devoted to celestial 
 vengeance the unlucky Abate Pizzi : 
 
 Pizzi iniquo, maledetto, 
 Tna mercS gia m'affiretto 
 Al ferale cataletto. 
 Ah crndele! ah seellerato I 
 M'ha ridotta in questo state 
 D'avarizia 11 tuo peecato. 
 Tu sol fosti che inventasti 
 Nobilta, corona e fasti, 
 Tu che ml sacrlficasti. 
 I miel vizil, 1 miei dlfettl, 
 Di canzonl e di sonettl 
 Oggi sono i soil soggetti. 
 
 Gorilla had excited much admiration, and met much adulation ; 
 Madame de Stael, who saw everything through the beautifying and en- 
 nobling medium of her own character, heard of her in after years, totally 
 misconceived her talent, her position, her triumph, saw in her a radiant 
 sibyl, a sort of personified genius of Italy, and wrote Gorinne. Thus poor, 
 misused, pasquinaded Gorilla Olimpica unconsciously gave rise to a 
 masterpiece ; but those Eomans who still remembered the scene at the 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 59 
 
 Capitol in the year 1775 must hare suppressed a smile in reading the 
 magnificent description of Corinne's coronation. 
 
 The reigns of Clement XIII. and of Clement XIV. had been dull 
 enough for Eome and Arcadia; both popes were austere men, one en- 
 grossed in bigotry, the other in reforms, caring respectively only for beati- 
 fications and consistories, and for politics and Church government. The 
 reign of Pius VI. was a very different one. Giovan Angelo Braschi, the 
 handsomest, vainest, and most artistic pope who had reigned since more 
 than a centm'y, seemed inclined to abandon the principles of his imme- 
 diate predecessors, and to return to the notions and habits of a Paul V. 
 or an Urban VIII. Nepotism, a thing long out of use, reappeared in full 
 force, together with the most lavish expenditure and the most childish 
 ostentation. The Pope's nephew, Braschi Onesti, was made a duke, a 
 grandee of Spain, a prince of the Holy Empire, and was given a large 
 fortune, large estates, including the famous villa of Hadrian, and a large 
 amount of political influence : a striking contrast to the Lambertinis, 
 whom their uncle Benedict XIV. had invited to stay at home ^.nd leave 
 him alone. Pius VI. had something of the feeling of Louis XIV., and a 
 vague idea of playing the part of Pericles ; he did a few things handsomely 
 and a great many in the most shabby style of ostentation ; he bought a 
 number of very valuable ancient statues, which would otherwise have been 
 scattered about in foreign collections, and built to receive them the 
 noble rotonda and staircase of the Museo Pio-Clementino, the most 
 beautiful of all galleries ; he caused considerable excavations to be made, 
 and employed Canova and other first-rate artists to restore antiques ; at 
 the same time he built that monster of heavy pastry-cook architecture, the 
 chapter-house of St. Peter's, and a number of trumpery buildings of a 
 similar style ; and to whatever he did, good or bad, he appended his name, 
 hoping to gain immortality by means of the tablets with the heraldic 
 wind blowing down lilies, and the inscription, "Munificentia Pii Sexti," 
 which he sprinkled all over the streets, museums, and monuments of 
 Eome. In his reign, and partly owing to his personal influence, Eome 
 became for the first time a great cosmopolitan centre ; not merely a place 
 like Venice, Bologna, and Milan, in which young men on their grand 
 tour remained for a short time, but the permanent residence of numbers 
 of foreigners who came to study art or to wile away a lazy existence. 
 Soon there was a regular set of French artists, another of Germans, and 
 a small colony of English of rank and fortune; nay, Eome became so cos- 
 mopolitan towards the end of the eighteenth century that when Beckford 
 was there in 1780, the Senatol: — that is to say, the supreme magistrate — 
 was a Swede. These foreigners did not necessarily mix with Eoman 
 society, except with the artistic and literary part of it ; and whereas, in 
 the year 1740, Charles de Brosses found himself in the midst of a strange 
 
60 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 people, Dr. Burney informs us that as early as 1770 he met more English 
 than Italians in Rome, and eighteen years later Goethe seems scarcely 
 to have known a single Italian; for, in proportion as the foreigners 
 colonised, the natives became more national and exclusive. This new 
 condition of things naturally affected literary life; there was no longer in 
 Rome either a Don Livio Odescalchi in search of literary retainers nor a 
 Crescimbeni in search of rich noble protectors; the nobles had ceased to 
 play the M»cenas, the literati had ceased to be their humble attendants; 
 literature was gradually being turned out of noble Roman circles and 
 seeking refuge in the cosmopolitan society which collected in Rome for 
 the sake of art, of music, of archaeology, and of that general intellectual 
 improvement which Goethe was the first to analyse and define; the in- 
 tellectual part of different nations was beginning to consider Rome as its 
 home. There were, of course, lots of Roman fine ladies and gentlemen 
 on the lists of the Bosco Parrasio; but the really intelligent public, the 
 one which could still take pleasure in meeting for literary purposes, was 
 a mongrel one: there was the Duke of Dorset, a great giver of private 
 concerts; there was Councillor Reiffenstein, a great collector of antiques; 
 there was Zoega, the Danish archaeologist; Piranesi, the engraver; Fea, 
 the translator of Winckelmann, and his more famous rival Visconti; 
 there were Canova and Angelica Kauffmann, and Tischbein and Gavin 
 Hamilton; there was a crowd of artists, and literati, and musicians, 
 Italians and foreigners, with whom they associated; there were aspiring 
 young men trying to create a national stage: the Abate Monti, a poor 
 secretary of the pope's nephew Braschi Onesti, whose Aristodemus was 
 vehemently applauded, and Count Alfieri, a rich, half-mad Piedmontese, 
 always driving a lot of horses and getting into dreadful quarrels, whose 
 Orestes created a still more violent sensation, and gave the younger gene- 
 ration a certain impatient contempt for Pope Pius and his rule, and a 
 desire to return to antiquity, and freedom, and paganism. While Roman 
 society was thus losing its national character, Rome itself was unchanged: 
 with its old-fashioned, half-classic practices, its riotous Carnival, its races 
 of riderless horses, its people living and sleeping in the streets, its pro- 
 cessions and popular festivals, and old Christian and heathenish customs; 
 so that, in this wonderful mixture of newly discovered antiquity, of modern 
 arftstic life, of picturesque old-fashioned custom, of polished modem 
 society, Goethe could feel all his wishes fulfilled, save that of never 
 quitting so delightful a mode of existence. The imbecile and uncultivated 
 natives had retired, the imbecile and uncultivated foreignei-s had not yet 
 come; there was art and music, and antiquity and nature, apparently for 
 the sole enjoyment of the intelligent and cultivated minority, to whom 
 new and vast horizons of philosophy, of liberty, of art, of literature, were 
 gradually disclosing ; and altogether things seemed to be going on in a 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 6 1 
 
 strangely agreeable way, as indeed they did immediately before the great 
 storm which was to shake, and blast, and uproot all. This was the state 
 of Kome when, in 1788, Councillor Wolfgang von Goethe, minister of 
 the Duke of Wmoar, author of Werther, the most popular book that had 
 ever appeared, was admitted into Arcadia as Megalio Melpomeneo, and 
 had allotted to him by the Abate Pizzi the " fields of the Tragic Muse " 
 — rather an unnecessary piece of property for a man who was finishing 
 Tasso and Iphigenia, and had the first scenes of Faust in his portfolio. 
 
 This delightful state of Koman life was not destined to last long. 
 Scarcely had Goethe recrossed the Alps when there came news from 
 France which diverted the thoughts of intelligent men from literature, art, 
 and archaeology. Liberal doctrines had long been working their way in 
 Italy, though in a subdued and inoffensive way, but it was not till the 
 year 1789 that the Italians became aware that those doctrines might be 
 practically applied; as it is possible that even in France people did not 
 know what changes might be effected until the first great effort had shown 
 them their own force. But, when once the movement had begun, it was 
 irresistible; men found themselves suddenly hurled from out of the sphere 
 of mere wild speculation into that of violent action. The Italians seem 
 to have received a shock of surprise; what the French had so long hinted 
 at and then ranted about was absolutely taking place. The reforms, which 
 had seemed mere dreams, were being enforced, philanthropy was being put 
 into practice, freedom was being established; those far-gone times of 
 Brutus and the Gracchi, which had seemed mere poetical ideals, were 
 really returning; humanity was being changed, renovated, transfigured. 
 Such was the feeling of many ardent young men in Italy, and many more 
 moderate and wiser men sympathised to a certain degree with them, but 
 felt less sanguine than they did; nor does there appear to have been any 
 attempt at imitating the French in their revolution. Very soon, however, 
 the horrible excesses of the republicans, their theatrical bombast, their 
 want of patriotism, their insolent defiance of all law, human and divine, 
 disgusted even the most ardent philanthropists of Italy. The Govern- 
 ments looked on in stupid fright or stupid apathy; some thought to stay 
 the revolutionary wave by imprisoning a few Frenchmen and uproarious 
 youths ; others trusted in their concessions to the people. Tuscany 
 remained placid and happy. Venice, despite the warning voice of Fran- 
 cesco Pesaro, determined to jog on comfortably, and let the banner of 
 St. Mark and the twenty-five old cripples of Peschiera scare away all 
 invaders.* Pius VI. immediately ordered a creature of his, named Spe- 
 dalieri, to write a book to prove that man had a right to equality and 
 
 * The following gives an amusing picture of the times, which we transcribe from 
 Professor Ernesto Masi's very learned and at the same time amusing book on the 
 
62 Tlie Arcadian Academy. 
 
 liberty, and that the Sovereign Potitiff was the likeliest person to obtain it 
 for him. The King of Sardinia called out his people to defend their 
 independence and their rulers, and opposed his elaborately-trained army 
 to the French. Austria moved, England moved, France moved; the 
 independent Italian States found themselves between the belligerents, 
 caressed and bulHed now by the one, now by the other, vainly attempting 
 to maintain neutrality, and to suppress the seeds of insubordination. In 
 Rome the French minister and his secretary drove through the Corso 
 wearing tricolour cockades— the mob fell upon them and cut them to 
 pieces; Monti wrote a poem in honour of the murdered Basseville, but 
 that did not atone. The French soldiers, without bread, without clothes, 
 without shoes, were told at the foot of the Alps to avenge their country- 
 men massacred at Rome; they poured into Italy, a hideous barbarous 
 mass, burning, sacking, and pillaging, while they declared that they were 
 bringing liberty to the Italians. Napoleon reorganised them, disciplined 
 them, soothed the population, and prevented all but official plunder. The 
 Austrians then came and sacked and ravaged in their turn. The French 
 planted trees of liberty, stole pictures, statues, manuscripts, money, all 
 they could lay their hands upon. The Italians rejoiced because they had 
 been made free, and wept because they had been made beggars. Some 
 false enthusiasts cringed to the conquerors and obtained posts under them; 
 some timorous conservatives went over to the Austrians; some generous- 
 minded visionaries plotted to exterminate the foreigners of all sorts and 
 set up an Italian kingdom; some wanted a democracy, others an oligarchy; 
 some approved of the French system of levelling and wholesale changing; 
 others wished to preserve some of the old traditions; a few truly noble 
 men put aside their prejudices and united, priests and freethinkers, repub- 
 licans and aristocrats, determined to serve their country under whatever 
 rule it fell, trying to save it from the ruin which seemed impending; 
 among these we meet, for the last time, a man of whom we have already 
 spoken at considerable length, the Abate Giuseppe Parini. 
 
 Meanwhile the frivolous part of society chatted and danced, and went to 
 operas and masquerades, and adored now the Emperor of Germany, now 
 the French general, but especially that greatest, most heroic of men, the 
 
 amateur playwright Albergati, a book which unfortunately fell into our hands only 
 after the publication of this essay in Fraser's Magazine: — 
 
 " In the year 1792 the Bolognese Senate discussed various plans, and finally assigned 
 to the most excellent Signer Gonfaloniere (head of the Senate) 120 Bolognese livres, 
 wherewith to provide for the safety of the State. This worthy gentleman resolved 
 in his mind how best to employ the money, and finally distributed it, in sums of 30 
 livres, to the various Capuchin monasteries and to the convent of the Barefoot Nuns, 
 that they might implore Heavenly assistance on account of the French invasion of 
 Savoy" (p. 442). 
 
The Arcadian Academy. 63 
 
 singer Marcliesi, whom Alfieri called upon to buckle on Ms helmet, and 
 march out against the French, as the only remaining Italian who had 
 dared to resist the " Corsican Gallic" invader, although only in the matter 
 of a song. And in this confusion of contrary opinions, and of absence of 
 opinions, in this chaos of strife and of utter helplessness, of vain-glorious 
 rascality and unnoticed heroism, there remained one man who, taking no 
 part, looked on in contempt, and left the world the most extraordinary 
 monument of his feeling. Alfieri had only two feelings, strangely fused 
 into one — hatred and contempt. He hated and despised the savage repub- 
 licans, the formal Austrians, the grandiloquent French spoilers, the bar- 
 barous German invaders, the inane republics and grand dukes, the retro- 
 grades and the radicals, those who acted and those who were passive, the 
 servility and the tyranny; and this hatred and contempt he expressed in 
 the collection of epigrams which he entitled Misogallo, with the harsh 
 bitter terseness which was his literary weakness and his political strength. 
 The whole order of things in Italy was subverted; all was plundered, 
 regulated, arranged for the better by the French; the Austrians and Pied- 
 montese made terrible reprisals. Venice was handed over to the Austrians ; 
 Naples was abandoned to Caroline and Cardinal Euffo; colleges were 
 instituted, statues carried off, trees of liberty planted, fireworks let off, 
 while prisons and fortresses were crowded, while whole families, once 
 wealthy and powerful, crossed the Alps on foot as beggars, and the best 
 blood in the southern provinces was shed in torrents.* Carlo Botta, a 
 patriot and a thinker, who had suffered in his youth for the French cause, 
 has left a heartrending account of the feelings of men like himself at the ' 
 close of the eighteenth century, looking upon their country ravaged, pil- 
 laged, enslaved; dishonoured by those who had pretended to bring liberty; 
 and crushed by those who had pretended to defend independence; all 
 illusions were dispelled, all hopes gone, and there is something like a 
 stifled sob in the words in which the historian tells how the populace 
 rejoiced when the Eepublic of St. Mark was dissolved, and predicts that 
 soon the time will come when Venice will be a mere heap of ruins, washed 
 over and half hidden by the compassionate lagoons. So, indeed, it seemed 
 when Botta wrote; nor could he foresee that what appeared final destruction 
 was, in reality, but the beginning of renovation; and that the freedom and 
 independence of Italy, lost amidst devastation and oppression when the 
 feudal monarchies of the North reached their highest power at the begin- 
 ning of the sixteenth century, would be recovered, thanks to that second 
 
 * Perhaps no better picture could be given of Italy in the last years of the 
 eighteenth century than that contained in the Confessioni di wn Ottuagenario, by 
 the late Ippolito Nievo. This very remarkable, though occasionally tedious, novel 
 reads like a real autobiography; and it is wonderful how a young writer of our own 
 day could so realize the condition of Italy ninety years ago. 
 
64 
 
 The Arcadian Academy. 
 
 foreign invasion due to the fall of feudalism at the end of the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
 What became of Arcadia in that great storm? Did her members con- 
 tinue writing and reading sonnets, while Pius VI. was being dragged 1o 
 Avignon, while Pavia was being sacked, while Venice was being sold, 
 while Oirillo, and Eleonora Pimentel, and Filomarino were being butchered, 
 and Caracciolo hanged to the mast of his own ship? This much is certain, 
 that men thought no more about the institution, and that its existence 
 and very name were forgotten in the great confusion whence modern Italy 
 arose. 
 
 And as we stand once more in the little desolate battered villa on the 
 Janiculum, and look again at the portraits of Crescimbeni, of Perfetti, of 
 Gorilla, and of the beautiful Faustina Maratti, of their many nameless 
 companions, mouldering unnoticed on the bare, stained walls, we feel even 
 more powerfully than before how deep a gulf separates us from those times, 
 so near to our own, yet so long forgotten, when the Academy of the Arcadi 
 Represented the whole literary life of Italy. 
 
THE MUSICAL LIFE. 
 
THE MUSICAL LIFE. 
 
 We go down the Strada San Donato, the noblest street in noble old 
 Bologna; we issue out of its lofty arcades in front of the tall red brick 
 church of San Giacomo, pass by the side of its time-worn marble lions, 
 and ring, hard by, at a little blistered door, all scribbled over with music 
 notes. The door creaks, swings back on its hinges, and lets us pass into 
 a little black lobby, illumined by a flickering, sputtering shrine lamp; we 
 clamber up a dark rugged well-staircase, past an open kitchen, and come 
 "to a landing. A confused sound of instruments and voices meets us, for 
 the pupils of the music school are at their lessons; we push back a heavy 
 leathern door, and enter a vast, lofty^ desolate hall, on whose brick floor 
 our steps resound as in a church. The practising pupils are not here, nor 
 is any other living person besides ourselves; but all around is a crowd of 
 dead musicians, members of the once famous Philharmonic Academy, in 
 purple and lilac, and brocade and powder, who look down upon us from the 
 walls. Only here and there do we recognise some well-known figure — 
 Handel, majestic in blue plush and a many-storied peruke ; Gluck, coarse, 
 bright, and flushed, in a furred cloak; Haydn, pale, grey, willow-like, 
 bending over a meagre spinnet; Mozart, sweet and dreamy, with the 
 shadow of premature death abeady upon him — ; around them are a host 
 of others, forgotten and unknown, their contemporaries, their masters, 
 their friends, their rivals, and perhaps their successful rivals. Very solemn 
 and quaint they mostly are, those ladies with prodigious beribboned hay- 
 cocks on their heads, those fiddlers in dressing-gowns and periwigs, those 
 prim chapel-masters seated by their harpsichords, and those dapper singers 
 with one hand on their music roll and the other on their sword-hilt ; very 
 solemn and quaint, and almost droll, but not without something that 
 awakens sadness. There is sadness in the dignified thoughtful composers, 
 looking as if the world still rang with the sound of their music — music 
 not heard for a century ; there is sadness in the dandified singers, whose 
 names have long been forgotten, but whose eyes are upturned and whose 
 lips are parted, as if they still thrilled and delighted those that have been 
 dead a hundred years : it is a world of feeling extinct and genius forgotten, 
 
 p2 
 
68 The Musical Life. 
 
 a world separated from ours by a strange indefinable gulf. Yet amongst 
 these forgotten nameless figures there is one who can procure us a glimpse 
 into that world: opposite us hangs the portrait of a man in the brocade 
 gown of a doctor of music; thin, sharp, with a shrewd, kindly, humorous 
 face. Our fellow-countryman. Dr. Burney, can yet introduce us to some 
 at least of the forgotten musicians around us; of all his contemporaries 
 he is the only one who does not look down on us in silence. 
 
 Let us quit for a while the old desolate hall, hung with the portraits of 
 the Philharmonic Academicians; and descend into the cosy brown library, 
 with its shelves of books and manuscripts, its glass cases of quaint lutes 
 and viols, and its Venetian chandelier shining opal-tinted in the sunshine, 
 which slants across the little cloister court; and gilds the red brick of the 
 adjacent belfry. Here, among heaps of time-soiled scores and bundles of 
 faded letters, and with a subdued hum of music entering by the open 
 windows, we can sit and turn over the leaves of the battered volume which 
 chronicles the musical tour through France and Italy made in the year 
 1770 by Charles Burney, Doctor of Music. 
 
 1. 
 
 Charles Burney is scarcely remembered now-a-days except as the father 
 of one of the earliest and most brilliant of female English novelists; but 
 long before Evelina and Cecilia were written, at a time when the future 
 Mdme. d'Arblay was looked upon as a mere ordinary little piece of living 
 furniture in the house in Poland Street, her father was well known as one 
 of the first of English musicians, as a man of great literary attainments 
 and of great social charms, and as belonging to the most brilliant coteries 
 of the day. Although by profession nothing beyond a mere music-master, 
 and without pretensions to an elegant or even very comfortable style of 
 living, Burney had a very large circle of acquaintances, not only among 
 literary and scientific notabilities, but among people of much higher rank 
 and station than his own, who were pleased to know him and pleased that 
 their acquaintance with him should be known, for Bm-uey was a man who 
 was acquainted with everyone worth knowing, thanks to his character, his 
 talents, and a certain sincerity and sunniness of nature which attached 
 everyone to him. Born at Shrewsbury in 1726, and entrusted during 
 childhood to mere country-folk, he had been early apprenticed to the 
 celebrated composer Arne, whose teachings were restricted to making him 
 drudge as a copyist, so that the young man owed nearly all he learned to 
 his own indefatigable activity while in this bondage. From it he was 
 released by Pulke Greville, a high-born fop and wit, who took him into his 
 private service, but less as a teacher than a companion. This position, 
 
The Musical Life. 69 
 
 while throwing the youth into the dissipated circles to which his patron 
 belonged, at the same time afforded him opportunities of becoming 
 acquainted with persons of social and literary standing; and such was 
 Burney's happy character that he obtained all the advantages without 
 any of the disadvantages which Mr. Greville put within his reach. A 
 charming and highly intellectual young wife confirmed his tendencies 
 towards domestic life, and towards literary and social culture ; and every 
 succeeding year saw him extend his reputation and enlarge his circle of 
 friends. Nothing perhaps impresses us more with his winning character 
 than the perfect confidence and affection of all his children, and the 
 constant tender admiration of his daughter Fanny — an admiring enthu- 
 siastic aifection, not unlike that of Madame de Stael for Necker. But 
 Burney was as great a favourite abroad as at home. Among the earliest 
 of his innumerable friends was Garrick, who would show off all his powers 
 of mimicry for the delight of the little Burney s; the accomplished and 
 unfortunate Crisp, to whose conversation Burney probably owed much of 
 the superior sesthetical education he displayed; and Mason, the friend of 
 Gray, and author of Caractacus, whom, together with Thomson of the 
 Seasons, Burney had come across in the earliest part of his career. 
 Eeynolds, who loved money, painted Burney's portrait out of mere friend- 
 ship; and Mrs. Thrale hung it up at Streatham. Goldsmith sought eagerly 
 for the acquaintance of the doctor of music; while Gibbon, Bruce, Burke, 
 Sheridan, Captain Cook, Murphy, Boswell, and a host of other celebrities, 
 flocked to the parties in the house which had once belonged to Newton. 
 But of all Burney's friends none perhaps was as hearty and truly appre- 
 ciative as Johnson: 
 
 "Mrs. Thrale," writes Madame d'Arblay, "was lamenting the sudden 
 disappearance of Dr. Burney, who had just gone to town, sans adieux ; 
 declaring that he was the most complete male coquette she knew, for he 
 only gave just enough of his company to make more desired. ' Dr. Burney,' 
 said Mr. Murphy, ' is indeed a most extraordinary man. I think I do not 
 know such another. He is at home on all subjects ; and upon all highly 
 agreeable. I look upon him as a wonderful man!' 'I love Burney!' 
 cried Dr. Johnson, emphatically; 'my heart goes out to meet Burney. . . 
 Dr. Burney is a man for everybody to love. It is but natural to love him. 
 ... I question if there be in the world such another man, altogether, 
 for mind, intelligence, and manners, as Dr. Burney.' " 
 
 In this prosperous condition of his affairs. Dr. Burney, who, it must be 
 remembered, although a wit and a friend of wits, was by profession merely 
 a music-master, conceived the idea of a great work on his art — a general 
 history of music, such as had never been written before, and could never 
 be written except by himself, by the man who had heard more music than 
 any other, who appreciated it better, and had the friendship of all the most 
 
70 The Musical Life. 
 
 distinguished composers and performers. To this plan he devoted all his 
 leisure time and all his spare money. He made extract after extract, 
 bought volume after volume and manuscript after manuscript, and every 
 hour missed by a pupil was, according to Madame d'Arblay, given to his 
 History. Indeed, what would not be done for an all-engrossing work by 
 a man like Burney, who as a boy had tied a string to his toe that he 
 might be waked by a companion in the street and begin his studies at day- 
 break, and who as a young man had learned Latin and Greek while 
 plodding through the mud of Lynn Regis on his mare Peggy? Very soon 
 Burney became dissatisfied with the materials for his History which he 
 could obtain in England from books and conversation ; he wished to give 
 his work the benefit of every kind of information, and he at length con- 
 ceived the plan of visiting France and Italy. " In hopes," he wrote, " of 
 stamping on my History some marks of originality .... I determined 
 to hear with my own ears, and see with mine own eyes ; and, if possible, to 
 see and hear nothing but music." " There was something so spirited and 
 uncommon," writes Madame d'Arblay, " and yet of so antique a cast, in 
 these travels or pilgrimage that he had undertaken in search of materials 
 for the history of his art, that curiosity was awakened to the subject, and 
 expectation was earnest for its execution ;" and, consequently, well supplied 
 with letters of introduction, and encouraged by general approbation. Dr. 
 Burney set off for Italy with a light heart at the beginning of June 1770. 
 On Tuesday, June 13, Dr. Burney arrived in Paris. He had been there 
 twice before, was well acquainted with its sights, people, and music, and 
 therefore stayed only as long as was required to seek for materials for his 
 work in the public libraries. Dr. Burney appears to have had that high 
 admiration for French writers, and that smiling slight contempt for the 
 French people, which distinguished well-educated Englishmen of his day. 
 Like them he had read the Encyclopedie, and Voltaire, and Bousseau, and 
 all the other philosophers, without that religious and national hostility and 
 dread which the succeeding generation felt for them. Like most of his 
 travelling countrymen he had noticed the French lower classes, horribly 
 oppressed, miserably poor, and invincibly lighthearted and civil, dancing, 
 bowing, and making witticisms in torn, tarnished clothes, as gaily as if 
 there had been neither taxes nor corvees, nor rack, nor gibbet. He had 
 Jooked at this strange people without any of the fears and hatred which 
 they were later destined to inspire. The coming revolution had not yet 
 cast its shadow before it. In the eyes of foreigners the Encyclopaedists 
 were not yet atheists and corrupters; the lower classes were not yet dema- 
 gogues and murderers. All in France was quite safe and pleasant: there 
 were philosophical marquises disbelieving in moral law, while waiting for 
 old age and neglect to take to devotion ; ministers, who gave delightfully 
 courteous audiences to insignificant travellers and sent troublesome pam- 
 
The Musical Life. 71 
 
 phleteei'S to the Bastille; there were gay tattered vagabonds' like La Fleuro, 
 and chivalrie outcasts like the Knight of St. Louis who sold pasties ; there 
 was the whole fantastic world of Yorick — amusing, charming, despicable, 
 and perfectly harmless. Dr. Burney went to the public libraries, walked 
 in the streets crowded with the FeteDieu processions, and on the Boulevart, 
 " which is a place of public diversion without the gates of Paris. It is 
 laid out and planted ; at the sides are coffee-houses, conjurors, and shows 
 of all kinds. Here, every evening during the summer, the walks are 
 crowded with well-dressed people and the road with splendid equipages." 
 Here also people danced minuets, allemandes, and contre-danses when the 
 weather was warm. He went to the theatre and saw comedies exquisitely 
 acted, and operas most vilely sung. He went to the Abbe Arnaud, who 
 had written much in favour of Italian music, and to M. Gretry, who was 
 trying to bring it into fashion by his own example, and with them Burney 
 lamented to his heart's content over the vileness of French music ; for 
 Arnaud's books and Gretry's compositions, though read and heard through- 
 out the country, seemed equally inefficacious to make the French abandon 
 their own atrocious music. 
 
 Burney also went to several- concerts and operas, thinking that some 
 improvement might have taken place since his previous visits to Paris, and 
 also from a conscientious determination to hear everything, good or bad, 
 and to try once for all to find something enjoyable or commendable in 
 French music. " Those who visit Italy for the sake of painting, sculpture, 
 and architecture,'' writes Burney, " do well to see what those arts afford 
 in France first, as they become so dainty afterwards that they can bear to 
 look at but few things which that kingdom affords ; and, as I expected to 
 have the same prejudices or feelings at my return about their music, I 
 detemiined to give it a fair hearing first." How strong a prejudice already 
 existed in the Doctor's mind is shown by the very precautions he took to 
 remain, unprejudiced ; indeed it was preposterous to think of giving a fair 
 hearing to French music ; for, besides the musical taste of every English- 
 man of that day being exclusively Italian, it was a fact universally admitted 
 and proved by experiments on the unsophisticated minds of Greeks, 
 Hurons, and Polynesians, that to enjoy French music it was not sufficient 
 to be a savage but it was necessary also to be a Frenchman. Why the 
 French opera from the time of LuUy to that of Gluck should have been a 
 musical abomination incomprehensible to all other nations, it is indeed 
 difficult to explain, except by the fact that all stagnant things corrupt. 
 The French, like the English and the Germans, had originally got their 
 music and their opera from the Italians, but, unlike their neighbours, they 
 had refused to submit to the constantly progressing Italian taste, while 
 they themselves remained incapable of improving what they had been 
 incapable of producing. Music out of Italy was a delicate exotic, and the 
 
72 The Musical Life. 
 
 French planted and cultivated it among coarse and tawdry plants by 
 which it was soon crushed. 
 
 . "When Cardinal Mazarin introduced the Italian opera into France it 
 was in the monstrous condition inseparable from times of growth and 
 transition; the dramas were badly constructed, the poetry languid and 
 quibbling, the music harsh and pedantic; no great school of singing had 
 as yet arisen, and the chief attraction of the performance consisted' in 
 scenic displays and pantomime wonders, which were pushed to an incre- 
 dible point. The French never dreamed of altering the opera in any of 
 these essential points. While the Italians gave a new shape to the 
 drama, eliminated all the extraneous elements of machinery and dancing, 
 and cultivated singing and vocal composition to the utmost, the French, 
 relying entirely upon their own powers, never attending to what was being 
 done in Italy, merely petrified the uncouth and meaningless forms of the 
 opera of the seventeenth century. Musical progress there was none; on 
 the contrary, the greater the distance from the original importation of the 
 opera, the worse it became; the more insipid were the plays, the more 
 extravagant the scenic shows, the more uncouth the music, the more 
 insufferable the singers, and the more satisfied was the public. La 
 Bruyere and Vauvenargues spoke with admiring complacency of what was 
 styled la machine, of the transformations, the flights through the air, the 
 apparitions from underground, the enchanted castles and palaces in the 
 clouds; St. Evremont and Bourdelot proudly contrasted the ranting, 
 screaming, barking, drawling performance o their countrymen with the 
 smooth and brilliant execution of the Italians, which they found utterly 
 devoid of pathos and fit only to make people gape or to send them to 
 sleep. The most polished Paris audience would turn with satisfaction 
 from a tragedy by Eacine or Voltaire to an opera by Campra or Eameau; 
 from the exquisitely dignified declamation of a Baron or a Lecouvreur to 
 the screeching and howling of a Gros or a Delcambre; in short, French 
 music seemed invincible. Gray, who accompanied Walpole to Paris in 
 1739, has left a long description of a French opera, in which, after 
 detailing the ludicrously vapid subject and the eternal ballets, he con- 
 cludes as follows : " Imagine all this transacted by cracked voices trilling 
 divisions upon two notes and a half, accompanied by an orchestra of hum- 
 sirums, .... des miaulements et des hurlements effroyables, melees 
 (sic) avec un tintamarre du diable : voila la musique frangaise en 
 abregee" {sic).* 
 
 However, as even Frenchmen must travel and find something to admire 
 in foreign countries, a suspicion began at length to spread that French 
 
 * Compare Goldoni's account, which we translate from his Autohiography: 
 " I kept waiting for the airs, the music of which would, I thought, have at least 
 amused me ; when, behold I out comes the ballet again, and conclude? the a?t, I, 
 
TJie Musical Life. 73 
 
 Lusic was not quite so perfect, and Italian music not quite so atrocious, 
 3 had been hitherto thought; men of talent and fortune began to seek 
 )r Italian scores and to write pasquinades on French operas. An Italian 
 3mic company was encouraged to perform in Paris Pergolesi's charming 
 lusical farce La Serva Padrona, which immediately awakened the 
 nthusiasm of all who were inclined towards Italian music and the frantic 
 idignation of the partisans of the French opera, and inaugurated a war 
 f pamphlets and epigrams which lasted full a quarter of a century. But 
 'rench music was not so easily routed. Frenchmen like the President de 
 Irosses went to Italy, heard the Faustina, Senesino, Carestini, all the 
 reatest singers of the day ; brought back volumes and portfolios full of 
 Dngs by Hasse, by Pergolesi, and by Leo, which were handed round in 
 'aris, copied, and performed by self-sufficient amateurs ; but, after having 
 3C0vered from the first shock of hearing once more their national music, 
 de travellers would gradually become half reconciled to the French 
 pera. Or else a great Italian singer, like Caffariello, would be sum- 
 loned to Paris by the Dauphine, and Grimm, Diderot, and hundreds of 
 thers would go into raptures and burst into tears at his performances in 
 he Royal Chapel; but scarcely had he left France when his frantic 
 dmirers would turn half complacently to the howlers and screechers of 
 lie Concert Spiritvel. A vast amount was said and written to prove that 
 talian music was the only sort fit for civilised beings, and a constant 
 imentation was set up as to the difficulty of introducing it into France ; 
 et never did it enter the head of any one that it was as simple to esta- 
 lish a regular Italian opera-house in Paris as it had been to do so long 
 efore in London, at Vienna, nay, even at Lisbon and at Warsaw. The 
 i'rench talked and wrote in favour of Italian composers and singers, but 
 either[the President de Brosses, nor Grimm, nor D'Alembert, nor Arnaud, 
 or Diderot, nor any of the warmest partisans of Italian music, ever 
 reamed of introducing into France the Italian style of musical drama, nor 
 tie exclusive and passionate worship of the human voice which formed 
 lie mainspring of Italian music. They wanted to retain their own 
 ational style and just varnish it over with Italian gloss; they wanted 
 tie singer to remain subservient to the composer, the composer to the 
 oet, and the poet to the stage mechanician; and at the same time they 
 
 linking that the whole act had been without a single air, turn to my neighbour for 
 xplanation on the point. He begins to laugh, and assures me that the act I have 
 eard contained no less than six airs. ' How? I am not deaf.' It turns out that 
 had taken all the airs for an endless recitative. A minute later out come three 
 ;tors, all singing together: this was meant for a trio, but I again mistook it for a 
 icitative. In short, all was beautiful, grand, magnificent, excepting the music, 
 ^hen the curtain had fallen, all my acquaintances asked me how I had liked the 
 pera. The answer bursts out of my lips: ' 'Tis a paradise for the eyes, but a hell 
 )r the ears !'" 
 
74 The Musical Life. 
 
 wanted what tliey called Italian music; a proof that, as Burney affirms, 
 they never understood what it really meant, and that they were in reality 
 fighting about mere names. The only French writer of the day who really 
 understood Italian music was Eousseau, and, because he did, he under- 
 stood also that his fellow countrymen would never understand it. Of this 
 Burney had ample proof at the Concert Spirituel or concert of sacred 
 music in the Louvre, the only kind of musical diversion which the godly 
 Louis XV. would tolerate on festivals : the performance began with a 
 chorus by Lalande, of which the greater part seemed detestable to Burney, 
 but was " much applauded by the audience, who admired it as much as 
 they did themselves for being natives of a country able to produce such 
 masterpieces of composition and such exquisite performers." Two able 
 Italian instrumentalists were less agreeable to the public; " nay, I could 
 even discover by the countenances of the audience and their reception how 
 little they felt such a performance." Poor Madame Philidor, who only 
 attempted to sing in the Italian way, and who could not be accused of suc- 
 ceeding in the attempt, was scarely better treated ; but Mdlle. Deloambre, 
 " who screamed out Exaudi Deus with all the power of lungs she could 
 muster," was much admired, and when the concert concluded with a grand 
 chorus, which surpassed all the clamour, all the noises Burney had ever heard 
 in his life, he saw, "by the smiles of ineffable satisfaction which were 
 visible in the countenances of ninety-nine out of a hundred of the company, 
 and heard, by the most violent applause that a ravished audience could 
 bestow, that it was quite what their hearts felt and their souls loved." 
 Yet these were no longer the days when LuUy and Eameau had ruled 
 siapreme. Rousseau had written his Lettre sur la Musique Franqaise; 
 Grimm and Arnaud had pasquinaded French composers ; Diderot's 
 daughter, when Burney visited her, played only Italian music, and all 
 the fashionable people declared themselves the warm admirers of Pergo- 
 lesi and Galuppi. " It is not easy," writes Burney, " to account for the 
 latitude the French take in their approbation, or to suppose it possible 
 for people to like things as opposite as light and darkness. If French 
 music is good and its expression natural and pleasing, that of Italy must 
 be bad; or change the supposition, and allow that of Italy to be all 
 which an unprejudiced but cultivated ear could wish, then the French 
 mii^ic cannot give such an ear equal delight. The truth is, the French 
 do not like Italian music: they pretend to adopt and admire it, but it is all 
 mere affectation." 
 
 Burney was perfectly correct in saying that the French never really 
 liked Italian music. They never obtained or tried to obtain it gennine ; 
 and, so far from its ever being thoroughly adopted in France, the French 
 lost their exclusive worship for Lully and Rameau, made a step forward 
 from the point at which they had been at the beginning of the eighteenth 
 
'The Musical Life. 75 
 
 itury, and began to enjoy Italian music only when it was offered them 
 Glnck cunningly tinged with French declamation; and they entirely 
 mdoned their national composers only when Italian music was begin- 
 ig to decay, when it had ceased to be purely Italian, and had mingled 
 th what remained of the original French style, in the days of Cherubini, 
 lieri, and Spontini. 
 
 The violent feuds between Gluckists and Piccinnists, whfch broke out 
 Paris a few years after Burney's visit, have indeed led some persons to 
 lieve that there must have been intense musical life among the French, 
 d that they really possessed an Italian school of composition ; but such 
 lotion is totally erroneous. The French cared nothing for music itself, 
 t they seized hold of it as a subject for dissertation and dispute. Gluck 
 d Piccinni were equally unappreciated by them, and were valued only 
 
 affording occasion for a war of pamphletg, epigrams, and vaudevilles, 
 3h as was waged upon every other subject and upon no subject at all. 
 16 French were in that strange state of mental over-excitement in 
 lich scientific discoveries and drawing-room jests, social laws and 
 arlataus' nostrums, became objects of the same engrossing and feverish 
 tention ; and music, to which they never listened, but about which they 
 !re always talking, was merely another intellectual bauble which amused 
 d excited them for a-while, until Mesmer and Cagliostro took its place, 
 d until all artificial subjects of interest were swept away by the Eevolu- 
 m. With respect to the Italian school of music, it never took root in 
 •ance, and indeed the first superficial varnish of Italian elegance was 
 iparted to French music by Gluck, whose wild theories of dramatic 
 pression, joined with his aversion to the supremacy of the voice, made him 
 mpathise to a certain extent with the declamatory and unmelodious 
 hool of Lully and Eameau ; whereas Piccinni, bent, like every true 
 alian composer of his day, solely on perfecting purely musical excellence, 
 IS utterly unable to amalgamate his style with that of the French, or to 
 oduce any effect on the latter. That this is true, and that the utter 
 Lisical stagnation of which Burney complains continued in the midst of 
 e most violent theoretical discussions, is proved by Mozart's letters, 
 •itten from Paris in 1779, when the Gluckist and Piccinnist squabbles 
 sre at the highest : " What irritates me most," he writes, " is that these 
 erren Franzosen have improved their taste only to the extent of endur- 
 g to hear good music as well as bad. But to expect them to perceive 
 at their own music is bad — eyheiLeibe! And such singing! Oimi! 
 
 at least French women would let alone Italian airs, I might forgive 
 em their squalling; but to hear good music spoilt is intolerable." 
 Again: " If at least there were a place here where people had ears and 
 larts to appreciate music, where they understood a little about music, 
 
76 The Musical Life. 
 
 and had a little good taste ; but with respect to music, I am among cattle 
 and beasts ( Vieher und Bestien)." Lord Mount Edgcumbe also, who 
 visited France in 1780, found French music insufiferable, and French taste 
 so little improved that Pacchierotti, the most refined and pathetic of all 
 the many exquisite singers of his day, was wholly unappreciated there. 
 
 The French, however, continued quite proud of themselves, and pro- 
 tested (and still perhaps protest) that if French music was not perfect, 
 which they could not readily admit, it yet possessed great excellences, 
 without which the Italian school must necessarily have remained incom- 
 plete. This was already the style of talk in the time of Rousseau, the 
 first Frenchman who flatly denied that French music had any qualities 
 which the Italians need desire ; and these pretensions became such an 
 article of national belief that it is right they should be examined care- 
 fully, as well as the answers of their contradictors. 
 
 There are no Italian accounts of French music,* for the Italians who 
 travelled avoided hearing it, and those who stayed at home did not even 
 know, as Rousseau remarks, that there was any French music which 
 differed from theirs. Our authorities, therefore, are mainly English and 
 Germans, and Frenchmen themselves, who often confessed individual 
 faults of their music, while refusing to admit its general inferiority. The 
 first and most important fault found by foreigners is that French music 
 is old-fashioned ; that, while Italian music has rapidly improved, PVench 
 music has remained utterly stagnant since the end of the seventeenth 
 century ; that the same operas, forty, fifty, or sixty years old, are con- 
 stantly being repeated, while in Italy ten or fifteen years suffice to render 
 an opera obsolete; and that, even if new operas are composed, it is always 
 in the same traditional style and with the same servile imitation of Lully, 
 Lalande, and Eameau, whose Italian contemporaries have long since 
 been laid aside. " It is wonderful," writes Burney, speaking of the Zmde 
 of Royer, which he had just heard, " that nothing better, or of more 
 modern taste, has been composed since ;, the style of composition is totally 
 changed throughout the rest of Europe; yet the French .... have 
 stood still in music for thirty or forty years: nay, one may sssert boldly 
 
 that it has undergone few changes at the great opera since LuUy's time 
 
 that is to say, in one hundred years. In short, notwithstanding they can 
 botl» talk and write so well and so much about it, music in France, with 
 respect to the two great essentials of melody and expression, may still be 
 said to be in its infancy." What we next hear is that the music was not 
 
 * Except that of Goldoni, who resided in France for more than twenty years. He 
 refers to about the year 1765, and, although unmusical by nature, his opinion is 
 interesting as being that of a man accustomed to the best Italian music. 
 
The Musical Life. 77 
 
 only old-fashioned, but bad, and most shamefully performed. French 
 singing was proverbially abominable : the French, as we learn from 
 Eousseau, knew only one sort of upper voice, the soprano, raised to the 
 most unearthly pitch ; and they replaced the contralto, so lovingly culti- 
 vated by the Italians of the eighteenth century, by a sort of falsetto tenor, 
 of a most nasal and disgusting artificial tone. These misplaced voices 
 were further ruined by being produced either purely in the head or in the 
 throat, no such thing as a real chest-voice being known in France. They 
 were totally undisciplined in the simplest and most essential qualities : 
 they had no swell, no proper shake, no real agility and neatness of 
 movement — above all, no portamento, that is to say, no art of moving 
 from one note to another without either hopping or dragging, no art of 
 beginning and finishing a phrase ; in short, no art of singing. All this 
 was replaced by the most violent vocal contortions, shrieks, howls, 
 gabbles, and squalls ; by the most lamentable drawling, and especially by 
 certain movements, called indiscriminately ports de voix, which, according 
 to contemporaries, were the sourest and most lugubrious graces con- 
 ceivable. So much for the singers. The orchestra, though very numerous, 
 was, as Gray expressed it, one of humstrums ; and Eousseau infonns us 
 that, despite its numbers, it produced no effect, as no one knew how to 
 direct it. Add to this, that the choruses were bawled in so stentorian a 
 fashion that Burney declares that compared to them the loudest English 
 oratorio chorus was a lullaby. As to the compositions, they belonged, as 
 we have seen, with the exception perhaps of dance music, for which the 
 French had natural talent, to a raw, primitive, and — what was much worse 
 — utterly stagnant style; and the French notoriously possessed neither 
 real, distinctly marked melody, nor real, spoken, well-modulated recitative; 
 both categories, so carefully kept asunder by the Italians, being merged 
 into a kind of awkward, insipid, boorish, continued declamation. 
 
 All this the French had to admit wholesale or piecemeal, and they had 
 to admit also that in every one of these points the Italians were as perfect 
 as they themselves were faulty. Yet the French had a loophole of escape: 
 " The Italians," they admit, "sing exquisitely, have first-rate orchestras, 
 compose divinely, but they have no expression. And that is what we, 
 with all our failings, possess to the utmost." But this was the weakest 
 subterfuge, sufScient perhaps for their blind vanity, but which all other 
 nations utterly despised. For by expression the French meant the mere 
 coarsest ranting. They could find none in Italian compositions, in the 
 most heroic and pathetic which have perhaps ever been written ; a clear 
 proof that they did not feel and recognise true pathos. One of their own 
 light, dissolute rhymesters, Dorat, declared that 
 II echappe souvent des sons a la donleur 
 Qui sont faux pour I'orelUe, mais vrais pour le coeur. 
 
78 The Musical Life. 
 
 But certain it is that French music, to all but Frenchmen, was false to 
 the ear, without being therefore just to the heart. Indeed, the constant 
 burden both of Eousseau and of Burney is that the French did not know 
 what musical pathos meant. Eousseau especially informs us that the 
 chief advantage of French music was that, according as it was sung 
 quickly or slowly (and either suited it equally), it could be made cheerful 
 or melancholy, thus saving much additional trouble ; and that the chief 
 advantage of French singing was that the performer could slacken or 
 quicken a passage to suit the length of his arms, and the time which it 
 consequently took to stretch them out and draw them in again. What, 
 then, was this wonderful expressiveness of French music ? It was simply, 
 to all appearance, an extraordinary amount of national musical obliquity, 
 and a great deal of theatrical claptrap. A French opera, despite the 
 utter absence of pathos, the horrible monotony of both the poetry and the 
 music — for the first was a mere tissue of the most vapid gallantry and 
 conceits, while the second was a mere succession of trivial, vulgar, and 
 awkward tunes^a French opera was a far more dramatic performance 
 than an Italian one ; it was full of ranting and shuffling and screaming 
 and roaring, full in short of all the refuse of tragic representation, of all 
 that is sensational, melodramatic, and unartistic. If therefore French 
 music did eventually give anything to Italian music, it certainly was not 
 musical expression nor musical pathos, which Italian, and not French, 
 music already possessed; it was a quality which could not improve, but only 
 destroy, a work of art — it was the coarsely, falsely emotional. However, 
 a union of the two schools, French and Italian, did eventually take place, 
 to the great advantage of the former, but certainly not of the latter, as 
 some critics would have us believe. But this amalgamation could take 
 place only when both schools were growing feeble, and when the excellence 
 of the Italian was diminishing no less than the execrableness of the 
 French. In France the public was growing tired of shrieking and 
 bellowing, and the romantic movement which began towards the end of 
 the last century was bringing foreign art, as well as foreign literature, 
 into vogue ; in Italy, on the other hand, people were growing sick of 
 good singing, and the French revolutionary wars were bringing the two 
 nations into close contact. A third school, the German instrumental 
 School, had meanwhile separated itself from the Italian, to which it was 
 originally due, and served further to cement the Italian with the French 
 music. Italian composers, Cherubini, Spontini, and Paer, settled in 
 France, and their works, returning to Italy, diffused the remains of the 
 French style in their country. It is from this moment of union that 
 dates our modern music, born of the disconnected, convulsive, highly 
 theatrical French school, as well as of the perfectly coherent, polished, 
 and eminently musical Italian one. The two elements may easily be 
 
The Musical Life. 79 
 
 traced; they are sometimes equally balanced, but oftener one of them 
 overweighs the other; and, although we have still got some pure melody 
 and some good singing, it is, we fear, easier to recognise in our operas 
 the frantic cries, shrieks, and whimperings; the noisy concerted pieces, 
 and the vulgar scenic displays, which disgusted Gray in the works of 
 Rameau and Campra, than the touching situations, exquisite melodies, 
 and highly polished and pathetic performances, which delighted Rousseau 
 in the operas of Pergolesi and Jommelli.* 
 
 But this period of union was still far off in 1770, and Dr. Burney left 
 Paris in unmingled disgust at what he had heard, and journeyed towards 
 Italy in delightful expectation of what he was going to hear. In the 
 provinces music was of course still more abominable than in the capital, 
 for there being no spontaneous musical life in the country, where not 
 imported, it did not exist. At Lyons, however, he met at a coffee-house 
 with a family of which the father and sons played a violin quartet, while 
 the daughters sang. None of the guests at the coffee-house ceased 
 chattering and laughing during their performance, but Dr. Burney was 
 delighted: he heard good music almost for the first time since entering 
 France, and heard it from this family of poor Italian street musicians. 
 It was like a sort of welcome to the country which was at that time the 
 home of music ; he accepted it gratefully, and hurried on towards Italy. 
 
 How Dr. Burney got across the Alps he does not tell us. In those 
 days, when Alpine roads were unknown and Alpine scenery unnoticed, a 
 journey of this sort was probably looked back upon as equally horrid and 
 ' uninteresting, and unworthy, therefore, of being recorded. We next find 
 him safely arrived at Turin, and settled at the Hotel La Bonne Femme, 
 round whose rooms some twenty-five years later Xavier de Maistre made 
 many a fantastic journey. And now let us try and place ourselves in 
 the position of Burney, of this intelligent, cultivated, and enlightened 
 traveller of the eighteenth' century, on finding himself at length in Italy, 
 the country of countries, towards which he had looked for years, and to 
 visit which had been his dream, as it had been that of so many of his con- 
 temporaries. To the mind of an intelligent and cultivated man, Italy 
 was not then what it is now. Its name did not suggest what it suggests 
 to us; it was not the field for the exercise of those faculties which are 
 exercised there in our day. There had been no Byron, no Sismondi, no 
 Lady Morgan, no Ruskin; the generation of Goethe, of Madame de 
 Stael, of Beckford, nay, even that of Ann Radclifie, had not as yet 
 
 * The Printer suggests that we are mistaken in spelling this composer's name with 
 two in's, and this certainly is not the usual spelling, The authority for lie two m's 
 in Jommelli and also for the two re's in Piccinni (usually written ' Piccini ') is 
 Saverio Mattei, an eminent Neapolitan critic, who was intimate with both composers, 
 and who puts the two to's even on Jommelli's epitaph. 
 
80 The Musical Life. 
 
 appeared. There was no such thing as assthetic criticism, as scientific 
 history, as romantic poetry; not even a trace of classical enthusiasm or 
 of romantic awe. Antiquity was only just beginning to become a real 
 existence; the Middle Ages were only vaguely supposed to have existed; 
 and as to the Eenaissance, it was not known that there had ever been 
 one. Italy was already the great museum of Europe, but its contents 
 had not yet been catalogued and labelled; no one knew what to look at 
 or what to look for, and people ran about in it at random, either seeing the 
 wrong things or nothing at all, or at best only what they themselves coiiIJ 
 discover in the vast confusion. In a few years, it is true, Goethe would 
 come to revive antiquity in his mind by the help of scenery and buildings, 
 customs, and manners, art and poetry; and Beckford would come and fill 
 his strange fantastic brain with visions of splendour and weirdness, with 
 gorgeous displays of nature and of art, and with fanciful suggestions of 
 terror and mystery. But neither Goethe nor Beckford had yet arrived 
 with romanticism in his company; and the traveller in Italy still belonged 
 to the generation educated in the midst of philosophy and ajBfectation, fed 
 upon Pope and Voltaire, Boucher and Kneller ; poor in historical informa- 
 tion, as in poetic fancy, and possessing only a very large fund of good 
 sense and practical wisdom, with plenty of this attendant folly. He came to 
 Italy without prejudices as without enthusiasm, to finish his education 
 or to improve his mind. He was interested in antiques, as historical 
 remains, without much 8esthetical appreciation ; associating Greek vases 
 with coins of Roman Emperors and with mummy cases; not clearly 
 understanding the difference between Athens and Eome; seeing Hadrians 
 and Faustinas in gods and goddesses of Scopas and Praxiteles, and 
 recognising Brutus and Virginia in bas-reliefs of athletes and amazons. 
 He turned away from Giotto's Tower and Milan Cathedral as barbarous 
 Gothic structures, but went into careful details of Palladio's and Sanso- 
 vino's palaces. He venerated the names of Eaphael, Titian, and Michel 
 Angelo, of whose predecessors and minor contemporaries he was perfectly 
 ignorant; but what delighted and entranced him were the fat, languishing 
 sibyls, the dainty dapper angels, the muscular sprawling martyrs of the 
 Bolognese school. The old Florentines and Venetians were certainly 
 very correct draughtsmen and fine colourists, but the traveller of the 
 eighteenth century was above such material merits ; he wanted soid, and 
 sml he found to his heart's content in the Caracci, Guido, and Guercino. 
 But he did not go to Italy for mere art; he was too large-minded and 
 universal for that. He examined the cultivation of the fields ; he chipped 
 off little bits of rock; he made inquiries respecting the construction of 
 drains and the passing of laws. He investigated into family arrange- 
 ments and historical legends; he tried to understand the nature of those 
 two strange, mysterious animals the tai-antula and the caraliere serrente ■ 
 
The Musical Life. 81 
 
 in short, he took an interest in everything, peeped into everything, and 
 judged most emphatically of all things. He did not consider Italy as a 
 thing of the past, a remnant of antiquity, of the Middle Ages or of the 
 Eenaissance, but as a country like any other modern one ; and its in- 
 habitants neither as degenerate descendants of the Komans nor as weird 
 children of the Eenaissance. He expected neither heroism nor enthusiasm, 
 nor poisonings, nor bravo-haunted castles, but merely human beings very 
 much like himself, only, of course, somewhat inferior to so splendid a 
 type of humanity. 
 
 In all these characteristics Dr. Burney was a perfect representative of 
 the educated traveller of the eighteenth century: he was never surprised, 
 entranced, or horrified by anything he saw; he never imagined that he 
 saw what there was not; he looked about him coolly and complacently. 
 He had, however, two distinguishing peculiarities. He was neither an 
 ordinary stranger nor an ordinary traveller; he had known many Italians 
 in England, mostly, it is true, of the musical sort, whom their countrymen 
 not a little disparaged, although they seem to have given him a very 
 favourable idea of the nation ; and he seems to have felt perfectly at 
 home and at his ease in Italy, more so by far than he had done in 
 France. In the second place, Burney had a distinct object in his journey: 
 ; he had come on a sort of artistic mission, to collect materials for the work 
 which was the darling object of his life. And this artistic mission was 
 in itself quite different from most others, for Burney had come to Italy 
 not to unite by dint of science and imagination broken limbs of marble 
 into complete and perfect statues, to follow the outlines of frescoes fading 
 away from mouldering walls and to seek for patches of colour under layers 
 of decaying plaster; he had not come to reconstruct a past state of things 
 nor to cherish its vestiges like relics ; he had come to hear music finer, 
 as he believed, than that of any previous time ; to enjoy the fruits of an 
 artistic civilisation while it was yet in its prime, to see a nation to whom 
 music was at that time what sculpture had been to the Greeks and 
 painting to the men of the Eenaissance; he had come to deal not with 
 a dead art but with one which, as he says, " still lived." 
 
 And he came neither as an ignoramus nor as a student: he had heard 
 Handel's oratorios when Handel himself was at the organ, and Gluck's 
 operas when Gluck himself directed them at the harpsichord; he had 
 heard all the best works of Pergolesi, of Jommelli, of Galuppi, sung by 
 the singers vphom the masters themselves had taught, and from whom the 
 masters themselves might have learnt the living musical art; he had 
 enjoyed all the best of what Italy could give and his object now was to 
 inquire how Italy had been able to give it: he had known Italian music 
 abroad ; he wished to know it in its home. 
 
 But when Dr. Burney descended into Italy it was the middle of July, 
 
82 The Musical Life. 
 
 the time when the old cities doze the whole long day, when the nobility 
 have gone to their villas, and the rich burghers run to and fro between 
 their shops and their farms ; when the small townsfolk stay sleepily at 
 home, or loiter yawning about barbers' shops and lemonade booths ; when 
 everything is lazy and desultory. At this time no great music was to be 
 heard: the great theatres were shut, the great singers were abroad, the 
 ecclesiastical and secular great folk were far too drowsy to encourage art; 
 the only music to be heard was in the churches during their more ordinary 
 services, in the small popular theatres, in the streets, and in some private 
 family here and there; music which the Italians despised, as their ordinary, 
 every-day, cheap artistic food, but of which Dr. Bumey never failed to 
 hear every note, finding it, indeed, delightful and exquisite after what he 
 had heard in France. Music therefore he heard every morning and every 
 evening ; in the morning in church, in the evening at the theatre, as he 
 journeyed leisurely through the great drowsy plain of Lombardy. In 
 some one of the churches, thanks to the multitudes of obHgrng small saints, 
 something could always be heard, and Dr. Bumey was so indefatigable and 
 insatiable that even when only passing through a town he would run off, 
 while his horses were being changed and his dinner being cooked, and 
 hear all the monks, nuns, or choristers that could possibly be heard ; and 
 when staying in any larger place he would miss no church performance, 
 although dusty scores and illuminated missals awaited him in the public 
 archives; for Dr. Bumey, unknown perhaps to himself, always cared 
 much more for the music of the present than for that of the past. 
 
 In these churches he tells us he never met " much good company," the 
 good company hearing mass in their private chapels (when indeed they 
 had not sent their chaplain to run errands) or in the smart Jesuit churches, 
 where the service was conveniently short, and all the cavalieri serventi 
 stood holding their .ladies' mass-book, smelling-bottle, fan, or lap-dog, 
 according to the devotional habits of the day. At the churches to which 
 Dr. Burney went there were only small shop-folk, peasants and artisans, 
 hanging about, staring at their neighbours, saymg their prayers, listening 
 to the music for a few minutes, and then walking out; a rather dis- 
 respectful manner of receiving the Church's cheap musical gifts; yet even 
 such listening, repeated constantly, could do more to form people's musical 
 iJ&ste than the most strained attention at an opera. The shop-keepers, 
 artisans and peasants, while dawdling carelessly about, imbibed music 
 unconsciously; they became critics, and occasionally one of their sons or 
 nephews, instead of turning shopman or farmer, would turn composer or 
 performer; and indeed nearly all the great Italian musicians belonged to 
 the humbler, often to the humblest, classes of society. This daily church 
 music was usually mediocre in performance; good singers and instru- 
 mentalists could gain far too high remuneration elsewhere to become 
 
The Musical Life. 83 
 
 iched to a church, yet every now and then Buvney would meet a little 
 irister destined to become famous or a nun singing like the most 
 ned prima donna. The nuns sang, and sang well; the monks played 
 organ, often grandly and scientifically, and even in the smaller 
 irches the director was a learned musician. On the other hand, in the 
 lat churches and chapels splendid musical establishments were kept 
 h first-rate performers; every ducal or grand-ducal chapel possessed at 
 st one great opera-singer; while the famous violinist Pugnani, the great 
 itboy and bassoon players the brothers Besozzi, and innumerable 
 lers, played in the churches at Turin, Milan, and Padua. The Maestro 
 Gapella of a large church was always high in the profession : Jommellij 
 : greatest tragic composer of Italy, was chapel-master at St. Peter's' 
 and Caffaro at Naples, Galuppi at Venice, and the famous instru- 
 ntal composer Sanmartini at Milan. Nor were their functions limited 
 merely directing the performances; they were required to produce 
 eral new works every year, and the great church archives of Italy 
 itain numbers of unpublished masses, hymns, and psalms by the greatest 
 nposers of the eighteenth century. Besides the usual musical services 
 sathedrals, and parish and convent churches, there were occasional grand 
 ■formances even at minor ones, to celebrate the feast of some patron 
 nt or the consecration of some rich nun. Then all the greatest opera 
 gers, the Caffariellos, Manzolis, and Guarduccis, mounted into the 
 ;an loft, and a tremendous concourse of people met to hear them; 
 netimes also, as we learn from Sir Horace Mann, a great musician 
 uld have a splendid service performed at his own expense, on recovering 
 m a bad illness or accident. 
 
 The music performed in the churches was, as a rule, not very different 
 m that performed in the theatres; for the fact is, that there never has 
 sted such a thing as church music independent of the other branches 
 the art. There have been various styles of music, one belonging to 
 ih epoch, and which have been adapted, one after the other, to all the 
 isical requirements of the time, the church, the theatre, or the room; 
 t there has never been music used solely for the church or for the 
 latre or for the room. The style of the Eoman school of the sixteenth 
 itury may possibly be more suitable for ecclesiastical purposes than any 
 ler, we do not deny it; but it is undeniable that this style was the only 
 ; then extant, and that Palestrina himself set profane madrigals to 
 it very sort of music which is held up as the only sort fit for the 
 irch. The eighteenth century also had its style of music, which it 
 id indiscriminately for all purposes, and which has been described as 
 suitable to religious ceremonies. Possibly it was not so suitable to 
 im as that of the Palestrina school, but this was no fault of the great 
 sters of a hundred years ago. The art had progressed for two hundred 
 
 g2 
 
84 The Musical Life. 
 
 years since the days of Palestrina; to ask the composers of the eighteenth 
 century for music such as those of the sixteenth could have given would 
 be like complaining that Eaphael did not paint like Giotto. They could 
 not have spontaneously produced anything of the sort, and, as to cold 
 imitation, they were incapable of it; for as long as there be a living art 
 there can be no exhumation and galvanising into life of a dead one; so 
 the eighteenth century knew of no Palestrinists, as the Renaissance knew 
 of no pre-Raphaelites. Modern critics — not unlike those who never 
 perceive that Giotto, their idol, was progressing, while they^ his disciples, 
 are merely retrograding — ^modern critics have found fault with the church 
 music of the eighteenth century for not being as suitable to ecclesiastical 
 purposes as that of the sixteenth century; but this fault of the church 
 music of the last century, like the similar one attributed by kindred critics 
 to the church painting of the Renaissance, merely signifies that it 
 belongs to a fully developed and not to an immature art. The form has 
 attained to perfection, the spirit to maturity; it has all the richness and 
 strength of human nature; it is no longer timid and lowly, it is grand and 
 divine; men, according to Goethe's expression, form the picture of the 
 Divinity after their own highest model, as He had formed them in His 
 own resemblance; art is no longer a symbol, it is a form, a thought, a 
 feeling which acts independently and directly. The church music of the 
 eighteenth century is profane, if you will; saints and angels are made to 
 sing like opera heroes and heroines; but what the opera heroes and 
 heroines sing is so pure, so lovely, so noble, that there remains nothing 
 purer, lovelier, or nobler for the saints and angels. These great composers 
 do not, like some later ones, own several styles, one for the gods and 
 goddesses and the other for the Satyrs and Maenads: wherever their art 
 is employed, for whatever purpose it is destined, it is equally noble, not 
 because it is used to express the feelings of Scipio or of St. Eustace or of 
 Harlequin, but because it is their art, which to them is a thing sacred. 
 This being the case, the Italians of the eighteenth century, who set apart 
 no special style for devotional purposes, gave church music all that they 
 gave to all other music, all the richness of device which their art afforded. 
 They preserved the massive choruses on which men like Lotti, Leo, and 
 Durante lavished all their skill of counterpoint; they kept the solemn 
 ^gan for which Scarlatti had written his grand fugues and on which 
 every composer had learned to play; they kept all the best part of the 
 old, unindividual, unemotional church music; but they added all their own 
 creations, all the individual, emotional wealth of completely matured art; 
 the choral performances were broken by psalms and verses in three or 
 four single parts, performed by the most highly-trained singers, who 
 displayed all their powers of execution and expression; by duets either 
 fugued like the divinely-lovely ones of Pergolesi, or in the freer, more 
 
The Musical Life. 85 
 
 emotional shape of the opera; by splendidly-modulated recitatives, crowned 
 by an air, solemn, pathetic, or florid, sung by one of those great singers 
 whose feeling gave a ijew soul and whose fancy added a new splendour 
 to even the most perfect piece. The eighteenth century added also its 
 orchestra, its wind instruments lightly and soberly distributed among the 
 graver stringed ones; and during the hushed moment, when any human 
 voice, be it even that of a Guadagni or a Pacchierotti, would have sounded 
 profane, Tartini or Giardini or Pugnani would take up his violin and 
 break upon the silence of the church. 
 
 According to a bad but invincible tendency of which the reader may 
 often have to complain, we have taken the opportunity of discussing the 
 church music of the eighteenth century in general, when there was no 
 occasion to speak of any save the trifling performances which Dr. Burney 
 attended; keeping our traveller waiting, standing in some dull little 
 church listening to mediocre music; but, alas, we have not the power of 
 introducing our reader into the smallest church, of letting him hear even 
 the meanest perfomiance of the eighteenth century. So, in default of 
 this, we can give him the only thing criticism can give — not art itself, 
 but only a disquisition on it. 
 
 As soon as the sun had fairly set and the cool breeze risen, the towns- 
 folk would awake, and having opened shutters, pulled up blinds, and 
 breathed the fresher evening air, they would begin to think of heaving a 
 little music. A little music, nothing grand or tragic, oh, no ! no great 
 singers who required tremendous applause; something simple, easy, and 
 refreshing. So the men have exchanged dressing-gown for snuff- or 
 puce-coloured light coat, and coloured handkerchief for well-combed little 
 wig, and their wives and daughters having slipped on a tidy gown and a 
 coquettish black veil, the population would slowly wend their way towards 
 the comic theatres, pausing just a little to talk to acquaintances, and 
 breathe the fresh air in the white, pearly twilight. In this state of 
 quiet, languid enjoyment, the people would scarcely have given a thank- 
 you for the autumn and winter music — music in her grand, splendid, 
 delicately-worked Court dress, led about in . state by prince-singers, who 
 wore military orders and bought dukedoms; they wanted music, like 
 themselves, in summer array, music in her most negligent, slovenly attire, 
 wandering carelessly from town to town in company with third-rate 
 singers, vagrant fiddlers, and motley columbines and pantaloons, and yet 
 as graceful and charming, if not as stately and magnificent, as in the 
 serious winter months. 
 
 All summer performances were therefore comic, and at small theatres, 
 to which the admission cost a few pence, where people went in and out, 
 made a terrific noise, and listened, and let others listen, only to as much 
 or as little as they felt inclined, it was an amusement for the lower or at 
 
86 The Musical Life. 
 
 most middle classes, and one which they held very cheap indeed. For, 
 until quite late in the eighteenth century, the Italian comic opera was 
 not only totally distinct from the serious one, but of much lower artistic 
 standing, and its performers were a class wholly apart and decidedly 
 inferior. A long comic opera like the Matrimonio Segreto or a semi- 
 serious one like Don Giovanni was equally unknown ; there were only 
 short musical interludes of two or three characters, like Metastasio's 
 Impresario of the Canary Islands or Pergolesi's Serva Padrona, intended 
 to be sung between the acts of a Kpoken comedy; and short musical farces, 
 with plenty of buifoonery and nonsense, like Galuppi's Arcifanfano King 
 of Fools and Leonardo Leo's Cioe'. The comic opera, or hurletta, as it 
 was called, was a very humble sister of , the serious opera, and a near 
 relative of the Italian comedy of masks ; it got a share of the musical 
 excellence of the first, and inherited a large portion of the ramshackle, 
 popular buffoonery of the second. Where a singable dialect existed, the 
 comic opera was most often written in it, and the President de Brosses 
 took the trouble to learn Neapolitan in order to fully enjoy Pergolesi's 
 burlettas ; and where the dialect was wholly unmusical the modes of speech 
 of the lower classes were strictly adhered to ; for one reason of the success 
 of the comic opera was its total opposition to the serious one: the more 
 dignified and heroic became the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Persians of 
 the opera seria, the more trivial and farcical became the shopkeepers, 
 sailors, and peasants of the burletta. Baretti, in his book on the Italians, 
 says that comic operas were most often coarse and even gross; and Dr. 
 Burney adds that they were utterly childish and ridiculous ; but Baretti 
 hated all things musical, and never lost an opportunity of throwing undue 
 odium on them, while Burney was accustomed to regard the polished 
 French comedy as the only proper one, and was wholly blind to the 
 merits of the Italian national stage, so that the opinion of neither is veiy 
 reliable ; and it is probable that the burlettas, although occasionally coarse 
 had no harm in them, and although fantastic and absiu-d were decidedly 
 clever. However they were strictly popular and lowly, for, although 
 Goldoni wrote a few texts for them in his moments of pecuniary distress 
 no well-known poet worked regularly for them until the time of Casti, 
 Da Ponte, and Sografi, when the comic opera, in the hands of Mozart, 
 Cimarosa, and Paisiello, had already become the successful rival of the 
 serious one. The performers were on a level with the text-writers- no 
 first-rate singer, male or female, ever deigned to sing in a bm-letta until 
 quite late in the century; the performers who had been carefully trained 
 ever since their childhood were reserved for the serious opera more 
 lucrative, more fashionable, more purely musical, where they might stand 
 as rigid as statues and as stupid as babies, providing they could swell 
 and diminish, shake and run rapid divisions, and make long, intricate 
 
The Musical TAfe. 87 
 
 sxtemporary embellishments ; they would have nothing to do with the 
 ;omic opera, and the comic opera would have nothing to do with them. 
 Occasionally indeed the second man or second woman of the serious opera 
 in which no one listened to them) would play the serious parts, the two 
 nsignificant lovers, in the burletfca ; or a young raw performer would 
 Degin his career on the comic stage before attempting the serious one ; 
 3ut such irregular singers were not those on whom the success of the 
 Durletta depended. The real burletta performers were men and women 
 jf talent, but whom want of voice, want of training, want of ambition, or 
 want of respectability, had wholly excluded from the higher walks of the 
 profession. There were fine voices with insufficient cultivation, and good 
 singers with insufficient voice ; but there were likewise brilliant actors, 
 lelightfully cheery scapegraces, exquisitely coquettish waiting-maids, 
 nagnificently blustering tutors; there was an overflow of life and good 
 aumour. The public did not go into raptures and ecstasies about their 
 jomic singers as they did about their serious ones, but they liked them 
 md applauded them as jovial friends, and the singers were grateful; they 
 lid not sulk when there were no kings or princes or senators to applaud 
 shem, they did their best to amuse shopkeepers and vagabonds ; they did 
 3ot show off wonderful rifiorituras and feats of execution, but they impro- 
 rised a witty answer here, or a comical situation there ; parodying, pas- 
 juinading, always entering into the fun of the thing, like that huffo whom 
 Dr. Burney saw at Milan, falling on the prompter and thrashing him 
 in default of the actor who played his prodigal sou, to the great joy of 
 ihe whole audience. Many, however, of these inferior singers would have 
 seemed excellent, but for the comparison with the great performers of the 
 serious opera, and Burney met many who would have pleased on a higher 
 stage, even the worst being better than the best that could be heard in 
 France. The music, on the other hand, was never mediocre, for the great 
 3omposers of Italy were never so overburdened with money or so sated 
 (vith applause as to disdain obtainingit by humbler means: the Pergolesis, 
 Leos, Galuppis, and Piccinnis, who were either positively starving or 
 iving in the most modest style, and who had no absurd artistic dignity 
 ike their overpaid, swaggering singers, wrote willingly for the comic 
 jpera and wrote their best. Nor did they adopt a different style from 
 ;hat they otherwise employed ; for the Italian composers of the eighteenth 
 jentury, like the Italian painters of the Eenaissance, had only one style, 
 spontaneous and perfect, which, according to the time and the individual, 
 ffas only more or less grand, or tender, or gay. The comic opera did not 
 sxist in the earliest part of the century,* because the music of that time 
 
 * Goldoni, Memorie, chap. 35, says, " The comic opera originated in Naples and 
 n Rome, but it was still unknown in Lomhardy and the Venetian States about 
 L735. 
 
88 The Musical Life. 
 
 was too uniformly grand and solemn; it began to develop only when 
 musical forms became softer and more flexible, and it reached its highest 
 point when they had become so light, graceful, and unheroic as to be 
 positively unsuitable to solemn subjects. But the style of the masters of 
 the last century, which was too spontaneous, too free, too perfect, to be 
 distorted either into the thoroughly tragic or the absolutely trivial, could 
 yet be adapted with more or less success to tragedy or comedy, though 
 always, of course, suiting the one better than the other. The introduction 
 or omission of certain passages, the arrangement of the accompaniment, 
 the choice of the rhythm, of pace and of voice, would alter the style suffi- 
 ciently, yet without changing its radical nature: Pergolesi was accused of 
 having used the same tune in a piece of his Stabat Mater and in an air 
 of his Serva Padrona, but the melody had been so adapted to each situa- 
 tion that no one would have complained of unsuitableness had it been 
 heard in only one of the two. So much indeed was done by the choice of 
 melodies, of accompaniments and voices, and by the different structure of 
 the whole play, that not only did the comic opera differ totally from the 
 serious one, despite the similarity of the general style, but a complete 
 revolution in musical arrangements gradually developed in the former, 
 which finally upset the latter. For, in the first place, popular melodies, 
 taken from the peasantry, were constantly being introduced into the bur- 
 letta, and thence influenced even serious music, which little by little grew 
 lighter, brighter, brisker, less grand, massive, and studied ; the accom- 
 paniments at the same time growing more dependent on rhythm and less 
 on counterpoint, and the more popular and less cultivated wind instru- 
 ments being introduced one by one into an orchestra which had mainly 
 consisted of strings. Add to this that in the burletta the contralto voice, 
 so dear to the serious composers, especially in men's parts, was completely 
 eschewed, that the principal male part was reserved solely for the tenor, 
 while the bass voice, which in the serious opera was given over to mes- 
 sengers, confidants, and other small folk, appeared, and perhaps to its. 
 greatest advantage, in the very effective parts of blustering old tutors 
 and blundering valets. Nor was this all ; the comic situations could ill 
 be expressed in the grandly-modulated solemn recitative of the serious 
 opera; they required constant movement and hubbub, and thence the 
 introduction of finales and other concerted pieces where five, six, or seven 
 persons scream and shout and storm at each other ; pieces which the 
 delicate, pathetic situations of the heroic opera excluded, and which, 
 moreover, the despotic serious singers, who had not spent years in con- 
 stant practice to let themselves be drowned by screaming women and 
 bellowing basses, would never have permitted. Thus there came to exist, 
 not a different style of composition, but a different system of arrange- 
 ments, in the comic opera; and when the comic opera had risen to the 
 
The Musical Life. 89 
 
 'el of its rival in the hands of Paisiello, Guglielmi, and Cimarosa; when 
 possessed first-rate singers, like the charming Ooltellini, the magnifi- 
 itly-comic Casacciello, and the delightful tenor Mandini; when Joseph II. 
 pt comic poets and a comic company instead of serious ones ; then the 
 i arrangements of the opera seria had to give way ; contraltos had to 
 
 abandoned for brisker voices, tenors were shoved up into important 
 irts, and basses removed out of subordinate ones; recitatives were slashed 
 to, and Curiatius and Pyrrhus, Horatia and Penelope, had to join in 
 undering concerted pieces, just as the undignified harlequins and 
 lumbines of the burletta had done before. The old opera seria was 
 sed with the old hurletta, and, this being done, both expired, leaving a 
 int product — the modern melodramatic opera. 
 
 In 1770 the poor humble little hurletta was still far from such triumph: 
 it it was, perhaps, all the purer in its nature, all the more popular, 
 (nple, and amusing. Its singers had not yet learned to make rijiorituras 
 ce the serious ones ; its poets had not yet felt the necessity of intro- 
 icing deserted ladies, punished libertines, heart-breakings, murders, and 
 ithos. All was as yet simple, natural, buffbonish, cheap, and jolly, 
 tie Abate Metastasio, Imperial opera poet, might smile with contempt 
 . the plays; the virtuosi in peagreen satin and lilac and gold lace might 
 irn up theirjanguishing eyes in horror at the singers; the small shop- 
 jepersand street folk might still shake with laughter on their wooden 
 inches, while the President de Brosses, Eousseau, and Burney, could 
 ill join in their hearty delight at the bright, elegant music, the droll 
 tuations, the easy, off-hand singing, and the inexhaustible humour of the 
 d hurletta. 
 
 Stepping out of the little cheap theatre. Dr. Burney found music again 
 , the streets- — the streets, which, after all, are the pleasantest place in 
 le heavy drowsy summer evenings, when the people loiter about in little 
 lots of threes and fours under the clear blue sky, as clear and as blue, 
 lough in so strangely different a way, as at midday. There were bands 
 : artisans, apprentices, shop-boys, marching down the street arm-in-arm, 
 nging, led by a fellow playing the guitar or the mandolin ; and sere- 
 iders coming with flutes and fiddles under windows, which would ooca- 
 onally open to reward them with a dash of water ; and all sorts of similar 
 Dn-professional music, received by the population sometimes as a favour 
 )metimes as a nuisance. Besides this, in the spacious squares where 
 Bople sat drinking lemonade and coffee, where perambulating booths 
 isplayed their wares under the flickering torchlight, where the puppet- 
 low stood surrounded by a ring of eager spectators, there, of course, in 
 le great outdoor saloon of the town, there was music again in plenty — 
 usic which the public paid for, feeling that even the humblest profes- 
 onal music is, cceteris parihus, better than that of amateurs. There 
 
90 The Musical Life. 
 
 were whole families, like the one Burney met at Lyons, who wandered 
 about, singing and playing in concert, and these perambulating musicians 
 were most often Venetians. They played and sang well, and occasionally 
 a voice might be heard amongst the tables of the coffee-houses which was 
 destined to the utmost vocal glory, like that of the poor untaught girl who 
 was later to be called Banti, the most pathetic female singer of the latter 
 part of the eighteenth century. Bologna possessed in Burney's day a 
 quartet of vagrant blind musicians, called the " Bravi Orbi," whom many 
 Italian composers warmly admired, the great and masterly Jommelli 
 always sending for them to play for him. What these people played we 
 are not told; probably favourite opera airs, with just a dash of more 
 popular music. At all events, it was not to them that belonged the 
 really popular songs, for these were the property of the wholly untrained 
 lower classes, workmen, boatmen, fishermen, and peasants, and it was 
 from these that composers like Paisiello learned the rustic, truly pastoral 
 style of some of his pieces; while the vagrant musicians, on the contrary, 
 served to diffuse among the people the more refined and polished styles 
 of composition. 
 
 After loitering about a little in the coffee-houses. Dr. Burney would go 
 and end his evening at an accademia, or dilettante concert, in some private 
 house, with whose owners he was of course totally unacquainted, but to 
 which he was taken by some musical busybody, whose acquaintance he 
 had made the previous day, and who now treated him as a brother; perhaps 
 some long, meagre ecclesiastic, with immense spectacles on a nose which 
 looked like a pick-axe, wherewith to hew into the depths of musical 
 science; or by some jovial lawyer, who always found time to devote to 
 the Muses, especially when pretty, and who would talk himself purple in 
 favour of this or that composer ; or again by a music-master — some still 
 obscure young composer, or some ancient singer who had not provided for 
 his old days — a music-master bound to accompany his pupils on gi-and 
 occasions, and thankful for the scanty refreshment offered him. By some 
 such individual Dr. Burney would be introduced into the trim little 
 parlour as a distinguished foreigner, a man of universal knowledge, as a 
 glory to England, and an honour to Italy, &c. The company would rise 
 
 and look with awe at the stranger (perhaps a Milordo — who knows? 
 
 are not the English the most eccentric of beings?), the hostess would 
 meet him, curtsey, and express how much her house was honoiu-ed, and 
 then the dilettanti would sit down to their instruments, their silken coat- 
 tails neatly disposed on either side of their chair, their well-starched 
 ruffles carefully drawn out; the ladies would rise, smooth out their 
 dresses and aprons, unroll their scores, and the performance would beo-in 
 interrupted only by a few solemn pauses, during which candles were 
 snuffed, violins tuned, bows resined, and snuff-boxes passed round. 
 
The Musical Life. 91 
 
 They took things solemnly, these good people, because a hundred years 
 ago musical amateurs were rarer than now, and to be one involved much 
 more responsibility. For among the Italians of the eighteenth century 
 music was at once both more common and more prized than among us; 
 it was a necessity to the greater part of the nation, but it was an art, a 
 profession, rather than an amusement or an accomplishment. All young 
 ladies were not taught music; not, as Baretti most falsely and pre- 
 posterously pretended, because the morals of professional musiciaus were 
 too slack, but because people had not yet conceived the modern notion of 
 culture, which most often consists merely in giving slovenly cultivation 
 to endowments which deserve no cultivation at all. But where real 
 musical talent existed it was usually made the most of; and it must he 
 remembered that the study of music was at that time far more arduous 
 than in these happy days of classes, piano arrangements, manuals of 
 harmony, and other royal roads to mediocrity. The musical education of 
 professionals, the seven or eight years spent in learning to sing by men 
 who were to be mere composers ; the two or three years spent in learning 
 composition by those who were to be mere performers ; the inexorably 
 complete system according to which one branch of the art could not be 
 mastered without a knowledge of the others; all this reacted on the 
 education of the non-professional musicians : the music which people 
 heard was too good to permit them to endure music that was bad ; the 
 masters were too thoroughly trained to submit to slovenly pupils. More- 
 over, all was more difficult in itself. Amateurs had not the benefit of 
 pianoforte arrangements; they had to read the full orchestral scores 
 of theatrical music and the figured or absolutely dry basses of church 
 and chamber music; they, like all others, had to learn the difficult 
 science and art of accompaniment which required not only knowledge 
 but natural facility. There were no easy drawing-room fantasies, ballads, 
 or duets ; there were only sonatas, harpsichord lessons, string quartets, 
 cantatas composed of recitative and air, canzonets as difficult in their 
 simplicity as the cantatas were in their complication, canons and 
 madrigals for several voices. There were violins, viols, hautboys, bassoons, 
 violoncellos, harpsichords, but no pianofortes, and that fact alone means 
 a great deal. An instrument very much resembling the modem piano- 
 forte, as distinguished from the harpsichord, clavichord, virginal, and 
 others of the same genus, having been invented by Cristofori, of Florence, 
 at the beginning of the last century, the non-existence of the pianoforte 
 as a class (for individual instruments could be found here and there, 
 Farinelli and Count Torre Taxis appearing to have had them according 
 to Burney) means not only that the musical education of that day was 
 free from the influence which the pianoforte necessarily exerts, but that 
 there were circumstances which prevented the instrument from becoming 
 
92 Tlie Musical Life. 
 
 as common as it has since. The harpsichord, although externally like 
 the piano, was in reality a very different thing, for its quill mechanism, 
 the absence of pedals, and its sharp metallic sound, placed it rather in the 
 category of stringed instruments. Now, viewed as a stringed instrument, 
 the harpsichord had little to recommend it ; its tone was not strong, not 
 peculiarly fine, and extremely monotonous, and the consequence was that 
 people often preferred to it the violin tribe, which was more capable of 
 effect ; and that the harpsichord sank rather towards the level of a mere 
 accompaniment. And even when cultivated for itself it had to be culti- 
 vated in a totally different manner from the pianoforte ; it was too uniform 
 and feeble in tone, and too sharp and unsustained, to permit either of 
 emotional performance or of that hurricane and lullaby alternation so dear 
 to modern pianists. You could not play a study of light and shade, nor a 
 moonlight fantasia, nor a rhapsody on it, even had such pretentious pieces 
 of inanity existed in those days ; you could play a fugue, a gigue, a brQliant 
 scherzo, or an intricate lesson, like those of Handel and Scarlatti, and play 
 them neatly, clearly, firmly, roundly, with a spring and an expression of 
 intelligence and cheerfulness, but that was all you could do on a harpsi- 
 chord ; and Handel and Scarlatti understood this fact, and turned it to 
 account, as genius turns everything to account. But the violin, the 
 violoncello, the organ, could do much more and better : they could be 
 brilliant or pathetic or grand, and the voice could be all three together ; 
 so the harpsichord was comparatively little esteemed. People regarded 
 it as a respectable instrument, and most great masters, like Porpora, 
 Jommelli, and Pergolesi, wrote a few good pieces for it, but rarely did a 
 composer, like Domenico Scarlatti and Alberti of Venice, devote himself 
 almost exclusively to it, until it turned into the pianoforte and gained a 
 new character, or rather borrowed that of other stringed instruments in 
 the days of Haydn, dementi, and Mozart. The Italians cared little for 
 harpsichords, and made them badly, so badly that we have been told that 
 when, at the beginning of this century, Clementi returned to Rome, he 
 could barely find an adequate instrument. They made them feeble and 
 metallic, such as singers and violinists and opera conductors wished them 
 to be ; small, thin, ungainly things, on slender little legs with black keys 
 instead of white, and vice versd, such as you still occasionally meet, faded, 
 ylllow, with only a few jangling, melancholy notes left, in old houses 
 where they have not been touched for a century. As to people who went 
 in for execution, they might get their harpsichords from England, 
 Germany, or Holland, from Eucker or Broadwood. An instrument like 
 our pianoforte, with a loud, thick, muffly tone, on which you could 
 execute with considerable disadvantage the music written for other 
 instruments, besides the sentimental and thundering imbecility written 
 expressly for it; with sufficient power of expression to supersede other 
 
The Musical Life. 93 
 
 instruments, and with power of mechanical dexterity unlimited enough 
 to ruin itself — such an instrument, such a compromise, could not have 
 existed in the eighteenth centurv; and could not therefore usurp all 
 musical privileges, make people losb^ all notion of adaptation of sound 
 and style, accustom them to unlimited noise and to dubious tune, and 
 foster that wholesale ignorance of music in general which is inevitable 
 where a performer need aim only at mechanical dexterity; arranged 
 pieces, pedals, and tuners, having relieved him from the necessity of 
 learning harmony, of studying expression by means of the voice, and of 
 obtaining a correct ear by tuning his own instrument; where, above all, 
 everything having been done for him by others, he has been educated to 
 total want of individual endeavour. 
 
 The dilettanti, therefore, of the last century, were more thorough 
 musicians than are most of ours, besides having had the advantage of 
 learning, not from teachers who are mere performers who have failed, 
 but very often from first rate composers, Leo, Porpora, Jo'mmelli, Galuppi, 
 who did not disdain by any means to give private lessons. The pupils 
 were usually worthy of their masters, and Dr. Buruey heard excellent 
 performers, vocal and instrumental, at the private concerts he attended at 
 Milan, Venice, and Rome, in the dull, bare parlours of the upper middle 
 classes, and in the gorgeously stuccoed and gilded saloons of the aristo- 
 cracy; for in that day music belonged equally to all classes, being a fruit 
 not of special culture but of general civilisation. Round these dilettanti 
 performers, whether dressed in broad cloth or in embroidered satin, was 
 congregated the far larger class of merely appreciative amateurs, who 
 neither sang nor played, nor composed, but for whose benefit singers, 
 violinists, and composers were produced. Some of these were of the 
 oracular sort, others of the disputative, others of the ecstatic. The oracu- 
 lar ones were old gentlemen, senators, monsignori, lawyers, and doctors, 
 who gave advice to young musicians ; and, as the singer Mancini tells us, 
 taught well-endowed but slightly-rigid sopranos and tenors how to move 
 their arms and legs gracefully and expressively, and how (as the malicious 
 Marcello adds) to take snuff and blow their nose without impeding the 
 dramatic action : the disputative were younger men, men of fashion and 
 wit, who discussed musical merit under the hands of their hairdresser, 
 like Parini's young gentlemen, wrote indecorous sonnets against admirers 
 of rival musicians, and occasionally waylaid and thrashed them with 
 sedan-chair sticks; the ecstatics, on the other hand, were mainly ladies, 
 or efieminate cavalieri serventi, descendants, and worthy ones, of those 
 noble dilettanti who sallied out a whole mile outside the town of 
 Bologna to meet the singer Baldassare Ferri, and heaped his carriage 
 with roses, somewhere about the year 1650. In the soberer eighteenth 
 century, when great singers became more plentiful, the ecstatics remained 
 
94 The Musical Life. 
 
 at home, but were none the less ecstatic, the ladies wearing portraits 
 of great performers, fainting, like Beckford's Paduan lady, from musical 
 rapture; in short, showing their love of music in a hundred absurd 
 fashions, at which satirists either shook their heads like Parini or Gozzi, 
 or laughed like Passeroni and Marcello ; and foreigners looked amazed, 
 and remarked that the Italians had become a nation of children. 
 
 It was through such disputative and ecstatic dilettanti that music so 
 thoroughly permeated the life of the upper classes ; that, even where it 
 was not genuinely enjoyed, it was required as part of fashionable life, 
 and good taste in art became a sort of accompaniment to good taste in 
 dress and deportment. But, as the circles on the water grow fainter as 
 they grow wider, so this general dilettanteism, by which musical culture 
 was extended to the utmost, to even the unmusical, was necessarily 
 comparatively sterile and un influential ; the really influential dilettanti 
 were of course the active ones, those who approximated nearest to the 
 professional musicians. Among these many appear to have possessed 
 much talent and learning, both for the theoretical and the practical pai'ts 
 of the art ; and the Italians of the eighteenth century owed two of the 
 best, and one of the very best, of their composers, Domenico Alberti and 
 Emanuele d'Astorga, and the great Benedetto Marcello, to the class of 
 aristocratic amateurs. 
 
 II. 
 
 Thus Dr. Burney proceeded leisurely through the great plain of Lom- 
 bardy, from Turin to Milan, from Milan to Bergamo, thence to Brescia, 
 Verona, and Vicenza, seeing and hearing everyone and everything ; active, 
 wideawake, observing and criticising ; making extracts from dusty books 
 and MSS. ou the music of other days; taking down notes on music and 
 musicians of the present. Ah ! if only we could obtain a sight of those 
 notebooks in which Dr. Burney kept his journal, of those letters in which 
 he told hia friends at home of all his doings : those original sketches, 
 taken from true Kfe, and of which the printed work is but the curtailed, 
 pohshed, enfeebled copy ! As we turn over this cold, civil, pseudo-disiry, 
 tri«imed and clipped so as to give offence to no one, we feel iristinctively 
 how much we have lost — what droll anecdotes, what racy adjectives, what 
 humorous descriptions, have fallen victims to the doctor's prudent scissors. 
 In looking up at Burney's portrait, by Eeynolds, we can fancy the ineffable 
 suppressed smile with which this sharp, shrewd, caustic little man, -with 
 almost as much rapid perception of the ludicrous as his daughter and 
 perhaps more kindliness of nature, must have sauntered through the 
 Italian musical world of the eighteenth century — a world which, while it 
 
llie Musical Life. 95 
 
 produced masterpieces of art equal to those of a Phidias, a Raphael, or 
 a Milton, also produced living figures and comhinations of figures worthy 
 of Sterne, or Hogarth, or Hoifmann — of that Hoffmann who even from far 
 away caught strange glimpses of it, which he handed down to us in those 
 fantastic stories of beautiful singers, crabbed Kapellmeisters, and melo- 
 maniacs dressed in coats the colour of A sharp minor. What a series of 
 whimsical silhouettes, of delicately touched caricatures, Dr. Burney might 
 have given us ; how he might have shown us all the droll and touching 
 realities of those musicians whom we see only with composed mien and 
 holiday dresses in the portrait gallery of the Bolognese Academicians — 
 composers, singers, fiddlers, and dilettanti, in dapper silk and plush and 
 well-powdered wigs, solemn and dignified as if, while they belonged as 
 artists to the unchangeable, eternal world of the grand and lovely ideal, 
 they had not also belonged as men to the ephemeral world of quaint and 
 ludicrous reality, the world of academic pedants, of dandy nobles, of 
 cavalieri serventi, and of harlequin actors; the world of Goldoni and 
 Gozzi, and of Marcello's Teatro di Musica alia Moda. 
 
 Throughout Lombardy Dr. Burney had heard only the music which 
 formed the ordinary every-day artistic food of the people ; not what they 
 prized and took trouble to produce, but what they got easily and scarcely 
 noticed, and which was thereby almost more important to the critic. But, 
 if the art which is in common use be good, that reserved for special 
 occasions must needs be excellent ; and such art, carefully obtained and 
 kept up, not by the lower and middle hut by the rich and cultivated 
 classes, nay, by the governing oligarchy, Dr. Burney first met at Padua, 
 the terra firma suburb of Venice. In this quiet, straggling town of reedy 
 canals, silent gardens, and faded villas, the Venetians held their great 
 annual fair of St. Anthony, or the Santo as he was styled ; when the vast 
 oval space of the Prato della Valle was turned into a little town of booths; 
 where merchants from the East, from Germany, and from Poland, brought 
 their costliest wares, in almost mediaeval fashion, and all the wealth and 
 luxury that still remained in Venice came riotously across to the melan- 
 choly old town. Then, as at the other great fairs of Reggie and Lodi, there 
 were new operas performed by the finest singers — as Gray explained to 
 his friend "West, who associated only giantesses and gingerbread with the 
 word fair, and could not comprehend this great annual market, where the 
 Republic sold what yet remained of its commercial and artistic products. 
 For these performances of the fair of St. Anthony all who came had of 
 course to pay ; but the Republic had its own permanent music at Padua. 
 It spent large sums on the musical establishment of its great, half Gothic, 
 half Byzantine basilica of St. Anthony; it kept up a large band, 
 composed of first-rate performers, and for only four annual performances 
 it gave 400 ducats and the cross of St. Mark, the only decoration the 
 
9(j The Musical Life. 
 
 State possessed, and with which it was wont to reward Ambassadors and 
 Proccuratori, to Signor Gaetano Guadagni, one of the finest singers, and 
 the handsomest and most brilliant actor, in Italy, the favourite pupil of 
 Garriok, the famous original Orpheus of Gluck. Guadagni was in no 
 wise tied down by this liberality, and belonged, in the intervals of the 
 four performances, to the rest of the world quite as much as to St. 
 Anthony's ; but Padua was the sole possessor, and almost the shrine, of 
 a greater and more famous musician than he. Tartini lived there during 
 well-nigh half-a-century, playing regularly at the Santo, and when 
 Barney arrived there, a few months after his death, the silent city was 
 full of the fame of the great violinist, whose dark, puzzled genius and 
 fantastic story fitted well into the framework of the strange mediceval 
 town. Tartini, who was born in Istria at the end of the seventeenth 
 century, and had spent an adventurous youth, had passed the remainder 
 of his long life in quiet artistic routine ; composing, playing, teaching, 
 meditating over his art, and writing, surrounded by devoted pupils, and 
 tormented by an insufferably ill-tempered wife ; but in this uneventful 
 existence there was one little speck of romance which shed weird lights 
 over all the rest. Early in the century Tartini had received a visit from 
 the Devil, and had heard the Fiend play the violin more beautifully than 
 even he himself had ever played. Whether Tartini was dreaming or 
 awake during this visit is a matter of small importance, and certain it is 
 that the demon's performance left a deep impression on this whimsical- 
 minded, Petrarch-reading violinist — an impression of weirdness which 
 can be seen not only in his fantastically-beautiful works but in his 
 haggard face, with intense, wildly-staring eyes, as it is portrayed in the 
 gallery of the Philharmonic Academicians of Bologna. 
 
 The reputation of Tartini and his career were equally different in nature 
 from that of the great vocal performers of his day, and would have been 
 so even had he not been a very eminent composer and writer on musical 
 science as well as a mere violinist, for the Italians of the eighteenth 
 century placed vocal and instrumental performers on a totally separate, 
 though not necessarily unequal, footing. Tartini may have had greater 
 talents than, say, Farinelli, and a fame not very much inferior to his; but 
 he could never have had his career, for the greatest, nay, merely the 
 great, singers of the last century exercised a sort of magic which even the 
 greatest performer on the most perfect of human-made instruments never 
 possessed. The singer, besides the immense individual influence due to 
 his being at once the performer and the instrument, had a much larger 
 and more universal audience than the violinist ; the first was heard on 
 every great theatre, and by every class of society, while the second was 
 rarely heard out of the room, and that room not a concert-room. For the 
 concert, in our sense of the word, was not an institution of the eighteenth 
 
The Musical Life. 97 
 
 ;entury, at least not in Italy; music was too spontaneous, too universal, 
 to be confined in any stated place more limited than the theatre or the 
 church; it was not an exotic enjoyment for cultivated gentlefolk, it 
 kvas a national necessity, a necessity as much to the petty artisan, the 
 o;ondolier, the lazzarone, as to the great lady, the senator, and the prelate; 
 ind when music was inclosed within the limits of a room it was not 
 because it was too rare and fine for ordinary use but because it was so 
 common, so all-pervading, as to become indispensable in private life. The 
 instrumental performer, therefore, who, after a certain eminence had been 
 attained, would probably not condescend to play in a theatre orchestra, 
 could be heard by all the world only in the organ-loft of a church, and, if 
 he rejected that, he must be satisfied with playing in private houses and 
 gaining his bread by teaching. Thus most of the great instrumental per- 
 formers became fixtures, tied down to some church or chapel, like Tartini 
 to the Santo of Padua ; Pugnani and the two Besozzis to the royal chapel 
 at Turin ; only now and then venturing abroad, where chamber music was 
 an exotic, like Giardini in England, or taking service with some royal 
 personage, as Domenico Scarlatti and Boccherini did in Spain. The great 
 violinist, or hautboy or bassoon player, could thus gain only a limited 
 income — Tartini securing 400 ducats for yearly attendance while Guadagni 
 got as much for only four performances — and only an inferior reputation; 
 for, although dilettanti might flock to Padua to hear Tartini, he was never 
 heard or heard of by the thousands of people who might applaud a singer. 
 The life of a miisician of this sort was therefore modest, quiet, without the 
 tumultuous opulence of the singer; where he went he was received with 
 respect and listened to with the deepest admiration; but he was not petted 
 by people of fashion, idolised by great ladies, and permitted to swagger, 
 bully, and pout like his vocal rival ; his life was less brilliant, but perhaps 
 more worthy of respect, and occupied in the patient, humble study of his 
 art. 
 
 In a period when music was a natural product, a thing for the whole 
 people and only secondarily for the individual, that branch of it which 
 essentially belonged to the house naturally followed the progress and 
 adopted the style of the more universal one belonging to the theatre and 
 the church. As, in the great days of Greek art, the carvings on cameos and 
 seal-rings were executed in the same grand style as the colossal statues 
 on the fronts of temples, so instrumental music was dependent on vocal 
 music, developing as it developed, and following its changes of style; but, 
 just as the Greek artists understood that a small shell or onyx requires 
 a different treatment of details from that required by a huge block of 
 marble, so the Italians of the eighteenth century also understood that a 
 violin, a violoncello, or a wind-instrument, must be treated differently from 
 the human voice, and in accordance with its peculiar tone and volume, and 
 
98 • The Musical Life. 
 
 with the nature of the building in which it is to be heard. The instru- 
 mental style was therefore an adaptation of the vocal, within the strict 
 limits of each particular instrument : no one wrote for the harpsichord what 
 might equally well have been written for the violin, the violoncello, or the 
 voice, yet the general style had been learned from vocal composition, just 
 as the education of every instrumental performer had begun with learning 
 to sing; nay, if we examine the sonatas even of Haydn, we cannot fail to 
 see how much the most purely instrumental of German composers had 
 learned from Porpora, the greatest singing-master of the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
 Bumey had come too late to hear Tartini, but, with an artistic piety by 
 no means common in those uncultured days, he went to see his house, and 
 the organ-loft at the Santo in which he was wont to play, and collected 
 every possible relic of his compositions. Having done so, he embarked 
 in one of the barges, crowded with people returning from the villeggiatura, 
 and loaded with vegetables and fruit, which, having slowly carried him 
 along between the reed- and willow-grown banks of the Brenta, drifted 
 him across the lagoon, and landed him at Venice on the 4th of August, 
 1770. 
 
 And now Dr. Burney found himself for the first time in a musical 
 centre, where the art was not only a cheap amusement of the people, but 
 a splendidly managed State concern and an enthusiastically cultivated 
 occupation of the upper classes. The street music soon taught him the 
 superiority of Venice over the cities of the mainland : there were guitars, 
 mandolins, fiddles, and voices in the two squares of St. Mark, among the 
 coffee-house tables and the story-tellers, and their music was better than 
 any street music elsewhere; there were the gondoliers chanting Tasso, and 
 by night barges full of musicians, like the one on which Groldoni and his 
 merry companions had mounted, fiddling and singing, up the Po towards 
 Pavia; there were serenades on the canals, which to Burney sounded 
 exquisite, and music issuing from the windows of the palaces ; the now silent 
 city of winding canals and fantastic lace-like architecture was still full of 
 music, music destined to cease with the destruction of the fast crumbling 
 State. Then there was music in numberless churches, from the archaic 
 chants of the Greeks and Armenians to the florid rondos and sonatas of 
 tie iJ^dewtore and the Gesuati. Dr. Bm-ney went to SS. Giovanni e Paolo 
 one morning that the Doge and Council were attending mass, and heard 
 the music of the Venetian State, as carefully guarded from corruption and 
 as singular in character as that of the Sovereign Pontiff. The Common- 
 wealth kept its own chapel of St. Mark's, where the music had been directed 
 by a series of the most eminent national composers. The compositions 
 performed at St. Mark's on State occasions, and those sung on the 
 Bucentaur when the Doge wedded the sea, all belonged to the Venetian 
 
Tlie Musical Life. 99 
 
 school of the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth 
 centuries, at the head of which was the famous Antonio Lotti : madrigals 
 and fugued pieces, elaborate and stately, either wholly without instru- 
 ments, or accompanied merely by the organ, unimpassioned and solemn, 
 suitable to the dignity of a great oligarchic State — of Venice, not perhaps 
 as she really was, with her corrupt nobles, spying police, and effete com- 
 merce, but as she continued to exist in the imagination even of her own 
 degenerate sons, strong, placid, and venerable beyond all others. And 
 Dr. Burney, who had heard music enough to make him rather insensible 
 to any save its purely artistic qualities, seems to have received an unac- 
 customed impression from these performances, and confesses that, he knew 
 not well how or why, they affected him even to tears. 
 
 Dr. Burney next proceeded to visit the music schools for girls for which 
 Venice was famous: the Pieta, the Mendicanti, the Incurahili, and the 
 Ospedaletto. As their names imply, these institutions were originally 
 and really nothing but hospitals and workhouses ; but as the girls educated 
 in them were taught music, and the best teachers were given them, the 
 four conservatori (literally asylums) had gradually become engrossed by 
 musical interests, until at length girls neither orphans nor beggars were 
 admitted, merely because they showed disposition for the art. Although 
 the public heard of them only as musicians, these girls were being 
 thoroughly educated without any view to making music their profession ; 
 as long as they remained in the conservatorio, they were permitted to sing 
 nowhere else ; comparatively few took to the stage, and the greater part 
 were dowered by the State and married ; those who did not, remaining 
 and growing old and amazonian, as Beckford tell us, at their double-basses, 
 French horns, and kettle-drums. Nor did this singular system cost much, 
 for the older girls taught the younger ones, the choruses being studied 
 under the guidance of the foremost pupils, so that the State had to pro- 
 vide only the masters to compose, direct grand performances, and finish 
 the best pupils. But in the matter of masters the Serene Republic was 
 incomparably generous, accepting only the most eminent composers, so that 
 in the course of the eighteenth century the four schools were respectively 
 directed by Porpora,* Domenico Scarlatti, Hasse,f and Jommelli, who 
 taught, directed, and composed for the girls, from the simplest exercises 
 up to the grandest oratorios and the most elaborate masses. And the 
 performers were worthy of their teachers : all the writers on music of the 
 
 ^ The Venetian music-schools of the last century are now remembered chiefly by 
 the readers of George Sand's great novel, as Consuelo is made a pupil of Porpora at 
 the Mendicanti. 
 
 t Niccolo Porpora, born at Naples in 1687, died in 1767. Domenico Scarlatti, 
 born in 1683, died in 1757. Adolfo Hasse, born in Saxony about 1700, died in 1783. 
 Niccolo Jommelli, born in 1714, died in 1778. 
 
 H 2 
 
100 The Musical Life. 
 
 eighteentli century speak with enthusiasm of the performances of these 
 girls, of their voices, of their excellent performance, choral and instru- 
 mental perfection, and of the singular effect produced by the sight of an 
 orchestra entirely composed of women, who played in a masterly manner 
 the most difficult solos and the most complicated symphonies. Lady 
 Mary Wortley Montagu, no particular friend to music, spealss with 
 astonishment of the concerts given in these hospitals, where she says she 
 heard finer voices and better singers than the Faustina and the Cuzzoni, 
 who then surpassed all other singers. The President de Brosses and 
 Eousseau soon after mention them with equal enthusiasm ; Beckford, who 
 was a great musician himself, was entranced by what he heard in 1780 ; 
 while Groethe, in 1787, seems to have received a grander impression from 
 these girls' performance than from any music he had previously heard; 
 in short, the four charity schools of Venice were one of the musical 
 wonders of the eighteenth century. Of all writers on the subject. Dr. 
 Burney is, however, the most detailed, and at the same time the most 
 enthusiastic. At the period of Burney's visit to Venice, the two best of 
 the schools, whose respective merit oscillated according to the eminence 
 of the teachers, were the Incurahili and the Ospedaletto, while the Pieta 
 had previously been more famous for singers and the Mendicanti for 
 instrumentalists. At all of them, but especially at the two first named, 
 Burney heard admirable performances : splendid voices of every categoiy, 
 whether for agility, expression, or grandeur ; excellent orchestras and 
 choruses, which were perfect, although consisting only of female voices, 
 the compositions being skilfully scored for soprano, mezzo soprano, and 
 contralto, the latter singing at a pitch which the unmusical Mrs. Thrale 
 called " odd unnatural enough." Dr. Burney went to several rehearsals, 
 and to the small concerts, where, a few friends only being present, the 
 girls played all sorts of vocal tricks, in order to show off their powers of 
 voice and lungs. Of all these various performances Burney has but one 
 judgment to give : that they are admirable, equal, and perhaps superior, 
 to anything that can be heard on a first-rate stage— in short, some of the 
 very finest things which he, the great musical critic, who had known 
 every opera and every singer since 1740, had ever heard. 
 
 A great deal, of course, depended on the masters. At the two best 
 sBhools Burney found respectively two of the greatest of Italian com- 
 posers, one in vigorous old age, the other in brilliantly promising youth : 
 at the Incurahili, the Venetian Baldassare Galuppi, surnamed Buranello ; 
 at the Ospedalello, the Neapolitan Antonio Sacchini. Galuppi was one 
 of the Italian composers whom Burney most admired, placing him second 
 only to Jommelli; Sacchini was one of those whom Burney was most to 
 esteem in later years ; each belonged to a separate period of musical 
 transition : Galuppi, born 1703, to the transition from the solemn, heroic 
 
The Musical Life. 101 
 
 style of Lotti, Durante, and Leo, to the deeply and almost femininely 
 pathetic one of Gluck, Jommelli, and Trajetta ; Sacchini, born about 
 1738, to the period of transition from this latter style to the nntragic, 
 lovely, sunny style of Cimarosa, Paisiello, and Mozart. Each was to 
 cause others to be forgotten, and to be forgotten in his turn, in the rapid 
 changes which Italian music was undergoing ; but Sacchini, being the 
 nearer to us, is probably less entirely forgotten than Galuppi, from whom 
 he was separated by a whole artistic generation.* Galuppi, who was an 
 immensely prolific composer, abounded in melody, tender, pathetic, and 
 brilliant, which in its extreme simplicity and slightness occasionally 
 rose to the highest beauty. He was not a very learned composer, used 
 instruments very sparingly, but when, for instance, he introduced wind 
 instruments, it was with a delicate and delightful effect. The purely 
 musical qualities satisfied him, and he defined the requisites of his art to 
 Burney in very moderate terms, " Chiarezza, vaghezza, e buona modu- 
 lazione,'' clearness, beauty, and good modulation, qualities which he himself 
 possessed to a high degree, without troubling himself much about any 
 others. Sacchini, on the contrary, thought much of orchestral fullness 
 and dramatic expression, or, rather, he followed the taste of his time, 
 which was constantly tending to the first and momentarily interested in 
 the second ; yet, with more effort at pathos, he obtained it less success- 
 fully perhaps than Galuppi, in whose time it came more spontaneously 
 than in that of Sacchini, when musical forms were tending to the idyllic 
 rather than the tragic. Galuppi, although he lived many years in Eussia, 
 always remained faithful to the purely musical school of Italy, while 
 Sacchini, seeking his fortunes in France about 1785, adopted to some 
 extent Gluck's dramatic system. The lives of the two composers were as 
 widely opposed as their genius: Galuppi was a model of the respectable 
 modest artist, Kving quietly on a moderate fortune, busy with his art and 
 the education of his numerous children ; beloved and revered by his 
 fellow artists ; and, when some fifteen years later he died, honoured by 
 them with a splendid funeral, at which all Venetian musicians performed ; 
 the great Pacchierotti writing to Burney that he had " sung with much 
 devotion to obtain a rest for Buranello's (Galuppi's) soul." Sacchini, on 
 the other hand, was most irregular in his habits and luxurious in his 
 mode of life; his dissohite conduct surrounded him with enemies ; his 
 singers were constantly rebelling ; he was more than once reduced to 
 almost beggary, and died poor, broken-spirited, and neglected, before he 
 was fifty.f 
 
 * Mr. Browning's fine poem, "A Toccata of Galuppi's," has made at least his name 
 familiar to many English readers. 
 
 f Sacchini had gained the friendship of the great satirist Parini, who, on his 
 death, mourned him with an ode. Paiini, a very moral man, was totally mistaken 
 
102 The Musical Life. 
 
 Venice, being the city where music was cultivated at greatest expense, 
 was naturally the one where most was done in the way of music-pub- 
 lishing, nearly all the printed music in Italy coming from Venice.^ This 
 was, however, very little; nothing compared to what was done in this 
 line in England and Germany ; for in the last century music-printmg 
 was quite exceptional in Italy. Musical types h ad indeed been invented » 
 by an Italian, Ottaviano Petrucci of Fossombrone, and much music had 
 been engraved and printed in the country during the sixteenth and the 
 first half of the seventeenth centuries; but gradually, as the musical life 
 developed, as the number of musical productions increased, printing and 
 engraving were thrown aside as too laborious and expensive processes ; 
 it was not worth while, as Rousseau explains, to stiike off a number of 
 copies of an opera or oratorio which might be forgotten in a year; for in 
 the rapid rush forward of Italian music, in the tremendous vortex of new 
 compositions, the work even of an eminent composer was rarely performed 
 more than one season at the same place, especially as it was usually 
 written so exactly to the measure of this or that great singer that where 
 he or she was not the opera could not be performed with any hope of 
 success. The system of copyists, who could produce exactly the number 
 of copies that were demanded, was therefore developed to the utmost; 
 all the Italian operas of the last centuiy existing only in manuscript, 
 while only collections of sonatas or cantatas published by subscription 
 were printed. These copyists, who knew of no such thing as copyright, 
 had a very profitable business of it, although they gave their work very 
 cheap ; for they not only supplied the theatres, and churches, and native 
 amateurs, but were often employed to prepare whole musical libraries for 
 strangers, whom their countrymen expected to bring home loads of the 
 newest Italian compositions. In these cases it was a joke of long 
 standing, already mentioned by Marcello in 1720, and still spoken of by 
 old Italian musicians, that the copyists would sell, as rare works by 
 eminent composers, hotch-potches made up of odd pages of old operas 
 and exercises which the rich Milordi bought up as treasures. However, 
 it must be said in favour of this rather uncivilised practice of copying 
 that much of the music of the last century was written in a way to 
 gladden the heart, compared with our crabbed, stiff type, on the thickest 
 and creamiest paper, in large, bold, elegant characters, which prepossess 
 you in favour of a piece even before you have read it. The paper has 
 now, alas! become yellow and stained, the ink brown and shiny, the loose, 
 
 in Sacchini's character, and praised him for virtues which Sacchini entirely ignored, 
 while taking the opportunity of throwing a little of his usual ahuse upon singers, 
 among whom Parini would, however, scarcely have found so dissolute a spendthrift 
 as Sacchini himself. 
 • About 1500. 
 
The Musical Life. 103 
 
 ;le cardboard bindings give out a cloud of dust when you touch 
 1, but the compositions are full of that divine youth which never 
 
 3, 
 
 le private concerts to which Burney went at Venice were as superior 
 tose he had heard elsewhere as was the church music ; he was 
 snt at several in the houses of patricians, amongst others in that of 
 Grrimani, and heard excellent performances by persons of the highest 
 :. One of these concerts was devoted entirely to the works of 
 jdetto Marcello, some of which a party of ladies and gentlemen per- 
 led once a week ; and this might be considered as a kind of national 
 social institution, for the Venetian dilettanti naturally regarded their 
 t patrician composer as a sort of patron saint ; and this might well be 
 jase, for Benedetto Marcello was the personification, the incarnation, 
 il that was most original and noble in the music of the Venetian 
 irchy, uniting as he did the genius of a great composer with the 
 t of a noble of the great commonwealth. The younger son of the 
 itor Marcello and of a lady of the famous Cappello family, Benedetto 
 
 born in 1686, one year after Handel, during the efftorescence of 
 etian music, and in a highly intellectual and musical house. An old 
 J tells that the young man was recalled from a dissolute mode of life 
 , fall into an empty tomb, whose slab had given way beneath him. 
 ! may or may not be true, but we prefer to think of Marcello, not as 
 converted libertine, but as the delicate, precocious, ardent boy, from 
 m his parents had to hide every book, and who, disdaining the 
 ile, mechanical study of music, attempted to learn the art in his 
 
 rapid way, until a slighting remark from his elder brother, who told 
 Princess of Brunswick that he was a clever little fellow, and very 
 ul in finding the place in books, goaded him into serious study of 
 art. How serious that study was, how deep a knowledge of harmony 
 ibtained, is evident from his works — so masterly, so simple, and yet 
 laborately finished. And that study was carried on by the side of 
 ly others, for Marcello became well known as a writer, nay, even as a 
 er of verse, and having taken his degree in law he entered the 
 ice of the Republic as a judge of the criminal Quaranzia. About 
 he began his setting of the first fifty psalms, translated into Italian 
 nother patrician, Ascanio Giustiniani. This work was enthusiasticajly 
 ived all over Italy; it became a model for composers, a study for 
 •ers, and was commented on by the many musical archaeologists of the 
 , who compared it with the works of Arion, Terpander, and other 
 ek musicians, of which they knew nothing and about which they 
 3 therefore extremely enthusiastic. A few years after the publication 
 bis grand work, the famous composer and wit, whose palace was the 
 ting-place of all the Venetian musicians and literati, went and buried 
 
104 The Musical Life. 
 
 himself in the little marshy, semi-ruined Dalmatian town of Pola, at the 
 order of the government, which had appointed him Provveditore there. 
 Marcello set bravely to work at his official duties, employing his dull 
 leisure in composing and writing; but after five years of this kind of 
 exile his health gave way and he was obliged to beg for other employ- 
 ment. The Eepublic recalled him, and appointed him to a fiscal office 
 at Brescia, but his health, weakened by over study, had been ruined by 
 the malaria of Pola, and after languishing for a few years he died in 
 1739, at the age of fifty-three. In the last years of his life he had met 
 a girl of very low birth, called Kosina Scalfi, had been struck by her 
 splendid contralto voice, had taught her to sing, and had, as tradition 
 has it, ended by marrying her, although by so doing he incurred the dis- 
 pleasure of the Senate and Council, who by no means approved of such 
 marriages. We are told but little concerning Benedetto Marcello's pri- 
 vate life, yet enough to picture to ourselves a grand character, following 
 quietly an ideal of the conduct of a Venetian noble, earnest in his belief, 
 serious in his official woi-k, full of suppressed and unostentatious enthu- 
 siasm for his art, going through life with a deep perception of what he 
 owed to the State which had given him social nobility, and to Him who 
 had given him artistic genius ; yet not without a certain softness and 
 playfulness of humour. Marcello hated and despised every sort of medi- 
 ocrity, and this he proved in two very different yet very characteristic 
 writings : the one a solemn letter, written shortly before his death, in 
 which he admonished his nephew to live and serve the State as befitted 
 his family ; the other a satire, published when he was about forty, in 
 which, while professing to teach how managers, singers, and composers 
 should act in order to please a modern audience, he held up to contempt 
 all that was mediocre in his art. 
 
 This little prose work, entitled II Teatro di Musica alia Moda, is not 
 only a great musical curiosity, but, in its style, a literary masterpiece ; 
 not an ordinary satire such as the Italians possess by the dozen, not a 
 pasquinade, nor a humorous display of provincial characteristics, like 
 those of Marcello's countryman Gritti, but a curious mixture of all these, 
 with a dash of the fantastic extravagance of Carlo Gozzi, and a droll 
 simplicity worthy of Addison and Steele, whom, however, it is far fi:om 
 probable that the Venetian had ever read. In a grave, simple, business- 
 like style, it purports to teach how best to suit the theatrical and musical 
 taste of the day, recommending a series of petty absurdities, interspersed 
 with more glaring follies, and crowned every now and then by a burst of 
 the quaintest, drollest, wildest nonsense ; and in so doing it gives a more 
 complete and more completely developed picture of the motley theatrical 
 life of the time, certainly not as it was, for absurdity never was so amus- 
 ing, but as the artist, the idealiser of nonsense and extravagance, would 
 
The Musical Life. 105 
 
 conceive it; — not of the higher artistic classes, which in all times must 
 seeds be serious and manly, but of the lower ones, in which all the folly 
 af the profession and of the time bursts out unmitigated — classes which 
 ifforded Goldoni and his imitator (inimitable himself) Sografi the most 
 delightfully comic characters and episodes, as in the Impresario delle 
 Smirne of the former and the Convenienze Teatrali of the latter ; but 
 which Marcello alone viewed as a whole, as a cycle of humorous ab- 
 surdities, as the heroic world of grotesque folly, and which he alone 
 treated in an epic spirit, showing us all its heroes and heroines, laying 
 bare all their feelings and displaying all their various actions, making us 
 witness all the complications and collisions of their several whims and 
 requirements. For there is a perpetual struggle in this grand world of 
 the Teatro alia Moda, a battle of conceit, avarice, imbecility, and ser- 
 vility, between the singers and the composer, the composer and the poet, 
 the whole company and the manager; and Marcello, its Homer, brings 
 us into the midst of the strife — among the swaggering, bragging singers; 
 the threadbare, cringing, and shufH.ing poets ; the fantastic prime donne, 
 with their dialect-jabbering mothers, and their retinue of parrots, lapdogs, 
 monkeys, and admirers ; the stolid, ill-educated composers, complacently 
 plagiarising, curtailing, lengthening their operas; the self-important bear 
 performers, the pushing figuranti decked in their companions' clothes ; 
 the whole jostling; "screeching, bellowing, tossing warfare of behind the 
 scenes. And to each and all Marcello lays down the law, quietly teaches 
 his part in the general scufle, regulates and systematises the universal 
 folly. The poet gets his lesson of cringing impudence ; the composer, of 
 exacting slovenliness ; the singers, male and female, of wild conceit and 
 artistic inanity — precepts of which we can give but the following short 
 specimens. 
 
 The starving poet, the patcher together of operatic imbecilities, must 
 declare : " That for his part he has never deemed it necessary to read 
 the ancient writers, since the ancient writers never deemed it necessary 
 to read the moderns. He must secure the assistance of some influential 
 person, cook or valet, agreeing to share all dedication fees with him, who 
 will teach him all the names and titles to be put on the dedication. He 
 must exalt the family and ancestors of his Msecenas and be profuse in 
 such expressions as munificence, generous soul, &c., and finding nothing 
 to praise in the great personage himself (as is frequently the case) 
 he must explain that he refrains from eulogies for fear of offending his 
 modesty. Fame, with her hundred sonorous trumpets, will re-echo his 
 immortal name from one pole to another. He will conclude his epistle 
 with the declaration that, by way of showing his profound respect, he 
 kisses the jumps of the fleas of the dogs of his Excellency." He will, 
 moreover, write a dissertation on tragedy and poetry in general, quoting 
 
106 Tlie Musical JAfe. 
 
 Sophocles, Euripides, Aristotle, Horace, &c., and adding that all good 
 rules must " be set aside to meet the requirements of the corrupt time, 
 the absurdity of the theatre, the extravagance of the composer, the indis- 
 cretion of the singers, the susceptibility of the hear, of the flguranti, &c. 
 He must not fail to give the usual explanation of the three unities of the 
 drama, place, time, and action; the place being such and such a theatre, 
 the time from two hours after sunset to six, and the action the ruin of 
 the manager." The composer must be very humble towards everyone, 
 standing with his hat off before the singers, and showing every possible 
 degree of politeness towards the bear, Mhe figuranti, and the candle-snuffers; 
 but he is to maintain his station with the poet, " ordering him to put in 
 such and such metres and syllables, insisting on the poem being legibly 
 copied, with lots of commas, semi-colons, notes of interrogation, &c. 
 although in his composition he is to pay no attention whatever either to 
 commas, semi-colons, or interrogations." 
 
 The singers, male and female, are to keep up their dignity above all 
 , things, " never listening to any other actor ; saluting the people in the 
 / boxes, joking with the orchestra, &c., that people may clearly understand 
 that he or she is not the Prince Zoroaster but Signor Alipio Forconi ; 
 not the Empress Pilastrocca but Signora Giandussa Pelatutti ... If 
 the singer plays the part of a prisoner, or slave, he must take care always 
 to appear well powdered, with many jewels on his dress, a very high plume, 
 nice shining sword and chains, which latter he is to clatter frequently, in 
 order to awaken compassion in the audience ; the prima donna must 
 always raise one arm, then the other, constantly changing her fan from 
 one hand to the other ; and if she perform the part of a man she must 
 always be buttoning one of her gloves, must have plenty of patches on 
 her face, must very frequently on entering the stage forget her sword, 
 helmet, wig,'' &c. The seconda donna " must always insist on the poet 
 making her come out before the prima donna, and when she has received 
 her part she must count the words and notes in it, and if there be less 
 than in that of the prima donna she must insist on the poet and composer 
 giving her the due number of words and notes, as she must never be 
 inferior to her in the length of her skirts, the amount of paint and patches, 
 in her shakes, embellishments, and cadenzas, protectors, parrots, owls," &c. 
 
 These lamely translated quotations can give but a very poor notion of 
 the wonderful talent of the Teatro di Musica alia Moda ; it lies in the 
 details, in the subordinate figures, actresses' mothers, protectors, teachers, 
 scene-painters, bear-performers, pages, &c., and in the ludicrously grave 
 incidents which arise between them ; in the completeness and drollness 
 of the whole picture ; and, such as it is, Marcello's humorous talent might 
 be envied by his fellow-countryman Goldoni. And in all this Benedetto 
 Marcello is always perfectly gentlemanly, never gross, never buffoonish, 
 
Tlie Musical Life. 107 
 
 never bitter ; looking down upon the absurdities of the profession with 
 the delicate and amused contempt of a patrician who is above the squabbles 
 of professionals, and of a genius who is above the disputes of mediocrities. 
 For Benedetto Marcello was much more than a mere wit, than a mere 
 high-bred critic ; to the spirit of a noble amateur, who could permit him- 
 self all sorts of artistic vagaries, he united the genius of a great composer 
 who could deal with every sort of material. His dilettante's fancies, 
 learned and fantastic, which no professional could permit himself, raised 
 suspicion in the minds of professional critics, among whom we grieve to 
 find the usually candid and appreciative Burney, who was inconceivably 
 blind to Marcello's merits ; but these fancies and oddities were controlled 
 by unerring instinct. Marcello might score his pieces for strange com- 
 binations of voices, leaving only a solitary contralto to cope with three or 
 four tenors and basses, but he would make that contralto soar grandly 
 above them ; he might continually change measure, key, and pace, change 
 recitative for air and air for recitative, but with these abrupt alternations 
 he would produce a splendid and harmonious effect; he might go into the 
 port, into the synagogues, and into the Annenian churches, and imitate 
 the strange, nasal, barbaric chants he heard there, but he would use them 
 as the groundwork of choruses of extraordinary beauty and grandeur ; he 
 might be as odd as he chose, he could never be otherwise than great. For 
 Marcello not only lived at the precise time when Italian music was in its 
 full youthful strength and grandeur, but he had the peculiar endowment 
 for the musically sublime. His works afford examples of many sorts of 
 composition for single voices and for many voices ; of the simplest 
 slightest melody, and of the most complicated fugued style ; of the tender 
 and the florid; yet they resemble each other by a peculiarity which it is 
 difficult to define — a certain, if we may say so, impersonal character: they 
 seem to express not so much human emotions due to human circumstances 
 as the impressions which a poetical mind might receive from nature — im- 
 pressions which, though vague, are embodied in the most distinct and 
 artistic shape, somewhat in the same way as the vague divinities of nature 
 took plastic forms in the conception of the Greek people, yet without 
 losing something characteristic which betrayed their origin. What we 
 meet in Marcello's works seem impressions of the sea, of the sky, and of 
 the moonlight, with all their solemnity and stillness and vastness, sweet 
 or austere. A sort of pantheistic nature-worship is suggested by his 
 great psalms, which raises them far above the more emotional and dra- 
 matic church music of other composers. While his contemporaries gave 
 the loveliest musical form to the human emotions, Marcello seems to have 
 musically embodied man's mysterious sympathies with inanimate nature. 
 This could only be done by a man placed, like Marcello, high above pro- 
 fessional requirements, unaffected by fashion, and able therefore entirely 
 
108 TJie Musical lAfe. 
 
 to follow his own natural dispositions. Marcello wrote mucli cliurch and 
 chamber music, the remains of which now lie mouldering away in archiveE 
 and lumber-rooms, even as Giorgione's frescoes mouldered away patch bj 
 patch from off the Venetian palaces ; his psalms only have been pub- 
 lished and republished, and are still known to the more studious among 
 Italian musicians ; but they alone suffice to show how great and original 
 a composer is due to the Venetian aristocracy, which, despite corruption 
 and sloth, was yet the only remaining institution of the Italy of nobler 
 days. Of the distinguished men which it produced Benedetto Marcello 
 was the last great and characteristic one. 
 
 Dr. Burney left Venice about the 18th of August, and proceeded direct 
 to Bologna, which was one of the principal stations of his musical pilgrim- 
 age. It could not indeed afford what Venice did ; it had not the great 
 musical establishments of the latter, nor anything of its musical life, but it 
 was eminently the studious town of Italy, and was therefore the home of 
 the more purely erudite and abstract part of music. The rich Bolognese 
 nobles, more intelligent and less frivolous than the Venetians, cultivated 
 music even to a high point ; the great Teatro Comunale, which the 
 famous Bibbiena had just built, was admirably managed by the Senate; 
 the deputation of patricians who had the care of the great Gothic church 
 of S. Petronio stinted neither trouble nor money to obtain first-rate per- 
 formers on each recurrence of the feast of the patron saint ; all this, and 
 a good deal more, would have sufficed to place Bologna in the first rank 
 of musical cities, but it had, moreover, a peculiar walk of musical activity 
 in which it was supreme. The town of universities and academies 
 naturally possessed the society which dispensed the highest musical 
 honours, and the man who had penetrated deeper than all others into the 
 mysterious depths of musical science and history — the famous Philhar- 
 monic Academy, and the not less famous Padre Martini. The Philhar- 
 monic Academy was the highest standard in Italy, because it was purely 
 and rigidly musical ; it accepted, indeed, the patronage of royal per- 
 sonajres, but it would not open its doors to the fashionable and profes- 
 sional mediocrities who crowded all similar institutions. It was as 
 democratic and suspicious as any mediaeval commonwealth; its president, 
 or principe, reigned only a year, and was elected only after many disput-es; 
 it accepted as members only those who had undergone the severest 
 examination in musical science ; and we know with what exultation the 
 young Mozart passed through the ordeal of being locked up alone in a 
 room and developing the theme given him, and how fond his father was 
 in after-years of telling people that Wolfgang was a Bolognese Acade- 
 mician. There were consequently no inferior men in the Academy, and 
 all the most eminent composers and singers belonged to it : the com- 
 posers and singers whose quaint faded portraits now hang, forgotten and 
 
The Musical Life. 109 
 
 unnoticed, in the former refectory of th6 convent of S. Giacomo Maggiore, 
 converted by Napoleon into the present musical school. If a stray 
 traveller go there now, it is not for their sake, but for the sake of 
 Rossini and Donizetti, who, while passing to their lessons, may some- 
 times have stopped, looked wonderingly at their predecessors in powder, 
 brocade, and satin, have thought for a moment how frail and unenduring 
 a thing is musical fame, and then gone on themselves to join the number 
 of those who in their turn will be neglected and forgotten. 
 
 Of course Burney did not fail to go to the Philharmonic Academy, which 
 later honoured him with membership, but his first thought at Bologna 
 was to run to the Franciscan monastery of 8. Francesco, and deliver the 
 introductory letter to I'adre Martini given him by Gretry, for the 
 famous monk was not only the most learned theoretical musician in 
 Italy, but was himself busied with a vast history of music, of which the 
 first volume had appeared some twelve years before. Giambattista 
 Martini was the most eminent type of a peculiar class of musicians which 
 had swarmed in Italy ever since the end of the sixteenth century ; the 
 class of musical humanists, or, if we prefer, of scholarly investigators 
 into the science and history of the art, as distinguished from its practical 
 and sesthetical sides. The humanists of the Renaissance had been exclu- 
 sively busied with the literary remains of antiquity, and it was not till 
 music began to replace the plastic arts in the general interest that the 
 new category of musical humanists could arise ; men who had inherited 
 all the blind enthusiasm for antiquity of their literary predecessors, but 
 who, caring really little for literature, and having a smattering of counter- 
 point and mathematics, devoted their thorough knowledge of Greek, 
 Latin, and Hebrew, and their unwearied inglorious patience, to the 
 subject of ancient music ; ransacking every classic author for allusions, 
 copying bas-reliefs of musical instruments, trying to decipher ancient 
 systems of notation ; attempting in short to uaderstand the unintel- 
 ligible. Many of them, of course, firmly believed that they understood 
 how to produce music like that of Pythagoras and Anaximenes, as was 
 the case with the unfortunate little humpback Gabriel Naude, who per- 
 formed a genuine Pyrrhic dance before the jeering court of Queen 
 Christina ; and with those noble Florentine gentlemen of the end of the 
 sixteenth century who thought they had reconstructed ancient tragedy on 
 their theatre in the Palazzo dei Bardi, when they had in reality invented 
 the modern opera. Those who could not aspire to performing ancient 
 music made up for it by most furiously abusing modern music, like Doni, 
 Kircher, and a host of others ; so, while modern music was rapidly 
 developing in the hands of empirical students, of composers and singers, 
 who gradually refined and enriched the musical elements they had re- 
 ceived from the people, a number of scholars, men without voice, 
 
1 10 Tlie Musical Life. 
 
 fingers, or talent for the art, grayely condemned everything that did not 
 suit their notions of ancient music. Of course they could neither prevent 
 nor direct the growth of modern music, but so blind was the worship of 
 antiquity — antiquity, we need scarcely say, neither understood nor ap- 
 preciated—that the critical and scientific world bowed down before their 
 verdicts. While Scarlatti,* Pergolesi, Leo, and Jommelli, were bringing 
 the art to the highest point of excellence, while the whole Italian nation 
 went into raptures for its great composers and performers, treatise on 
 treatise was published to, prove that modem music was low, immoral, 
 and totally without the miraculous powers of ancient music ; and these 
 treatises were read, commented on, and rarely, very rarely, refuted. 
 D'Alembert scarcely dared to suggest that, after all, ancient music was a 
 mere name ; Metastasio thought it prudent to write an immense com- 
 mentary on Aristotle's Poetics, to prove that ancient tragedy was 
 exactly the same thing as modern opera ; men of original thought, like 
 Arteaga and Eximeno, always maintained the superiority of ancient 
 music; and Sacchi, a very judicious critic, whose musical ideal was the 
 rather tm-antique Signer Farinello, declared that ancient music must 
 have been better than modern music since ancient sculpture was better 
 than modern sculpture — the very reason, to our minds, for its being 
 inferior ; while only now and then a sturdy dilettante, a lawyer or doctor 
 like Saverio Mattel, would boldly enter the lists in favour of modern art, 
 driven to this extremity by the perverse and insolent pedantry of the 
 musical humanists. 
 
 To this class Padre Martini undoubtedly belonged, but he joined to 
 the bigotry of other scholars so much learning, musical and mathematical, 
 so much candour and gentleness, and so much self-abnegation towards 
 his art, as to neutralise it in great part. People might think him pre- 
 judiced and infatuated, but they were compelled to view him with respect. 
 Padre Martini had an intense aversion to the then existing Italian music: 
 to him, who possessed far less musical talent than musical science, it 
 seemed frivolous and superficial ; he attacked Pergolesi for not having 
 written his exquisite Stahat Mater in the more scientific fugued style of 
 the sixteenth century ; and when one day a young man desiring his advice 
 hj),d very skilfully developed a theme given him to test his knowledge, 
 and had subsequently informed him that he was Niccolb Jommelli, 
 engaged to compose for the Bolognese opera. Padre Martini burst out 
 into lamentations that so fine a genius should be wasted in composing 
 operas. Jommelli, whose peculiar excellence happened just to lie in 
 dramatic expression, used to speak very highly of his obligations to 
 
 • Alessandro Scarlatti, born about 1650, died in 1725. Giambattista Pergolesi, 
 born according to recent accounts in 1710, died in 1737. Leonardo Leo, born in 
 1694, died about 1745. 
 
Tlie Musical Life. 1 1 1 
 
 Padre Martini as to the first scientific musician in Italy ; but added that 
 he had but little real musical genius, although he wished to direct that 
 of others. To Burney Padre Martini was a most interesting person, as 
 he had written more on the art than any other Italian, and possessed 
 the largest musical library in the country ; a library of which the most 
 considerable part had been made him a present by the famous singer 
 Parinelli, who, after having had the most wonderful career which a 
 musician ever enjoyed, may have looked with a sort. of mixed compassion 
 and envy on the perfect contentment which the poor old monk enjoyed 
 among his books and MSS. 
 
 This Cavalier Don Carlo Broschi, surnamed Farinello, was in fact a 
 much more interesting person to Burney than poor good Padre Martini, 
 despite all the learning stored up in his head and in his MSS. ; nor was 
 Burney at all singular in the vague curiosity with which this great singer 
 inspired him. Even unmusical travellers arriving at Bologna between 
 1760 and 1780 would, if they had credit among the aristocracy, try and get 
 presented to him like the Abb^ Coyer; or, if they were less fortunate, like 
 La Lande and Dupaty, would question their fellow-lodgers and the towns- 
 folk about him, so as to be able to put down a sentence or two in their diaries 
 about the Cavalier Broschi's history or present circumstances; for Fari- 
 nello, or, as the English, including Dr. Burney, called him, Parinelli, had 
 had a most extraordinary social career, which, magnified by time and 
 ignorance, and fused with his immense musical fame, surrounded him 
 with that species of mysterious effulgence which curious persons are 
 always trying to see through, even at the risk of seeing something far 
 smaller than they imagined. He was eminently one of those figures 
 which leave a deep impression on the popular imagination, an impression 
 which for a long while grows stronger in proportion as the reality is removed 
 further away. His voice, it was universally acknowledged throughout 
 Europe, had been infinitely more vohiminous, extensive, and beautiful 
 than any other that had ever been heard before or since; his musical 
 talent far more versatile and astonishing than any other; in short, the 
 whole eighteenth century was unanimous in placing him alone and far 
 above all its other great singers, his predecessors, contemporaries, and 
 successors; and musicians, as the eminent singer Mancini emphatically 
 writes, regarded Parinelli not so much as the most brilliant member but 
 rather as the tutelary divinity of their profession.* Carlo Broschi,-]- one 
 of a family of shabby-genteel musicians, had been launched into the 
 theatrical career about 1721, when a mere boy and still the pupil of the 
 famous Porpora, and had immediately become famous under the schoolboy 
 
 * " Questo luminoso decoro, anzi piattosto tutelar nume della nostra arte." Mancini, 
 who wrote this, was a shrewd critic and very catholic in his admirations, 
 t Born in 1705, left the stage in 1738, died in 1782. 
 
112 ' The Musical Life. 
 
 nickname of Farinello, due to the protection of some dilettanti called Farina, 
 and which, after the easy-goiog Neapolitan fashion and the habit of con- 
 temporary musicians, he continued to be called by for the rest of his days. 
 The Italians and the Germans lavished every species of honour and 
 adulation on him, for in those days singers were paid much less in money 
 than in the wildest enthusiasm. There are prints representing Farinelli 
 seated among clouds in the midst of allegorical figures with preposterous 
 draperies and preposterous inscriptions: a long, slim, sober youth, looking 
 on with the most absolute indifference at the puffy-cheeked Fame blowing 
 her trumpet, and the creasy little Cupids pelting him with roses: no bad 
 allegory of the perfect self-command and modesty which the great singer 
 preserved amidst the most exaggerated prosperity. All the Italian poets, 
 good, bad, and indifferent, wrote vapid, turgid sonnets for him: amongst 
 others the very talented Tommaso Crudeli, destined to end his days 
 imprisoned for atheism, wrote a couple of odes for this musical divinity. 
 In one of them,the poet, in despair at the thought of his going off to 
 England, calls upon Cupidto detain him in Italy; to which Cupid answers 
 that the plan is impracticable, since he cannot help following him where- 
 ever he may think fit to go, across the sea, or across the Alps. In this 
 glorious way Farinelli departed from Italy, young, and at the height of 
 popularity. When he returned twenty-five years had elapsed ; he was 
 elderly, broken in health and spirits ; he had been sent home ignominiously 
 by the new King of Spain, Charles III., and ordered to fix his abode at 
 Bologna, the place he hated most in the world. During those twenty- 
 five years his fellow-countrymen had been constantly receiving vague and 
 wonderful reports concerning him. He had gone to Spain, cured Philip 
 V. of melancholy madness by the magic of his voice, kept Ferdinand VI. 
 alive by the same supernatural means, become omnipotent at Court, been 
 made prime minister, and, people added, had governed the country like 
 another Solomon; all of which extraordinary pieces of information were 
 duly registered by historians and writers on music, who have handed down 
 to posteiity the fame of this miracle. It was indeed a miracle, and, like 
 all other miracles, could be explained satisfactorily only by one fact, that 
 it had never taken place. Not that it was groundless ; on the contrary, 
 it was merely the popular exaggeration of what few people at the time 
 (*uld thoroughly understand, namely, that a great singer had gone to 
 Spain, had pleased poor old, dull, duped Philip by his voice, his intelli- 
 gence, his good French, and his good nature, and had gained much 
 influence over him ; that Philip's successor, Ferdinand, had liked and 
 estee'med him still more, and that thus he had insensibly got to possess 
 very considerable political power. Such a position as this was difficuK 
 to define, and consequently easy to exaggerate ; the story was in itself a 
 strange one ; people made it much sti-anger, the glamour of Farinelli's 
 
The Musical Life. 113 
 
 isical fame heightening the effect and inducing them to add on all 
 lis of fanciful colouring ; for, whenever humanity has a chance of 
 iting the uncommon and inexplicable, it takes good care to season and 
 ice it to the utmost. Thus there came to exist a sort of popular myth 
 Farinelli, in which the singer appeared much as he does in the pageant- 
 ;e portrait by the crotchety barrocco painter Amigoni : colossal, dark, 
 canny, mysterious, standing out sharply and strangely in his white 
 mtle of Calatrava from a vapoury, lurid background, filled with vague 
 rms of elves and genii. But only eliminate the additions made by 
 pular fancy, the strange, weird lights and shades, and see him through 
 ordinary medium, and you find yourself in the presence no longer of 
 migoni's sphinx-like demi-god but in that of an ordinary man, very 
 liable, very intelligent, very incapable of being a prime minister, such as 
 u may see Farinelli in the smaller portrait belonging to the Bolognese 
 lilharmonic Academicians, in which a book, a walking-stick, and two 
 gs, replace the theatrical paraphernalia of the large picture. Yet, after 
 , the reality is almost more curious than the fiction ; Farinelli never 
 red Philip's madness, he never became prime minister, he never governed 
 lain, as even well-informed people like the Margravine of Anspach and 
 esident Dupaty affirm, but his residence at Court is none the less 
 igular from the sole fact that never was there a person less made to be 
 •oyal favourite than this favourite of two kings, and never was there a 
 m less capable of profiting by Court influence than this man, whose 
 luence nobles, ministers, kings, and emperors were continually trying to 
 g, steal, or buy. For Farinelli cared neither for money nor for titles, cared 
 thing for political power, which he felt incapable of wielding and which 
 was incapable of selling ; he was proud of being a singer and afraid 
 being a political agent; yet, while childishly mistrustful of all who 
 ttered and courted him, fearing and despising their aims, he was as 
 ildishly confiding in those who treated him with coolness and ingratitude, 
 □naining unshaken in his devotion to the Queen — a vain, avaricious 
 iman, who used his influence for her own selfish purposes while making 
 m believe she was a saint — and maintaining with all his might the 
 nister Ensenada, a clever rascal, whom he imagined to be the noblest 
 philanthropists, and to save whom from well-deserved ruin he risked 
 erything, even after being convinced of his gross treachery towards 
 nself. This is how we see FarineUi : not in the high-flown panegyrics 
 Lombardi and Grossi, but in Sir Benjamin Keane's despatches from 
 adrid. All the romance is gone, but there is something nobler than 
 [nance in this man, who was neither a genius nor a wizard : modest and 
 f-respecting in the most corrupting position, unselfish and forgiving 
 lidst baseness ; something which makes him appear like almost an 
 rllic hero among the artificial, worthless people around him. Farinelli 
 
1 14 The Musical Life. 
 
 had lost his credit at Court, and paid for it by exile from Spain on the 
 accession of Ferdinand's half-brother Charles — a wanton act of injustice, 
 due, in all probability, to old Elizabeth Farnese, the new King's mother, 
 whose influence oyer her husband, Philip V., Farinelli had considerably 
 usurped, and whose tool he had declined to become. He had been living 
 near Bologna about ten years when Dr. Burney arrived there, spending 
 the dull last years of his life in a desultory, intellectual fashion, seeing a 
 vast number of celebrities, teaching his nephews, writing innumerable 
 letters, singing, composing, and taking part in the easy cheerful life of 
 Bolognese senators and professors, always serviceable and generous, except 
 in undeserved praise, which was exactly wherein his contemporaries were 
 most lavish. He came to meet Dr. Burney at Padre Martini's monastery, 
 and the Englishman visited him several times at his country-house, which 
 Bolognese tradition still points out in the fields near the Eeno. Dr. 
 Burney, although a trifle awe-stricken by the dim halo of royalty which 
 surrounded the old singer, experienced strongly that singular attraction, 
 due to manner, voice, and unmistakable goodness, which Farinelli seems 
 to have exerted over everyone, making men's hearts open instinctively to 
 him, they knew not why or wherefore, and in which lay the real explana- 
 tion of his otherwise inexplicable career. When, therefore. Dr. Burney 
 took leave of Farinelli, whom he had met only twice or thrice, he felt, he 
 tells us, quite sorry and melancholy, as if in parting with an old friend ; 
 and nearly thirty years later, when the great singer had long been dead, 
 and Burney was himself grown old, and forlorn, and sceptical, he looked 
 back to this visit, and declared that, of all the celebrities he had ever 
 known, none had inspired him with more liking and respect than the 
 Cavaliere Broschi Farinello. 
 
 Dr. Burney left Bologna after a week, and proceeded towards Florence, 
 crossing the Apennines wholly unconscious of the delightful Radcliffian 
 thrills of horror which Mrs. Jameson and Washington Irving were destined 
 to render so popular ; indeed the writers of the eighteenth century are so 
 perversely cool and comfortable about the Apennine passes that you might 
 almost imagine brigands and ghastly inn-keepers to have formed part of 
 the travelling paraphernalia of the romanticists of our century, by whom 
 they were introduced into Italy, together with circulating libraries and 
 English groceries. Florence was not a particularly musical town in the 
 musical Italy of those days : it had neither the inexhaustible musical life 
 which in Naples bubbled up spontaneously from the lowest depths of 
 society; nor the carefully cultivated, splendidly dowered art belonging to 
 the Venetian nobles. Although it had done much for music in the sixteenth 
 century, when the opera took rise in its court pageants and learned 
 academies, Florence had been passive ever since, submitting to imported 
 taste, listening to Neapolitan, Venetian, and Umbrian composers and 
 
The Musical Life. 1 1 5 
 
 :rs ; for the one great master whom Florence produced, Cherubini, 
 itill a mere child, and attained to maturity in France, at a time \vhen 
 ausical civilization of Italy was dissolving and spreading over other 
 tries. But Florence, with its thriving agriculture, its comfortable 
 
 its easy fortunes, its mild little intellectual stir, with all that it still 
 led from greater days, and with the addition of the levity introduced 
 e Austro- Lorenese Court — Florence in the eighteenth century was the 
 ! of places for fashionable dilettanteism. It could no more have produced 
 ircello or an Alberti, than a Pergolesi or a Durante, but it produced a 
 ; number of small dilettanti, half nobles, half burghers, who saug and 
 id and quarrelled and went into ecstasies : a public of rapid, intelli- 
 , if rather superficial appreciation. There was first-rate music in the 
 onable churches, where all the best singers and fiddlers performed ; * 
 ! were innumerable parties in private houses, where, alternated by 
 chat and improvising verses and erudite discussions. Dr. Burney 
 i great performers, like the stentorian soprano Manzoli and the 
 us violinist Nardini. The Austro-Lorenese princes were themselves, 
 urse, very musical — ^musical in a humdrum, paternal way, as they 
 
 in all things : as, for instance, the Archduke Ferdinand, the son of 
 hen reigning Peter Leopold, who would summon his chapel musicians 
 day or hour to perform with him one of those many operas and 
 )honies which he kept neatly bound in gaudy German paper with the 
 ; written in the middle of droll pictures, " Vorstellung einer vornehmen 
 mblee in einem schonen Saale," and so forth, intended to be cut out 
 hildren's pasteboard theatres; childish-looking volumes, half vulgar, 
 pathetic, which have rarely been opened these eighty years. 
 le Florentine aristocracy had the fashionable melomania to almost as 
 t an extent as the Milanese. The Italian nobles of the last century ) 
 ; their theatres by subscription, forming the'mselves into a sort of j 
 emy, each retaining a certain number of boxes, and all retaining the ^ 
 
 t to discuss the choice of the performers or of the delegated manager, 
 jucca, where the aristocracy was accustomed to mercantile and political 
 aess, the theatre was under the direct management of the Senate, and 
 3 is a droll account in Beckford's correspondence of the solemn visit 
 cpostulation paid by the Gonfaloniere and the Anziani to his friend 
 great singer Pacchierotti, on account of certain cold-taking excursions 
 , the author of Vathek, about which they vociferated and gesticulated 
 
 There is scarcely a number of the Monitore di Toicana of a, hundred years 
 which does not contain a notice of some such performance, registered in 
 lany with the noble weddings, royal presents, monster births, miraculous cures, 
 jccasional falls into wells and apoplectic strokes, which consoled the Florentines 
 ose days for receiving but little political news, and that little about six weeks 
 ro months old. 
 
 I 2 
 
116 ' Tlie Musical Life. 
 
 " as if the safety of their mighty State depended on them." This system 
 of course infinitely increased the already existing musical bustle and 
 squabble; preference for this or that composer or singer implying not mere 
 abstract enthusiasm, but palpable advantages for him, and the amateurs 
 were constantly coming to blows about their favourites. A curious 
 instance of the passionate interest taken in musical matters by the 
 frivolous Florentines of the eighteenth century may be seen in Sir 
 Horace Mann's Correspondence. The British minister was so infected by 
 this very un-British mania that he kept informing Horace Walpole, 
 who cared nothing for music, how this and that theatre at Florence was 
 managed; how such and such a singer had performed, how such a virtuoso 
 had treated his rival; how such a prima donna had been dressed as 
 Penelope ; and giving him regular bulletins of the condition of his 
 favourite Gizziello: what medicine he had been given, how many times 
 he had been bled, what the doctors said, and so forth. 
 
 Dr. Burney found the attention of the Florentines engrossed by a 
 musical phenomenon which had excited universal wonder throughout 
 Italy, but which, we believe, he shrewdly suspected was a mere fair-booth 
 wonder, destined to come to nothing : it was a boy of thirteen or fourteen, 
 a weazen, childish little creature, who played the harpsichord astoundingly, 
 had composed an opera, and was being courted by eveiyone. Of course 
 Dr. Btirney held his peace on the subject: since Signor Farinelli had 
 thought fit to encourage the boy, and the Pope to give him the Golden 
 Spur, and the Improvvisatrice Gorilla to write him sonnets ; since the 
 people would make a fuss about the creature, and send him bouquets, 
 fruits, and ribbons, and cry " Ewiva il Maestrino ! " why let them, there 
 was no harm in it; but as to him, Dr. Charles Burney, he maintained 
 certain doubts as to the possibility of infant prodigies coming to any 
 good, and especially in the case of this little Signor Volfango Amedeo, 
 son of M. Mozart, Vice-Chapelmaster of His Serene Eminence the 
 Prince Archbishop of Salzburg. 
 
 On his way from Florence to Rome, a dismal six days' journey, Dr. 
 Burney stopped at Montefiascone, near Viterbo, in order to visit an old 
 acquaintance, the singer Guarducci, who, according to the vocal fashion 
 of lihe time, had in his old days taken to him his peasant family, left far 
 behind during his brilliant career. Guarducci was a very eminent per- 
 former, extremely refined and expressive, and certainly also exceedingly 
 ludicrous in aspect, if we may fcelieve the Bolognese print, in which his 
 fat and flabby countenance peers out from beneath an immense antique 
 helmet. He is forgotten like all his rivals ; nor should we have men- 
 tioned him had he not suggested a few remarks on the singers of the 
 eighteenth century, which we can make at our leisure while Dr. Burney's 
 
The Musical Life. 117 
 
 chaise is slowly rumbling through the Umbrian fields and oak-woods, 
 southwards towards the valley of the Tiber. 
 
 The singer was a much more important personage in the musical 
 system of the eighteenth century than he is now-a-days. He was not 
 merely one of the wheels of the mechanism, he was its main pivot. For 
 in a nation so practically, spontaneously musical as the Italian, the desire 
 to sing preceded the existence of what could be sung : performers were 
 not called into existence because men wished to hear such or such a 
 composition, but the composition was produced because men wished to 
 sing. The singers were therefore not trained with a view to executing 
 any peculiar sort of music, but the music was composed to suit the powers 
 of the singers. Thus, ever since the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
 when music first left the church and the palace for the theatre, com- 
 position and vocal performance had developed simultaneously, narrowly 
 linked together ; composers always learning first of all to sing, and 
 singers always finishing their studies with that of composition ; Scarlatti 
 and Porpoia teaching great singers, Stradella and Pistocchi forming 
 great composers ; the two branches therefore acting and reacting on each 
 other so as to become perfectly homogeneous and equal — homogeneous 
 and eqjial because, in this national, spontaneous development of music, 
 unwarped by critical speculation, the art tended to perfect balance ; tended 
 to satisfy, not an abstract ideal, but an irresistible mental craving, the 
 craving to hear music, and the best music that could be heard. Now 
 music is a twofold entity, consisting of composition and performance. To 
 unite the two halves in one individual would have been to prevent either 
 from duly developing ; to subordinate the one to the other would have 
 been to produce an ill-balanced whole, and therefore to frustrate the 
 attempt to reach what was wanted. The two branches were therefore 
 given over to separate individuals, equal in talent, in education, but 
 different in function, and the collision between whose equal powers 
 constituted the full, strong artistic life of the day. 
 
 The singer, therefore, was neither a fiddle for other men to play upon, 
 nor a musical box wound up by mechanism. He was an individual voice, 
 an individual mind, developed to the utmost ; a perfectly-balanced organi- 
 sation ; and to him was confided the work of embodying the composer's 
 ideas, of moulding matter to suit the thought, of adapting the thought to 
 suit the matter, of giving real existence to the form which existed only 
 as an abstraction in the composer's mind. The full responsibility of this 
 work rested on him ; the fullest liberty of action was therefore given him 
 to execute it. Music, according to the notions of the eighteenth century, 
 was no more the mere written score than a plan on white paper would 
 have seemed architecture to the Greeks. Music was to be the result of 
 the combination of the abstract written note with the concrete voice, of 
 
118 The Musical Life. 
 
 the ideal thought of the composer with the individual personality of the 
 performer. The composer was to give only the general, the abstract; 
 while all that depended upon individual differences, and material peculi- 
 arities, was given up to the singer. The composer gave the unchangeable, 
 the big notes, consbituting the essential, immutable form, expressing the 
 stable, unvarying character ; the singer added the small notes, which filled 
 up and perfected that part of the form which depended on the physical - 
 material, which expressed the minutely subtle, ever-changing mood. In 
 short, while the composer represented the typical, the singer represented 
 the individual. 
 
 To perform such a work, to bear such a responsibility, the singer had 
 to be produced almost like a work of art; the physical powers had to be 
 developed to the highest point, the mental powers had to control them 
 to the utmost, the whole had to become so balanced that no physical 
 movement could be made without the direction of the mind,* and that 
 no mental movement should be without its physical expression. This 
 was the aim towards which singers and singing-masters constantly strove, 
 the ideal which, when attained by an individual, gave him the undisputed 
 supremacy of a Farinelli or a Pacchierotti. To attain it, merely to ap- 
 proach it, was the labour of years — patient, self-sacrificing, intelligent 
 labour on the part of both master and pupil. It could not begin too 
 early, it could not continue too long. The singers of the last century 
 began to learn how to produce and steady the voice before they were ten; 
 they continued studying how to render it supple and docile not only up to 
 their beginning their career at seventeen or eighteen, but long'^afterwards; 
 they went on refining their style, selecting their ideas, all their lives; and 
 then, after ending their career, they might say, as the old Pacchierotti 
 said to the young yet unknown tenor Eubini, " Our art is too long for a 
 lifetime : when we are young we have the voice, but do not know how to 
 sing ; when we are old we begin to know how to sing, but we no longer 
 have the voice." 
 
 Few, very few, of course, ever attained to this ideal, but it was so high 
 a one that the whole level of the art was raised, and mediocrity itself 
 became excellent; for in this attempt to reach perfection of development 
 and balance every good quality was encouraged and every bad one eradi- 
 cated to the furthest power of the individual ; hence those many incom- 
 pletely gifted, yet extremely excellent, singers, who had partially filled up 
 
 * Stendhal, with his keen artistic sense and sentimental jargon, has expressed 
 this in the style of his day: " Ce grand artiste (Pacchierotti), qui ne s'etait jamais 
 permis un son, un monvement, qui ne fut calcule snr le besoin actuel de I'ame des 
 anditenrs ; " a great artistic triumph turned into a preposterous hysterical calcula- 
 tion; yet Stendhal knew what he meant, although few of his readers can say aa 
 much. 
 
Hie Musical Life. 119 
 
 natural deficiency by unwearied study, like the Bolognese Bernacchi, who, 
 with a bad and weak voice, still became one of the most perfect singers of 
 his day ; and the more modern Marchesi, who, with a prodigious voice and 
 but little taste, was yet tempered down into a highly refined performer ; 
 hence also those innumerable others who, with neither much voice nor 
 much talent, were forced by the weight of tradition and of universal 
 requirement into very considerable excellence. 
 
 The composer remained a comparatively abstract creature in the eyes 
 of the Italians of the eighteenth century ; they applauded him, indeed, 
 vehemently, but, once the opera over, he was rarely to be met except in 
 specially musical houses and among others of his profession. It was the 
 singer who awakened personal enthusiasm, and who became the musical 
 idol of society at large; and, as the male singer was at once more respect- 
 able and more thoroughly artistic than the singing actress, it was he who 
 had all the social advantages of the art for himself. He was received 
 with open arms ia every house ; all his impertinence and caprice were 
 tolerated; when he sang people remained silent and breathless, and occa- 
 sionally fainted and went into hysterics ; when he ceased the applause 
 was perfectly frantic ; everyone possessed his printed portrait with Latin 
 distichs, CupidsjiSurel-wreaths, &c. ; the ladies wore miniatures of him, 
 sometimes four at a time ; all the wits of coffee-houses and lecture-rooms 
 wrote sonnets in his honour ; nay, the very writers who had held him 
 up to derision were forced to join in the general enthusiasm. All the 
 travellers in Italy tell the same story, and foremost of them the President 
 de Brosses, whose love of scandal was highly and not unreasonably grati- 
 fied by these demonstrations. The singer, meanwhile — usually a mere 
 lad at the commencement of his career, of the lowest extraction, and who 
 had hitherto led the hardest, dullest life of musical routine — was placed 
 in the most trying situation, and if the sudden change from the rusty 
 cassock, the scanty food, and abundant blows of the conservator to, to fine 
 clothes, lacqueys, fashionable dinner-tables, and great ladies' flatteries, 
 did turn his head and make him an intolerable, capricious, swaggering 
 coxcomb, it was less his own fault than that of society at large. But the 
 satirists of the eighteenth century, embittered by this musical infatuation, 
 by the insolence of individual singers towards themselves, above all by 
 the comparison between their pecuniary and social circumstances and those 
 of the singers, fell upon the virtuosi with implacable rage. Parini de- 
 nounced the singer as a base and ungrateful upstart, as a corrupter of 
 morals ; Passeroni abused him as a conceited imbecile ; Baretti roared 
 that of all living creatures the singer was the most abject ; Marcello, 
 Goldoni, and Sografi, were more successful in their attempts at depicting 
 him as an absurd, jolly, cowardly, bragging puppy — more successful 
 because they produced genuinely humorous, and therefore really valuable, 
 
120 The Musical Life. 
 
 pasquinades. But delightfully droll as are the Signer Alipio Forconi of 
 Marcello, the Carluccio of Goldoni, and the Giuseppino of Sografi, it is 
 clear that they represent only the most inferior class of performers —the 
 small fry, which in every profession is almost equally ■worthless; the 
 really great artists entirely escaped the satirists' hold ; neither Marcello, 
 nor Goldoni, nor Sografi can show us one of them ; we see them occa- 
 sionally in memoirs and letters — modest, honourable, and intellectual, 
 spending their time among books and friends, often the intimates of men 
 like Metastasio, Zanotti, Winckelmann, and Canova; we see their por- 
 traits, gentlemanly and intelligent, among those of the Bolognese Acade- 
 micians ; and we feel convinced that the dignity in which the vocal art 
 was then held necessitated in some measure the dignity of the artist; 
 for it must be remembered how much intelligence, feeling, and refinement, 
 how much honest, patient striving after excellence, was required of the 
 singer, and how much the possession of such requisites argues in favour 
 of those who possessed them. 
 
 The eighteenth century required such a development of singing; it 
 deemed it absolutely indispensable ; and in that day of artistic strength 
 and riches, the genius spent in an extemporised vocal ornament which 
 was never transmitted to paper, in the delivery of a few notes which 
 lasted but a second ; the genius squandered in the most evanescent per- 
 formance, the memory of which died with those who had heard it — all 
 this seemed no waste, and indeed it could well be afforded ; but when we 
 read of it — we, who can only read of it — we feel an undefinable sense 
 of dissatisfaction, a wistful dreary sense of envy for what did not fall to 
 our lot, and of pain at the thought that all that feeling, all that imagi- 
 nation, all that careful culture, has left no trace behind it. In turning 
 over the leaves of memoirs and music-books we try, we strain as it were, 
 to obtain an echo of that superbly wasted vocal genius ; nay, sometimes 
 the vague figures of those we have never heard, and never can hear, will 
 almost haunt us. And of all these dim figures of long-forgotten singers 
 which arise, tremulous and hazy, from out of the faded pages of bio- 
 graphies and scores, evoked by some intense word of admiration or some 
 pathetic snatch of melody, there is one more poetical than the rest — 
 fjr all such ghosts of forgotten genius are poetical — that of Gas- 
 paro Pacchierotti, who flourished just a century ago.* I'or in those 
 that heard him he left so deep an impression of supreme genius, of 
 moral and intellectual beauty, that even now we cannot read of him 
 without falling under a sort of charm. In the pages in which the wi-iters 
 of the day speak of Pacchierotti there lies, as it were, a faded, crumbling 
 flower of feeling, whose discoloured fragments still retain a perfume that 
 
 * 1750—1824, 
 
The Musical Life. 121 
 
 ^oes strangely to the imagination; so that we almost fancy that we our- 
 selves must once, vaguely and distantly, have heard that weirdly sweet 
 roice, those subtle, pathetic intonations. Some such occult charm, acting 
 itter a century, there must be, for no story, no romance, is connected with 
 ;his singer that could explain the interest he awakens. We catch a 
 Sflimpse of him once or twice in Beckford and Stendhal's books, we see 
 iim oftenest in Madame d'Arblay's Diary— a gaunt youth, with plain 
 features, but which would light up with a look of genius; proud and shy 
 a.nd silent, but bursting out sometimes into a strange impassioned sort of 
 prose-poetry, beautiful and grotesque, such as children and poets appre- 
 ciate ; ardent and patient, learning English and Latin and Greek with 
 passionate eagerness, loving his own art with intense, never-satisfied 
 enthusiasm ; a curious whimsical character, always in pursuit of some 
 indefinable excellence ; equally at home in Dr. Burney's parlour in Poland 
 Street, in Mrs. Thrale's garden at Streatham, and in Daddy Crispe's 
 hermitage at Chesington, an unexpected figure by the side of Johnson, of 
 Burke, and of Keynolds; comprehended by very few, liked by all, and 
 especially, with a singular romantic, sisterly sort of afi'ection, by that 
 most sharp-witted and sharp-tongued little Fanny Burney, who, years 
 later, when he was dead, and she an old woman, declared, that had Pac- 
 chierotti not been a singer, he must certainly have been a poet, without 
 perceiving that the secret of his influence lay in his being both together. 
 Strangely enough, by a curious accident, we got yet another glimpse of 
 this singer — the glimpse, as it were, of a ghost. For rambling one day 
 through a quiet corner of Padua— where the rows of gloomy porticoed 
 streets have gradually thinned, and the town seems insensibly to grow 
 into the open country, green with budding vines and corn ; where you are 
 met by bends of the sluggish, verdure-garlanded canal, which reflect faded 
 Palladian villas, and by tracts of desolate gardens, with only mutilated 
 statues and rows of undipped trees, to mark their former avenues, — in 
 this remote corner of Padua we stumbled one day into a beautiful tangle 
 of trees and grass and flowers, separated from the grand cedars and mag- 
 nolias of the Orto Botanico by a bend of the Brenta, and were informed 
 by a gardener's boy that this garden had once belonged to a famous 
 singer, by name Gasparo Pacchierotti (of whom your Excellency has 
 perhaps heard ? Why should we, why should anyone ?). The gardener 
 led us into the house, a battered house, covered with creepers and amphorae, 
 and sentimental inscriptions from the works of the poets and philosophers 
 in vogue a hundred years ago — beautiful quotations, which, in their can- 
 dour, grandiloquence, and sweetness, now strike us as so strangely hollow 
 and melancholy. He showed us into a long narrow room, in which was a 
 large slender harpsichord, the harpsichord, he informed us, which had be- 
 longed to Pacchierotti, the singer. It was open, and looked as if it might 
 
122 The Musical Life. 
 
 just have been touched, but no sound could be drawn from it. The 
 gardener then led us into a darkened lumber-room, where hung the portrait 
 of the singer, thickly covered with dust : a mass of dark blurs, from out of 
 which appeared scarcely more than the pale thin face — a face with deep 
 dreamy eyes and tremulously tender lips, full of a vague, wistful, con- 
 templative poetry, as if of aspirations after something higher, sweeter, fairer 
 — aspirations never fulfilled but never disappointed, and forming in them- 
 selves a sort of perfection. This man must have been an intense instance 
 of that highly-wrought sentimental idealism which arose, delicate and 
 diaphanous, in opposition to the hard, materialistic rationalism of the. 
 eighteenth century ; and the fascination which he exerted over the best 
 of his contemporaries must have been due to his embodying all their 
 vague ephemeral cravings in an art which was still young and vigorous 
 — to his having been at once the beautiful soul of early romanticism and 
 the genuine artist of yet classic music. 
 
 Some faded scores, a few passages in memoirs, a grimy portrait, are 
 all that remains of Gasparo Pacchierotti; yet, slight as are these remains, 
 they have sufficed to do that in which many far more important might 
 have proved inadequate : to bring us vaguely and drowsily into the pre- 
 sence of a man forgotten since the days of our great-grandfathers ; 
 perhaps because Schiller may after all be right and 
 
 Wer den Besten seiner Zeit genng gethan, 
 Der hat gelebt fiir alle Zeiten. 
 
 Whither have our fancies carried us? — The garden at Padua, the 
 harpsichord, the portrait — are none of them present. Pacchierotti, so far 
 from being a mere faint recollection, is as yet a scarcely noticed reality, 
 an obscure youth with undivined talents. Dr. Burney has never yet 
 heard his name, and, little dreaming that eight years hence a new world 
 of music is destined to be revealed to him by this singer, whom he is so 
 passionately to admire, the Doctor of Music is now jolting along the 
 high road to Eome, in the month of November 1770. 
 
 III. 
 
 In the eighteenth century, as in the sixteenth, Eome was sterile of art 
 and artists, but it was once more the market to which were brouo-ht the 
 productions of other provinces. As the town of Italy where men of all 
 nationalities had most met, where every period of history had left the 
 greatest trace, where everyone found most to suit his taste — as the huge 
 centre of eclecticism — Rome was at once unable to produce anything herself 
 and able to absorb all that was produced elsewhere ; for great works of 
 
The Musical Life. 123 
 
 irt are born of a single locality and a single period, but are destined for the 
 whole world and all time. A hundred years ago Eome was a musical 
 jentre ; it alone had preserved the music of the sixteenth century as a 
 sort of relic, and the living music of the eighteenth was poured into it on 
 all sides. The nobles, ignorant and pedantic, were as infatuated for 
 musicians as they had been forty years before for writers, with the addition 
 that the former were tidier, better mannered folk than the latter. The 
 princes of the Church, immensely ostentatious, thought fit to collect and 
 keep singers (when obtained cheap) as well as antiques. Perhaps they 
 could no longer afford to keep private chapels as a hundred years before, 
 when Milton and Evelyn were at Rome; but they had numbers of musical 
 proteges, whom they flattered with dinners, for whom they intrigued with 
 foreign theatre directors, as the great Alessandro Albani disdained not 
 to do, and by whose means they could get up sacred, though tolerably 
 profane, operas in their palaces, as Metastasio's godfather Ottoboni did 
 at the Cancelleria. The smaller priesthood hunted about everywhere for 
 poor and modest young men of talent, who composed oratorios and masses 
 for their shabby little churches and schools. The middle classes, an easy- 
 going, independent, rather indolent set, with the intelligence, cynicism, 
 and good humour of Pasquino, were so many born critics ; the opinion of 
 shopkeepers and shopkeepers' wives, who heard music from morning till 
 night, -was important ; that of doctors, lawyers, and secular priests, para- 
 mount. The enormous class of indescribable half-lay, half-ecclesiastical 
 creatures, poor, witty, disreputable, called dbati; adventurers, scholars, 
 poetasters, filled the pits of the theatres, where they reigned supreme; 
 they, in their rusty black cloaks and horse-hair wigs, bearding the scarlet- 
 robed cardinals and be-ribboned grandees in the boxes. For they were a 
 most intelligent and pugnacious lot ; quick at epigram and pasquinade, 
 always ready with smart sayings, sonnets, and unripe apples, wherewith to 
 express their several states of mind. Behind these youngsters were the 
 graver wearers of black : physicians, jurists, chaplains, and secretaries, 
 respectable old gentlemen who had published unread treatises on the 
 music of the ancients, on the opera, &c. ; slow and reserved in judgment, 
 inquisitorial and paternal. These two classes supplied the total absence 
 of musical journalism; their disputes at coffee-houses, their disquisitions 
 in drawing-rooms, constituted the sesthetical life of the people; their 
 combined impertinence and dignity, rapidity of perception and solidity of 
 judgment, kept all in check; cardinals and nobles could not gainsay 
 them; when they had cried evviva to a singer the proudest princess 
 cpuld not shut her door to him, although he be a lout and a coxcomb. 
 When they had thrown tomatoes at a composer, the Pope himself could 
 not engage him. This critical tendency, due to constitution and social 
 
124 The Musical Life. 
 
 arrangements, was considerably increased by an absurd regulation for- 
 bidding women to perform on any stage in the Eternal City. When the 
 opera originated, as when the drama took its rise in Greece and in 
 England, it never occurred to anyone that women might rationally per- 
 form women's parts ; their introduction was an innovation which gained 
 ground slowly, despite prudery and jealousy: the Italian Church could 
 not object to dramas, nor damn actors, as did the Galilean Church, 
 because the Italian drama had originated in monasteries and prelates' 
 palaces ; but the Italian Church did set its face against female performers, 
 and this original disapprobation remained expressed in the regulation 
 above mentioned, a regulation made early in the seventeenth century, and 
 which the priests of the eighteenth were too unoriginal, rather than too 
 moral, to revoke. Consequently, all the female parts were performed by 
 men or boys, to the great delight of Goethe, to whom the performances of 
 a black-bearded young man, as Goldoni's Mirandolina, seemed a return 
 to the days of Rosoius. At the opera the women's parts were performed 
 by boys, who looked the parts amazingly well, as Burney, Brosses, Goethe, 
 and Miss Beriy inform us, and as all can believe who have seen the 
 Tuscan peasant lads playing Armida and Bradamante on their rustic 
 stage. Now not only did the exclusion of women, who were often hand- 
 some and invariably coquettish, render public appreciation purely artistic 
 and coolly critical, but the youth and comparative immaturity of these 
 boys rendered their critics singularly sharpwitted and practical ; these lads 
 were brought rather to finish their musical education than to be applauded; 
 their masters came less to gain money by them than to sound public 
 opinion ; and the audience reproved, and approved, and corrected timid 
 schoolboys in a manner which would never have been tolerated by men 
 and women of confirmed style and settled reputation. The Roman public, 
 therefore, was not only critical to an intense degree, but highly paternal, 
 and with paternal freedom and vigour did it administer the intellectual 
 rod to singers, composers, and teachers. It was a well-established fact, 
 recorded by Gretry, that when an opera or performer had once been 
 approved by the Romans it must succeed everywhere else, and, when a 
 man was applauded elsewhere, shrewd people would say " Wait till he 
 ^as been to Rome;" for Rome was the inexorable judge — inexorable, yet 
 discriminating, for, when it approved of a composer but not of a singer, 
 it would intersperse its hissings with " Bravo Maestro ! " or vice versd; 
 and when it discovered any touch of plagiarism it would cry " Bravo 
 Galuppi !" " Evviva Piccinni !" in the middle of an opera by Signor BimoUi 
 or Maestro Bequadro. Therefore the greatest composers deemed it an 
 honour to live among the Romans, even with the small stipend of chapel- 
 master of St. Peter's or St. John Lateran, and it is touching to see with 
 
The Musical Life. 125 
 
 what candour the great Jommelli sent Padre Martini a copy of a medal, 
 showing his effigy adorned with donkey's ears, with which the Romans 
 had honoured him. 
 
 Yet even the Romans were not always infallible. At the foot of the 
 Pincian, where its laurel and rose hedges first begin, there stand, or rather 
 did stand a short time since, the four walls of a burnt theatre — an empty 
 dismal shell which still gave its name to the adjoining Vicolo d'Alibert, 
 close to the Via Margutta, the street full of the incessant hammering and 
 chipping of sculptors. This burnt-out shell is that of a theatre far older 
 and more illustrious than S. Carlo or the Scala, the so-called Teatro delle 
 Dame, built by an equerry of Queen Christina, a certain M. d'Alibert, 
 whence its other name of Teatro Aliberti. This Teatro Aliberti, and not 
 the Tordinone or the Argentina, which have replaced it, was the principal 
 Roman theatre of the eighteenth century ; Metastasio wrote his plays for 
 it; Porpora, Leo, Durante, Galuppi, Jommelli, all the great composers of 
 the day, composed for it; and it was there, if we may believe tradition, 
 that when one evening the great Pacchierotti was playing Arbaces, and 
 when, not hearing the usual instrumental bars which filled up his recitative, 
 he turned impatiently to the orchestra, exclaiming " What the devil are 
 you about? " that the composer, from his harpsichord, answered simply, 
 " We are crying." 
 
 Well, to return to the one instance of Roman injustice. One day, in 
 the year 1735, the performers of the Aliberti brought on to the stage an 
 opera called the OUmpiade, the work of a young pupil of a Neapolitan 
 music school. He was only twenty-five, with a delicate, feminine, almost 
 Raphael-like face, and a fragile, sickly person. He had composed an 
 opera or two and some church and chamber music with great success; his 
 name was triambattista Pergolesi, of Jesi in the March. This opera, the 
 OUmpiade, was his last and dearest work; in it he had done things that 
 no other composer had done : it was a masterpiece, marking a new era 
 in music. Now it so happened that, from some reason or other, the good 
 Roman critics were out of temper that night : they hissed the opera off 
 the stage, and one of them threw an orange at the head of the composer, 
 who sat directing at the harpsichord. The opera was suspended, and next 
 day news came from the rival theatre of Torre Argentina, that another 
 new opera, the Nerone of Duni, had been enthusiastically received the 
 very evening of the fall of the OUmpiade at the Teatro Aliberti. Duni, 
 who was a good man or a very bad one, came to his rival and condoled with 
 him on the ill-success of his work. The OUmpiade, he said, was far superior 
 to his own Nerone; the Romans were the stupidest people on earth : he 
 was furious with them for their bad taste. " Son frenetico con questi 
 Romani." Poor Pergolesi made no answer ; he returned to Naples and 
 to his work there, but he would never again write for the stage. He wrote 
 
126 Tlie Musical Life. 
 
 his splendid cantata Orpheus, and some church music, but then he fell ill; 
 his reverse had utterly broken his spirit, and with it his frail constitu- 
 tion. His friends took him to Torre del Greco, the place where con- 
 sumptives are sent to revive or to die ; he got worse and worse, but con- 
 tinued to work at the Stabat Mater, for which, in consideration of his bad 
 circumstances, he had already been paid. The price was eight scudi, about 
 thirty-five shillings, and Pergolesi was too honest to give an incomplete 
 work in return for it. He died in 1736, one year after the fall of his 
 Olivipia<ie, leaving the Stabat finished and a divinely perfect work. 
 People heard of his sad end, were sorry, made amends ; two years later 
 his house was already shown to strangers ; the Olimpiade was performed 
 for years and years all over Italy, in England, in Germany, nay at the 
 very Teatro Aliberti ; it was considered a masterpiece, one of the few that 
 withstood changes of fashion, and Pergolesi was acknowledged all over 
 Europe to have been perhaps the greatest Italian composer of his day. 
 The Olimpiade is truly a beautiful work, but the Stabat, written on the 
 young man's death-bed, is a still finer one, and is recollected even now. 
 
 Naples, the last of the stages of Dr. Burney's musical pilgrimage, was also 
 one of the, if not the, most important of them ; for, if Italy was regarded 
 as the musical country of the eighteenth century, Naples was universally 
 considered as the most musical town in it. And this was but natural ; it 
 was at Naples, that, so to speak, modern music, as distinguished from the 
 old choral music of Eome, Bologna, and Venice, had originated ; it was 
 there that, towards the middle of the seventeenth century, music had 
 ceased to be symbolical, liturgical, and scientific, and had become human 
 and humanly excellent ; there that composers had listened for the first 
 time to the rude, sweet inspirations of the people ; that the art had been 
 brought back to revive, as it wore, in the fresh air, to drink in the strong 
 life-giving wine of popular feeling, after its long imprisonment in churches 
 and schools, where it had dragged on a weak existence, starving on mere 
 science. This new movement, doubtless very slow and imperceptible, 
 became strongly marked by, and inseparably united with, the figure of the 
 great elder Scarlatti. Born in the middle of the seventeenth century, 
 when the purely contrap untie style of Palestrina's successors was still 
 predominant ; when the opera was a mere puppet-show, sometimes 
 literally performed by puppets ; when melody was feeble and unsteady, 
 and recitative stiff and ill-modulated, Alessandro Scarlatti had died about 
 1725, when Porpora had brought the art of singing to perfection; when 
 Marcello and Durante had developed the free chm-ch style to the utmost, 
 when Vinci and Leo were rapidly carrying tragic melody and tragic 
 recitative to the highest point ; and if we seek for the linlc between these 
 two generations, for the men to whom the immense progress is due, the 
 
Tlie Musical Life. 127 
 
 luagnificent figure of Scarlatti is alone visible, throwing all humbler ones 
 into shade. For Scarlatti was essentially one of those men destined to 
 achieve a great movement ; bold and original, but never, as Gluck was, 
 beyond the limits of possibility ; upsetting readily, but only as much as he 
 could rebuild; innovating rapidly, but because carried on by the tide 
 of universal feeling ; always following instinct, never following theory. 
 He was the strangest of strange modulators, the most pertinacious ex- 
 presser of the words, the most wholesale adapter of popular themes ; 
 trying all, and making his works a wonderful, splendid, grotesque medley, 
 full of untold wealth of harmony, of melody, and of expression, riches which 
 required only to be singled out, purified, and recast by others. 
 
 All the musicians of Italy flocked round him : Porpora, Durante, Leo, 
 Vinci, were his personal pupils ; Kaiser and Stefani carried the Italian 
 style, inaugurated by him, to Germany, where it helped to produce Handel, 
 Hasse, Bach, Graun, in their turn constantly receiving new grafts of it 
 from the works of the Italians themselves, brought to the north by singers 
 like the Faustina, Senesino, Parinelli, and Carestini, pupils of Scarlatti's 
 pupils. The influence of Scarlatti's school, and the consequent musical 
 supremacy of Naples, persisted for two generations ; Pergolesi, Jommelli, 
 Piccinni, Sacchini, and an immense number of great singers, diffused the 
 fame of the Neapolitans all over Europe. Eousseau, the only really great 
 and fascinating writer on music of the day, told the young musician to go 
 to Naples as to the head-quarters of his art, in that famous article on 
 Genius, in which he poured forth lava-like eloquence to singe and wither 
 up French music. All subsequent travellers mentioned Naples in the 
 same fashion, some, like La Lande, deferring all accounts of music till 
 they arrived there ; and Dr. Burney, who knew better than any other man 
 what Naples had done for music, arrived there with intense expectations. 
 
 He had taken care to be provided with the means of fully enjoying the 
 musical wealth he expected to find ; he brought letters for Jommelli, for 
 Piccinni, for the Ambassador Lord Fortrose, and for the later too famous 
 Sir William Hamilton. The latter received him most cordially ; his wife, 
 not the terrible Lady Hamilton of the year '99, but an amiable and 
 accomplished woman praised by all travellers, was herself a great musician, 
 and at her house, and at that of Lord Fortrose, Dr. Burney met several 
 eminent musicians, amongst others the singer Caffarelli, or more properly 
 Caffariello, who had been extremely famous for his voice, talent, beauty, 
 wit, and immeasurable insolence, which latter he had vented on all the 
 greatest personages in Europe. 
 
 Dr. Burney then went to see Piccinni, who was at that time about 
 forty, very well known all over Italy, reckoned among the most eminent 
 of living composers, but by no means yet raised to that pitch of importance 
 which he was soon to obtain in Paris as the rival of Gluck. Piccinni had 
 
128 The Musical Life. 
 
 special talent for comic music ; his Buona Figliuola, written to a text of 
 Goldoni's, had been applauded everywhere, and he did more than any 
 composer of his day to bring about the gradual transition to the softer, 
 brighter, less tragic, more richly accompanied style, which, twenty years 
 later, was to attain to perfection in the hands of Paisiello, Ciraarosa, and, 
 most resplendently unheroic of all, Mozart — a transition which consisted 
 in a gradual change of the musical forms, which became lighter, smaller, 
 more tripping, more twirling, less massive and simple; in a gradual 
 development of the rhythmical accompaniment, hitherto almost unknown, 
 which was to culminate in Cimarosa and Mozart's delightfully buoyant 
 rondos, and to degenerate into Eossini's machine-like crescendos ; in a 
 gradual breaking-np of the melody and sharing it with the orchestra, 
 which was permanently endowed with those wind-instruments which had 
 till then been reserved for very special occasions. Piccinni was at the 
 head of a change in the art, a change which captivated the public at large, 
 but which a few individuals regarded with suspicion and aversion, growl- 
 ing out, like Mattei, that music was losing its dignity and worth ; that it 
 was growing effeminate and frivolous. Nor were they entirely wrong; but 
 in losing one set of good qualities it was gaining another, and classic 
 music could not enter into its last and most brilliant phase without leaving 
 its earlier, more sober, and solid ones. The idol of this austere minority 
 was Niccolb Jommelli ; not that he was theoretically of their opinion, for 
 in this lies the main difference between Jommelli and the other great 
 composer whom he resembled almost like a brother, Gluck : Jommelli 
 was essentially a practical artist, paying no heed to theory, indolent, 
 placid, following only his instinct ; nor did he, who was the most amiably 
 candid of men, underrate Piccinni, or abuse the movement which Piccinni 
 represented, as did his partisans ; but he held aloof from it, because he 
 had no sympathy with it, because he was incapable of going along with it, 
 because he was essentially a survivor of a previous generation of com- 
 posers. Jommelli, who was born in 1714, the same year as Grluck, hved 
 for about fifteen years, between 1755 and 1770, at Ludwigsburg, as 
 Chapel-master to the Duke of Wiirtemberg; and this long stay in 
 Germany, though not longer than that of many another Italian com- 
 poser, gave rise to the legend that his style underwent a process of 
 Ttutonisation. "When he returned to Italy, the Italians seem to have 
 looked on him with a degree of suspicion, and his works seem to have 
 struck them as strange ; a circumstance which, to the minds of German 
 critics, evidently proves that Jommelli had ceased in some measure to 
 be Italian. But this theory is founded on a misconception, and has 
 grown, thanks to national vanity. Jommelli underwent no change during 
 his absence, but his countrymen did; he brought back from Germany only 
 what he had carried thither, but when he brought it back it was already 
 
The Musical Life. 129 
 
 so out of date as to seem almost a novelty. The public had changed, 
 not he : the admirers of Leo, Hasse, and Pergolesi were dead or dying 
 out, and in their stead were men who were gradually getting accustomed 
 to the fast-developing style of Piccinni, Sacchini, and Sarti, composers 
 much younger than Jommelli, and who had scarcely been boys in the 
 time of his immediate predecessors. To Jommelli ■ this new style, with 
 its broken-up melody, its easy modulation, its light, brilliant ornaments, 
 its strong rhythm, its wind-instruments constantly used and used in the 
 same fashion as the others; all this easy, lightly pathetic music seemed 
 trivial, effeminate, undramatic, and meretricious. He resisted the new 
 style to the utmost, intensifying in so doing all the peculiarities of the 
 old one. The lighter and less serious became his contemporaries, the 
 more solemn and tragic became Jommelli; and the more they dealt in 
 wind instruments and slightly tripping rhythms, the more vigorously did 
 he adhere to his violins and the more varied and complicated became his 
 accompaniments. The public listened with as much awe as a Neapolitan 
 public could muster; Jommelli's undisputed fame and undeniable genius 
 enforced it, but all the same the public was not satisfied; it instinctively 
 disliked Jommelli's effoiit? to stem the onward movement; it was vexed 
 by his composing solemnly where another would have composed lightly, 
 by his putting few instruments where another would have put many, by 
 his writing solid passages where the singers wished to improvise flimsy 
 ones ; add to this, that the performers, vocal and instrumental, were 
 unaccustomed to his music and incapable of performing it, not because 
 they were inferior, but because they were capable of performing something 
 else. Jommelli's works were less and less liked : some people said they 
 were hard of performance and comprehension; others, as Bnrney tells us, 
 that they were written for the learned many and not for the feeling few; 
 others still, as Mozart heard, that they were old-fashioned. At length 
 things came to such a pitch that when, in 1773, Jommelli offered the 
 public his opera of Iphigenia, which contained many extremely beautiful 
 things ; many, like the great duet between brother and sister, which might 
 have been composed by Hasse or Pergolesi, and nothing that indicated 
 that forty years had elapsed since their day — when Jommelli thus pushed 
 his resistance to extremes, the opera broke down in the performance, the 
 audience grumbled, the Government ordered another to be performed, 
 and Jommelli, having returned the price of his opera to the manager, 
 entirely abandoned the profession. Some years later he wrote his last 
 work, his great Miserere, and died, honoured but not appreciated, in 
 1778. The old style died with him. In 1780 Sarti wrote his Giulio 
 Sabino, 'Moza.vt his Idomeneo ; Cimarosa and Paisiello reigned supreme; 
 the comic opera gave laws to the serious one, and classic tragic music was 
 buried for ever. 
 
130 The Muswal Life. 
 
 V 
 
 Ur. Burney paid a visit to Jommelli, whose peculiar genius, at once 
 elevated and so sweet, so full of that solemn, intense tenderness which 
 shared with Gluck, the Englishman admired immensely. Jommelli h 
 made a very considerable fortune, as the fortunes of composers then we; 
 and lived comfortably enough, married, but childless, a well-educate 
 quiet, highly benevolent, very indolent man; immensely stout ever sir 
 his youth, not unlike Handel in face, and, according to Metastasi 
 account, " liking to saunter at his ease and indulge the laziness of 1 
 well-fed body " — a placidity and self-indulgence which probably prevent 
 him from becoming, like Gluck, a would-be reformer, and kept hi 
 satisfied with following his own ideas and letting others follow thei: 
 He received Burney very well, and invited him to attend the rehearsal 
 his new opera Demofoonte, which he was then putting on to the stage 
 S. Carlo. Burney went, not only to the rehearsal but to the performan 
 of .this opera, the last by Jommelli which was either well performed 
 at all successful, and at the same time the first serious opera which t 
 Doctor had heard since his arrival in Italy, where the burletta alo 
 sufficed during the summer and autumn. 
 
 An Italian serious opera was in those days a very different thing frc 
 what it is now — different in its object, different in its production, differe 
 in its nature, answering to requirements unlike those of our own time, a; 
 regarded in quite another manner. In the second half of the eighteen 
 century music had run through an untroubled course ; it was still youi 
 still vigorous ; it grew and altered spontaneously and insensibly by t 
 same vital force as a child grows into a youth ; it had not required a 
 artificial treatment, any doctoring at the hands of theorists, for it h 
 never given signs of decrepitude ; and if it had occasional maladies it g 
 over them quickly and unconsciously. It had not yet grown old, and t 
 public had not yet grown tired of it ; men did not yet require drama' 
 effects or psychological interest, for they could still obtain pure beau( 
 they did not ask for distinctly marked characters, for historical picture 
 for mythological allegories; they asked only for music. Greeks, Romai 
 Persians, Chinese, and Indians, the heroes of Homer and those of Arios 
 were all made to sing in the same way, because there was only one wi 
 and that the proper one — ^just as the ancient heroes and saints of Rena 
 sance painters are all dressed in the same nondescript delightfully i 
 accurate fashion, because that fashion was the most becoming one ; t 
 historically valuable and artistically worthless being left to later a 
 move critical times. The object, then, being to have music, and oi 
 music, people began by discarding every irrelevant, and subordinati 
 every additional motive. Now in a time of artistic life the best art mi 
 always seem to be the newest ; the art is in motion, the public with i 
 
Hie Musical Life. 131 
 
 e are no received classics because there is no perceivable decay ; per- 
 lers suit their style to that of composers, or rather it grows with 
 rs, and if they were thoroughly suited to the old they would be 
 e or less unsuitable to the new. The consequence was that in the 
 teenth century no opera lived more than a few years ; others followed 
 s good, but in a different style ; and in the immense bustle of new 
 luctions and new styles there was very rarely time to revive an old 
 An opera was therefore almost invariably new — either newly corn- 
 id or newly imported — and there was no such thing as a repertoire. 
 ry great town had yearly one or two operas composed expressly for it, 
 one or two imported from elsewhere. When the opera was newly 
 posed it was composed for a given set of singers already engaged ; 
 composer had, as it were, to take their measure, and there was no 
 1 thing as writing for an abstract soprano, tenor, or bass, and then 
 Qg to fit the part so written (and such a fit must often be bad) on a 
 ;rete one ; an opera was written for such or such a performer, in order 
 i to display his or her peculiar excellences. Of course, in proportion 
 fc fitted them it was also unsuited to others, for, as we have already 
 arked, the individuality of the singer was highly developed ; it was 
 refore usual that an opera should be performed only by its original 
 'ormers, who, so to speak, kept its copyright, and very often kept 
 composer bodily; thus all the most popular serious operas of the 
 iteenth century were indissolubly connected mth some great singer — 
 Artaseree * of Hasse with FarineUi, the Regolo of Jommelli with the 
 igotti, the Orpheus of Gluck with Guadagni, the Quinto Fabio of 
 toni with Pacchierotti, who sang it at Venice, at Florence, at Lucca, 
 iT'ienna, in London, everywhere. To attempt a part written for an- 
 jr was to throw down the glove and pretend to equality with him or 
 ; such audacity was generally severely punished by the audience ; 
 when, for instance, the Italians permitted Pacchierotti, Marchesi, 
 Rubinelli successively to sing Sarti's CHulio Sabino, it was for the 
 bsure of comparing their three greatest singers, of pitting them 
 inst each other, and for the attendant pleasure of street riots and 
 ee-house fights. 
 
 Vo points, then, are established : the opera must be new, or at least 
 ' for the place ; and, secondly, it must have been composed expressly 
 the principal performers. The consequence was that each theatre 
 Id scarcely prepare more than one opera each season, as the performers 
 audience both required to be perfectly familiarised with it ; the same 
 ra was therefore performed twenty or thirty successive times, and then 
 
 Basse's Artaserse, 1730 ; Jommelli's Regolo, 1750 ; Gluck's OrpTieus, 1764 ; 
 ;oni's Quinto Fabio, 1780. 
 
 k2 
 
132 The Musical Life. 
 
 packed off to another place. Moreover, as the music was all and every- 
 thing, the music alone was required to be new, while the words were as 
 old as possible ; every composer of the eighteenth century had set nearlj 
 all Metastasio's plays, and most of them twice, thrice, or even four times 
 The plays were beautiful, the public knew them by heart; so much th( 
 better, it enjoyed them here and there, and gave its main attention tc 
 the music; that was novel, and full of unexpected turns and twists 
 whereas everybody knew since his childhood that Zenobia was not to b( 
 killed by her husband, that there was poison in Artaxerxes' cup, thai 
 Megacles was to be married to Aristea after all, that Timanthes was nol 
 Dirce's brother; and was consequently highly indifferent to the suddei 
 explosions of wrath, the attempts at assassination, the alarming oracles 
 and similar stage business which would otherwise have absorbed its at 
 tention. Thus the play was of but little account, the music was every 
 thing ; but gradually, as the audience became acquainted with it, parti 
 of it also began to pall on the hearers : the pieces belonging to th( 
 secondary parts began to be but little heeded, and when the thirty oi 
 forty performances were drawing to their close ; when the public — whicl 
 had started with a thorough knowledge of the play — ^had become heartili 
 sick of the connecting scenes and the subordinate parts ; only five or sii 
 pieces were attended to, the audience paying visits, playing at cards, talk 
 ing, making an intolerable din during the remainder. But let only thi 
 prima donna or the primo uomo come forward, especially if she or he be i 
 Gabrielli, or a Marchesi, or a Davidde, and the whole theatre becomes a 
 silent as a church : woe betide those afflicted with colds or coughs ! Ai 
 the Venetian Majer informs us, they become an object of universal hatred 
 The crowd listens breathless to the great recitative, to the duet, the trio 
 the air, to the rondo, that crowning glory ; they have heard them thirty 
 iive nights consecutively, and each night twice or thrice, but they neve 
 tire of them: how could they, since each new performance means a ne\ 
 intonation, a new ornament, a new variation — nay, sometimes a perfect! 
 new reading of the piece ? the great singers having become positively in 
 capable of singing a thing twice alike, and sometimes entering the stag 
 with three or four totally different renderings in their head from which t 
 select on the spur of the moment, as Farinelli had done, as Pacchierott 
 *d, and as old, old people can still recollect Velluti, the last of vocs 
 autocrats, to have done before Eossini came and said, "Lascia fai'e 
 me."* Then the audience became breathless, ecstatic; then amatem-i 
 
 * An intelligent German traveller, Rehfues, who was in Italy about the year 180 
 gives the following information concerning the rifioritiire of the famous Lni| 
 Marchesi, who left the stage just about that time. It is all the more curious as Ma 
 chesi was famous rather for voice, agility, and dramatic power, than for imaginatio 
 
The Musical Life. 
 
 3 Stendhal's friend, would gently slip off their shoes, and throw fir 
 J, then the other, across their shoulder, in silent agony of delight. 
 Foreigners were amazed at this strange mixture of utter indiffereni 
 i utmost rapture, of loud-voiced inattention and breathless attentioi 
 i Germans especially, who took all their pleasures as duties, and a 
 sir amusements as tasks, cried out that assuredly the Italians must 1 
 ! most unmusical, the most unsesthetical, the most unconscientious - 
 fcions ; but, many years later, a German and an jesthetician, Hege 
 idicated the Italians, pointing out to his countrymen that only the ui 
 isical will give intense attention to every detail of a play — to every not 
 1 be equally interested in the important and the unimportant, and I 
 merely because they are really interested in neither ; while the gem 
 ily musical will heed only what is worth heeding ; an important lessoi 
 fortunately unnoticed in our days, when people rarely reflect that a; 
 nands not volitional attention but instinctive appreciation ; that whe 
 
 art is of spontaneous growth it is enjoyed as men enjoy outdo( 
 ture, freely, independently, carelessly ; and that the Greeks of the daj 
 Pericles, and the Italians of the time of Leo X., could enjoy Athei 
 d Florence in a less pedantic manner than we do, for whom works < 
 ; are rarities and the beautiful a mere study. 
 
 The opera was the product of requirements different from those i 
 r times ; it was therefore a different thing in itself. In the days > 
 mmelli it was, it is true, undergoing a gradual change, or rather it ws 
 ginning to be affected by that organic change in the art itself which wi 
 complete the evolution of classic music; but the change was as y^ 
 jht, and, above all, the change was solely in the music. The peci 
 rity of the opera of the last century was, as we have said, that it wi 
 lentially classic, as Hegel uses the word: that is to say, that the princ 
 1 aim was a purely artistic, as distinguished from a dramatic or psychi 
 fie one, and that the principal interest lay in the musical form. Tl 
 ly was there to suggest the music, not the music to illustrate tl 
 ly ; the play corresponded to the capabilities and requirements of tl 
 isic, and gradually changed to suit its changes. Now the music of tl 
 st seventy years of the last century, although thoroughly develop! 
 
 point of modulation and of melody, had not yet attained to ft 
 ythmical and orchestral maturity; the fact is, that the great vigour 
 )dulation and melody excluded much rhythm and sonority, and that tl 
 iform, more or less mechanically-marked, rhythm, and the volume ai 
 
 e his rival PaccMerotti: "Man Iiat ihm manchmal in Opern nachgeschriebe 
 jr, trotz der oftmaligen Wiederholung der nehmliclieii Stiicken, waren seine V( 
 
 ierungen unaufhorlich yerschieden. Mein Freund S in L — ^ besitzt eine sole 
 
 mmlnng" (of rifioritwe and cademe taken down during the performance). 
 
134 Tlie Musical Life. 
 
 variety of sound, were employed in proportion as the modulation becami 
 weaker and the melody less massive. Now as long as rhythm anc 
 sonority were in this undeveloped state there was no possibility of any 
 thing beyond the air, or the double air called a duet, besides the recita' 
 tive and the chorus; for the concerted piece, where a lot of small snatches 
 of melody are caught up and carried along by the general rhythm, coulc 
 not exist as long as the rhythm was undeveloped; and as to fugued 
 pieces, where the parts follow each other and cross and combine in a 
 regular and Intricate fashion, they were kept solely for the church and 
 the room, as being unsuitable, from their methodical and artificial con- 
 struction, to the expression of dramatic situations. The consequence 
 was that all the action of the play was transacted in recitative, mostly 
 unaccompanied, and that melody and orchestration were reserved as the 
 expression of mere emotion; of the result, so to speak, of the previous 
 action, not as the expression of that action itself. Nor was this peculiarity 
 at all considered as a disadvantage, for people instinctively recognised, 
 that, while in comedy the interest lies in the joint action, the hubbub and 
 tussle of several characters, the interest of tragedy lies in the emotion of 
 the single characters, emotion more or less solitary although subject 
 to be influenced by the emotion or action of others. While, therefore, 
 rhythmical concerted pieces were gradually being employed in the burletta, 
 the personages of the serious opera stood, musically speaking, alone, or 
 at most in groups of two or three, as the figures stand, sharply defined 
 and separated, in Greek frescoes, from the mere want of that general 
 rhythm of the accompaniment which would press them together, tie them 
 up in balanced groups, as the figures in modern painting are united by 
 means of perspective and effects of light and shade. The personages of a 
 serious opera anterior to 1775, not excepting even those of Gluck, who, 
 despite his efforts at dramatic expression, never hit upon that rhythmical 
 arrangement which, in the humblest burlettas, was already making the 
 music follow the action — the personages of the old serious opera stood 
 united together by a mere recitative, Hke so many statues on a Greek 
 temple : as isolated, but also as individually perfect; for their very isola- 
 tion caused them to be seen closer, to be appreciated more minutely than 
 are the combined figures of a painting, where one hides the other, and 
 many are lost in the deep shade, where you cannot immediately tell whose 
 is that head or whose that drapery; this close scrutiny forced both com- 
 poser and performer to aim at the greatest perfection, at the greatest har- 
 mony between the feeling and the expression, at the greatest grandeur of 
 outlines, at the greatest finish of details. 
 
 The art was ffisthetically mature, though, perhaps, like Greek sculpture, 
 dramatically as yet undeveloped; the songs of the Italian and German 
 masters up to the time of Paisiello and Cimarosa are so many single artistic 
 
The Musical Life. 13' 
 
 ems, each in its own style ; like the Giustiniani Minerva, the Amazon o 
 'olyclete, the Discobolus of Myron, the Faun of Praxiteles, they losi 
 othing by being remoTsd from their niche, from that connecting frame 
 ork of recitative, itself grandly simple. We, who have enjoyed th( 
 ondrous musical pictures of Mozart, where form melts into form anc 
 roup succeeds group, united by the light and shade of the accompaniment 
 e moderns should truly not be satisfied with those series of perfect soli- 
 iry gods and goddesses and demigods of the operas of Handel, of Per- 
 olesi, of Jommelli, of Gluck; but the men of the eighteenth century were 
 nd if we consider what splendid and lovely forms those were we need nc 
 Dmpassionate their ignorance. 
 
 Dr. Burney heard another new opera at Naples, a little burletta callec 
 le Trame per Amove, by a young man named Giovanni Paisiello. Bur- 
 ey had never before heard of him, but he was delighted with this litth 
 irce, so full of life, of easy melody, of coquetry, of passages so simple anc 
 asily remembered ; and perhaps the Doctor was not without an instinci 
 iUing him, that, while an old artificially maintained style was dying oui 
 1 the full pomp of Jommelli's opera at S. Carlo, a new power in music 
 as rising up with Paisiello's burletta at the shabby little Teatro Nuovo 
 power which was destined to triumph before ten years were out, anc 
 hich, while it for ever precluded the production of a Judas Maccahceus 
 n Olimpiade, or an Orpheus, would give the world a Matrimonio Segreto 
 Marriag^f Figaro, and a Don Giovanni.* 
 
 After Jommelli's new opera — for only lazzaroni and low folk as ye 
 signed to notice Paisiello's — what most attracted Burney's curiosity ii 
 faples were the famous music schools : Sanf Onofrio, the Pieta de 
 \rchini, and S. Maria di Loreto, which, like the four conservatori ai 
 "enice, had been founded towards the close of the sixteenth century, anc 
 ad afforded gratuitous musical education to boys and young men m 
 le Venetian ones did to girls. The difference in the sex of the pupils 
 instituted the only main difference ; but it was a very important one, 
 ir, whereas the girls mostly married and disappeared into private life 
 ily a very few becoming professionals, the boys developed into the mosi 
 
 * The comic operas of this school are tolerably in keeping with the requirements 
 onr day ; the Matrimonio Segreto of Cimarosa (bom 1749, died 1801), and the 
 
 ariiere di S'mglia of Paisiello (1741-1816), have both been performed in Italj 
 tie latter shamefully and without any success) during the last two years; but the 
 rious operas of the same day, the Orazi of Cimarosa, the Pirro of Paisiello, the 
 lemema di Tito of Mozart, are entirely incompatible with our present (good oi 
 ,d) opera habits, on account of the absence of action, the incoherent effect produced 
 
 • light and idyllic music (suited to comedy), adapted to very tragic words, and 
 xtly also the chief male part being -written, as in all serious operas of the 18th 
 ntury, for a soprano or contralto voice, a habit extending to Rossini's day. 
 
136 The Musical Life. 
 
 famous composers and performers in Italy. In the Venetian schools, 
 therefore, music was regarded as an accomplishment forming part of 
 a liberal education, while in the Neapolitan conservatori it was taught 
 essentially and almost exclusively as a profession. Now as Naples had, 
 during the first half of the eighteenth century, been the focus of Italian 
 musical life, its music schools had necessarly become most important in 
 the history of the art. The elder and greater Scarlatti had taught in 
 them; Porpora, Leo, Durante had been educated and taught there, them- 
 selves forming such pupils as Pergolesi, Vinci, Jommelli, Piccinni, and 
 Sacchini; while at the same time a great proportion of the finest singers 
 of the day were trained under their care, as the immense heap of vocal 
 exercises, from the most rudimentary to the most complicated ones, by 
 all the great Neapolitan masters, abundantly proves. The music schools 
 of Naples were consequently far more important, if less curious, than the 
 Venetian ones. Who could tell how many embryo geniuses there might not 
 be among those sallow little urchins, promenaded about by twos, like semi- 
 narists, in their coloured cassocks and sashes and symbolical leading-strings? 
 What wonderful voices might not be resounding in those dreary, white- 
 washed convent-like rooms ? What new musical glory might be developing 
 in those schools, so venerable for their memories of past splendour? So 
 Dr. Burney naturally thought, and impatiently asked leave to visit these 
 wonderful establishments. But the Neapolitans somewhat damped his 
 ardour; they looked modest, and hummed and hah'd about their conser- 
 vatori, while Jommelli and Piccinni, who had themselves been educated in 
 them, shrugged their shoulders and warned the Englishman not to let 
 himself be run away with by his expectations. All this Dr. Bm-ney 
 interpreted as mere modesty, true or false ; as the indifference of men 
 long accustomed to musical supremacy, or as the peevishness of the 
 praisers of past days. He visited the conservatori S. Onofrio, S. Maria 
 di Loreto, the Pieta dei Turchini, each and all; went over every part of 
 the establishment, listened to every class, vocal and instrumental, and 
 followed the pupils to their public performances at churches and con- 
 vents; did all, in short, which can be done by a man who cannot well 
 believe his own senses, and tries to wake out of a sort of nightmare. 
 No, it was all of no avail; there could be no delusion, no mistake; it 
 was as clear as day, visible, audible, undeniable, irrefutable, that in not 
 one of the conservatori of Naples could there be discovered a talented 
 composer, a fine-throated singer, a well-taught instrumentalist, a single 
 piece of good music. The schools where Scarlatti, Porpora, Durante, 
 and Leo had taught, — where Pergolesi, Jommelli, Piccinni, Caffariello, 
 Gizziello, all the greatest of Neapolitan composers and singers had learned, 
 — those famous unrivalled schools were now filled with ill-taught, untrained 
 mediocrities; composers without originality, singers without voice; mu- 
 
The Musical Life. 137 
 
 ians as raw and inferior as a musical country and a musical time could 
 11 produce. 
 
 What could it mean ? asked Burney. Did the State give less money 
 the maintenance of the establishments? No. Had Neapolitan masters 
 grated elsewhere ? No. "Was there any rational explanation of this 
 traordinary decay ? No one could afford any. The more philosophical 
 ubtless remarked that such phenomena are inexplicable, being, in the 
 od language of the eighteenth century, so Ta&rq freahs of Nature. But 
 ) additional experience of a century has taught us moderns that Nature 
 the least freakish, prankish, or whimsical of creatures ; but, on the 
 itrary, the most matter-of-faot, economical, and practical of beings ; 
 i it has also shown us why the Neapolitan schools had become sterile, 
 e reason was simple: they had produced enough ; they had done their 
 rk ; they might cease to exist. A very ungracious mode of proceeding ; 
 t Nature, in her wise niggardliness, by no means shrinks from unkind- 
 3S. She had used Italy, and more especially Naples, and in Naples 
 ist particularly those three schools, as the mechanism by which music 
 s to be made to traverse the second great phase of artistic life, the 
 ssic one, the one during which the art is no longer subordinate to some 
 ;erior aim, like the religious aim, as in the phase rightly designated 
 Hegel the symbolical ; and when the art has not yet gradually been 
 erted to some other likewise unartistic aim, such as those of dramatic 
 3ct or scientific suggestion, as in the third or romantic stage; the 
 ond phase when art exists literally for art's own sake; when men ask 
 )nly for the beautiful ; when it stands in full independence. Now this 
 ssic phase — being in fact merely the time when art has become capable 
 interesting by its own sole force, of riveting attention without borrowed 
 s, and before it has become unable thus fully to satisfy the mind 
 jinning to require artificial and foreign stimulant — this classic phase 
 uires a peculiar combination of circumstances. Like some splendid 
 nt, it needs for its efflorescence a peculiar atmosphere, a peculiar 
 iperatjire ; like the plant, also, it requires that its roots should be in 
 ! spot and should strike into the lowest layers of soil: " Et quantum 
 tice ad auras Ktherias, tantum radice in Tartara tendit;" it must be 
 ntaneous, national, and popular; it must be born of period, of a nation 
 I of every class of that nation ; it must grow naturally, freely, un- 
 sciously, because it must grow in the most favourable of circum- 
 Qces. Such a phase is of short duration — short, at least, when we think 
 t an art lives not years but centuries. In ancient Greece it lasted 
 le three hundred years; in the Eenaissance barely fifty; in its last 
 tance, the one we have been treating of, scarcely five generations of 
 sts, from Carissimi to Cimarosa.* In 1770, the classic period of 
 
 * Carissimi died in 1672; Cimarosa in 1801. 
 
138 ' The Musical Life. 
 
 music, the period of music for music's own sake, and of perfectly spon 
 taneous national growth, was fast coming to a close; music in this sens 
 classic had only one more stage to pass through before gradually declininj 
 into romanticism; the stage represented hy Mozart, Cimarosa, and Pai 
 siello. Now Paisiello was already nearly thirty, Mozart was fifteen 
 Cimarosa eighteen ; the minor masters, Guglielmi, Sarti, Sacchini, wer 
 still older; the men and women who were to perform for these master 
 were also well nigh mature. The younger musicians, therefore, yet childrei 
 in the conservatori, were destined to actiyity about the year 1800, exact! 
 the moment when classic music melted into nothing, when Italy ceasei 
 to be spontaneously creative; they were to be those weak and barrel 
 composers, those slaves of first sopranos, as Hoffman called them, o 
 whom Zingarelli, Paer, Pavesi, and Portogallo were the gloriously in 
 glorious leaders; they were to be those abnormally wretched singers 
 mere apes of former styles, who were destined to bring Italian song int( 
 disrepute and to call forth Eossini's sudden abolition of all vocal licences 
 in short, they were to be the men employed by fate to publish to thi 
 whole world that truly classic music was dead, that the real artistic energ; 
 of Italy was well nigh exhausted, and that it was time for romanticisn 
 to arise, to render art cosmopolitan, eclectic, and to restore its influenci 
 by making it appeal to men's love of excitement, of the new and of thi 
 scientific. Some persons, nay many, nay perhaps most, from that momen 
 date the real existence of music, at least of the music which will last 
 and Hegel, we know, distinctly said that music was essentially a romanti( 
 art, which only means that it thrives best when not cultivated solely fo: 
 its own sake, and that it is most valuable in the days when composeri 
 aim at scenic effects and philological distinctions; when they build uj 
 their works out of the fragments left by various preceding generations 
 to the accompaniment of a chorus of critics ; when art is born spon 
 taneously nowhere, but exists equally artificially everywhere; when, there 
 fore^ composers who are putting together forms originally created b; 
 Italians talk loudly of German music, and Italians, who have learned al 
 their newest tricks from Germans, cry out that foreign music should bi 
 banished; when, in short, criticism and eclecticism are playing at th 
 game of original creation. Perhaps this may be the case, perhaps cul 
 tured people are right to like only the music of their cultured century; w 
 do not dispute it ; all we can say is that with these cultured days an( 
 this eclectic music we have at present nothing to do, for with them end 
 what we have been ti-ying to reconstruct — the musical life of Italy in th 
 eighteenth century, as Dr. Burney saw it one hundred and ten years ago 
 
 Of all this strange movement in the future Dr. Burney of course neve 
 dreamed; and he left Naples for England, highly delighted with Italiai 
 
The Musical Life. 139 
 
 iio, unable to explain that odd little decay in the conservatori, and little 
 ssing that in forty years all that musical life would have vanished, all 
 t musical supremacy would have ceased, and that the works of Mar- 
 0, of Jommelli, of Piccinni, of Galuppi, nay, even of Paisiello and 
 larosa, would have been thrown aside by generations asking for a new 
 it in art, for more vehement emotions and more violent sensations. 
 
 iVe shut the old, brown, calf-bound volume of Dr. Burney's musical 
 r, and lay it down on the oaken table. The evening sunlight, rosy and 
 Jen, is gilding the red brick belfry of S. Giacomo Maggiore, the grass 
 the quiet little cloister court, the brown fittings of the cosy library of 
 Bolognese music school. We tie up the bursting portfolios of old 
 its, we replace the ill-sewn, musty-smelling music books on their accus- 
 led shelves ; we close the cardboard box of yellow, shrunken letters, 
 [ we take our leave. In going away we pause a moment in the vast, 
 ilted, desolate refectory, where our steps re-echo as in a church ; the 
 y twilight is slowly filling the place, and from out of it faintly appear 
 rows and rows of portraits: Marcello, stately and sad in his patrician 
 es ; Jommelli, heavy and bowed ; Farinelli, strange and weird in his 
 ghtly mantle of Calatrava ; Pergolesi, sweet and mournful ; and the 
 ay others, more forgotten than they, dignified composers at their harp- 
 lords, dapper and sentimental singers holding their scores, men and 
 nen in plush, and satin, and powder, and buckle wigs, once famous, 
 f forgotten. Dimmer and dimmer do they grow in the twilight, till 
 y melt into the colourless uniformity of the walls, 
 ^e turn away, descend the dark tortuous staircase, cross through the 
 ck lobby with its sputtering shrine-lamp, and pull the iron bar of the 
 iking door. 
 
 Outside there is the pearly light of evening ; the old bricks of the 
 thic palaces glimmer with rosy hues, and at the end of the long row of 
 k arcades is the purple and golden glory of the sun setting over the 
 en plain of Lombardy. There is rumbling of carts, and clicking of 
 sers' hammers from beneath the old leaning towers, and clanking of 
 cers' swords, and clatter of glasses, and strum of guitars, and laughter 
 n the open coffee-houses ; but we pass heedlessly through the bustle of 
 summer evening, threading our way almost mechanically through the 
 wded streets, silent and absent, our thoughts still bent upon that dead, 
 gotten world of art, which has faded away, even as the last streaks of 
 nson are now fading in the grey evening sky. 
 
METASTASIO AND THE OPERA 
 
METASTASIO AND THE OPEEA. 
 
 On the 28tli of January, 1750, the Abate Pietro Metastasio, Imperis 
 lourt Poet of Austria, scribbled off in a letter to the Cavalier Brosch 
 )urt singer and royal favourite of Spain, a page of mock biography 
 3ginning thus: "In the eighteenth century there lived a certain Abat 
 [etastasio, a tolerable poet among bad ones." 
 
 The Abate Metastasio was in high spirits that day ; he had jus 
 iceived a present of snuff, chocolate, and quinine; he had been give 
 apes of obtaining some hundred doubloons of pension, and he had hear 
 lat the Queen of Spain declared him to be the greatest poet of the ag« 
 
 conjunction of agreeable things which made him burst out into 
 ithyranib of frolicsome nonsense crowned by mock humility, by tl 
 ipreme drollery of calling himself a tolerable poet among bad ones. 
 
 The notion was certainly a very funny one, and certainly must ha^ 
 lade everyone laugh very much ; yet, by a strange irony of fate, th: 
 idgment, scribbled in a moment of buffooneiy, is the very one which th 
 iture was destined to pronounce over Pietro Metastasio, expressed wit 
 le would-be leniency of candid criticism. For the fame of Metastasi 
 as undergone singular vicissitudes ; the Italians of to-day mention h: 
 ame with a contemptuous smile and a contemptuous shrug, often with 
 ietorical mixture of pity and taunt, of stinted praise and restrains 
 buse ; yet scarce a hundred years ago that name was famous throughov 
 Europe, adored in Italy ; those much-reviled works were in every man 
 lemory, in many men's hearts, and on all men's shelves. Metastasio wi 
 etted by kings and empresses and popes, and looked up to like a sort i 
 rophet by his countrymen; while Voltaire, the sneerer at all thinj 
 n-French. said that he was greater than the Greeks, equal to Corneil 
 rhen Corneille was not declamatory, and to Eacine when Eacine was m 
 isipid; and Eousseau, the denouncer of false sentiment and pastor; 
 frism, declared that he was the only living poet who was a poet of tl 
 eart. 
 
 Was Metastasio unworthy of the admiration of the past? — is 1 
 .eserving of the contempt of the present? At once both and neither; fo 
 
144 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 while his century admired him for what were sometimes faults, our owi 
 times yet oftener despise him for what are in truth his merits ; thi 
 eighteenth century praised him because he belonged to the eighteentl 
 century, which was often his misfortune; the nineteenth century deridei 
 him because he does not belong to the nineteenth centuiy, which is mosi 
 often his advantage. Metastasio was great because he wrote not tragediei 
 but operas, at a time and in a country in which the opera was the dramati( 
 form spontaneously created and appreciated by the whole nation, whih 
 the tragedy was the dramatic form artificially elaborated and eclecticall] 
 enjoyed by a few men of letters; because he never shrank from the faults 
 which were- inherent in the style which belonged to his day, and strov( 
 only after the beauty which it could afford, instead of pruning awaj 
 inevitable defects and seeking for unattainable merits like his great rival 
 the fastidious, faultless, pleasureless Alfieri; Metastasio was great because 
 his position as court poet placed at his disposal the best tragic actors ol 
 his day, its singers, while Alfieri, the disdainful amateur, was forced tc 
 seek his Brutus and his Antigone among the harlequins and columbines 
 of the comic stage; Metastasio was great because, being himself weal 
 and characterless, his unerring instinct, his psychological imagination, 
 was free to create the most varied and well-defined types, while Alfier 
 made his men and women only a curtailed and lifeless copy of his owe 
 strong self. But music, as it became more boldly multiform, manglec 
 Metastasio's plays, and finally wholly rejected them, so that at lengtl 
 they disappeared from every stage in Italy. The position of Courl 
 librettist at Vienna became a source of contempt and hatred when nationa' 
 liberty and independence were once more sighed for. The feebleness ol 
 Metastasio's own nature, when once known to the public, raised againsi 
 his works a suspicion of effeminate hypocrisy; in short, the causes of his 
 true greatness, of his deserved fame, became in time the causes of neglecl 
 and scorn, both totally undeserved and perfectly unintelhgible neglecl 
 and scorn, which will last till criticism shall have taught us that a mear 
 man may be a greater poet than a noble one, and that a faulty product ol 
 a whole time and nation is more valuable than a faultless fabric of eclectic 
 refinement. 
 
 I. 
 
 One evening in the summer or winter, no one remembers which, of th( 
 year 1709, two wearers of the grave black cloak of priests and scholars 
 the Abate Gian Yincenzo Gravina, of Hellenistic and legal fame, an( 
 famous also for his revolution in the Arcadian Academy, and his frien( 
 the satirist and critic Lorenzini, were strolling about in the heart o 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 1 
 
 Rome, when they perceived a crowd collected in the Piazza dei Cesar 
 between the bridge of S. Angelo and the Farnese Palace. On approa 
 iug, they found that the people were collected round a little boy, w 
 perched upon a curbstone, was singing extemporary verses. The cl 
 was pretty, his voice was beautiful, the verses followed each other T( 
 singular facility. Gravina and Lorenzini remained standing and lister 
 and were more and more astonished at the ease and grace of the imp 
 visation. The boy, on his part, perceiving the scholarly gentlemen \ 
 had joined his audience of artisans, beggars, and street children, tur 
 towards them and extemporised some lines of thanks and of excuse; t 
 he continued to sing his verses and they to listen. When he had cea 
 and the crowd had dispersed, the two literati called the boy to them, ; 
 asked him who he was and what he did. His name was Pietro Bo 
 ventm-a Trapassi, son of Felice Trapassi, druggist and macaroni-selle 
 the neighbouring Via dei Cappellari; he was eleven years old, hav 
 been born on January 6, 1698, and had two sisters and one brother, 
 father had sent him to a day-school, where he had been taught read 
 and writing. Gravina was struck with the child, and bade him c( 
 next morning to his house in Via Giulia, over the Ghapel of the Soffraj 
 Then the two scholars went their way, while the boy ran home to tell 
 good news. 
 
 Felice Trapassi, descended from an honourable family of Assisi 
 Umbria, had served as a private in the Pope's Guard, ostensibly d 
 posed of Corsicans, but recniited in reality among the riff-raff of all p; 
 of Italy; he had been a thrifty man, and, on marrying a Bolognese ca 
 Francesca Galasti, he had set up a little shop of flour, maccaroni, oil, dri 
 tallow-candles, soap, and that curious variety of things designated 
 the Eomans as White Art. He had, by some means or other, probt 
 the patronage of some great cook or valet, obtained the inestimi 
 honour of having his younger son nominally carried to the font by 
 very handsome, dissolute, and art-loving Cardinal Pietro Ottob 
 nephew of a preceding Pope; but, beyond permitting his name to 
 entered in the parish register of SS. Lorenzo e Damaso, his Emin( 
 appears to have done but little either for father or son., Felice Trap 
 was therefore much pleased at the expectation of some small prei 
 which the rich and learned Gravina would doubtless make his boy. 
 the next morning Pietro Trapassi was dressed in holiday clothes, 
 sent to the house of the great jurist and scholar. The Abate Gra' 
 was still better pleased with the little poet, so pleased that either \ 
 or soon after he asked Felice Trapassi to give him the boy that he m: 
 educate him as his son. Gravina was rich, learned, and famous; 
 offer opened the way to a far higher career of fortune than coulc 
 dreamed of for his child by the ex-soldier and druggist; he accepted. 
 
146 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 This is the authorised narration of the strange chance which turned 
 Pietro Trapassi into Pietro Metastasio, a druggist into a poet; it is 
 probably not absolutely correct, but yet relatively true, compressing into 
 one or two striking scenes what was certainly a matter of days and weeks, 
 possibly even of months. The Abate Gravina, though only nominally a 
 priest, was unmarried, his sole near relative being his old mother; he 
 had a number of pupils, young men and boys, whom he was preparing 
 for a legal or classical career; it is probable that he had at first merely 
 admitted Pietro Trapassi to some of his lessons, and that gradually and 
 slowly, as the boy developed in undoubted talents, he took him into his 
 house and adopted him as a son; for he likewise took charge of the 
 education of Felice Trapassi's elder son Leopoldo, less gifted and less 
 insinuating than his brother. Be it as it may, Pietro Trapassi had not 
 yet completed his twelfth year when he was entirely settled in Gravina's 
 house, lodged, fed, clothed, and taught by the famous man. Giovanni 
 Vincenzo Graviaa was between forty and fifty, a tall, spare, handsome 
 man, prematurely bent and pale from study and from discontent; among 
 the dull, benevolent, cringing pedants of his day he stands out almost like 
 the ghost of some old humanist of the times of Poggio or Valla. He had 
 the intense, blind, sterilising love of antiquity of the men of the fifteenth 
 century, their boldness restrained by servile imitation, 'their scepticism, 
 their bitterness, and their inordinate and morbid vanity; the people of 
 his time, even his most intimate friends and warmest admirers, thought 
 him disagreeable and eccentric; the rest of the literary world looked upon 
 him with suspicion and aversion, and pasquinade and calumny were 
 showered on him. He hated all things modern, and, like the Hellenists 
 of the Renaissance, was discontented even with his own name, which he 
 changed from John into Janus.* The name of his two pupils, the 
 druggist's sons of the Via dei Cappellari, offended him beyond measure, 
 and he lost no time in seeking a Greek equivalent or approximation to 
 the plebeian and modern Trapasso. The substitute he hit upon was 
 elegant, scholarly, sonorous, well fitted to become famous ; — it was Metas- 
 tasio. 
 
 The name represented the fact; Pietro Trapassi, the son of the Arte 
 Bianca dealer, had entirely ceased to exist; there remained only Pietro 
 Metastasio, the adopted son of the greatest of Eoman jurists. To the 
 Via dei Cappellari the boy never returned except on a visit; his brother 
 was permitted to be present at his lessons, and thus remained somewhat 
 of a companion ; but from his father, his mother, and his sisters, he became 
 
 * Olan is a common Italian contraction for Giovanni, especially when followed by 
 such a name as Vincenzo, but that Gravina took it deliberately is evident from his 
 styling himself, in his own Latin, not Johannes but Janus. 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 14 
 
 aily more alienated. He lived in a pleasant house, ate off Gravina 
 andsome plate, studied out of costly books, dressed elegantly as a litt 
 riest, and associated with the well-horn, or at least well-educated, lac 
 fhom Gravina was bringing up. He was taken to literary assemhlii 
 a the houses of nobles and prelates; he had the honour of improvisin 
 lefore cardinals and princesses ; he was handsome, bright, winning ; ever 
 ne approved Gravina's choice in adopting the little poet. His carei 
 ly ready mapped out: he would become a great scholar and legal authorii 
 ike his master, exercising poetry only as an elegant pastime. Gravii 
 rould push him on in the law, he would take orders, become auditor 
 he Eota, pontifical advocate, prelate, cardinal, who knows what ? 
 ras a splendid present and a splendid future, but it had its drawback 
 Che child, taken out of the society of his old comrades the street-boy 
 estrained by the trammels of unaccustomed gentility, decorum, and stud 
 xammed with book pedantry by a protector impatient to enjoy the frui 
 >f his munificence, stiffened in the society of literary celebrities ar 
 Lcademic dignitaries, shown off as a poetical wonder before every big] 
 )orn or learned idiot who asked to hear him, was living in an intellectu 
 lothouse, and undergoing the most intense intellectual cultivation, 
 )rder that he might sooner burst into flower and gratify his patror 
 ranity. He was growing into a pale, stunted; priggish piece of precocil 
 rain and conceited from the general applause, timid and depressed fro 
 ;he sense that such applause was the price required by Gravina, wl 
 lad adopted him mainly as a means of satisfying his greed for prais 
 Metastasio was declining in bodily and mental health when Gravi: 
 ivas suddenly called by business to his native Calabria, whither he co 
 iucted his dear, precious, stunted, applause-obtaining pupil. Passii 
 through Naples he could not resist thp desire of showing off Metastas 
 before the many legal and scholastic celebrities of the place, among who] 
 perhaps unnoticed, and contrasting strangely with the complacent ai 
 prosaic commentators on the Pandects and St. Thomas, was the gre 
 Vico, seeing dimly, chaotically, with the half-mad enthusiasm of a prophi 
 that great field of philosophic history which Montesquieu and Herd 
 were first to open to us. Before these great men, great men most 
 long forgotten' and not worth remembering, Gravina made Metastas 
 improvise eighty stanzas at a sitting, and then left Naples triumphant. 
 But Metastasio was exhausted, and when they got to Calabria it w 
 necessary to leave him there, less to study than to recruit his strengi 
 under the care of Gravina's cousin Gregorio Caroprese, at a place call 
 Scalea. After the dark Via Giulia, the narrow Eoman streets, t 
 dismal academic rooms, Oaroprese's house struck Metastasio as a si 
 of paradise; sixty years later he spoke with vivid pleasure of the lit 
 room in which the breaking of the sea against the rocks had lulled h 
 
 l2 
 
148 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 to sleep, of the boats in which he had rowed about, of the boys with whom 
 he had studied, of his teacher's little dog, of the good old Caroprese, the 
 gentle and amiable pedant, who would jestingly teach him logic and amuse 
 him with optical and chemical experiments ; a world of study, serene and 
 happy, so different from the dead classic world of Gravina, in which 
 nothing lived save bitter vanity. And even Gravina had to relent ; he 
 had to cede to the remonstrances of the charming blue-stocking sister of 
 Prince Pinelli di Sangro, of that strong, warm-hearted, intelligent woman, 
 to whom, when she had become the Princess Belmonte Pignatelli, Metas- 
 tasio was to owe so much ; he forbade Metastasio ever again improvising 
 a line, — a great sacrifice from a man who had seen him improvising with 
 Eolli and Perfetti, the most famous of extemporary poets, and had heard 
 him complimented by the pompous old humpbacked Pindar Guidi. Gra- 
 vina also moderated the study of Greek and Latin ; he forbade all scribbling 
 of verses ; he was beginning to see that his desire for immediate success 
 might lose him the pleasure of his pupil's final triumph. Still the life in 
 Via Giulia was much the same ; the same studies, the same academic 
 amusements, the same solemn philosophic banquets, the same lectures, the 
 same squabbles, inuendoes, satires, and other literary violences ; while 
 Gravina grew more bent, more pale, more sickly, more consumed by 
 unsatisfied vanity and bitterness as his great Arcadian schism came to 
 nothing, as his adherents abandoned him for his rivals, as his tragedies 
 remained unsold at the booksellers, as his satirist Lodovico Sergardi 
 became fiercer and fiercef, and. even his friend Martello jested blandly over 
 poor, learned, intelligent, eloquent, conceited, ill-tempered Gravina's 
 eccentricities. Gravina was also intellectually difficult to deal with : 
 broad as were some of his views, and intelligent as were some of his 
 criticismsj he was often narrow-minded, not in accordance with the ideas 
 of his times, but in obedience to a captious character. Antiquity was his 
 idol, but antiquity cramped and warped by his appreciation, antiquity 
 rather negative than positive, stiff, cold, subtle, as suited the scholar who 
 hated everything the world enjoyed, who despised love, and scorned women, 
 in his bitter revolt from the pomp and gallantry, the effeminate pastoralisnis, 
 of the dying seventeenth century. The Italian language he found weak, 
 the Italian poets childish — Ariosto alone found grace in his eyes ; Tasso 
 h« abhorred and tried to annihilate by praising his stiff rival Trissino. 
 Gravina was constitutionally in contradiction with his times, and his 
 conceit and obstinacy rendered him doubly contradictory. " You must 
 concur in every one of his opinions ; praise him, and he will love yoa like 
 a son," wrote Martello about him. During Metastasio's boyhood, wliile 
 Gravina looked down upon him in undiminished majesty, before he had 
 had opportunities of comparing his judgments with those of others, and 
 testing his likings by his own ; while he was but a poor little feelingless. 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 idealless scholar, Metastasio probably regarded Gravina as a god : 
 concurred in his judgments spontaneously, unhesitatingly, and blindly, 
 
 It was in this stage of his intellectual existence that Metastasio wi 
 his first work, the play of Giustino. The story is that he worked at i 
 night, fearing his master's displeasure, and that Gravina discovered 
 manuscript only when completed. This may be, but the play is wri1 
 distinctly in Gravina's shadow: the story is taken from the Italia Liber 
 of his favourite Trissino ; the action is so to speak none ; the speec 
 are immeasurably long, pompous, and dull ; the choruses, the best j 
 of the performance, are painfully copied from the moralising lyrics 
 antiquity : it is a tidy patchwork, made up by a boy who sees only 
 shell of the antique, to whom Seneca is as strong as Sophocles, and Lu 
 as grand as Homer ; awe-stricken before the Elzevir and Aldine class 
 pleased with the polish and sentiment of the courtly French, utt 
 without experience of character and passion ; thinking he understa 
 and admires, merely because he has never felt the true nor seen 
 beautiful. Such is Giustino. Gravina was pleased with it, got it appro 
 by his friends, and finally had it printed, probably after it had benefii 
 by hia revision. '.,f 
 
 This was Metastasio's attitude towards Gravina when still a boy ; 
 it not undergo a change as the boy grew into a young man ? Did 
 the Armida of Tasso, with whom he became acquainted in some clandes 
 way, sedueyhini from allegiance to dull old Trissino ? Did not L 
 and Calderon, devoured in stealth, open a world of movement and pass 
 unknown to Seneca and Gravina ? Did not some opera or mask com( 
 which he saw muffled up and hidden in the pit of the Aliberti or Fa 
 corda, give him a glimpse of splendour and humour, of living art 
 opposed to dead erudition ? Did not some face he may have seen, s( 
 word he may have heard, suggest that the world contained other thi 
 besides Aldines and Elzevirs, that there was more than was known of 
 the omniscient Gravina ? Surely all this must have happened ; sureb 
 Metastasio grew up, and questioned others and questioned himself, s( 
 doubt, some sneer, must have crossed his mind respecting his mast 
 dogmas ; surely ie must have begun to feel that reaction against 
 antique, that distrust and aversion of its pedant-expounded masterpie 
 which to the last prevented his seeing more than a barbarian in .iEschi 
 and an obscene jester in Aristophanes. And then, did he cease to pr 
 Gravina ? Did he fail to concur in all he said ? No, for Gravina loved 1 
 like a son to the last. When we think of Gravina's character, of Gravii 
 ideas, and of Metastasio's position of total dependence upon him, we 
 inclined to think that the accident which made Metastasio's literary gr 
 ness possible rendered almost inevitable the pusillanimity of his life. C 
 vina's education taught Metastasio not only a hypocritical love for an un 
 
150 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 able man, but a cowardly acceptance of opinions not his own. A great benefit 
 may ennoble a strong nature, which can be both grateful and independent; 
 it can but degrade a weak character, leading it to servility or ingratitude. 
 
 Gravina's worries and bitternesses, his total humiliation in his contest 
 with his stupid rival Crescimbeni, the ill-success of his literary under- 
 takings, the inuendoes of enemies accusing him of irreligion and what 
 not, finally determined him to leave Eome and to seek for success at 
 Turin, whither he was invited by the King of Sardinia. But it was too 
 late : his constitution was broken down, and he died unexpectedly, pre- 
 maturely, humbling himself before his adversaries in his last moments, 
 and regaining while dying the sympathies he had disdained during his 
 life. To his old mother he left all his Neapolitan property; to his 
 beloved pupil Metastasio all the remainder of his considerable fortune. 
 
 Metastasio wrote off several letters, telling, in a half stilted, half 
 trepidating style, the death of his master and his good fortune ; he paid 
 Gravina's little accounts, arranged the legal affairs, gave the materials 
 for an obituary notice to one of Crescimbeni's Arcadians, wrote a solemn, 
 constrained, obscure, but not unpoetical elegy on the death of his master, 
 and read it among general applause at the meeting of the Arcadian 
 Academy; and then, having performed his duties, looked round him. 
 
 Here he was, the penniless son of the druggist, suddenly in possession 
 of a house, furniture, much valuable plate, a tine library, three lucrative 
 hereditary offices, several bonds of Neapolitan investments, the whole 
 amounting to upwards of 15,000 scudi, about 4,000Z. • It was a good 
 fortune for a man of letters, and more than enough to secure a successful 
 legal career. But Metastasio was only twenty ; the idea of further 
 drudgery displeased him; he had, four years previous, taken the minor 
 orders requisite to hold ecclesiastical benefices, and he determined to 
 obtain some employment about the Pontifical Court, and while waiting 
 for it to amuse himself. So Metastasio, very young, very handsome, 
 very clever, entered the world of the frivolous, gallant, though ecclesias- 
 tical, city. He was successful: he pleased everyone; he was witty, tender, 
 elegant, a poet, and moreover a rich one; he led the life of a smart secular 
 priest, going to balls, theatres, villas, throwing his money about lavishly 
 in every sort of dissipation save gaming, from which his placid, timid 
 nature shrank. He was a favourite with ladies of all ranks, for whom he 
 wrote such pretty affected pieces of gallantry as his canzonet, " Gia riede 
 Primavera," * and the two graceful cantatas in which he offered snuff and 
 chocolate to candid nymphs in hoops, ribbons, and long stomachers. His 
 godfather, the handsome Cardinal Ottobini, whom he so strangely re- 
 
 * Exquisitely set, sixty years later, by Paisiello as the lesson-piece in the Barhiere 
 di SivigUa. 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. L 
 
 sembled in effeminate good looks, introduced him to the great eccle 
 astioal world, — ostentatious, worldly, immoral, and insincere, — in whi 
 he hoped to make his way by dint of smiles, flatteries, and bribes. 
 
 Thus things went brilliantly in the midst of amusements, gallantrii 
 and applause; but the ecclesiastical situation was not forthcoming, a: 
 after a couple of years, on examining into his finances, Metastasio fou: 
 them in a deplorable condition. The hope of a sinecure was gone wi 
 the money that could buy it; the certainty of steady advancement in t 
 law had been trifled away in idleness ; friends and protectors vanishe 
 creditors began to rise up, flirtations became subjects of jealousy; Roi 
 grew hateful to Metastasio ; he was sick of dissipation, fearful of wai 
 longing for change. He sold the house, plate, and most of the books, a 
 set off for Naples, Gravina's home and the home of legal pursuits; po( 
 but determined to work, somewhere in the year 1720. 
 
 As he had received only the beginning of a legal education frc 
 Gravina, Metastasio apprenticed himself to a distinguished Neapolit 
 lawyer, called Gastagnola, as whose clerk he began to work. Tl 
 Castagnola was a hard, sensible man of business ; he had heard 
 Metastasio's idle life in Rome, of his reputation as a drawing-room poi 
 he probably expected but little real work from the young man, and, 
 way of keeping him to his studies, he extorted a promise that he shoi: 
 completely abstain from any reading or writing of verses. Metastas 
 afraid of poverty, tried to follow his employer's advice; but a little poei 
 he did write, probably behind his back, a canzonet to the pretty you; 
 daughter of the famous philosopher Vico, of which Castagnola could i 
 be expected to hear; and a long grandiloquent poem, stately a 
 sweetish, full of gods, goddesses, and little chubby Cupids, after t 
 style of the Bolognese painters, for the marriage of his noble patronf 
 the Princess Pinelli di Sangro with Prince Belmonte Pignatelli, a nec( 
 sary piece of civility of which the gruff lawyer could not possibly coi 
 plain. Metastasio did not like hard work, he did not like the law, 
 did not like his employer; his temperament required light and elega 
 work, and pleasant easy-mannered people ; still, he continued, f 
 although lazy and self-indulgent, he was the most prudent, the most e 
 cessively prudent, of men. 
 
 One day in the year 1722 a servant of the Viceroy of Naples, Prir 
 Borghese of Sulmona, brings word that his Most Elustrions Excellen 
 desires to speak with the Abate Metastasio, clerk of the Advocj 
 Castagnola. Metastasio, in an agony of surprise and curiosity, burr: 
 to the Viceroy's palace and waits for the mysterious communicatic 
 The Viceroy appears, receives the young man in the most flatteri 
 manner, tells him that he- has had the highest reports of his poeti( 
 powers, probably from the good Princess Belmonte and lier family, a 
 
152 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 asks Metastasio whether he will undertake to write a short play, to 
 sung on the hirthday of the wife of the Emperor Charles VI., then st 
 King of Naples and Sicily. Metastasio is taken aback, hesitates; 1 
 has, it is true, written several such pieces in his days of prosperity : 
 Rome, the Galatea, the Endymion, and others; he feels that he ce 
 succeed ; but he has had experience of the vanity of a poetical caree 
 He fears to displease his employer, Castagnola, by so flagrantly breakir 
 his promise ; he dreads being dragged from his dull but solid professic 
 into the unlucrative,- demoralising habit of writing verses. He would lil 
 to accept, but dares not. The Viceroy inquires into the reasons of h 
 hesitation ; the young man, emboldened by his condescension, explains h: 
 dilemma. Is that all? In that case all is well; his Excellency gives hii 
 his solemn word that not a living soul, not even the composer, the pei 
 formers, no, not even the printer, shall know the authorship of the propose 
 piece ; Metastasio may go and obey his request with perfect tranquiUity ( 
 mind. So Metastasio takes his leave and goes home. During the daytim 
 he copies in Castagnola's office, and only at night, when the sulky un 
 poetical lawyer is asleep, does he venture to work at the play. At lengt 
 it is finished. Metastasio carries it to the Viceroy, and receives from hir 
 fresh protestations of secrecy and two hundred ducats ; and then awaits 
 hidden and safe in his legal den, the reception of his work by the public. 
 
 II. 
 
 Metastasio's new work. The Gardens of the Hesperides, was what peopl 
 in those days called a serenata: a sort of dramatic cantata destined ti 
 celebrate a marriage or a birth, a sort of poetical decoration for a grant 
 entertainment. When, in the first half of the seventeenth century, th^ 
 opera was first transported on to a public stage, the serenata remaine( 
 in the palace, as the oratorio did in the cloister, the two minor develop 
 ments of the musical pageant of which the opera was the highest, mos 
 altered form. While the opera, represented on a large theatre befor 
 every class of society, required a distinct dramatic action, well-definet 
 characters and situations, and above all rapidity of movement,— thi 
 setenata, only half acted and sometimes not acted at all, in a hall or oi 
 a terrace, before an assembly of great folk coming from a wedding, am 
 waiting for a ball or a supper, remained what the earliest melodrama hai 
 been,— a tissue of long speeches, of refined conceits, of florid descriptions 
 like the pastorals of Tasso and Guarini, and the masks of our own Eliza 
 bethan and Jaoobian poets. While the opera turned to account all th( 
 heroic deeds, great love, great murders of antiquity, the serenata require 
 only the slightest mythological theme. In the opera Orestes was ton 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 1 53 
 
 remorse, Cleopatra stormed and imprecated, Caesar strutted and bullied, 
 reek queens calumniated their step-sons, and Persian satraps poisoned 
 eir kings on the bare boards before the roughly-daubed scenes; in the 
 'ermta Galatea and Proserpine, Endyraion and Paris, sauntered about 
 icid like shades in Elysium, sweet and dapper like china shepherds and 
 epherdesses, grandiloquent like dedicatory letters, among the real 
 rubs and flowers in a palace, among the trimmed hedges and triton 
 iintains of a garden, a sort of well-bred, languishing, love-sick Olympus 
 me to entei"tain the greatest folk in the country with their conceits and 
 eir roulades, their cooings and their cadenzas. Metastasio's serenata 
 a serenata like every other, only much better. Venus and Adonis glide 
 out in the gardens of the Hesperides something between the flabby 
 alky divinities of Guido and Albani and the peruked and furbelowed 
 iroes and heroines of an heroic ballet; they sigh and weep, and smile 
 id glow in phrases borrowed from Aminta and the Pastor Fido ; they 
 ove in a pastoral world made up of recollections of Theocritus and 
 irgil, and impressions of formal, artificially sweet French gardens ; 
 ey are at once unnatural and lumbering like a decorative stucco, and 
 lickingly finished like a fan-painting ; they are among the latest pro- 
 icts of the dying seventeenth century, the centuiy of nepotism, of 
 nceits, and of Bernini, when art has fallen to the level of upholstery 
 id poetry has sunk to the level of dedication writing. Still the Orii 
 speridi has great merit : beneath the upholsterer there is an artist — 
 meath the dedication writer a poet ; the play is good in as far as a bad 
 yle will permit it. 
 
 And good it was found by the audience, who heard this graceful nonsense 
 wompanied by the solemn, manly music of the early eighteenth century, 
 drolly unconscious of the discrepancy ; better still did it seem to those 
 lio read the book, prettily ornamented with ban-occo vignettes ; the 
 irse was so good, so clear, so elegant in that time of slovenly inflation, 
 ere was so unmistakable a poetry in the midst of the conventional 
 jurishes, that people began to talk about it and to ask who was the 
 ithor. The composer asked, the actors and actresses asked, the noble 
 dies and gentlemen asked ; but the Viceroy kept his promise, and i1 
 as of no avail. The mystery increased the general curiosity; everj 
 16 tried to discover the author ; some wrote to the Custode Generale 
 Arcadia, but he knew no more than they ; it was all in vain. The 
 ost curious of all these curious people was Signora Marianna Benti, wife 
 ' Signer Domenico Bulgarelli, commonly called La Romanina, who hac 
 mg the part of Venus in the mysterious play. She had been particularly 
 ruck with the piece, and had piqued herself on discovering the author 
 le made inquiries in all quarters; she threw money about freely; a 
 Qgth she found a clue to the secret : a servant of the Viceroy informec 
 
154 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 her that a certain young man, a clerk of the lawyer Castagnola, had had 
 several private interviews with the Viceroy just at the time that the per- 
 formance was proposed, that he had moreover sent to the palace various 
 rolls of manuscript at the very moment that the play began to be learnt. 
 The Eomanina immediately commissioned a friend, who knew Castagnola, 
 to obtain her a piece of his clerk's handwriting, while she, on her side, 
 borrowed from the printer the manuscript of the play. Comparing the 
 two manuscripts, and putting facts together, the ingenious and pertina- 
 cious lady ascertained to her complete satisfaction that the author of the 
 Gardens of the Hesperides was in short no other than the Abatino 
 Metastasio. But she was not satisfied ; her final triumph required that 
 the fact should be confirmed by the author himself. So she induced 
 some friends to take an opportunity of bringing Metastasio to her house 
 without letting him suspect her discovery. 
 
 Signora Marianna Bulgarelli, commonly called La Romanina, was not 
 only one of the most famous Italian actresses and singers, but was well 
 known as a singularly respectable, well-educated, and intelligent woman, 
 whose house was an intellectual centre. Metastasio, therefore, could not 
 resist the invitation. He was taken to one of the Romanina's receptions 
 which was crowded with poets, composers, singers, lawyers, travellers, 
 and the more intelligent nobles. She was no longer young, and had 
 never been beautiful, but she was dignified yet lively, insinuating and 
 clever, one of those women who, without inspiring love, can gain a great 
 ascendency over an intellectual man by the strength of their will and the 
 warmth of their sympathies. She received Metastasio with every degree 
 of courtesy, made him feel very happy, and then suddenly asked him 
 whether he was or was not the author of the Orti Esperidi ; the question 
 was so unexpected and so direct that Metastasio was forced to confess 
 that he was. The Romanina had gained her point ; now that her 
 curiosity was satisfied she might have ceased to care about the poet. 
 But Metastasio had pleased her; he was young, handsome, soft-mannered, 
 and clever ; and perhaps the very effeminacy, the absence of strength 
 of character, which was written in his fair smiling face, rendered him 
 attractive to her. She bade him return to her house, and he did so, 
 finding himself for the first time in his right element. But the Roma- 
 nfia, much as she got to like Metastasio, had, by her thoughtless curiosity, 
 put him into a dangerous position. In a few hours all Naples knew who 
 was the author of the serenata, and the Advocate Castagnola heard it 
 but too early. He was a hard and imperious man, and took Metastasio's 
 breach of faith and subsequent dissimulation all the more ill that he had 
 not before doubted of his implicit obedience. Of the serenata he did not 
 condescend to speak, but began to treat his clerk with the most insulting 
 gruffness. Metastasio cowered before his unspoken anger, and waited 
 
Metastasio and the Opera, 
 
 that it should consume itself, while he resumed his work with grei 
 assiduity, and treated his employer with greater deference than e 
 But the lawyer became daily more unpleasant, and his house intoleri 
 to Metastasio ; in the evening he would go to the Eomanina's receptii 
 and seek consolation in the literary and musical company around her, 
 after some time Castagnola's ill-will and desire to get rid of him g 
 too strong to be'borne. Metastasio appeared at the Eomanina's depres 
 and disconsolate ; she and her husband, whom we see only as her shad 
 pressed him to say what ailed him, and the poor fellow, utterly brol 
 spirited, told the story of his promise, of its violation, and of Castagno 
 wrath. Perhaps the Romanina was sorry, perhaps she was glad ; a< 
 events it was evident that her indiscretion had been the proximate caus 
 Metastasio's losing his employer's good will, and finally his employn: 
 also. Her advice was decided: " Leave that detestable Castagnola ; tl 
 are lots of other lawyers in Naples; another employer will soon be fou 
 meanwhile, get out of his house as soon as possible, and come to n 
 till you be settled." The obedient husband re-echoed her energetic ii 
 tation. Metastasio hated Castagnola's ofSce, he liked the Eomanii 
 drawing-room: the offer was in itself too tempting; the determi 
 temper of his friend entirely broke through any resistance on the par 
 his prudence. Metastasio was weak, ceding to people with strong liki 
 and dislikings whenever fear, stronger than any human will, did 
 command him to resist by means of flight. The Eomanina did not j 
 him time to hesitate, but dispatched her husband to Castagnola's to 
 that Metastasio took, his leave, and to have his luggage instantly tr£ 
 ported to her own house. So, shielded by Signor Domenico Bulgar 
 Metastasio faced the furious Castagnola and meekly departed from 
 lawyer's hated habitation. 
 
 Once fairly established at the Bulgarellis', Metastasio seems to h 
 forgotten all about the necessity of finding another legal employer, oi 
 least, to have postponed the matter indefinitely. For the moment he 
 comfortable and happy; the Eomanina could afford to support him 
 awhile, and neither she nor her husband was in any hurry to get ric 
 him; he could on his side earn a little by writing more serenatas 
 more bridal compositions, now that the Orti Esperidi had given hir 
 name. All was well. The Eomanina, no longer young, childless, 
 coming to the close of her professional career, centred upon him all 
 energetic interest, all the passionate affection, of her intense nature; t 
 she did so was her pride, and she disdained to hide it. Some pe( 
 smiled and whispered at this adoption of a young and handsome mar 
 a woman herself not old nor ugly; but to their inuendoes neither f 
 nor her husband, nor Metastasio, would give any attention; that he 
 
156 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 her lover she scorned to disprove, she to whom he was more than a lover, 
 more than a son, a suddenly found object of an intense and headstrong 
 devotion such as other women of her character have given to some political 
 or social object. Her strength and breadth of character strengthened 
 and widened, at least for the time, the timid and narrow character of 
 Metastasio; her generosity ennobled as that of Gravina had debased him, 
 because the one was noble and the other mean. She was a large-minded 
 woman, strongly educated, with clear ideas — best of all, with strong sym- 
 pathies; she matured Metastasio's mind, and raised it above the pastoral 
 insipidities which had been his admiration. She was a great, simple, 
 masterly singer, above all a grand actress: in her Metastasio first saw 
 the incarnation of the artistic work which was allotted to him; in her 
 society he was first led into the world of art in which he was to create. 
 
 Round the Romanina centred that great musical life which existed at 
 Naples and Venice in the early eighteenth century. It was a very 
 difi'erent world from those hitherto seen by Metastasio; from the crabbed 
 wooden decrepitude of the world of erudition, from the hopeless formal 
 ossification of the world of plastic art, from the artificial and sterile 
 exuberance of the world of poetry. Many things, blighted by the great 
 catastrophe of the sixteenth century, had faded away during the seven- 
 teenth, and died grotesquely at the beginning of the eighteenth, — erudition, 
 painting, sculpture, lyric and epic poetry: but some things, dormant in 
 the Renaissance, had quickened and grown unnoticed during the great 
 lethargy of the seventeenth century, — Italian tragedy, Italian comedy, and, 
 above all, Italian music. And now music arose, in its first fresh Ufe, as 
 painting had done in the days of Ghirlandaio, Mantegna, and SignoreUi, 
 grand in its very adolescent roughness, charming in its very immaturity, 
 magnificent in its concentrated not yet unfolded strength. At the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century music had no past, only a rich present 
 and a richer future ; it had none of the academic classicalities of the 
 effete plastic arts, no models, no rules, no pedants, no originals, no 
 threadbare inheritance of importance, nothing false or borrowed. Its 
 artists were simple, earnest, cheerful ; not dreaming of artistic dignity, 
 conscientious, self-unconscious workmen, as have been the artists of every 
 living art. Despised by the academic painters with their mouths full of 
 lassie forms and their brains empty of thought, despised by the erudite 
 poets who revived Pindar and Anacreon by means of scissors and gum- 
 pot, perhaps they were a little awe-stricken before the dignified dotage of 
 other arts, and half ashamed of their infatuation for their own adolescent 
 unrecognised art, but satisfied with themselves, happy in the obscure 
 consciousness that they were alive, the art and themselves, and that the 
 same life filled those who listened when they played or sang. Such were 
 
Metast.asio and the Opera, \i 
 
 these musicians upon whom we now look back as upon primaeval gian 
 And Metastasio met them, sympathised with them, was infected with t 
 life of their art, and put it into his. 
 
 We may picture to ourselves those musical gatherings in the Bulgarell 
 house : the two or three bleak rooms furnished in the heavy Itali 
 imitation of the heavy Louis XIV., red and black and gold, the flourisl 
 Flemish prints on the walls, the dim mirrors set in dim glass, Metastasii 
 solemn little collection of parchment-bound classics in a coraer, the tab! 
 covered with the nicknacks of the great actress's admirers and with 1: 
 new friend's books and papers ; the whole pale with the light of the w 
 candles and drowsy with the scent of the fading nosegays brought ba 
 from the theatre ; the rooms filled with a motley noisy crowd of old coi 
 posers, in solemn perukes and beribboned shoes, of dapper liters 
 priestlets redolent of bergamot and sonnets, of shy young compos< 
 conscious of threadbare coats and unappreciated genius, of youths forei, 
 and queer, come from the Marches, from Bologna, nay from Germa 
 and Spain, to study music ; of beautiful actresses in long embroider 
 stomachers and cushioned hair, of comic actors, Scaramuccias and Covielli 
 only just stripped of their parti-coloured garb and black masks ; a Ion 
 spoken, jovial world, jabbering Neapolitan and gesticulating terribly, h 
 serious and fierce, half light and buffoonish, always moving, acting, pi 
 forming, overflowing with rough artistic life. And in the midst of the 
 moving rapidly from group to group, made room for respectfully by £ 
 the energetic yet almost regal Eomanina, intensely interested about eve] 
 thing and everyone, constantly active about something, enoouragir 
 reprimanding, ordering about, assigning to each his business, as befits t 
 queen of that world. Yes, we can see her moving about in her rustli 
 brocade and trailing velvet, going from the great singer lolling about < 
 harpsichord, his fat, sentimental face half hid in his curly wig and li 
 frill, one fat bejewelled hand thrust into his satin doublet, the otl 
 playing with his music roU, accustomed to be adored, and waiting dawdlinj 
 for adoration, an affected puppy when speaking, a grand and inspu 
 artist when singing ; from him to some obscure fair-haired young m: 
 stammering broken Italian with German absurdity, sent to Naples by i 
 King of Poland, called perchance Adolf Hasse, and ten years later, 
 these Italians who are now grimacing at him, "the dear, the adora 
 Saxon " ; and from him the Eomanina will go up to the great Alessan( 
 Scarlatti, father of the Neapolitan school, old, gouty, and occasiona 
 peevish; she will bend over his arm-chair, asking after his beautiful swe 
 voiced daughter Flamminia, after his son Domenico, great on the harj 
 chord, now at Eome or at Venice ; she will make him feel happy s 
 almost young again. She will lead up to him a grave handsome man, 
 
158 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 patrician black, introduce liim to the .old master as his Excellency Signo 
 Benedetto Marcello, a great dilettante and composer from Venice, and th 
 noble will bend humbly before the plebeian, as a pupil before a mastei 
 Then she will dive into the crowd of young students of the Conservatoric 
 exchange a word, hurried but earnest, with the impetuous but gentle Leo 
 nardo Leo, with the sedate scholarly Durante, with the smart and fier 
 Vinci, till she finds the burly, sarcastic Porpora, greatest of cantata com 
 posers and singing-masters, and will ask him jestingly whether he i 
 satisfied with his new pupil, the Abate Metastasio. The Abate Metastasio 
 handsomer and brighter beneath her glance, laughs and vows he will sel 
 all his benefices and turn prima tenore and make a fortune. The Eomanini 
 leaves them, and turns towards a boy of sixteen or seventeen, too tall t( 
 be hidden behind the stumpy Porpora, struggles with his shyness, drag! 
 him along on her arm in affected gravity to the harpsichord, pins hin 
 down, all blushing and protesting, and cries out that since he cannot hi 
 got to sing alone he must sing with her. She strikes a few notes anc 
 sings, while all become breathless, the boy hesitatingly beginning, till 
 seeing him absorbed in the performance, her ovm dexterous voice com- 
 pletely drowned by the immense splendour of his, the Eomanina stops anc 
 lets him run on alone in endless intricate passages, unconscious of the 
 crowd, till at length he is interrupted by the universal shout of admiration, 
 " Bravo, Farinello ! " Metastasio jumps up, runs to the harpsichord, 
 seizes hold of the boy, and cries, " I am honoured by this applause ; wc 
 belong to each other, we are fellow pupils, tvsdns, born together for the 
 world, you in song, I in verse. Remember it in later years, adorable twin 
 brother ! " 
 
 From the men who met at the Eomanina's house, from Scarlatti, Por- 
 pora, Leo, Durante, from the many great singers whose names are now 
 forgotten, from the very mediocrities of that musical world, Metastasio 
 learned his place in art, learned to co-operate in what, to the enlightened 
 and cultured of the day, probably seemed a mere huge incongruoue 
 monster, at best but a sort of sublime puppet-show, but what was in reality 
 the real artistic form, musical and dramatic, slowly elaborated by the whole 
 Italian people, the assemblage of the finest gifts of a whole civilization, the 
 masterpiece of the eighteenth century as the chryselephantine colossus 
 #as of antiquity ; in which there were indeed unsightly frames of wood 
 and grotesque clamps of iron and trumpery additions in stucco, but which 
 was yet in the main of dun gold and creamy ivory, and was formed in 
 dignity and loveliness — the Opera. 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 159 
 
 III. 
 
 [he opera was a necessary product of Italy ; it existed in germ in the 
 y essence of the Italian language; it developed by the very pressure of 
 lian culture. True tragedy, as it existed in England and in Spain, 
 5 perhaps impossible in Italy, with a language which naturally took 
 sical inflexions, and with a people who naturally sought for artistic 
 asure. The language fell into regular cadences hostile to the fluctuating 
 ent of emotion ; the people desired definite and artificial forms incom- 
 ;ible with the upheavings and wrenchings of tragic action. The Italians 
 Dte and acted many a tragedy, from the mediseval Ezzelino of Mussato 
 NTL to the Merope of Maffei ; but these tragedies were works of imita- 
 n, due to the feeling that what had been done by the ancients must 
 ids be repeated by the moderns; they were not the product of a national 
 iving which insisted on being satisfied. They were written, performed, 
 plauded, and published, one after the other, in rapid succession, but they 
 rer called into existence a permanent stage ; they were the works and 
 tertainment of academies and erudite courts — the people outside neither 
 iired nor noticed them. Construct them with the utmost care, write them 
 th the greatest eloquence, declaim them with the greatest intelligence, it 
 s all useless; neither the verse of Poliziano and Tasso, nor the skilful 
 iitations of academic actors, nor the ingenious stage mechanisms of 
 iruzzi and Palladio, could make tragedy a real necessity, a real pleasure, 
 the Italians. Humanists and erudite courtiers might be faintly inter- 
 red in such perforraances, but the townsfolk cared only for their carnival 
 immers, gods, goddesses, virtues, shoemakers, and pastrycooks, singing 
 ilogued couplets on their cars ; and the peasantry cared only for their 
 iggio actors, for their raw lads chanting on stages of planks and bedsheets 
 3 stories of saints and paladins; — nay, even the very courts themselves, 
 len not hampered by learned advisers, cared only for their pompous 
 omalous festivals, in which knights fought for enchanted ladies, sirens 
 d tritons swam across villa ponds, and Flemish or Flemish-taught 
 isicians sang madrigals inside the flanks of cardboard monsters. Thus, 
 the part of the burghers, the peasants, and the nobles, we see the^ 
 sire for an artistic form far more artificial than the mere recited 
 igedy. This form, this fusion of drama, music, and scenic effect, will be] 
 idely elaborated by the upper classes, saturated with humanism and' 
 se chivalry, a weak and uncouth anomaly, with not much vitality in it; 
 t once born, once seen, it will be eagerly grasped by the people at 
 rge, it will be vivified by popular feeling, and it will develope in fair 
 owth as a product of the whole nation. The opera is not the court 
 geant, not the street mummery, not the village play; it is the court 
 geant developed and transformed by the influence of those classes whose 
 
160 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 vague hankerings find their imperfect expression in the street mummery 
 as seen in the carnival song, and the village-play as exemplified in the 
 maggio. 
 
 In the second half of the sixteenth century, while the plastic art of the 
 Kenaissance is dying away in decorative imbecility, music becomes an 
 ever more important accessory in the festivities of courts, — ^music which, 
 during the century dividing Josquin from Palestrina, has attained to a 
 partial but in itself wondrous perfection ; a perfection of symmetrical 
 design and interwoven colour like that of the limited but subtly-finished 
 art of the East. At the magnificent wedding of the Grand Duke Fran- 
 cesco dei Medici with Bianca Cappello there were, together with tourna- 
 ments, pageants, verse reciting, and scenic shows, long musical per- 
 formances, complicated pieces set in learned contrapuntic mazes by Strozzi 
 and Peri, sung by men and boys trained as carefully as those for whom 
 Palestrina was composing in Eome. A few years later, at other court 
 feasts, we meet music even more developed ; choruses sung to pastorals 
 like those of Tasso and Guarini, players and singers on the stage sitting 
 round the harpsichord, viol, lute, and fife in hand, as we see them in the 
 concert pictures of Niccolb Abati and Leonello Spada. And in one of 
 these pictures a musician has left the harpsichord and is pacing the boards, 
 plumed hat in hand, with solemn gesture. Is he reciting, or is he singing? 
 Is this a rudimentary opera or merely a play interlarded with concerts? 
 This is the ever recurring question concerning the mixed performances, 
 dramatic and musical, which took place in the late sixteenth century. We 
 are told that there was music, we see that there was declamation; but were 
 the two separated and merely juxtaposed, or had they already amalgam- 
 ated? Were those verses merely spoken and those choruses only sung, 
 or had the first timid modulations been noted under the single declaimed 
 parts? The plays with harlequin and pantaloon with which Orazio 
 Vecchi amused the Lombard cities, the pastorals written by Rinnuccini 
 for the marriage of Henri IV., are still of this anomalous sort. And the 
 indecision is inevitable ; the music must have been limited to the choruses 
 \] until slowly, imperceptibly, the single parts had disentangled and separated 
 themselves from the great woof of harmony, which, until the beginning of 
 the seventeenth century, existed alone in its balanced complication. For 
 diuring the Middle Ages music had been but a unison, a faintly rhythmical, 
 almost formless chant; and during the Renaissance, while in the hands of 
 the great Flemish and Hispano-Flemish composers, of whom Palestrina 
 and Gabrielli were the last, though Italian, representatives, music existed 
 only as a harmonic structure, as a sheaf of wondrously- combined sounds, 
 learned, sublime, wonderful, but unindividual, unemotional, unmelodic, and 
 unrhythmic. When this sheaf of harmony had been perfected and handed 
 over from the erudite North to the artistic South it was gradually, timidly 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 161 
 
 isened; the Italians severed and extracted one part from the other; 
 idethe separate parts — unheard-of wonder! — stand alone in trepidating 
 kwardness, but stand alone, individual, independent, freed from the 
 iociation which stiffened and weighed them down, free to develope 
 lividually, to become one of the two great divisions of modern music : 
 ted declamation or melody, recitative or air. 
 
 Men had wished to enjoy that music which they had heard in palace 
 d church in their own house; they had sung one of the parts of those 
 iendid combinations of sound, and had sought for the other ones on 
 ar viol, their lute, their virginal, trying to reconstruct the great vocal 
 )ric. But they had destroyed it ; this single human voice would not 
 itself be bound together with the voice of the wood and of the String as 
 bad let itself be fettered with the other human voices. It leaped up, 
 )ke loose, and giddily followed its own course ; a strange, wild course, 
 im which it returned, trembling and terrified,' seeking the shelter of the 
 itruments. But independence once tasted was never forgotten; the 
 igle voice had learned the exiatence of a world of music whose doors 
 d been closed to the compact harmonic groups ; it had learned that it 
 d the strength to move and work by itself. Henceforward the single 
 ice is the main musical interest: to train it for long sustained quies- 
 ice, for rapid movement, becomes the work of the age, of the seven- 
 inth century, which is to music as the fifteenth century had been to 
 inting : the century of innovation, of awkwardness, of timid grace, of 
 er-bold attempt, the predecessor of perfection. The instruments have 
 3ome the servants of this new master of the art, of this individual voice: 
 sy must prepare its advent, wait for it, sustain it, give it time for repose, 
 leive it back after its triumphant joumeyings. But what shall this 
 erated voice do? Shall it travel in regular and cunning mazes, in 
 inite and perfect circles and arabesques, or shall it follow boldly in the 
 e, varying steps of the spoken word ? Shall it sing or shall it declaim? 
 . first and for a long time the answer is difiicult : it does both and 
 ither. Accustomed but little to its liberty, uncertain of its powers, 
 certain of what is in store, it feebly attempts both to sing and to 
 3laim ; nay, sometimes, in its foolishness, it tries to imitate its servants, 
 ! violins and fifes ; worst of all, it still seeks safety in the shadow of its 
 ■vitude, and would when free do what it did when imprisoned in its 
 rmonic shackles. 
 
 The song or air, the melody, in short, necessarily originated in the 
 empt to reproduce with one voice what had hitherto been done by 
 eral ; the recitative necessarily suggested itself simultaneously, for as 
 3 singer left the chorus and sang alone, it naturally occurred that he 
 a;ht sing the verses intended for one part; and, as the blank verse of 
 s narrative or dramatic part neither suggested rhythm nor definite 
 
162 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 shape, it was noted in a sort of approximation to the speaking tone. The 
 story goes that recitative, as this noted declamation came to be called, 
 was invented by certain Florentine gentlemen, the poet Kinnuccini, the 
 composers Peri and Caccini, who met in the house of a Bardi, Comit of 
 Vernio, to discuss the music to which the ancients had sung their choruses: 
 instead of reproducing ancient tragedy they invented modem opera. It 
 
 I may be so, but as music had long been on the stage, although only as 
 
 j chorus, the attempt to reduce the inflexions of the speaking voice within 
 musical limits must have been made all over Italy at the end of the 
 sixteenth century, independently and simultaneously, because the same 
 causes prevailed everywhere. But for a long while there is, strictly speak- 
 ing, neither recitative nor air : the poetry is written without sufficient 
 distinction of metre, the instrumental part is still too rudimentary, the 
 voice still too untrained. There is neither enough melody nor enough 
 declamation; musical form and prosody are alike confused, and even in 
 the works of Monteverde, the greatest Italian composer of the early 
 seventeenth century, we can scarcely distinguish the music which can be 
 sung from the music which must be recited. His setting of Einnuccini's 
 lament of Ariadne on Naxos contains, in its rich and pathetic modula- 
 tions, the germ of the great art of the Pergolesis and JommeDis ; but we 
 cannot define it as either air or recitative: it is not an air, because it is 
 too unsteady in rhythm, too unadmitting of a real, formal accompaniment; 
 it is not a recitative, because it reproduces too little of the inflexions and 
 punctuations of speech to be freely declaimed. 
 
 But this double product of the enfranchisement of the single voice, 
 recitative and air, confused and rude though it was, was at once recognised 
 and fostered by the Italian people. The musical drama almost banishes 
 the recited pastoral off the court stages ; it penetrates into church and 
 cloister in the form of oratorio, it is dragged about from town to town on 
 the cart of Pietro della Valle, Thespis fashion; instead of chapels we 
 
 / now begin to hear of singers. Milton and Evelyn, travelling in Italy 
 about 1630, meet everywhere great virtuosi, Leonora Baroai (the heroine 
 
 ^ of Milton's Latin verses), Lauro Vettori, Baldassare Ferri, artists trained 
 
 from their earliest childhood, and whom the whole nation honours with 
 
 poems, flowers, presents, and triumphal processions. Meanwhile, on all 
 
 !«ides, theatres have sprung up at Fano, at Parma, at Venice, at Eome, 
 
 : very different from the little theatres hitherto erected in palace halls; 
 
 immense stages, fit for the most magnificent scenic displays; immense 
 
 *>liouses, in which the voice resounds as it never did in a church; galleries 
 
 on galleries, capable of holding thousands of spectators; for now the 
 
 whole nation, — nobles, merchants, artisans, gondoliers and lazzaroni, — 
 
 have discovered what they want and insist upon being admitted. 
 
 But this rapid development is necessaiily very unequal, anomalous. 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 1' 
 
 lis musical drama, which the Italians have instinctively called "the worl 
 ves scope to too many and various arts : the already matured arts,- 
 chitecture, mechanic and pantomimic art, — obtain more than their d 
 are from the yet imperfect arts, poetry and music. The plays are 
 nstructed, uncertain mixtures of the historical and the mythologici 
 tchworks of lyric verbosities and cold conceits, interlarded with stuj 
 isk-buffooneries; the music is still awkward and unfinished: timid 
 sdulated, ill punctuated, frigid recitative; imperfectly rhythmical, pond( 
 s, indefinite melody; accompaniment added at random, without perce 
 in of its real place and power ; the singers are rather coarse and ove 
 uberant, fond of rough vocal gymnastics, with but little care of genei 
 ect or of finish. On the other hand, the remains of the pageant art 
 e Kenaissance crowd the stage ; there are continual changes of scenei 
 mense displays of horses, camels, elephants, armies; transformatio: 
 ;o wild beasts, into birds, into plants ; enchanted palaces rising out 
 8 ground or dissolving into thin air ; chariots drawn by winged serpeni 
 roes carried off on the backs of dragons; Tartarus, Elysium, Chac 
 y, as in Beverini's opera at Venice, nothing short of the Creation of t 
 Qiverse. This was the condition of the opera about the middle of t 
 renteenth century, when (a suggestive fact) the Cavalier Bernini, t] 
 ichelangelo of Barrocco art, built a theatre, painted the scenes, hewi 
 3 statues, wrote the play, composed the music, and sang and acted t] 
 inoipal part himself ; when flourished Carissimi, the striver after elabora 
 aplicity — Cesti and Cavalli, sweet and pathetic in their very co: 
 ■ainedness ; when Italy, which had long been ceasing to impose artist 
 ihions on the world, gave Europe her last artistic creation, made 
 jognise her latest supremacy — the supremacy in music. Mazarin hi 
 Toduced the opera into France, with Italian words, Italian music, ai 
 ilian singers ; but thy French soon rebelled from foreign dominatio 
 d plays constructed on the then existing Italian model by the co; 
 nbical, pastoral, sugary Quinault; music composed in the Italian sty 
 LuUy and Lalande, and singers trained according to Italian rule 
 attempt to be at once imitating and original, pupils and masters, whic 
 jedily ended in turning the French opera, — words, music, and perforn 
 ze, — into a European laughing-stock. The opera had early been carrie 
 Germany: Schiitz and Staden had tried to Teutonise it even in tl 
 ^s of Monteverde, but the attempt failed in monotonous, allegorica 
 itrapuntic frigidness, little suited to the coarse German middle class© 
 ; the Italian ojiera, with Italian poets, Italian or Italian-taught con 
 sers, and Italian singers, took root in every one of the Frenchifie 
 rman courts. At Vienna, an Italian court poet was kept expressly i 
 nish libretti ; at Dresden, Munich, and Hanover, the bes Italian mus: 
 lid be heard; even at Teutonic Berlin a great singer and compose 
 
 M 2 
 
164 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 Pistocchi, was kept, although his music accompanied the movements, not 
 of real actors, but of waxworks; even the Archbishop Moritz von Thun, 
 prince of the little medieval Salzburg, had an opera called Arminio per- 
 formed at the end of the seventeenth century, as we learned from the soiled 
 MS. lying on his Eminence's beautifully inlaid ebony and ivory harpsi- 
 chord, silent for nearly two hundred years. Italian singers and com- 
 positions began to be imported into England in the days of Charles II., 
 Davenant and Purcell attempting to do in English what Quinault and 
 Lully were doing in French; and the opera, first of mixed language 
 (Niccolini singing Italian and Mrs. Toffts English), but finally entirely 
 Itahan, was definitely established in the reign of Queen Anne. The 
 opera was recognised as a production of Italy, and a production for which 
 all the other nations were clamorous. 
 
 Meanwhile, as the seventeenth century drew to a close, music, in the 
 hands of Alessandro Scarlatti, of Bononcini, and of Pistocchi, was rapidly 
 maturing: melody was solidifying into strong, clear forms; recitative was 
 expanding and growing bolder and more elastic; accompaniment was 
 becoming fuller, more meaning, taking a certain reciprocal importance; 
 singing was developing in wonderful perfection, perfection of superb 
 delicacy and vigour. And as music moved so the poetry to which it 
 was to be linked had to move also, and before their growing importance 
 scenic shows and mimic performance were to give way. Silvio Stani- 
 piglia, Court poet of Leopold I., and Domenico David, Venetian play- 
 wright, began to disband the transformations, the enchantments, and 
 other shows of the old opera; to turn out harlequin and pantaloon; to 
 eschew flimsy mythology for serious historic subjects; to give to their 
 opera texts the proportions and dignity of tragedies; while at the same 
 time the composers began to require less rhetoric and more passion for 
 their recitatives, more simplicity and metrical clearness for the airs; and 
 the singers began to insist upon being given the place and the work due 
 to their respective voice and importance. Thus, little by little, thanks to 
 the pressure of the public, to the conflicting claim of authors, composers, 
 and singers, the opera was moulded into a definite shape, as we first see 
 it in the hands of the first true opera poet, of the predecessor of Metas- 
 tasio, the Venetian Candiot Apostolo Zeno. 
 
 * The literary activity of Apostolo Zeno, who was born in 1668 and 
 died in 1750, was mainly during the last years of the seventeenth and the 
 first of the eighteenth centuries, while occupying the post of Poeta Cesareo 
 or Imperial Opera Poet to Joseph I. and Charles VI. He was a very 
 learned man, a philologist and antiquary, according to the ideas oi 
 those days ; poetical gifts, in the sense of fancy and metrical talent, h« 
 had next to none, and no power of conceiving character; but he had grea^ 
 instinct for the dramatic, for well-tightened action, for simple plot, foi 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 16 
 
 ictive scenes. What he conceived he executed firmly, strongly, withoi 
 ng time in rhetoric and pathos, sketching rapidly, clearly, harshb 
 h much ease and evident satisfaction in his rough, curt work. Patheti 
 eches or even avowedly pathetic scenes he ignored, interesting an 
 ving the audience rather by the tragic earnestness, the very har 
 isiveness of the situations. A forgotten writer, left even in th 
 bteenth century merely to patchers-up of libretti, never read by th 
 )lic, and now found only on the shelves of public libraries, yet whe 
 d giving an impression of power, of solid art, reminding you, somt 
 at, at once for worse and for better, of Corneille; a man with little t 
 ase and amuse, but occasionally, as in his Lucio Papirio, with some 
 ag that rivets and impresses. Though no poet, and not pretending t 
 
 one; though dry, cold, hard, inharmonious, and freely plagiarising 
 ostolo Zeno is what the Trissinos and Cinthios, the Contis and Maifeii 
 I whole herd of Italian tragic writers, were not, a true artist, becausi 
 ike them, he is working at a living and national art. Zeno did n( 
 e the melodrama its shape, he merely compressed it firmly into tl 
 m required by the development of music; he merely defined tl: 
 sessary tendencies which had begun to exist with the very birth of tl 
 sra. 
 
 Che opera, as elaborated by Apostolo Zeno and perfected by Metai 
 io, is not a classical production like the French and Italian traged; 
 istructed according to supposed Aristotelian precepts and in avowe 
 itation of the antique: it is, in the same sense as the plays of Shake 
 iare and Calderon, a romantic product, bom unnoticed by the learnf 
 1 suffered to grow up unmolested by them, and only given an out( 
 ablance of classic correctness when already fully and individually d< 
 oped. It is the double product of the musical revolution of the ear] 
 enteenth century, melody and noted declamation, woven into dramat 
 ipe with the addition of scenic display. These three items, — melod; 
 itative, and mimetic and mechanical show, — are its three originally moi 
 portant parts ; poetry is thought of only later, and must bend to suit then 
 e opera is first for the ears and eyes, and only subsequently for tl 
 isoning faculties. It is the exposition, or the supposed exposition, of 
 ry by means of music, and action, and scenery ; words and their recitatio 
 le staple of the pseudo-Greek drama) are added only from the necessii 
 defining the story and giving words to the music. The words, therefon 
 1 such as the scenic display, above all as the music, requires them. No 
 n do they require them ? What dramatic forms do they elaborate 
 the very first place the scenic part entirely rejects the famous unil 
 place: the object of the mechanician is to change the scene as often i 
 possibly can, so that the poet has to satisfy Aristotle's commentatoi 
 
 he care to satisfy them at all) by the shallow excuse that "tl 
 
166 Metasiasio and the Opera. 
 
 various places are all sufficiently near each other to be gone to and from 
 in the course of twenty-four hours." This violation of the unity of place 
 carries with it a real, although not avowed, violation of the unity of time; 
 and this unavowed violation of the unity of time induces an unblushing 
 violation of the unity of action. For as the scene keeps shifting, and the 
 actors appear now in a wood, now in a palace, now in a temple, there is 
 absolutely nothing to tell the audience whether the scene in the wood 
 takes place the same day, week, month, or even year, as the scene in the 
 palace; and as there is thus no perception of limits of time; as no one 
 clearly knows when the various actions take place, there ceases to he any 
 objection to introducing half a dozen various actions interwoven with 
 each other, — plots, counterplots, murders, remorse, vengeance, mistakes, 
 recognitions, complications enough for years and years of human life. 
 Thus, instead of a correct tragedy according to Aristotelian precepts, we 
 obtain an exceedingly loose and complicated play virtually setting all 
 three unities at defiance. And since so many plots and events are com- 
 pressed into one piece, since the action is not one, but none in particular, 
 why not give up the Aristotelian canon of going from good to bad and 
 bad to worse, — why not satisfy the noble lords and ladies assembled tc 
 celebrate a wedding or birthday, and the citizens and artisans come tc 
 enjoy their Carnival or Ascension amusement, and neither at all wishing 
 to be moralised, — why not satisfy their craving for pleasant impressions 
 by making the play progress from bad to better, or at all events wind uj 
 cheerfully ? Why not ? Here, then, is another piece of corrupt heresy 
 happy endings are substituted for dismal ones, even as in the harrowing 
 Measure for Measure and the ferocious Fuenteovejuna of Lope de Vega. 
 Thus far the necessity of the scenic display has forced the opera on 
 of the old pseudo-classic groove ; the requirements of the music will pusl 
 it into full romantic eccentricity, and the claims of the performers wil 
 give it the finishing touches needed to make it what the good critics o 
 the eighteenth century called it — a monster, seductive or ridiculous. Th 
 music which developed on the stage was reducible to two forms, recitativ 
 and air. Besides the noted declamation, the one-voiced melody, ther 
 existed, until the full development of rhythm and instrumentation in th 
 last quarter of the eighteenth century, only one really distinct musics 
 rorm, the fugue or madrigal, inherited from the sixteenth century. Fc 
 in default of that general rhythmical movement which could swing alon 
 the various parts, and of that instrumental mixture which could solde 
 them together, as in the concerted pieces of the time of Paisiello, Cims 
 rosa, and Mozart, there was no choice except between letting one pa 
 (or one chord as in the choruses, where all the voices move together i 
 regular intervals)" move alone, or making two or more parts mo^ 
 together by that system of reciprocal balancing and pushing invente 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. K 
 
 the cunning harmony of the Eenaissance, and brought to perfectic 
 
 the fugued choruses of Handel and Bach, in the fugued duets at 
 OS of Marcello and Pergolesi. But the opera had from the earlie 
 ected the fugued concerted piece as too formal, too scientific, tc 
 Bcult of execution, and too deadening of action on the stage; so, unl 
 3 appearance of the rhythmical or symphony-like concerted piece 
 B late eighteenth century, it entirely dispensed with concerted musi 
 lich was left to the church or the room. There was as yet no way ' 
 iking several voices sing together in a manner not unfit for the dram 
 the voices were left to sing each in turn, and to meet only in recitativ 
 cept in the case of the simple chord-like chorus and in that of tl 
 et, which was merely two airs juxtaposed and crossing each other 
 e or two points, two voices singing mainly alone, and only for a sho 
 ae at the third or fifth. So the musical elements were virtually recit 
 re and air. 
 
 Obviously the recitative was used in all scenes of action, altercatio 
 d fluctuating feeling, for it was free, changing, impetuous as confiictij 
 lotion; obviously, also, the air was used when a person was left to spei 
 Dne, or when a feeling had become perfectly homogeneous, for it w 
 igle-voiced, consistent, and defined as the ruling emotion of an individui 
 b.e btflk of the play, therefore, — the whole action, the whole friction 
 aracters and collision of interests, all that makes the piece move on,- 
 
 given up to recitative; the superadded pieces, the lyrical similes, t 
 litary outpourings of feeling, all that is stationary in the play, all tl 
 the domain of melody. Their functions are defined and separate; th( 
 quirements are distinct and their influence opposed. The recitatii 
 e approximative noting of the speaking tones, the musical expandii 
 id ennobling of speech, requires, first of all, that speech be speech, a: 
 iooses, therefore, that poetical form which is most like prose, free 
 ast hampered by metre and rhyme, richest in various combinations 
 irase, in long, short, broken, sustained periods — blank verse. And 
 is blank verse recitative requires that it be clear, to the point, cha 
 
 involutions which perplex the musician, hostile to set phrases, 
 jures of rhetoric, to oratorical lengthiness, to far-fetched graces, whi 
 indemn him to monotony of modulation because they are monotone 
 
 spoken expression. Various, brief, clear, simple, abrupt, passionate, 
 ich is the blank verse which is required for recitative ; no oratori 
 ilendour, no stilted majesty: Seneca and Seneca's Italian imitators, t 
 rench poets who made Augustus and Athaliah speak like Bossuet a 
 ourdaloue, are here no longer models; the librettist must strike ou 
 )w path, pushed onwards by the musician. 
 
 These are the requirements of recitative ; those of melody are still great 
 I the first place melody absolutely requires lyric metres, metres tota 
 
168 Metastasio and the Opera, 
 
 ^- ; 
 
 unlike that of the recitative — short, regular lines, rich in rhythm ai 
 rhyme, strongly marked, compressed into the most definite shap 
 strophes which both as wholes and as parts shall suggest well-mark( 
 musical phrases. And these stort lyrics must be as lyrical as possibl 
 They must be as absolutely homogeneous in feeling as is the music 
 plan ; they must be worked up into arabesques to correspond with tho 
 of the voice; they must move towards a climax like the melodies to whi( 
 they are set; they must, in their briefness, contain lines, half-line 
 epithets, ejaculations, which the composer can detach, displace, ar 
 repeat and re-repeat as often as the melody may require ; they must coi 
 sist of metaphors, of similes which may be dwelt on and brought roui 
 again in new foniis, which may suggest some imitative accompanimen 
 some particular vocal grace; above all, they must be manifold, offerin 
 the composer as many different rhythms, as many different moods an 
 shades of mood, as possible; they must be by turns solemn and lon^ 
 stepped, sighing and pathetic, tripping and cheerful, abrupt and passioi 
 ate, brief or lengthy, in order that every sort of melodic form may h 
 displayed. The lyrists of the Middle Ages and of the sixteenth centur 
 the Petrarchists and followers of Bembo and Tasso, with their monoto 
 nous tinkle of sonnets, their vague, languid, turgid drawl of canzoni, ca 
 teach the librettist nothing ; the ancients, with their curt metres, bu 
 their convoluted, inextricable sentences, can teach but little. The librettis 
 must again follow his own devices, under the directions of the exactin, 
 composer. 
 
 The scenic mechanician has forced the opera into being a play withon 
 real unity of time, place, action, or plot, — an eccentric performancf 
 crowding together all manner of events, and ready to move from bad t 
 good as easily as from good to bad. The recitative has forced it to put al 
 the action into blank verse, simple, uninvolved, curt, varying, impetuoue 
 passionate, unoratorical, and unlyrical. Melody has forced it to interlan 
 this blank verse with lyric strophes of intensely lyrical feeling and form 
 strongly marked, singable, metaphorical, various as various can be ii 
 metre and style. The opera is already a monster, setting Aristotle, Tris 
 sino, and Castelvetro at defiance ; romantic, mixing blank verse an( 
 rhyme, dramatic and lyric, plain-spoken and metaphorical. Tlius far w 
 ha,ve seen the influence of the decorator and the composer on the poei 
 an influence which drives him to distraction, makes himMolate all rules 
 and, instead of a worthless piece of imitation, makes him create a ne^ 
 style, homogeneous and natural. There is yet another influence, that o 
 the performers. 
 
 These performers are singers ; they are, first of all, so many voices o 
 various pitch, which have been trained from infancy to every sort of voca 
 gymnastics ; whose respective importance is a purely musical one, A 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 16 
 
 iiiral law of music makes the highest pitched voice invariably tli 
 st important; the singer with the highest voice, therefore, is inevii 
 y the principal performer. Now, the highest voice necessarily snggesl 
 itive youth ; the principal part is, consequently, almost always that ( 
 outh. And the emotions proper to youth, and best suited to high 
 ched voices, are the tender ones ; the hero and heroine are, therefor( 
 ariably in love, love passionate, melancholy, or solemn, but loveof som 
 t; the harsher passions being left to the lower voices, so that ambitioi 
 Tiotism, vengeance, and such like, fall to the inferior performei 
 1 become subordinate to that main love interest as the lower voices ai 
 (Ordinate to the upper. The poet has thus to develope to the utmos 
 ithful characters and feelings, and to make love and the misfortune 
 lovers the chief interest of his play. In this the ancient Greek 
 I Eomans, who understood dramatic love only as a family virtue c 
 "amily crime, the love of Alcestis or the love of Phaedra (both to 
 notonous, the one in resignation, the other in fury, to give full scop 
 music), can be of little help; nor can their Italian imitators; sti 
 3 the French dramatists, to whom young people are most ofte 
 ppets, like Severe in Polyeucte, Curiace in Les Horaces,* Xiphares i 
 thridate, and Aricie in PMdre, and for whom love is a mere insipi 
 ffing and bolstering for more violent and tremendous passion. Th 
 miards, with their jealous husbands, seduced maidens, duennas, an 
 guards, as in Lope's play about the Infanta Dionysia and Oalderon' 
 -.aide of Zalamea, are almost equally useless. The poet who has create 
 meo and Jessica, Imogen and Helena, is unknown to the Italia 
 :etti3t of the eighteenth century: the development of youthful cha 
 ter, the development of love interest and story, must be done b 
 iself unassisted. Further, the singers are voices; they are easil 
 ■gued, and when fatigued are worthless; they insist upon having thei 
 ts distributed in a way to equalise the work. Again, being voice 
 ined to various cunning artifices, they insist on displaying them al! 
 3h principal part requires at least four airs of four distinct characters 
 raceful, easy air, but not easy to sing (aria di mezzo carattere), 
 hetic air (cantabile), a speaking or dramatically active air (aria par 
 te), and a passionate, florid air (aria di bravura). The inferior part 
 not on any account to get anything as interesting as the supcrio 
 ts, and they are to get less, the ultima parte getting only one air, am 
 
 In 1796 Cimarosa wrote Ms beautiful Orazi e Om-iax.i to a text of the oomedia 
 rafi. The play is absolutely modelled on Corneille's tragedy, without any addi 
 s or omissions. But who is the principal performer? Horatius, the murdere 
 is sister, as in Corneille ? No; Curiatius, who in Comeille is a mere doll ; an 
 ? because Curiatius, having to sing love duets with Orazia, must be, accordir 
 ie habit of the day, the soprano, while Horatius must be the tenor, and consi 
 itly less important. 
 
170 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 that insignificant. Two airs of the same metre and character must n 
 succeed each other, and two performers having the same sort of voi 
 must not be made to sing in succession; claims in reality extreme 
 moderate and rational, but which the writers of the eighteenth centu: 
 declared monstrous, and which, while taking the opera more out of tl 
 mould of the tragedy, completed it by balancing and co-ordinating J 
 
 parts. 
 
 Such was the musical drama of the early eighteenth century; a thii 
 born of scenic displays and concerts, cherished for a century by the who 
 nation, moulded into a romantic, wholly original shape, by the requiri 
 ments of scenery, music, and singing. Such it was, defined and regul 
 in foim, in the last days of the reign of the too-much forgotten Aposto 
 Zeno ; an original, elegant, well-balanced, dignified, and wholly nation 
 form of art. The music to which it was linked was in high perfectio 
 a perfection of solemnity, of heroic strength and grandeur; of ample ai 
 impetuous recitative, of majestic and solemn melody : the music of LotI 
 of Handel, of Caldara, of Marcello, of the great composers of the fir 
 quarter of the last century. The singers who performed it were deep 
 scientific, trained in the schools of Pistocchi and Scarlatti, supreme : 
 graduated and sustained solemnity, in powerful and well-marked rapiditj 
 magnificent in broad and dignified recitative; those heroically strong co: 
 traltos and solemn sweet sopranos for whom Handel composed h 
 Binaldo, his Cfiulio Cesare, his Admeto, his Flavio ; among them supe: 
 actors and actresses, statuesquely fine in gesture, like Vittoria Tesi, tl 
 Eomanina, Senesino, Carestini, and that Cav. Niccolino of whom Stee 
 said that his gestures were as noble as those of an antique, and Addiso 
 in the days of Betterton, that he wished all English actors would tal 
 him as a model.* 
 
 * Steele's account of Niccolini is very qnaint: — " Signor Niccolini sets off tl 
 character he bears in an opera hy his action as much as he does the words of it 
 his voice. Every limb, and every finger, contributes to the part he acts, insoma 
 that a deaf man might go along with him in the sense of it. There is scarce 
 beautiful posture in an old statue which he does not plant himself in. . . ] 
 performs the most ordinary action in a manner suitable to the greatness of 1 
 character, and shows the prince even in the giving of a letter or the dispatch! 
 (rf a message. ... I have seen him enter alone at the remotest part of tie stai 
 and advance from it, with such greatness of air and mien as seemed to fill t 
 stage, and at the same time commanded the attention of the audience with ( 
 majesty of his appearance." — Tatler, No. 116, Tuesday, January 3, 1709. Stee 
 be it remarked, had no musical sense, and abominated operas. Addison, in t 
 Spectator (in which there is another eulogium on Niccolini's acting), has a vf 
 droll story of this singer's encounter with a lion, in the opera of Hydaspes, w 
 roared in high Dutch to a figured bass, and, being when ofE the stage a tailor, clav 
 open the hero's doublet in order to make work for himself in his other capaci 
 Niccolini's voice was a low contralto; Handel wrote for him his fine part 
 Binaldo. 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. Vi 
 
 P'ell-balanced, strong, solemn, heroic, is this opera of Zeno, of Ca 
 I, of Handel; in these qualities it can go no further. Let it be perfec 
 astasio, Pergolesi, Leo, JommelH, may arise. 
 
 IV. 
 
 a the year 1723 the Eomanina got Metastasio engaged to write tl 
 . of the opera in which she was to perform the following CarnivE 
 
 subject chosen was Dido. The treatment was talked over betwec 
 friends, perhaps also with the composer Sarro, and with the Cavali 
 3olino, the greatest actor in Italy, so warmly admired by Addison ai 
 jle, and who was to play ^neas. The Eomanina conceived, we a 
 , one of the most original scenes. That the dramatic conduct of tl 
 ', the masterly rapidity of the action, were due to the influence of tl 
 it actress, is more than probable. Dido has faults, and in plent 
 •e are many tedious scenes, tiresome disquisitions, action springii 
 a nothing, and ending in nothing ; but it has a something, a simplici 
 anguage, a swiftness of movement, an energy of passion, which sho 
 sw style and a master. The manly, generous, but lukewarm jEnei 
 
 the ease and dignity which Steele has described in Niccolini; 
 plicity and modesty of gestm-e which yet fills the mind, because it 
 id and elegant. Dido has a proud drawing herself up, a sweepii 
 etuosity of passion, a grand draping as it were of the part, wheth 
 1 or excited, in which we can recognise what the Eomanina mu 
 e been, — in her scornful humbling of Jarbas, in her pretended ii 
 jrence to ^neas, in her pitiful clinging to him, above all, in tl 
 mdid scene where, abandoned by all — dauntless, despairing, and b 
 lered — she hurls her death as an evil omen on the path of ..Eneas, ai 
 iipitates herself into the crashing ruins of the burning palace. In £ 
 
 there is something almost superior to Virgil, superior as are tl 
 )le mpdulations, the concentrated accent of a recitative to the naturs 
 confused and feeble, intonation of mere spoken words, 
 letastasio wrote not only the tragic play itself but wrote also tv 
 e comic interludes, according to that illogical jumbling fashion whi( 
 rails whenever an art is adolescent. After the curtain had falh 
 n the intensely tragic Eomanina Dido upbraiding the stately ai 
 uesque Niccolini ^neas, it rose upon Signora Santa Marchesini, as 
 la donna, quarreling with the stage tailors about the length of h 
 Q, and interrupted by the arrival of a famous buffo as Nibbio, 
 3ulous manager from the Canary Islands. Metastasio had no tri 
 ic talent, yet these interludes are droll enough— caricatures of tl 
 ' tragedy that they relieve, caricatures of the wrath and faintings 
 
 such a queen as Dido, caricatures of just such airs, with tremendoi 
 
72 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 lutical, botanical, meteorological similes: roses, rainbows, gilliflowers, 
 )pper kettles, lions, tigers, lobsters, cold fowl, &c., as Benedetto Marcello 
 (commended to opera poets of the year 1720, and as Metastasio himself 
 lade by the dozen — caricatures of the impresario, of the prima donna, of 
 le audience; turning of everything into ridicule fearlessly, from the 
 irtainty that as soon as the tragedy was resumed people would weep as 
 luch at the originals of the caricature as they had laughed at the carica- 
 ire itself. 
 
 The success of Didone Ahhandonata was prodigious; it was immediately 
 it by all the principal Italian composers, and performed on all the 
 rincipal Italian stages. It was printed and reprinted. To the com- 
 Dsers it offered a musical perfection, an elegance and variety of blank 
 srse and rhyme such as had hitherto been wholly unknown. To the 
 3tors it gave an intensity of movement to which they were unaccustomed, 
 ) the public in the theatre, and to readers in the closet, it revealed a com- 
 leteness of character and action, a height of pathos and passion, such as 
 .postolo Zeno could never have conceived. And from that moment 
 ites the end of Zeno's reign, the commencement of that of Metastasio. 
 Hdo is in some respects a mature, a perfect work, showing a complete 
 lastery over the subject, an unerring instinct of the treatment. It is a 
 mple, strong, correct blow, correct perhaps because it is the first that is 
 Tuck. It is satisfactory because it is limited, because it does not aim 
 t much, because in it Metastasio does not attempt to do more than a 
 lird of what can be done by him; because the plot is simple, the action 
 rident, the characters and passions concentrated, and given ready made 
 Y Virgil. The plays which succeeded Didone are woefully inferior as 
 holes; they are as unsatisfactory as Dido is the reverse; they are confused, 
 isipid, exaggerated, disagreeable, from the sense that the poet is at a 
 iss how to proceed. They are often ridiculous in inanity and artificiality: 
 I Cato in Utica, Csesar at one moment threatens Cato with Eoman 
 ardness and terseness, at another talks Petrarchesque sonnets at Cato's 
 lughter ; in Semiramide Biconosciuta, Semiramis, pretending to be her 
 mx son, is made the judge in a dispute for the hand of a Bactrian 
 rincess, is recognised by a lover who had tried to drown her on a pre- 
 ince of infidelity, and who consequently gives up the Bactrian princess, 
 id refuses the cup which she offers her three suitors. The Hyrcanian 
 L-ince, who, thinking his favoured rival would accept the cup, had put 
 aison in it, has it offered in turn to him, and is sorely puzzled what 
 ) do. . . . And thus for three acts of interminable complications. In 
 lessandro nelle Indie, Porus pretends to be one of his own generals, 
 irries messages to and from himself, and offers to betray himself into the 
 ands of Alexander, in order to catch the latter. In Siroe, a princess, 
 ishing to avenge her father on the tyrant Chosroes, dresses as a man, 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 becomes his faTourite councillor, urges him to every degree of inji: 
 towards his son, in order to make that son, who loves her, the instru: 
 of her vengeance. The son refuses; is accused of conspiracy, cannot 
 himself without accusing her, and so on. In Artaserse, the hero, ac( 
 of regicide by his father, and unable to disculpate himself, is let c 
 prison by the king, his bosom friend, and thus comes up just in tin 
 crush a revolt, by means of which his father intended to depose the 
 and liberate him. There is so much action, so much plot, so i 
 heroism, so much lyrism and love-making, so much blundering 
 recognising, that you get wholly indifferent to everything, to 
 eternally agitated men and women, and to these everlasting thea 
 strokes — the very good qualities of the plays, the real passion, real ps 
 real poetry, increase the impatience with the confused whole. Ye 
 Italian public did not grow impatient, and was not dissatisfied with 
 plays. Nay, it was better pleased with them, in their imperfei 
 than with Dido in its perfection. And the Italians were right, 
 instinctively recognised that the very inequality, the very languoi 
 exaggeration of these later works, was the result of a develop 
 of Metastasio's genius ; that his uncertainty arose from striving 
 new effects ; that the faults arose from the attempt to seize new beai 
 that the want of proportion was the effect of growth. He was expai 
 the style, seeking its limits, fumbling for its characteristics ; every 
 corresponded to a new merit. If he was over-lyric, he was strikin 
 lyric beauties ; if he was over-complicated, it was because he was 
 varied and inventive ; if his action was precipitate, his passion ace 
 lated, and his movement jerky, it was because his action had become 
 rapid, his passion more concentrated, his movement freer; if he was f 
 ing between the example of the French and of the Spaniards i 
 because he was absorbing some of the qualities of both. There c 
 be another Dido : it must for ever remain his best unless it be fol 
 by very different works. And if Dido be Metastasio's best, Metai 
 will never be Metastasio, the Metastasio of Achille, of Demofoonte, ( 
 Olimpiade, of Begolo. He will be but a better Zeno, forgotten like . 
 Thus, despite the bungling work of these plays, they were far mor( 
 cessful than Dido. They were newer, more original, contained 
 elements of greatness ; irregular, but great beauties, like the rough] 
 grandly sketched Cato, far more Eoman and more dramatic than . 
 son's mild platonician ; like the two slightly executed, but powe 
 conceived characters of Siroes and ^tius — noble, arrogant, boj 
 passionate — like the beautifully pathetic situation of Arsaces in Arta 
 judged and condemned by the father whose crime he expiates, but 
 not reveal: beauties also of lyric expression, of metrical originalit 
 power, of brilliantly conceived plot and action. In Dido, Metasts 
 
174 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 drawing correctly, with mastery, after the antique; but he can do : 
 than copy the antique, he can compose whole pictures, balance large gn 
 manage cunning lights, combine splendid colours. He has now lef 
 antique ; he is sketching confused groups, blurring strange colours, 
 matter, he is learning his true work. 
 
 Almost immediately after the successful appearance of Dido, the 
 manina, her husband and Metastasio, left Naples for Rome. Metasts 
 brother, Leopold, was employed to look for a house, and bought or 1 
 one in the Corso, between Piazza del Popolo and S. Giacomo, no 
 from where, some fifty years later, Goethe was to finish his Iphigen 
 the palace opposite Rondanini's. To settle in Eome was equivalen 
 the part of the Romanina, to retiring into private life, as ecclesias 
 prudery would suffer no woman on the stage. Marianna Bulgar 
 career was over; her future interest in life lay solely in Metastasio. 
 was more devoted to him than before. She took into her house not 
 himself, — young, famous, and agreeable, and whom she idolised, — but ' 
 was very different, his whole family: an old man, who, however wort! 
 respect, was but an ex-soldier and a small ex-shopkeeper; an old and brc 
 woman, ignorant, illiterate, accustomed to hobble about with a ken 
 on her head, and an earthenware brazier under her apron, much hono 
 by the company of the neighbouring housekeepers ; a couple of g 
 perhaps a little less homely, but probably not much more cultured, 
 like those whom the Romanina may have seen, gaudily tricked out, 
 ing pumpkin seeds and oranges in the highest part of the theatre ; 
 finally Metastasio's elder brother, Leopoldo, well educated and well-t 
 but lazy, peevibh, and perpetually dissatisfied. But they were P: 
 Metastasio's family, and for Pietro's sake, for the sake of his fair 
 winning present, his dimly splendid future, for the sake of her passio 
 devotion, the Romanina, — intellectual, cultured, a great artist, accusto 
 to the society of men of rank or of talent, a proud, though self-i 
 woman, — made these people her companions daily, hourly, and for as 
 as they chose to stay. These good people must have felt rather oc 
 their new position ; they must have said and done things which madt 
 Eomanina's grand visitors look at each other and smile. Was the 
 manina vexed ? Probably not. She may have smiled and tried t 
 , all right and make everyone comfortable, but the elegant little A 
 Metastasio, in his dapper black dress and a little white wig, with his 
 dignified manners, may sometimes have turned aside — crimson or \vi 
 to hide his shame and disgust at some droll blunder of his fathe 
 mother, or sisters. Yet, saving such little mortifications, his life 
 pleasant enough. True, here in Rome everyone knew about Gra 
 some about the arte hianca shop, and there were all the Trapassis t( 
 their own tale. But living in this rather strange fashion in the hou 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 an actress, surrounded by the harum-scarum theatrical world, risen 
 the mud and living strange lives, Metastasio got a sort of devil-may 
 feeling, and thought less about proprieties and dignity than before 
 Metastasio's preoccupation throughout life was to come up to the no 
 of those who immediately surrounded him. And the life in Eomc 
 pleasant in its way. There was no further thought of the law : M 
 tasio was to gain his bread writing texts for the opera. What he es 
 was spent on bread only metaphorically, since he and his lived ol 
 Romanina, hut it was a pleasant pocket-rnoney for his little vanities 
 amusements, of which there were plenty. There was much compai 
 the house, and always amusing, literary, and theatrical folk, who v 
 talk, brag, and had many and various adventures ; young idlers, c 
 and agreeable, jovial men of the middle classes, who cared mor 
 music and jesting than for their shops and offices; light ecclesia 
 gallant and cynical ; occasionally also some traveller or passer-by. 
 
 So they lived in Rome during the winter, Metastasio writing his 
 and looking on, while the energetic Romanina drilled the boy actress 
 the Aliberti theatre ; teaching them how not to trip up in their s! 
 how to hold their fans and fold their arms, all extremely droll, no d( 
 and generally instructing everyone, .from the prince of Persia in hi 
 wig, immense plumed helmet, and gilt manacles, down to the page 
 senators and other dummies. Then the excitement of the final per: 
 ance: the pasquinades, the applause, the triumph; the Carnival ai 
 ments, with the windows crammed full of friends ; the riderless Ba 
 horses rushing down the Corso ; the stream of masks harlequini 
 along, throwing up flowers and sweetmeats, amidst a rain of plaster 
 fits and of witticisms ; the waxlights lit, and snuffed out, between i 
 and window ; the yells, grimaces, quips and cranks, and everything 
 is childishly, barbarously amusing. 
 
 Then, during the dull Lent, some oratorio or sacred opera to wri 
 this prelate or that, some wheedling of ostentatious princes of the Ch 
 as Metastasio never entirely gave up the hope of ecclesiastical prefer 
 wishing, as was quite possible in the Rome of those days, to dine ol 
 altar and siip off the stage"; to live in the house of an actress, surrot 
 by theatrical riffraff and adventurers, and still to hold some sanctii 
 ous office— 'clerk of the Inquisition, secretary of the Congregation o 
 Index, treasurer of the Propaganda Fide, or something similar. 
 
 And perhaps, too, there were walks in the spring, lazy strolls it 
 violet-grown dells of the Villa Pamphili and beneath the inky holm 
 of the Borghese. Yes, there must surely have been such : the car 
 which Metastasio wrote about that time prove that he was not alwa 
 the pavement of the Corso and the boards of the Teatro Aliberti 
 these charming little pastorals of a page or so, of which the grufl 
 
176 I Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 iarcastic Porpora set the blank verse in pithiest, lightest recitative, and 
 vrote to the rhymes the sweetest, brightest melodies, wreathed with deli- 
 jate cadences, starred with crisp turns and sparkling little shakes, in these 
 santatas of Metastasio's there is an element of truth which there was not 
 n the Endymion or the Gardens of the Hesperides — there are no patches 
 )f Virgilian or Theocritan colour, there is no sweetly insipid perfume of 
 Fasso and Guarini; Thyrsis and Chloe, Philenus and Irene, the shep- 
 lerdess who is invited to go on the sea, fretted by the moonlight; the 
 hepherd who dreams that he sits on the brink of the well with his 
 )eloved, and starts up awake at the appearance* of his rival; the youth 
 md the nymph who are caught by the shower and take refuge in the cave: 
 ill these bright, graceful, actively feeling and moving little figures, are 
 leither real rustics like Lorenzo de' Medici's immortal Nencia, nor yet 
 lainty Dresden ladies and gentlemen, with flowered bodices, long waist- 
 loats, powder, and crooks. They are something betwixt and between, 
 imbodiments of impressions received neither from the fields and woods 
 lor from the clipped avenues and terraces of a garden, but from the sort 
 if Elysian ruralness of those sweet, solemn Eoman villas, where the 
 lorses graze beneath the red-stemmed pines, where you tread on a carpet 
 if lilac anemones and starry daffodils, where the bays meet overhead, and 
 he water trickles over the maidenhair of the broken fountains, where 
 Arcadia seems real, Arcadia neither of dusty pedants like Crescimbeni's 
 onder on the Janiculum, nor of porcelain beaux, like that of M. de 
 Horian, but an Arcadia of your own, according to your own heart. 
 
 In the scorching Eoman summer there were the little open theatres, 
 phere Pulcinella and Coviello jabbered the Neapolitan dialect, which 
 lletastasio preferred to his own stately Roman, and where hairdressers' 
 .pprentices and coffeehouse waiters played great ladies and sly waiting- 
 aaids. Later, in the pestilential autumn, there were villeggiaturas at 
 Ubano and Frascati, with long games at caids, noisy midnight walks, 
 ,nd singing and laughter to heart's content. Every now and then there 
 fas even some longer excursions to Bologna, where the buffoonish, jolly 
 aen of science flocked round the Romanina and Metastasio ; to Venice, 
 fhere the Dido was received with rapture ; where they met old Neapolitan 
 riends, Porpora and Vinci composing, and Metastasio's adopted twin 
 irother, Farinello, singing, no longer a boy, but the greatest, most 
 irilliant, most versatile, most magnificent of singers, living in a sort of 
 lermanent apotheosis. At Venice also they met the Saxon Hasse and his 
 amous, beautiful wife Faustina, staunch friends in later years, and des- 
 ined to set and sing Metastasio's verses into popularity all over the 
 rorld. And at Venice a famous rococo painter, by name Amigoni, later 
 estined to paint the finest scenes for Metastasio's plays, put the poet into 
 , half realistic, half allegorical picture, with himself, Farinello, and the 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 Faustina, to whom he might have added her husband Hasse ; with 
 three Metastasio was to be indissolubly connected, though going thi 
 life in different countries; while increasing their individual fame, 
 stantly contributing each to the other's triumph; they were young 
 hopeful, fit to be painted together. The Eomanina Amigoni did not d 
 of putting into his picture : she was gradually becoming a thing c 
 past. 
 
 But meanwhile time was going on. All hopes of ecclesiastical pi 
 ment had vanished; the price of each of Metastasio's new dramas 
 fixed at 300 scudi (about 60Z.) ; their success was certain. All was ^ 
 well, but all was limited: more new plays, more 300 scudi, more appl 
 he knew it all by heart, and it probably began to pall upon him. 
 a smooth, straight road, down which he could see for miles, was dej 
 ing him; he would fain have turned a comer, at the risk of wha 
 might appear round it. Perhaps, also, the sense of dependence upoi 
 generosity of the Eomanina began to weigh upon him; perhaps h( 
 weary of being so constantly thought of and cared for; weary of 1 
 the sole thought of a woman who no longer sufficed for him. H( 
 what people in those days called imprudent, and she was a pn 
 woman — ^he iigpsudent, safe in her care; she prudent in her abs 
 devotion: the words sound like an irony. Imprudent he was, ii 
 sense of following his whims, of ceding to his passions, and the Eomj 
 was prudent in trying to restrain a weak, selfish man. Perhapi 
 would have had him more manly, stronger, more capable of resti 
 able to repress all but some huge folly like her own, more like hei 
 self — blind to the fact that had he been like her she could not hav^ 
 towards him as she did, nor he have been what he had become to 
 There were petty quarrels, the more frequent because Metastasio brc 
 interference less, now he was tired of dependence. There were worse 
 quarrels, worse than anxieties : Metastasio, from fault or weakness 
 himself into a predicament which placed him at the mercy of enei 
 This is all his biographers dimly hint, speaking vaguely of his " free 
 visits to a person for whom he had a polite partiality," of " regard toTi 
 her family forbidding further explanations;" of calumnies spread; 
 lawsuit threatened, and suppressed by the influence of a friendly card 
 of the matter not ending till the mysterious person had "preso st 
 which can mean only one of two things, marriage or the cloister. \^ 
 ever the matter was it must have been scandalous, judging by th( 
 treme anxiety shown by Metastasio to suppress all discussion oi 
 subject, as in his letter written to Cardinal Gentili, written some 3 
 later — the most abject humiliation, the most painful knee-kissing 
 most pathetic entreaty for help which could be extorted from a man 
 
J8 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 IS let himself slip into a disgraceful position, who cannot defy calumny, 
 id sees safety only in complete silence. Altogether, the pleasant life 
 id become embittered. 
 
 Did the Eomanina notice it ? Surely. But she did not become angry, 
 he let Metastasio suggest to his old protectress, the Princess Belmonte 
 ignatelli, that he was anxious for change, for a less precarious position; 
 lat— ah, were it only possible 1 if only — ^but he had no thought of it- 
 he might obtain employment at Vienna, in case Apostolo Zeno, the 
 ourt poet, should require assistance. The Princess Belmonte repeated 
 le insinuation to her sister-in-law, the Countess Althann, widow of the 
 lyourite of the Emperor, and herself at one moment his flame; then the 
 tatter was left to itself. The suggestion worked its way. On Septem- 
 sr 27, 1729, Metastasio received a grand letter from the Austrian Em- 
 assy, a letter whose aspect and seals must have made him tmm white 
 ad red, and the Eomanina tremble and sicken. It was from Prince 
 'io di Savoja, one of the Emperor's lords-in-waiting, and said that the 
 oiversal applause excited by Metastasio's poems, and the approbation 
 wakened in the august Emperor, were the reason for which his Majesty 
 esired to offer his service to the Abate Metastasio, on whatever terms 
 e might mention; that Apostolo Zeno, the present Court poet, wished 
 )r no other companion, and that, as soon as an answer in the affirmative 
 as received, money would be forwarded to cover the expense of the 
 )urney from Eome to Vienna. 
 
 Metastasio was astounded, not at the proposal, for which he had been 
 ghing, but at the rapid fulfilment of his dearest wishes. His biogra- 
 hers teU us that the letter put him into terrible perplexity; that he 
 3uld not resolve to leave his dear native city, his dear father, brother, 
 nd sisters, his dear benefactress; that, without uttering a word, he 
 laced the letter in the Eomanina's hand; that she was oveijoyed, chid 
 im for his coolness, laughed, joked, and saluted him Poeta Cesareo. 
 Jas! the pretty little story must be apocryphal: the post had been long 
 oveted, the indecision long settled, the Eomanina's sacrifice had long 
 een made; and an answer, joyfully accepting the offer, and suggesting 
 ,000 florins as annual stipend, was despatched the very next morning, 
 'resently came Prince Pio's reply: 4,000 florins were deemed too much; 
 rould the Abate Metastasio accept 3,000, and a hundred ungheri for 
 he travelling expenses? The Abate Metastasio most humbly and grate- 
 iiUy accepted. He begged time to settle his affairs in Eome, to provide 
 or his family (already provided for by the Eomanina), to put an opera 
 n to the stage, &c.; all would be completed by Lent, and in Lent he 
 fould start. 
 
 All was completed by Lent. His family was to remain with the Bul- 
 ;ai'ellis; Leopoldo was to continue at the bar; the Eomanina was to 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 teach the singers of the Teatro Aliberti how to perform his pieces 
 was to go, become rich, great, who knows what? And in a few year 
 would obtain a holiday, and pass it in Eome ; or they should all ( 
 over to Vienna — why not? It was not so melancholy after all; oi 
 little twinge at parting, a little sickness of his too feminine sensibili 
 few tears, and then all would be over; once off, all would be men 
 ever. But would it be merry for the Eomanina ; for her who was g 
 nowhere, who had no future, and was to lose the present ? Metas 
 wept, and wept copiously, we may be sure, and then sprang cheerily 
 his postchaise. Marianna Bulgarelli parted from him with a sm 
 face, and words of hope and encouragement; but when he was gone i 
 remained in her poor life a void, a darkness, cheered up only by the 
 of seeing him again. 
 
 Charles VI. of Austria, King of Hungary, Emperor of Gem 
 King of Naples and Sicily, sovereign of the Milanese, Csesar Ever Au 
 was a very stately and splendid sovereign, surrounded by very so 
 magnificence. True, the Austrian house was beginning to be the 
 ball of Europe; his father and brother had been brow-beaten by ] 
 XtV^. ; he himself had been turned out of Spain by the little iml 
 Philip V. True, he was on the point of losing Parma and Naples 
 could with difficulty cope with his rebellious electors ; true, his dau; 
 was to be ignominiously deprived of the empire by Charles of Bavaria 
 to be buffeted about by Frederick the Great, Augustus of Saxony, Gi 
 II., M. de Choiseul, and Madame de Pompadour ; true, the Aus 
 finances were deplorable, the Austrian people ragged and ignorani 
 Austrian armies ever defeated; true, he was a pompous empty 
 true, most true, yet Charles VI. was surrounded by a halo of glor 
 aureole of victory, a dim majesty of Eoman imperialism. And he 
 it. He felt the necessity of a degree of holiness, of solemnity, of m 
 ficence, such as only the heir of the Caesars could assume. His cour 
 capital, were full of prudish gallantry, of frivolous devotion, of c 
 tatious bad taste, of majestic brutality, of imbecUe bigotry : a mixti 
 French elegance and levity with German coarseness and heaviness, 8p 
 solemnity and vacuity, Hungarian pride and love of display, Or 
 splendour and misery, and Italian love of art. Feudal courtiers 
 musical chapels and drank fifty sorts of wine at dinner; Jesuits 
 plaster beribboned churches; ladies were publicly and solemnly ask 
 appoint their lovers ; men who had struck priests who had insulted 
 were promenaded through the town in sackcloth, holding exp; 
 
 n2 
 
30 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 mdles; heretics were slaughtered in Silesia; Turks were dreaded on the 
 anube; the Empress and her ladies amused themselves with archery 
 eetings where jewelled Cupids were shot at ; the people amused them- 
 ilves with seeing robbers and murderers racked and broken on the 
 heel ; there were grand circus games, where bears were baited, bulls 
 irn to pieces by dogs, and horses ripped open ; German comedies, where 
 [answurst and Kasperl said and did all that is filthiest; and Italian 
 Deras, where heroic contraltos and idyllic sopranos sang virtue and 
 emency to exquisite music: of that strange medley of refinement, 
 rutality, pomp, vice, and bigotry which constituted a German Court of 
 le early eighteenth century, that of Vienna was a perfectly balanced 
 )ecimen: less vicious than Saxony, less brutal than Prussia, but as 
 gnified, splendid, and bigoted as any. And in this Olympus, with his 
 :et on the heads of Magyar and Bohemian nobles, of German mercenary 
 merals, of Italian and Spanish princes, of Occidental and Oriental 
 lagnates, was throned Charles VI. Ever August, with his confessor behind 
 im, his humpbacked, velvet and diamond clad dwarf on the right hand, 
 is gouty, grave chapelmasters, and plump, wistful singers, on the left, 
 like all of his family, a mongrel, without sympathy for any nationaUty, 
 harles VI. was too much of a German lout to be a successful Spaniard, 
 10 much of a Spanish grandee to be a satisfactory German; he had 
 ifiered too much from France to endure anything French in dress, 
 ,nguage, or manners; so, on the whole, he inclined towards being Itahan 
 I all that he could be. And, while as a German, a Spaniard, a Hun- 
 arian, Charles VI. was but a huge, pompous puppet, twitched by the 
 arious European stringholders into attitudes the droller for his very 
 ravity, as an Italian he had his fine side in his sincere passion for mosic 
 ad his truly intelligent cultivation of it. He was a good performer, a 
 )lerable composer, an excellent critic, though, as artistic sovereigns 
 sually are, rather jealous of supreme merit. His two chapelmasters, 
 'ux and Caldara, were somewhat ancient and pedantic, innovating genius 
 ither disconcerting Caesar's musical habits; but he also employed more 
 lodern and fashionable composers, like Lotti, Porpora, and later Hasse. 
 le would have Uked to compose his operas and to sing them in person, 
 ut the sense of Csesarean dignity restrained him. He did the next best: 
 e made all his dependents learn music ; he sent his little Archduchess, 
 laria Theresa, on to a miniature stage when she was stiU an infant, and 
 lade her sing duets with Signer Senesino when she was already Grand 
 )uchess of Tuscany ; he had operas performed by his chamberlains and 
 idies of honour ; he accompanied Parinello on the harpsichord, and well- 
 igh gave singing lessons to the greatest of living singers ; he had long 
 iterviews with his chapelmasters, and presided at every sort of rehearsal, 
 le squandered the money of his poverty-stricken country on wonderful 
 
Metastasio and the Opera, 
 
 performances in the open air, where the choruses were sung by a hun 
 distinguished singers ; on operas in the iFavorita gardens, with astoun 
 scenic shows and naval battles, like the one seen by Lady Mary "Wo: 
 Montagu, which cost 30,000Z. ; he kept companies entirely composf 
 celebrities, like the Tesi, the Faustina, Carestini, Senesino, Lotti's ' 
 and the like, of whom a single one was enough to sustain the g 
 theatres of Naples, Venice, or Ebme. For the sake of his operas ale 
 kept Apostolo Zeno, a Cretan Venetian, one of the most distingui 
 literati and humanists of the day, who received 4,000 florins for oi 
 two dramas, and who was assisted by another playwright, Pariati, 
 salary of 2,000 florins. And for the sake of his operas Charles 
 on Apostolo Zeno retiring from active service, had called from Ital 
 greatest dramatist, the young Abate Pietro Metastasio. 
 
 The honour of being the servant of so great and splendid a sover 
 was too much for Metastasio's feelings ; he himself wrote home \ 
 although he had prepared himself for the event, the presence of G 
 Augustus entirely overpowered him. It was at the palace of Laxemb 
 The gentleman-in-waiting introduced the poet into the room and left 
 on the threshold. Metastasio made three most humble bows, one ai 
 door, one half-way, and one before the Emperor, and went down on 
 knee before the immense and monumental monarch, not, as in his picti 
 in a breastplate and laurel crown, but in walking dress, a three-corn 
 beaverji^ his majestic peruke, leaning against a table, looking 
 serious indeed. " Rise, rise," said Csesar, and Metastasio, in falte 
 tones, began the speech he had probably composed before his depai 
 from Rome, which sounded thus: " I know not which is the greater, 
 joy or my confusion, at finding myself at the feet of your C»sa 
 Majesty. This is a moment for which I have longed ever since 
 earliest years, and now I find myself not only in the presence of 
 greatest monarch of the world, but even in the glorious capacity 
 servant of his. I know the obligations of this position, and if tte los 
 a great part of my blood could make me a Homer I should not hesi 
 to become one. I shall, however, do my best to supply my want of tal 
 sparing neither attention nor fatigue in your Majesty's service. I k 
 that, whatever the degree of my incompetence, it will always be less i 
 the infinite clemency of your Majesty, and I hope that the positic 
 poet to Caesar may give me that merit which I cannot hope from 
 talent." Charles VI. listened patiently, and as he listened his co\i 
 nance became more serene (why should it have ever been otherwise ?), 
 then he answered: " I was already persuaded of your ability, but ] 
 now further convinced of your good manners, and I do not doubt that 
 will satisfy me in all my Csesarly service ; nay, that you will force ni 
 be satisfied with you." The Emperor stopped, waiting to see whe 
 
32 Metastasio and tlie Opera. 
 
 [etastasio had any request to make; he begged permission to kiss 
 eesar's hand, but C»sar laughed and shook hands friendlily with him. 
 DeHghted by this demonstration of affection," writes Metastasio, "I 
 [ueezed Cesar's hands in both mine in a transport of pleasure, and gave 
 so sonorous a kiss that my most clement master could not but perceive 
 lat it came from my heart." 
 
 We may smile at this scene, at this ludicrous crawling speech of the 
 3et, at the solemn mien of the Emperor, at the transports of joy and the 
 p^erwhelming sense of honour with which the greatest of Italian writers 
 iceived the stinted, ungracious civility of this pompous Caesarly jackass ; 
 it we must remember what royalty was in those days, what a halo, what 
 glory, what holy splendour surrounded it ; we must remember that the 
 old Bavarian had not yet snatched the imperial crovra ; that Frederick 
 le Great, with his shabby clothes and democratic manners, had not yet 
 rought Austria to the last gasp ; that Maria Theresa had not yet made 
 erself cheap to everyone, from the King of France's mistress to the 
 nallest vice-chapehnaster of Salzburg ; that the Holy Eoman Empire, 
 lat mysterious inheritance of the Csesars, that link between Augustus, 
 Iharlemagne, and modern times, was still intact; and that this pompous 
 ickass, this dull, crowned music-master, was its incarnation, and as such 
 ;ood on a mental pedestal, in a mystic niche, which could be approached 
 aly with awe and trembling. Metastasio was in no respect superior to 
 is age, which was servile ; nay, his temper made him improve even on 
 le servility of his day; so Metastasio was extremely happy, and there 
 as a more interested reason for his satisfaction. If he had offered to 
 tied his blood in order to write better plays for C»sar, if he had squeezed 
 tesar's hand with such transport, if he had given it such a sonorous kiss, 
 ; was not merely from abstract loyalty and abstract servility: the post of 
 lourt poet was, in his eyes, a golden door to a vaguely-splendid career of 
 lourt favour. And why not ? The Emperor, constantly busy about his 
 peras, his oratorios, his cantatas and serenatas, had frequent oppor- 
 mities of noticing his theatre poet, of talking with him, of making him 
 is intimate. Metastasio's predecessor, Zeno, who had left Vienna just 
 afore his arrival, had been moat remarkably honoured by Charles VI. ; 
 e had been treated with the most astonishing familiarity, had been made 
 le Emperor's companion, his friend, his crony, had been given oppor- 
 mities of obtaining a splendid position at Court, if he had not been too 
 reat an old fool to seize his advantages. And if Zeno, an old, simple, 
 •abbed scholar, caring and knowing only about parchments and books, 
 ithout a presence, vrithout manners, without desire to please, could have 
 ained so much of Csesar's affection, what might not be done by a young, 
 mdsome man, by an acknowledged genius, a man of the finest manners, 
 le most delicate tact, the most insinuating conversation, who hungered 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 for imperial condescension, and could give such heartfelt and son 
 kisses ? Ah, yes, Metastasio would captivate C»sar as he had capti 
 Gravina and the Bomanina. 
 
 Meanwhile he looked around him in this new world of Vienna 
 world of mongrel feudalism, of heraldic hierarchy, in which people 
 judged of by their quarterings; so different from his own democratic 
 where servility was unprejudiced and practical, the only inequality 
 that between those who could confer favours and those who could i 
 them. Metastasio did not know a word of German, any more thai 
 other foreigner of the eighteenth century, to whom the language 
 mere guttural jabber fit for drunken postillions and half-witted ah 
 ists, but not for poUte lips or polite ears. But this ignorance, altl 
 it was of no hindrance in conversing with chamberlains, maids of he 
 and similar civilised people, was a great disadvantage when coping 
 Viennese servants and tradesfolk, especially where there was not 
 money to faciUtate comprehension. Metastasio, therefore, ingrai 
 himself with a fellow-countryman, Signer Niccolb Martinez, a Neapi 
 of Spanish origin, and interpreter of the Papal Nuncio. He had 
 lived in Vienna ; his wife knew how to deal with Germans ; both h- 
 she were pleasant, reputable people, just rich enough to have a cob 
 able home, just poor enough to be glad to share its comforts with a 
 who could pay for them. So Metastasio took up his abode in the 
 tinez's apartment, up a great many stairs, in the Kohlmarkt Streei 
 arranged his occupation methodically, as was his habit, and as was 
 for a man who had always been taken care of by others. 
 
 It being a pious Court, he began his day by going to mass a 
 Capuchin church ; then he wrote his plays, then he went about p 
 his visits, all with the regularity of clockwork. He thought to cap 
 all the Viennese magnates with his handsome face, his discreet wi 
 delicate scents, his elegant, subdued dress, his perfect balance of 
 quaUties. And so he went his round of visits. But the Austrians 
 to have been rather cold towards this plebeian Italian poet, wi 
 quarterings, without ancestors, with nothing but talent, and withi 
 voice, which was the only thing that could make these blue-bl( 
 feudal grandees thaw towards an inferior ; for a singer, like a sp 
 a horse, a dwarf, was one of those inferior beings which could be fo: 
 without indignity. But Metastasio was only a poet, that is to say, e 
 thing very like a valet: Being the Emperor's poet, he had indeed a 
 in the hierarchy, not as high perhaps as that of the Emperor's 
 butler, or chief groom, or chief dwarf, but he had a place, and one ^ 
 must be recognised even by those who, instead of writing verse 
 Caesar, had the supreme honour of handing him his wig, and buoklin 
 garters. Beyond such a frigid recognition of Metastasio, things a 
 
84 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 iarcely to have gone ; and Metastasio ever after hated the Austrians, 
 ipecially the ladies, seated solemnly over their samplers, from which they 
 ould raise but a supercilious glance at the poet. Metastasio's good 
 loks and graceful speeches were unremarked by all this blinking, lisping, 
 alf-deaf Viennese pride ; but they made a conquest, and an important 
 
 16. 
 
 Do you remember the Countess of Althann, to whom, as to her sister- 
 i-law, the good Princess Belmonte had applied on Metastasio's behalf, 
 nd through whose influence the post of Poeta Cesareo had been obtained 
 )r him? To her, as the source of his good fortune, as the relative of his 
 )rmer patroness, as the greatest of Italo- Austrian great ladies, Meta- 
 ;asio immediately turned. She had perhaps seen him once or twice at 
 [aples, where her husband had been Viceroy at one time; she knew all 
 bout him through the Princess Belmonte ; she received him very well, 
 nd he, rejected by the Austrian g^and folk, solitary and discouraged, 
 irew himself at the feet of this, his only hope. Marianna Pignatelli was 
 
 very great lady indeed, both by birth and by maniage; her late 
 usband, John Michael III., Count of Althann, had been the chief 
 ivourite of Charles VI. She herself had long been, and perhaps still 
 as, the Emperor's chief flame — honours in a German Court, where every 
 ifraction of the morality of lower folk was sanctified by its title, badge, 
 nd place in the hierarchy. She was very rich, had beautiful possessions 
 1 Moravia, and moreover was extremely influential and venerated at 
 lourt. She was an intellectual, liberal-minded woman, not indeed (being 
 n Austrian by marriage) as jovially familiar with writers, composers, and 
 ingers, as her warm-hearted sister-in-law, the Princess Belmonte, could 
 e in unceremonious, undignified Naples ; but appreciative, encouraging, 
 :racious to talent, whatever its number or paucity of quarterings. Meta- 
 tasio's works she admired, his company she enjoyed. For the Countess 
 Llthann was probably weary at heart : weary of her grandeur, weary of 
 he Court routine, weary of the empty-brained people with stars on their 
 reasts and keys on their coat-tails, who formed her society ; incapable, 
 rom Italian birth and education, of taking an interest in the squabbles 
 or precedence and for footstools, which occupied the court ; incapable, 
 rom character, of feeling attachment for these pompous male and female 
 ;!ourt dolls. Moreover, she was ceasing to be young ; forty was fast 
 pproaching, and, as it approached, her famous beauty, her famous fasoi- 
 lations, were vanishing. Charles VI. may still have been jealous, but he 
 irobably had long ceased to be in love; she was turning into a neglected 
 owager, without much interest in life. At that moment appeared Meta- 
 tasio, young, good-looking, witty, broad in opinions, delightful in 
 lanners, an Italian, a genius or very nearly, and ready to see her 
 oung, beautiful, fascinating, all that she had been; ready to adore 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 her discreetly, humbly, — raising his eyes upon her only enough to sho\ 
 that he wished to do more hut dared not. She was delighted with 
 with his respectful love : she encouraged him. That she was ami 
 clever, charming, is probable ; that she was rich, powerful, his 
 resource and hope, is certain. Little by little he made his way 
 her, not foreseeing perhaps what did happen, that the great lady c 
 completely to him, became his slave, his mistress — most wonderful o 
 his legitimate though secret wife ; that he should have foreseen th 
 scarce possible ; but in the Countess Althann he saw an ally, a pr 
 tress, who might push htm on in this dull stupid Court, and help 
 even more than the sonorous kisses on the Emperor's hand. 
 
 And meanwhile it was pleasant ; Csesar was distant and Oly: 
 indeed, but benign ; the Empress was encouraging ; the archduchi 
 adorably gracious ; one play succeeded better than the other ; 
 time and patience he might still obtain as much notice as Zeno 
 done, and he would know how to set it to profit. And the Coui 
 Althann would help him on. . . . All went well. In the wint( 
 went daily, as was the duty of a respectful cavaliere servente, to ai 
 his noble protectress while she was having her beautiful hair curled, pi 
 tumed, and powdered, and again in the evening when she received 
 friends. There were long chatty games at cards ; music, with Hasse 
 Caldara to play the harpsichord, and the Faustina, Parinello, or bin 
 to sing, and, pleasant talks with condescending ministers and diploi 
 In the summer there was the visit to the Countess in Moravia, the 
 strolls through the woods, the rambles gun in hand, everything fan 
 and charming. But there was not complete peace in Metastasio's i 
 while he shufled his cards, talked gaily, and listened to the music : s 
 thing began to worry him. He had found a delightful protectress 
 at Vienna, — a beautiful, accomplished, rich, powerful and loving 1 
 anna ; but there was another Marianna, the one he had left in Eomi 
 
 The Romanina had permitted him to leave her ; she had supportei 
 parting with fortitude, she had been happy in the thought of his hi 
 ness. But on«e away, her mental eyes were never turned from 
 direction in which he had gone; she attended to household matter 
 the wants of her husband, of Metastasio's father, brother, and sisi 
 she directed the performance of his plays at Rome : all went on as u 
 but her thoughts were far away, straining to see through the space 
 separated him from her, straining to see him, to follow his actioi 
 live in his presence. Much she doubtless supplied by her own fi 
 working upon the scanty facts contained in his letters. But he did 
 tell her enough of himself and of his doings. Why not ? Perhaps bee 
 wearied of long tutelage, he was vaguely vexed by her attempt still to 
 him in her sight, under her supervision. He wished to enjoy his lit 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 account to no one for his actions, to be independent, and independent 
 he would not permit him to be. His letters (Heaven knows how much 
 )runed and revised by those who published them) are at first affectionate, 
 lutiful, but with a sort of hurried affection and quickly despatched duti- 
 ulness. There is no lingering over this sort of talk with the distant one, 
 10 fond entering into such details as could make her see him ; it is all 
 ^ery proper, grateful, civil; he feels bound to write so many times a 
 aonth, but he hurries over his letter, and sends it to the post with a 
 )leasant sense of accompUshed duty. The Eomanina, intensely sensitive, 
 —all eyes, ears, imagination in what concerns him, — is dissatisfied : she 
 rants more details ; she complains of briefness, of reticence; he answers 
 vith greater briefaess and reticence, and also with a little impatience, 
 illing up his letters with moral reflections — moral reflections to her who 
 s hungering and thirsting for love, for something that may enable her 
 ,0 be in his company, at least in imagination. She becomes suspicious, 
 ealous ; imagines he is purposely concealing what he is working at, 
 somplains, accuses. Metastasio, with the impatience of a slightly niffled 
 itoic, resigns himself to complaints which, he says, have become as 
 •egular and inevitable as fits of quartan ague ; forgives her, becomes 
 nore brief, more general. The Bomanina has been very good to him, 
 lear, generoxis soul, but she is too ridiculous, too exacting towards a 
 roung man in his position; well, she is an evU, with her eternal sus- 
 Dicious epistles at regular intervals ; but it must be borne. Meanwhile 
 le goes to the Countess Althann, sees her hair dressed, reads her his 
 )oems, basks in the sunshine of so great a lady's afiection. 
 
 But the Bomanina cannot take things so philosophically; she has no 
 uture, no present ; she has only a blank, a void, an immense bitterness to 
 ive upon. And were they not to meet ? Was he not to return to Eome 
 ifter a few years ? Does he ever allude to that, the ungrateful wretch ? 
 iVas there not a talk of her joining him in Vienna? He has forgotten 
 hat. But she has not. Join him, and how? Under what pretext ? 
 Sow leave her house, her husband ? How undertake such a tremendous 
 ourney, not of days but of weeks ? Has not the Emperor a chapel, 
 loes he not engage all the greatest Italian singers ? And is she not a 
 ;reat singer — a great one among the great ? The poor passionate creature 
 brgets that she is old, that she has long left the stage, that she has 
 efused engagement after engagement. She thinks only of seeing him 
 .gain. Let him get her engaged. 
 
 Metastasio is terrified at the idea. Engage her, an old woman? 
 sTever. There is no danger of that, indeed. But if she knows there is 
 10 chance by this means, who can tell whether she may not sacrifice 
 louse, husband, all, and come to Vienna, openly, avowedly to see him ? 
 le trembles at the thought. What, to be claimed by her, as her protege, 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 her adopted son ; Heaven knows what ! By an actress, a singer, a 
 woman, without sense of decorum or prudence, in the face of the t 
 Court, of the Emperor, of all his friends and enemies! To be mad( 
 laughing-stock of this prudishly gallant town ? And the Countei 
 Althann! "What will happen if she, the proud great lady, whose 
 perty he has become, sees him claimed by another woman, a plebei 
 stage woman ? She who thinks him entirely hers, who never drear 
 his having been defiled by less noble patronage ; and the Romanina, 
 thinks that he lives solitary and faithful to his gratitude, finding hiu 
 acknowledged pet of another woman! What may not happen? ' 
 heavens! the earth will open beneath his feet; his hopes, his caree 
 be engulfed, and he be left to shame and misery. 
 
 No ; the Romanina must not, shall not come. But the only mea 
 preventing her is to let her continue in the hope that she may; to d( 
 her into fancying that he is working for her, lest she take the mattei 
 her own violent hands. Oh, wise young diplomatist! sagacious ri 
 of the human heart! Expert manager of life's stage ! How admire 
 enough? Alvisi, thy biographer, is too delighted with thy ingei 
 and expatiates on it : " He loved her sincerely ; he did not let a pos 
 pass without giving her the most lively signs of affection, but he 
 care not to satisfy her. He managed things so that the hope shoul 
 be extinguished in her, while he abstained from taking any steps to o 
 what she desired. The most exquisite policy did he use in the mi 
 so as neither to disgust Marianna nor to risk any untoward conca 
 tion." 
 
 Exquisite policy! And what sensibility, what consideration for 1 
 anna's feelings, as well as for those of the Countess ! A trouble 
 game, but beautifully played; nay, almost a pleasure to play it. Bu 
 most dexterous player cannot play against Fate. Fate would ha 
 that Marianna, wearied, suspicious, became exasperated at the delay; 
 some singer or composer, returning from Vienna to Italy, dropp( 
 incautious word about the Countess Althann .... Metastasio p 
 well and long, but Pate could not be wearied. What happened ? 
 do not know. Suddenly, in the year 1734, a letter comes, a black 1 
 Metastasio falls as if stricken. He can no longer conceal his feel 
 He is ill, very ill; cannot go to Court for months; remains at hon 
 weeks, till at length the Countess Althann, alarmed, throws dignit] 
 decorum overboard, and rushes to him, up the three pairs of stairs, 
 his rooms at the Martinezes. All we are told is that Marianna B 
 relli, commonly called the Romanina, was dead. Around this fact 
 is a great stillness, a great darkness. But in the stillness circulate : 
 very faint murmurs; in the darkness are visible dim outlines of tl 
 which frighten us The murmurs cannot be completely cor 
 
Metastasio and the Opera, 
 
 ended, the outlines cannot be distinguished, yet there remains a terrible 
 )mething, a legend made out of these confusedly interpreted vague 
 mnds and sights ; a legend which now, after 150 years, would scarcely 
 B understood, but merely suspected, had not a great philologist, a seeker 
 )r curious myths of all sorts, registered it. in his common-place book, 
 here it stands, hard and prosaic, in the common-place book of Gotthold 
 Iphraim Lessing, Librarian of Wolfenbuttel, in its alphabetical place, 
 mong notes on antique medals, extracts from mediaeval MSS., memoranda 
 a hydraulics, old German ballads, &c. 
 
 "Metastasio. — In his youth he was called Trapassi. Finazzi tells 
 le that the Didone Ahhandonata, performed for the first time in Venice 
 1 the year 1725, contains to a certain extent the story of Metastasio 
 imself and the Eomanina, the most famous of then flourishing Italian 
 ngers. The Eomanina had fallen in love with him, and when M. was 
 lUed to Vienna she wished, shortly after, to follow him. But Meta- 
 ;atio feared lest she might occasion annoyances to him in Vienna, and 
 light damage his reputation there, as she was married to a certain 
 lulgarelli, a poet and musician. So he obtained an order from the Court, 
 hich was sent to her half-way on her journey, forbidding her entering 
 le imperial dominions. The Eomanina became furious, and in her first 
 ige tried to kill herself, and wounded herself in the chest with a pen- 
 nife. The wound was not mortal, but she died soon afterwards of grief 
 nd despair." 
 
 The Eomanina was not married to a poet and musician ; Metastasio 
 lay never have been in love with her ; she died full four years after his 
 jttling at Vienna ; Didone was written ten years before her death; orders 
 ) prevent people entering the imperial dominions were not granted to 
 lourt poets for the mere asking ; the asking for such an order was not 
 le simplest or least compromising step a man could take. The myth is 
 myth, full of incongruities and absurdities as all myths are ; but myths 
 o not originate out of nothing: they are distorted phantoms, too hideous 
 )r reality, but which haunt and avenge. 
 
 Metastasio staggered under the news of this death, so sudden, so op- 
 ortune, so unexpected, perhaps also so horrible. So Marianna was dead! 
 he who had so long stood in his way was removed ; the letters of which 
 e had been so sick had come to an end ; the suspicions and accusations 
 'ould never again be renewed ; the journey to Vienna, which had so 
 jrrified him, would never be carried out ; that dreaded encounter would 
 ever take place ; he had been fighting for his honour, his safety: they 
 'ere no longer in peril. He had almost hated the Eomanina, and now 
 e loved her again. Oh to be chidden once more, to dread her again, to 
 isk all from her arrival ! anything rather than that she should be dead ; 
 one, gone in wrath at his ingratitude ; gone before he could have made 
 
Metastasto and the Opera. 
 
 amends (as he had doubtless intended to do) for the cruelty to whi( 
 imagined he had been driven by circumstances ; gone before he could 
 loved her again and been grateful to her once more ! And even ii 
 anger, in her moment of death she had forgiven him, had loved him, 
 vided for him, made him heir to all her fortune after her hush 
 demise. This generosity was too much ; this money was too loath 
 to him ; he had fine and generous instincts and ideals when selfisl 
 did not frighten him out of them. He did not hesitate for a second 
 wrote off to his brother, in answer to the news of the Eomanina's ( 
 and of the inheritance, a quiet, manly letter, but intensely remorsefu 
 sad: — " In the agitation caused by the sudden blow of the death of 
 generous Marianna, I have not the strength to write at length, 
 only say that my honour and my conscience persuade me to renounc 
 inheritance in favour of her husband. I owe the world the rectificati 
 a great mistake, namely, that my friendship for her had its foundati 
 interest or avarice." . . . Then he gives instructions concerning 
 legal measures necessary for the transfer ; he conjures his brother to 
 on good terms with the Eomanina's husband, all calmly and brieflj 
 at the end his grief bursts out : — " But poor Marianna will not re 
 nor can I hope to console myself, and I think the rest of my life w 
 insipid and melancholy. May God help me and give me the for 
 keep up, for I do not feel it in me." 
 
 Metastasio, the least Quixotic of men, had done a Quixotic t 
 Neither honour nor conscience nor any feeling towards Domenico 
 garelli required his giving up the inheritance, for Bulgarelli was to 
 the interest of the capital all his life, and there was no reason wha 
 why the Eomanina's fortune should not go to her friend after her 
 band's death, rather than to some person, unknown in all probabil 
 herself, whom Bulgarelli might choose as heir. Metastasio was rr 
 depriving himself and his of a capital of 1,500 crowns without an' 
 necessity or reason. But he was sacrificing the money not to Bulgi 
 not to justice, not to appearance, but to the memory of the Romanii 
 his own ideals, to his own feelings. Let no financial advantage ms 
 perfect grief at his benefactress's death ; let him not accept a gift 
 her to whom he had been ungrateful. . . . He had been mean, ci 
 mean ; hard fate (no doubt) had forced him to ingratitude ; now, f 
 spontaneously, he would be generous, self-sacrificing ; it raised hii 
 of his humiliation, it did him good to wipe out by the generosity • 
 was of no use the meanness which had killed. 
 
 After this Metastasio's grief became milder and more bearable ; h 
 the pleasure of looking back at the past with tender regret ; he 
 freely love the Eomanina, freely vent his gratitude towards her, 
 her, talk of her, now she was dead. Of an easily moved dispositioi 
 
190 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 mention of the Eomanina's name ever after brought the tears into his 
 eyes — tears of sincere affection and admiration, which he could shed even 
 in the presence of the Countess Althann, who was doubtless much moved 
 by the grief of her dear friend, and who may even have cried a little over 
 this generous woman who had done so much for him, and who was safely 
 removed far beyond all jealousy. Thus ended the romance of Metastasio's 
 life, and with it his youth, and soon after his hope and his genius. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Metastasio's genius, and with it the musical drama of the earlier 
 eighteenth century, attained to perfection only after his arrival at Vienna 
 and after the year 1730. This date represents the maturity of the com- 
 posers who were to be his fellow-workmen, in the same way that Bonon- 
 cini, Caldara, Scarlatti, Lotti, and Keiser had been the fellow-workmen of 
 Apostolo Zeno. Although the general forms both of the drama and of 
 the music remained the same, the early works of Metastasio, of Leo, of 
 Vinci, and of Hasse represented a change: an attempt to obtain greater 
 flexibility, greater variety, intensity, and delicacy of form and effect. A 
 younger, subtler genius was entering the forms left by the older masters, 
 and as it moved, expanded, and altered, it also discomposed their solid 
 dignity. Metastasio was not the mere equal of Zeno, as Vinci, Leo, 
 Hasse, and Pergolesi were the equals of their predecessors, — he had from 
 the first an immeasurable superiority of talent ; yet the first works of the 
 younger poet, like those of the younger musicians, are far less satisfactory 
 than those of the older : both poet and musicians obtain new and beau- 
 tiful effects of movement and pathos at the sacrifice of the former dignity 
 and completeness, at the expense of alternate insipidity and jerkiness. 
 Gradually the change is completed, the new genius and new style are 
 matured, discrepancies and awkwardness disappear, the various quaUties 
 coalesce and harmonise, the excrescences are absorbed. Already in 
 Artaserse, written in 1729, there is less vacillation of purpose ; in Adriano 
 the leading character is fuller and more conspicuous ; in Demetrio, written 
 in 1731, the unity of plan and the development of situation are almost 
 ^perfect; in Issipile, written in 1732, the unity of plan is disturbed, but 
 the action greatly strengthened ; — these are all imperfect works, but they 
 balance and correct each other's imperfections. The period of perfection 
 begins in 1733 with the Olimpiade, followed at intervals of six months or 
 a year by Demofoonte, La Clemmza di Tito, Achille in Sciro, and Temis- 
 tocle, and it is closed in 1740 by Attilio Regolo, after which masterpiece 
 there is nothing but imitation and inferiority. 
 
 As the opera was an artistic form, distinct and different from tragedy, 
 
Metastasio aud the Opera. 191 
 
 so also Metastasio was a different sort of poet from Shakespeare and 
 Lopo de Vega, from Corneille and Bacine ; as tte opera was a combina- 
 tion of two very distinct musical forms, recitative and air, so also Meta- 
 stasio was a poet of two very distinct categories : a dramatist and a lyrist. 
 But here we must note a difference: the opera, in its duality, belonged 
 half to the poet, half to the musician ; they were subservient to each other 
 by turns: in the recitative, the musician, composer, and singer helped the 
 poet, worked to give his verse the strongest, most artistic expression ; in 
 the air, the poet helped the musician, laboured to give him, composer and 
 singer, the greatest scope for free melodic invention and execution. The 
 notes of Pergolesi, the intonations of Parinello, were of first-rate beauty 
 in the recitative, but its real absorbing interest was the words of Meta- 
 stasio ; in the airs the rhymes of Metastasio were often of first-rate 
 beauty, but the real, absorbing interest was the melodies and harmonies 
 of Pergolesi, the swells, and runs, and shakes of Farinello. Metastasio's 
 real greatness does not lie in his lyrics, beautiful as is sometimes the 
 sentiment, perfect as is always the expression, deft as are invariably the 
 metre and rhyme ; these lyrics are even more incomplete without the 
 music than would be the notes of the recitative without the words ; the 
 notes of the recitative would be vague, formless, meaningless without the 
 words; but the lyrics are wholly different without the music. For the 
 music entirely changes the character of the lyrics : those little strophs, 
 which look such ridiculous appendages at the end of scenes, whose brief 
 metre and recurring rhyme jar so painfully with the sustained blank verse, 
 which are read off with a rapidity out of all proportion to the time re- 
 quired by what precedes ; those little strophs are altered, enlarged, trans- 
 posed by the composers, expanded into broad musical phrases which 
 coalesce perfectly with the musical declamation of the blank verse ; their 
 component parts are arranged and repeated in different fashions, their 
 metre is widened, their rhymes veiled ; they take as long to sing as two 
 or three scenes of blank verse do to declaim. Those tripping, skipping 
 rhymes, which seem, when read, such absurd vehicles for pathos or passion, 
 are made by the composer into sustained and intense lamentation, or im- 
 petuous and whirlwind-like invective ; those little comparisons of flowers, 
 seas, ships, storms, skies, &c., which read so insipid and tiresome, are 
 turned into exquisitely graceful melodies, into rich and florid songs, during 
 whose performance poet, words, rhyme, and metre are forgotten in pure 
 musical enjoyment. 
 
 Further, as the opera was performed by voices, of which the highest 
 pitched and therefore most important ones suggested youth and youthful 
 feeling, Metastasio diverged from tragic writers by the immense import- 
 ance* he was forced to give to love. There must be love between the 
 primo uomo and the prima donna, else how obtain a satisfactory duet 
 
192 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 between them ? And even where, as in Themistocles and Regulus, the real 
 hero is not the high-Toiced youth but some graver father or adviser, on 
 whose patriotism or revenge the real interest depends, even then an 
 additional interest, a love story, must be created for the primo uomo and 
 the prima donna, who by musical right, and despite dramatic suitability, 
 remain the most important performers. Nor is this all. An action, and 
 a complicated action like that of Metastasio's plays, cannot possibly be 
 carried on by merely the three principal characters ; other characters are 
 required to complicate the threads, another young man or young woman 
 is required to bring about the jealousy or the sacrifice in which consists 
 the pathos of the situation, not to speak of the confidants required to give 
 and receive information. Thence arises a second couple of young people, 
 the secondo uomo and seconda donna, who have to make love respectively 
 to the prima donna and the primo uomo in order to produce unfortunate 
 complications, and who, in the intervals, when they must come forward in 
 order to let their exhausted superiors take breath, can find no other em- 
 ployment than again making love with each other. This inevitable sub- 
 ordinate love is inevitably uninteresting : it has been created not for its 
 own sake but for the sake of the other love ; a second pair of lovers can- 
 not be made to go through the selfsame scenes of tenderness and rage as 
 the first pair, and, as the musical recitation of the play forbids any mere 
 exchange of witticisms, any fanciful flippancy such as Shakespeare gives 
 to his second pair of lovers, to Jessica and Lorenzo, Nerissa and Gratiano, 
 Beatrice and Benedick, this subordinate love-making of the opera is mere 
 namby-pamby cooing and sighing, weak sonneteering, fearful trespassing 
 into the ground of pathos and passion reserved to the primo uomo and 
 prima donna. 
 
 Moreover, the difi"erence between recitative and ordinary speech in- 
 duces a radically different conception of character from that of the 
 ordinary tragedian. Eecitative, drawing its existence from the inflexions 
 of the speaking voice, starves on rhetoric and dies miserably for want 
 of feeling. Long descriptions, disquisitions, logical propositions, in- 
 volving no alteration of mood, supply no intonations to recitative ; 
 what it wants is feeling, fluctuating and rapid. The consequence is that 
 Metdstasio entirely eschews everything like speechifying for its own sake; 
 if his men and women speak it is because they feel. He accustoms him- 
 self to think not so much how people would speak but how they would feel. 
 He cannot conceive one interlocutor waiting quietly while the other dis- 
 courses ; the very internal emotions, which in reality find no vent in 
 words, but only in looks, are noted and treasured by him, are communicated 
 to the audience by means of those continual apartes, those exclamations, 
 oh Dio! Stelle! Dei! &c., which seem absurd and womanish in print as 
 long as we suppose them to be spoken, but which are most effective in 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 193 
 
 recitative, as the expression, by artistic licence, of what is merely felt, not 
 said. Metastasio could not have conceived Cinna sitting calmly listening 
 to Augustus's eloquence; to his mind, Cinna would have bounded up after 
 the first sentence : he could not have imagined Theseus listening quietly 
 to the narration of his son's death ; in his Clemenza di Tito, which is in 
 the main the same situation as Corneille's Cinna, the principal scenes are 
 totally different. What interested Metastasio was not what Titus said, but 
 what Sextus felt ; and into Sextus's feelings he dived, bringing them 
 out with wondrous perfection of gradation, from the first terror of finding 
 himself before his betrayed benefactor, in the line 
 Oh voce che piombami sul cuore 
 
 through the stages of sickening and dizzy fear, the agonised hesitation, 
 down to that passionate explosion of feeling, that sweet though anguished 
 flood of tears, with which the traitor sinks down overwhelmed by the 
 generosity of the betrayed : 
 
 Oh Tito, oh mio clementissimo prence, &c. 
 
 To conceive an emotional situation, to develope it, gradually yet swiftly, 
 marking each step, each movement, even as a musician would develope a 
 theme, this was Metastasio's aim and his glory. To obtain opportunities 
 for such development was his constant thought; he was for ever seeking 
 for pathetic situations, he loved to crowd them together. The subjects 
 treated by the ancients and by the French did not satisfy him, they were 
 too meagre for him. He would take the main situation from half a dozen 
 plays and poems, and work them into one plot, combining together in his 
 I'itus the Cinna of Corneille and the Andromaqve of Eacine ; weaving 
 together Sophocles and La Motte, Ariosto and Eacine, Lope and Herodo- 
 tus, and then, in the prose argument prefixed to his play, referring the 
 reader with grand vagueness to Strabo, Pliny, Sanehoniathon, anyone ; as 
 romantic as Shakespeare or Calderon, while thinking he was correct and 
 classic as Maffei. 
 
 As a writer of opera texts, Metastasio was much influenced by music 
 and musicians ; he had none of the sense of discomfort of ordinary libretto 
 writers; he enjoyed writing for music, being a musician himself and a 
 passionate lover of the art. He was intensely fond of Hasse, who set 
 most of his operas, and between whose very delicate, graceful, and pathetic 
 music and his own verse there was a strong affinity ; of Jommelli, closely 
 resembling Gluck, he was an immense admirer; himself an excellent 
 singer and somewhat of a composer, he was at his ease in the musical 
 element and moved freely in it. Instead of the contempt and hatred of 
 such writers as Gaspare Gozzi and Parini, he felt a liking for singers : 
 he recognised their artistic value, sympathised with them, made friends 
 with them, and was repaid for his friendliness. He did not write for 
 
194 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 abstract performers : his actors were before him, and he wrote to their 
 measm-e. They were indeed singers, but the early eighteenth century, 
 with its immense development of recitative, was rich in singers with 
 dramatic talent, which required only to be directed. Some of these 
 singer actors and actresses were really great : intelligent, energetic, hand- 
 some, and with a natural dignity of gesture which was increased by the 
 dignity of vocal recitation ; and Metastasio let his conception of a part be 
 influenced by the individuality of the performer. Thus, in his Dido and 
 .ffineas we can see the Romanina and Niccolino ; in his passionate proud 
 .iEtius we can recognise the superbly strong and florid Carestini; in some 
 of his princesses the charming, soft Faustina Hasse, in others the 
 Amazon-like, majestic Vittoria Tesi. The charming part of Megacles 
 in the OUmpmde — of whom Argene says, " Avea bionde le chiome, 
 oscuro il ciglio . . . gli sguardi lenti e pietosi — " was suggested by 
 a beautiful young pupil of Porpora, with fair curls and femininely soft 
 brown eyes, Felice Salimbeni, who afterwards represented Achilles dis- 
 guised as a girl on Scyros in a way which astonished Metastasio himself : 
 " The part is made for him " — he wrote to his brother. " I have trained 
 him with great care, and he has succeeded so perfectly that the opera will 
 not have half its effect where he cannot perform it." 
 
 Under the influence of composers and singers Metastasio received the 
 finishing touches requisite to make him a romantic poet: it was impossible 
 to conceive correct tragic folk, solemn Greeks and Romans like those of 
 Corneille, Racine, Maffei, and Alfieri, in the midst of this strange and 
 motley vocal world of the eighteenth century : of these women dressed 
 as men, and boys dressed as women, in powder, velvet, rose-coloured 
 doublets, hoops, jewelled helmets, immense feathers, many-buttoned 
 gloves, and every eccentricity of cut and colour ; of the soprano and 
 contralto heroes and heroines, quarrelling and making love in richly 
 modulated recitative, with fiddles to mark the cadence and hautboys 
 to play the ritornellos, sighing their passion or threatening their anger 
 in magnificently melodious airs with fugued accompaniments, or in 
 wondrously subtle and flimsy woofs of swells and runs and curling turns 
 and luminous shakes. A distinct race of beings, as distinct as the euphu- 
 istic, fantastically dainty young men and girls of Shakespeare, as distinct 
 *as the grotesquely wonderful masks and Kings of Hearts of Gozzi, was 
 necessarily created under the influence of the proud beautiful music of the 
 Hasses, Leos, Pergolesis, and Jommellis. 
 
 And they had not time to be ceremonious and stilted, these opera 
 heroes and heroines : they were called into existence too rapidly for that. 
 There was no thought of the Imperial theatre poet first writing half a 
 dozen plans of a play, then working out one in prose ; then versifying the 
 prose, then turning the diction into correct Tuscan, as did the fierce and 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 195 
 
 energetic Alfieri : the plays were ordered and had to be produced at 
 once, to be ready by a certain day, to be ready for representation, — poetry, 
 music, scenery, acting, everything ; nay, once, in the case of Achilles on 
 Scyros, the performance had to take place eighteen days after the play 
 was ordered of the poet. Metastasio had to dash down an argument on 
 a large sheet of paper, make memoranda of the scenes and stage business, 
 and begin scrawling off verse after verse, song after song, while the mes- 
 senger waited to carry each page to the composer, at whose door another 
 messenger waited to carry each piece to the singer; and then Metastasio 
 had to be present at the prima donna's house at the rehearsal of the 
 second act, and to clamber on ladders and teach the mechanicians where 
 he wanted the temple, porticoes, and ships of the first act ; while the third 
 act was only taking shape in his brain. Beset by composers, singers, 
 scene-painters, mechanicians, there was no time to take down the dic- 
 tionary of the Crusca ; the people had to speak, not Tuscan, but Eoman, 
 and sometimes familiar Eoman, such as Metastasio himself spoke ; luckily 
 the pedants were forgotten in the bustle. 
 
 And now, having followed Metastasio in the composition of his play, 
 having seen all the requirements and restrictions due to music and 
 scenery, seen the poet surrounded by the odd figures of the eighteenth- 
 century vteal heroes and heroines, writing under the influence of eighteenth- 
 (teentury music, hurried by copyists, mechanicians, messengers, chamber- 
 lains; having watched him at his work, we would fain see the production 
 when completed, witness the performance of one of his operas. But we 
 cannot. The wonderful Favorita Theatre, with its open-air stage extend- 
 ing into real avenues and thickets, may indeed still be standing, but long 
 abandoned and decayed; the scenery may still be lying in some lumber- 
 room, but blackened and tattered ; the music of Caldara or Hasse may 
 still be contained in some mouldering music-book, but long silent ; the 
 voices which declaimed the verse and sang the songs have long died 
 away and been forgotten ; of this combination of arts, of this splendid 
 and delicate and complex work, fostered by a whole nation for a whole 
 century, there now remain only ruins, memories, and the volumes con- 
 taining Metastasio's plays. We cannot scientifically reconstruct, nor 
 fancifully evoke a vanished form of art ; we can only take up and examine 
 what yet remains of it; these plays, which are not a whole in themselves, 
 but only a part of a great whole, of the opera of the eighteenth century. 
 
 Of these plays three may be considered as representative : the Oltm- 
 piade, of the year 1733, for the delicately-sketched youthful characters 
 and pathetically-developed situations ; Achille in Sciro, of 1736, for 
 buoyancy, swiftness, and impetuosity of action; and Attilio Regolo, of 
 1740, for sustained simplicity, solemnity, and grandeur of situation. 
 
 o 2 
 
196 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 Metastasio tells us in his preface that the subject of the Olimpiade is 
 taken from Herodotus; in reality the story is but slightly modified out of 
 the Orlando Furioso : the scene is in Elis instead of being in Paris, the 
 tournament turns into the Olympic games, Charlemagne becomes Clis- 
 thenes King of Sicyon, Bradamante his daughter Aristea, beloved by a 
 Greek, Eoger called Megacles, and by his bosom friend and benefactor, 
 Lycidas, who is made Prince of Crete instead of Prince of Constantinople. 
 The original chivalric colour of the story is never wholly lost: the Olym- 
 pic games, despite their choral processions and olive wreaths, retain 
 something of the mediaeval tournament; Megacles, Greek wrestler and 
 runner though he be, acts with the punctilious sense of honour of a 
 paladin; Aristea is more of an Erminia or Isabella than of a Briseis or 
 Iphigenia ; antiquity and chivalry, Ariosto and Herodotus, are fused, and 
 out of their mixture is produced a something perfectly original, situations 
 and characters neither classic nor mediaeval. Megacles arrives at Olym- 
 pia obeying the summons of his friend Lycidas, who has saved his life, 
 and who claims the fulfilment of his promise of gratitude ; he arrives in 
 the very nick of time ; he must hasten and enroll himself among the 
 competitors in the games which are about to take place, enroll under the 
 name of Lycidas ; there is not a moment to lose; all shall be explained 
 on his return. He goes and returns. Lycidas explains the plot. The 
 prize of the Olympic games is to be Aristea, the daughter of King Clis- 
 thenes ; Lycidas is in love with her ; he has no chance of winning her in 
 the contest ; his friend Megacles, a repeated victor in the games, shall win 
 her for him. Megacles is struck dumb ; to the eager, hopeful words of 
 the flippantly passionate Lycidas he answers confusedly ; he staggers, he 
 begs to be left to repose before the games begin. This Ai-istea, this 
 prize whom he is to win and to hand over to his friend, is his own long 
 
 hopelessly beloved ; he can possess her and he must not keep 
 
 her ! He will keep her ; but what of Lycidas, who loves her, who hopes 
 only in him, for whom he had sworn to sacrifice his life ? Is he to refuse 
 him this, the first, the only gift ever asked ? Honour and gratitude 
 vanquish ; yes, he will conquer Aristea ; Lycidas shall possess her, and 
 shall never know at what a price his happiness is bought. If only 
 Aristea can be prevented from knowing the real victor, if only she can 
 %% led to Lycidas without thinking of Megacles ; if only her presence be 
 avoided; before her what would become of his resolution? All would 
 melt away. At this moment he is interrupted in his thoughts; he turns 
 round ; it is Aristea herself ! Megacles ! and is it he himself, the long- 
 beloved, and yearned and wept for in vain! Has he at length heard his 
 poor Aristea ? Yes, he has come, and how opportunely! Oh happy love, 
 happy past griefs ! But why is Megacles so silent, why does the colour 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 197 
 
 come and go in his face, why does he not look up ? Has he not come to 
 win Aristea ? He has. Then why this confusion and sadness ? She 
 understands it all ; some one has made him douht of her fidelity ; frankly, 
 cheerfully, she sweeps aside the idea ; he has been and will ever be her 
 only love ... he has for ever been in her thoughts. But why does he 
 not answer? Why does he smother exclamations of grief? Listen: 
 does he believe her to be faithful? As faithful, is the mournful answer, 
 as beautiful. Is he not going to win her ? He hopes it. Has he still 
 his former valour ? He thinks so. And.will he not conquer ? He hopes 
 it. If it is so, will she not be his ? From Aristea, clinging lovingly, 
 but anxiously to him, Megacles tries to sever himself; the recitative be- 
 comes melody, the exquisitely simple touching melody of Pergolesi's 
 duet, " Ne' giorni tuoi felici ;" he bids her remember him in the happy 
 days to come; she asks him the reason of these strange, sad, words ; 
 he begs her, weeping, not to speak ; she entreats him to explain ; the 
 words of the one, the silence of the other, are intolerable; she sees him 
 in grief without understanding its reason ; he struggles with suppressed 
 jealousy; both join in complaining of their cruel destiny ; a solemn, 
 deeply pathetic passage, of doubt and boding evil, which closes the 
 scene. 
 
 The Olympic games come to a close, and Megacles, under the name of 
 Lycidas Prince of Crete, is the victor. King Clisthenes crowns him with, 
 the olive wreath, while the chorus sings an ode; and then the prize, the 
 ^beautiful Aristea, is led forward. Megacles pretends that he is suddenly 
 called back to his father in Crete, and begs Clisthenes to intrust his 
 bride to his friend ^gisthus, who is, of course, no other than the real 
 Lycidas. Lycidas, light, eager, impulsive, is impatient to discover his 
 love to Aristea ; he urges Megacles to explain all to her. Megacles asks 
 to be left alone with the princess, much to the surprise and annoyance of 
 the unsuspecting Lycidas, who retires. Once alone the ordeal begins. 
 Aristea throws herself into the arms of Megacles, rejoicing at their final 
 happiness; to her words of love and joy he answers only with enigmatic 
 sadness, trying how to break the terrible news to her. Is he in earnest 
 or jesting ? she knows not what to think; sadly, tenderly, solemnly, he 
 begins to explain, and, as he speaks, vague fear seizes her. Has she not 
 often said that what she most loves in him is his spotless honour, his 
 gratitude and generosity; would she still love him if he had become un- 
 grateful to his benefactor, perjured to the gods, false to his promise ? 
 And how can Aristea ever conceive such a change in him ? Let her then 
 know that by becoming hers Megacles will be all this : ungrateful, 
 deceitful, perjured. And he tells her the story, his promise to his bene- 
 factor, of the Cretan prince's love, of the plot by which he is to win her 
 for his friend. What ! he has fought for another ! he would consent to 
 
1 98 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 lose her, he would have her sacrificed ! Megacles, half broken in purpose, 
 revives ; he begs her, as she loves him, to enable him to do his duty, to 
 crown his sacrifice, to love his friend as she has hitherto loved him ; 
 he calls upon her generosity and heroism . . . but Aristea will hear 
 nothing of this; she sees only that she is to lose him, that all her 
 hope, all her future is gone, that her happiness is shattered ; generosity, 
 heroism, what is all that to her ? The resigned, quiet Magacles deter- 
 mines to be brief ; he cannot face her despair and wrath ; he bids her 
 farewell, the last farewell. The last ! Aristea is struck down by the 
 sudden blow; he is leaving her already. Go he must, and, if he go, 
 better at once ; she would detain him in vain ; he goes ; and overcome 
 by grief she falls down insensible. Megacles hastens back ; this sight 
 entirely breaks his resolve ; he kneels down by Aristea, tries to revive 
 and comfort her. This is a piece of accompanied recitative, set magnifi- 
 cently even by so late a master as Cimarosa. He calls her in vain ; he 
 will stop, she shall be his wife, anything rather than see her thus ; but 
 she does not revive. What shall he do ? can he leave her ? leave her 
 thus? and, if he remain, what becomes of his honour, his gratitude? What 
 will Lycidas say, and the deceived Clisthenes ? At least he wiU delay 
 the going. Delay ? it will be this agony again ; what shall he do ? the 
 sighing violins and viols are the only answer. Better go. Farewell, his 
 beloved, his hope, lost for ever. The instruments echo. Lost for ever. 
 May the gods watch over her and give her the happiness he has lost : a 
 passionate, lyric burst of almost melodious declamation, borne upwards by 
 the instruments. Lycidas, where is Lycidas ? Lycidas comes ; has Aristea 
 heard all ? but what does he see ? what is the meaning of this ? Hastily, 
 impatiently, Megacles answers ; a sudden grief has overcome her ; in- 
 voluntarily, he is angered by the unconsciousness of Lycidas, his uncon- 
 sciousness of all the tragedy that is going on. " And thou leavest me ?" 
 says Lycidas. " I go," answers Megacles, " ah, think of Aristea." Alas, 
 what will she say when, reviving, she finds him gone? Lycidas, attend; 
 and these last instructions glide from recitative into slow, gently heaving 
 melody, the exquisite melody of Pergolesi — " If she asks what has be- 
 come of me, tell her I am dead." But a thought strikes him, a deep, 
 (ipassionate thought, which makes the melody stop, and expand solemnly. 
 "Ah, no, do not give her such sorrow for me. If she asks after thy 
 friend, answer her only, ' he went hence in tears,' and the accompani- 
 ment breaks in low, tremulous sobs ; then, while Lycidas hastens to suc- 
 cour the still fainting gu-1, Megacles bursts out in one last, rapid, wild 
 outpouring of grief at losing his beloved, and hurries away. Aristea 
 revives, calls upon Megacles, and recoils in horror on recognising a 
 stranger instead of her beloved. " Whore is Megacles ?" " Gone," 
 answers Lycidas quietly; "but I, thy love, thy husband, thy Lycidas, 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 199 
 
 am here " Lycidas, is he Lycidas ? she cries, starting to her feet ; and 
 Megacles has left her ! Where is the justice of heaven if the gods leave 
 such villany unpunished ? What ails her ? What has Megacles done ? 
 asks the perplexed Lycidas. Does she ask for revenge ? She shall have 
 it, she shall have all and everything from him. From him ! Aristea 
 bursts into impetuous song, broad, majestic in its very passion, the master- 
 piece of the great master Leo. Away, out of her sight ! He is the cause 
 of all her wretchedness, of all her misfortunes ; let him never hope for 
 love or forgiveness from her; his sight will for ever be hateful and 
 monstrous to her. But all comes right at last, after many complications, 
 attempted suicides, and murders; the tender and vehement Aristea is 
 united to her Megacles, wonderfully sustained in quiet, tender, resigned 
 affection, for Lycidas is discovered to be her brother, a long-lost son of 
 Clisthenes, and returns to his former love, Argene. 
 
 Achilles on Scyros is far better constructed than the Olimpiade, or 
 rather it is not constructed at all. It is an organic, spontaneous, perfect 
 growth, scene developing insensibly out of scene, and action out of action, 
 unbroken by oracles, recognitions, or murders, unhampered by the second 
 pair of lovers ; a beautiful and swiftly moving whole. 
 
 An oracle having declared that Troy cannot be taken without the help 
 of the young Achilles, Ulysses, despatched by the Greek chiefs, arrives 
 in the island of Scyros, where Achilles is said to lie hidden by his mother 
 Thetis. While waiting for the succour promised by the king Lycoraedes, 
 ""iJlysses remarks, among the damsels of Deidamia the king's daughter, a 
 certain Pyrrha, whose strange beauty, martial expression, vehement 
 manner, and passionate love for the princess, lead him to suspect that 
 she is the object of his search, disguised in woman's clothes. He takes 
 every means to make sure, to elicit some unmistakable proof; while, on 
 the other hand, Deidamia, in love with the disguised Achilles, does all in 
 her power to prevent the discovery. Achilles, swayed alternately by 
 martial instinct, by shame at his disguise, and by love and fear of losing 
 Deidamia, is for ever on the point of discovering himself, and for ever 
 restrained from so doing. At length Ulysses, fully persuaded that 
 Pyrrha is Achilles, resorts to an artifice which shall force him to disclose 
 himself. Lycomedes, King of Scyros, is banqueting with his guests, 
 and Ulysses describes in eloquent terms the preparations which are every- 
 where being made for the Trojan expedition ; and as he speaks he 
 watches the supposed Pyrrha, standing near the princess Deidamia, 
 listening eagerly, forgetful and agitated. " All Grreece," says Ulysses, 
 " has risen like one man; the cities are emptied of their inhabitants ; 
 decrepit old men drive on their sons with envy; the very children and 
 maidens burn to join the fight, and the wretch whom some hard necessity 
 holds back accuses Heaven and thinks himself hated by the gods." 
 
200 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 Deidamia, terrified at Pyrrha's strange demeanour, calls her, chides her 
 lover for his want of prudence. The king bids Pyrrha take her lyre and 
 sing to entertain the guests ; reluctantly, and only at Deidamia's bidding, 
 Achilles acquiesces. He sings in bitterness of love and his cruel power, 
 which takes pleasure in degrading the wisest and bravest, in degrading 
 men and gods ; in making Jove himself assume the shape of beast and 
 bird; and after all this requires the victim to kiss his chains, to praise 
 his shame and servitude. In the midst of the ode, Achilles is interrupted 
 by the arrival of the servants of Ulysses, bearing presents to the king of 
 Scyros. Lycomedes and his friends admire the purple apparel and costly 
 vases, the princess the gems and ornaments: the eyes of Pyrrha are fixed 
 upon the swords and shields and lances. " Ah ! " exclaims Achilles, 
 " what splendid arms !" " Eesume thy song, Pyrrha," orders Deidamia 
 angrily. At that moment there is a great clangour of arms, a noise of 
 strife ; all rise in surprise. Areas, the confident of Ulysses, rushes in, 
 calling upon the chief to stop a contest which has arisen between his 
 followers and those of Lycomedes. The noise grows louder; Lycomedes 
 hastens to the scene of the fray with his friends, Deidamia runs to hide 
 in her chamber ; Achilles remains, trembling with martial rage. Fire 
 runs in his veins, a mist rises up before his eyes, he can contain himself 
 no longer. " To arms ! " he shouts, " to arms ! " But he stops, he per- 
 ceives the lyre in his hand, the lyre, his only weapon. He dashes it on 
 to the ground, seizes a sword, and rushes forward, heedless of his 
 woman's weeds, with the magnificent impetuosity of the Pompeian 
 fresco. At that moment Ulysses, who has been watching him imob- 
 served, advances, takes him by the hand, and salutes him as Achilles. 
 Terrified at the discovery, the son of Thetis recoils; but Ulysses embraces 
 him, and tells him that it is too late for more dissimulation. Come, he 
 will lead him to glory ; Greece awaits him alone ; Troy fears only him. 
 Achilles, overjoyed, follows him, but stops. " And Deidamia ? " " Dei- 
 damia ! he shall return to her more worthy of love." " And meanwhile ? " 
 " And meanwhile, while the whole world was on fire, he would remain 
 hidden on Scyros ? What would posterity say ? That Diomede, Ido- 
 meneus, Ajax, had broken the walls of Troy, and divided the spoils of 
 Hector : and what was Achilles doing ? Achilles, robed in woman's 
 "weeds, lived ingloriously and feebly among the maidens of Scyros, slum- 
 bering to the sounds of other men's exploits. Ah, let this never be said! 
 Let no one see him again in this garb. See, does he recognise himself?" 
 and as Ulysses raises the shield as a mirror, reflecting the youth in his 
 disguise, Achilles tears his dress in wrath, and cries out for arms. And 
 Ulysses leads him off, quivering with shame and rage. As they go they 
 are met by Nearchus, to whose care Thetis had confided her son, and who 
 tries to stop the supposed Pyrrha, Achilles shakes him off, bids him never 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 201 
 
 again pronounce that shameful name; but then, when Nearchus asks 
 what is to be said to Deidamia, he turns round. Tell her that he 
 loves her, that he leaves her faithful, that he will return ere long ; a 
 beautiful tender air, quite in keeping with the character. Nearchus, 
 dreading the anger of Thetis, hastens to Deidamia, and tells her that 
 Ulysses will carry off her lover unless she prevent it. Meanwhile Ulysses 
 is leading Achilles to his ships, and admiring the young hero, in his 
 shining armour, rejuvenated like the serpent which has shed its skin, and 
 twists and untwirls proudly in the sunshine. At last, says Achilles, he 
 feels himself ; but like a prisoner whose chains have been struck off he 
 still doubts of his freedom, the shadows of his prison are before his eyes, 
 the sound of his fetters still in his ears. Ah, when will he see the shores 
 of Troy? He will wipe out the stains on his name; the indignities of 
 Seyros shall be erased by his sword ; he will bury the remembrance of his 
 shame beneath that of his glory. " And Thetis thought to hide him 
 from the world!" exclaims Ulysses; and the recitative bursts into a 
 grand and vehement air, rolling and storming with its splendid simile 
 of the fire bursting out of a Tolcano and rushing in destruction over 
 the land. The ships come up to shore, and Achilles is about to cross 
 on to one of them when Areas runs up, hurrying their departure: 
 " Deidamia," he whispers to Ulysses, " pursues them." " What has hap- 
 pened? "Whence this haste ?" asks Achilles. "The King of Seyros," 
 answers Areas, " has heard of our departure, and may attempt to prevent 
 it." " Prevent the departure of Achilles? Is he then the slave of Lyco- 
 medes? " "Away ! let us not be detained," urges Ulysses, well know- 
 ing how dangerous a foe pursues them. But Achilles refuses to move; 
 he will await Lycomedes and show him that he is no prisoner. Instead 
 of Lycomedes arrives the infuriated Deidamia. She stops before Achilles, 
 and they remain a moment in silence; then she bursts out in complaints 
 of his perfidy; he would answer, but Ulysses stops him. " If thou 
 speak, thou art lost," he whispers. But Achilles cannot listen in silence 
 to her passionate accusations; he must, he will answer; he explains that 
 he loves her, but that he can no longer remain in shame on Seyros ; he 
 must follow Ulysses ; he has dreaded her grief, her ' tears, he has fled 
 from her because he loves her ; but go he must. Deidamia feigns 
 resignation; she confesses that he is in the right, that his disguise was 
 shameful, that his love was weakness ; yes, he must go. But give her 
 a day, only a single day more, let not the blow be so sudden ; can he 
 refuse it ? Achilles does not answer, but remains with downcast eyes. 
 Will he not give her a day ? What thinks Ulysses ? Ulysses answers 
 with scornful indifference, "Achilles is master of his actions; let him 
 go, or let him stay. But he, Ulysses, must go at once ; if Achilles 
 wait, he will leave him behind." Achilles knows not what to answer. 
 
202 Metastaaio and tlie Opera. 
 
 " Well ? " asks Deidamia, " resolve." " I would remain, but what of 
 Ulysses ? " " Resolve," cries Ulysses. " I would go, but what of 
 Deidamia?" " I understand," cries Deidamia, "thou wouldst go; go, 
 unfaithful wretch !" To go, or to remain? which shall he do? Deidamia 
 no longer begs him to stay ; no, she sees that it costs him too much ; she 
 asks but one last gift : since she must die, let it be by his hand; let him 
 begin his deeds of war on her ; -he will go, unhampered ; she will die 
 happy, dying by his sword 1 The half-serious comedy touches Achilles; 
 he bids her not speak thus: " Ulysses, I cannot go, it would be too cruel." 
 " So I see," answers Ulysses, " farewell." " I ask only one day's delay," 
 begs Achilles. " Oh ! that is more than I can afford. I must hasten 
 to the Greek chiefs, and tell them what noble deeds are wiping out 
 Achilles' shame ; what grand amends he makes for the idleness of Scyros, 
 what trophies he is raising." " Valour is valour," answers Achilles, " it 
 is not lost in a day." " Valour ! " cries Ulysses, " do not speak of it. 
 Strip off those arms. They are merely a weight to Pyrrha. Ho! bring 
 the hero's gown! He has sweated too long beneath the helmet." " I 
 Pyrrha! oh gods ! " and Achilles becomes ready to go. " Thou leavest 
 me? " asks Deidamia. " I must." " Already?" " The delay is fatal to 
 my honour ; farewell, Deidamia ; " and he mounts resolutely on to the 
 ship. Deidamia, left alone, bursts out with furious grief; calls upon t\e 
 gods to avenge her ; her ghost shall haunt him everywhere, and bring 
 him to his death. But no; alas, whose fault is it? Could Achilles 
 remain for ever? If some one must pay the penalty, let it be the miser- 
 able Deidamia ; she has lived for him; for him she will die. And over- 
 come by grief she sinks inanimate. Achilles sees it, pushes aside Ulysses, 
 who would vainly restrain him, springs from the ship, and runs to her 
 side; and calls her, and tells her he will stay. " Areas," says Ulysses, 
 " the battle is lost ; let us cede for the moment, and then we will try 
 other arms ; " and he hastens to Lycomedes, persuades him to give his 
 daughter to Achilles, and postpones the departure till Achilles can go to 
 Troy, leaving behind him his bride. Thus ends Achilles on Scyros; not 
 a tragedy, but rather an heroic comedy of intrigue and love. 
 
 Attilio Regolo, on the other hand, is pure tragedy, with a more than 
 tragic, almost religious solemnity: in it there is no crime, only a grand 
 self-sacrifice; there is no plot, nothing but the gradual action of the hero's 
 influence on those around him; the whole interest depends upon the 
 resistance of Regulus against his own friends, his final triumph over 
 their love and their veneration. The play opens with the daughter of 
 Regulus, Attilia, stopping the consul Manlius as he descends the stairs 
 of the Capitol, and apostrophising him in favour of her father, a prisoner 
 at Carthage. This scene is magnificent in dignified impetuosity; Attilia 
 neither begs nor threatens, she demands assistance with a consciousness 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 203 
 
 of justice, of greatness, which places her, the supplicant, far abore the man 
 who is supplicated ; every word, every burst of passion, means a gesture, 
 and a gesture of infinite nobility. Manlius, secretly jealous of the heroism 
 of Eegulus, is disconcerted, left without an answer. At that moment 
 the news comes that Regulus is in Rome, brought thither by the Cartha- 
 ginian ambassador, come to negociate peace or an exchange of prisoners. 
 Eegulus has sworn to return to die horribly at Carthage if the treaty be 
 ■rejected. All Rome is ready to accept any terms for the sake of libera- 
 ting him; his friends await with joy his speech before the Senate, sure 
 that all will be granted. Eegulus is introduced before the Senate in 
 company with Hamilcar, the Carthaginian envoy ; he pauses a moment 
 on the well-known threshold, " Wherefore does he stop ? " asks Hamilcar, 
 " Is this place unknown to him? " " I was thinking what I was leaving, and 
 to what I am returning,'' answers Regulus, and the instruments, taking 
 up the phrase of recitative, re-echo his thought. Hamilcar reminds Regu- 
 lus of his promise, of what awaits him if the treaty be rejected ; Regulus 
 will fulfil all he promised. Hamilcar exposes briefly the conditions of 
 peace, and waits for Regulus to second the proposal. And Regulus speaks : 
 Carthage desires peace on condition of retaining all her conquests ; or, if 
 that be refused, at least an exchange of prisoners; the advice of Regulus 
 is to refuse both. Every one is in astonishment; he holds firm, he 
 desires to return to Carthage. Manlius, jealous of the sacrifice which 
 raises his rival, tries to prevent it ; Regulus has pointed out that the 
 deliverance of Roman prisoners, broken to every ignominy, and the giving 
 ap of a number of warlike Carthaginians in return, will be fatal to Rome. 
 Manlius answers that mere utility is not the only question, that Rome 
 must think of what is honourable, and honour requires gratitude to 
 Regulus. For the first time Regulus loses his usual moderation of tone. 
 Does Rome wish to show gratitude towards him? Let it avenge him 
 then. The barbarians have thought that he would betray his country 
 from cowardice, urge acceptance of the treaty from fear of returning to 
 Carthage. This outrage is worse than any torment they have inflicted; 
 let Rome avenge him. Arm, hasten to tear from their temples the 
 Eoman trophies; do not sheathe the sword until the enemies be crushed. 
 Let Eegulus read the fear of Roman anger in the faces of his mur- 
 derers; give him the joy of seeing in his dying agonies that Carthage 
 trembles at the name of Rome. The Senate vacillates, but Regulus 
 has not yet conquered ; his children stir up the people to protect him 
 from himself; the Senate decides that an oath extorted from a prisoner 
 is not binding; the Carthaginian envoy himself, moved by the sight of 
 such greatness, offers to let him escape. There is yet a long struggle 
 against violence of passion, from which Regulus, simple, determined, 
 finally issues victorious, causing all, by the calm weight of his purpose. 
 
204 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 to cede and make way; his children lie silences into obedience ; the Senate 
 he shames into more rigid honour; the treacherous Hamilcar hechides 
 with disdain. The Senate and his family permit him to go, the Cartha- 
 ginian galleys await him on the Tiber, but the people of Rome refuse to 
 let him pass to his death, and a struggle begins between the Consul wish- 
 ing to open a way for Eegnlus and the Tribune ordering the crowd to 
 refuse the passage. The Consul tries to explain, but the crowd drowns 
 his voice with the cry, " Regulus shall stay." At this moment Regulns 
 appears, and on his appearance there is a sudden silence. Regulus shall 
 stay, he cries, and does Rome wish his dishonour? The Tribune answers 
 that Rome wishes to strike off his chains. " Without them,'' Regulus 
 answers, " I am but a perjured and fugitive slave." Buf the augurs have 
 decided that the oath of a prisoner need not bind. Regulus rejects such 
 pretexts for bad faith as worthy of the barbarians. But what will Rome 
 do deprived of her greatest citizen? Reguhis answers gravely, firmly, 
 but with a moment of enthusiasm. He is old, and has served his time, 
 he can no longer be of use to Rome, fate offers him a glorious end, 
 let him not be defrauded of it to die in obscure infamy. Let not the 
 Romans think differently from himself; down with the rebellious arms ; 
 as a friend he begs; as a citizen, exhorts; as a father, he commands. 
 The arms are lowered and the crowd silently opens to let him pass. At 
 last he can go. He bids Hamilcar ascend on to the ship; he will foUow. 
 He stops once more and turns round to the silent, solemn multitude : 
 
 Bomans, farewell. Let this the last adien 
 Be worthy you and me. Thank Heaven, I leave, 
 And leave you Romans. Oh preserve nnstain'd 
 The mighty name, and you will thus become 
 The earth's sole arbiters, and the whole world 
 Will be for Rome. Ye deities that watch 
 Over this sacred soil, ye who protect 
 .tineas' breed, to you I now entrust 
 This race of heroes; and on you I call 
 To guard this soil, these roofs, this city wall. 
 In them for evermore let glory, faith, 
 And bravery dwell. If to the dapitol 
 Malignant stars now threaten evil fate, 
 ^ Here's Regulus, oh gods; and he alone 
 
 Shall be your victim, and upon his head 
 Let all the wrath of Heaven be discharged, 
 But Rome uninjured . . . What ye weep? 
 . . . Farewell. 
 
 The plays of Metastasio are neither fashionable pieces of pseudoclassic 
 work, like those of Voltaire, nor eclectic works of classic imitation, lilre 
 those of Alfieri ; they are a national, spontaneous form, evolved by the 
 artistic wants of a whole nation. And this being the case, Metastasio's 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 205 
 
 men and women are neither eighteenth-century gentlemen and ladies, with 
 togas and chitons slipped over their brocade coats and silk embroidered 
 stomachers, talking the talk of eighteenth -century drawing-rooms in 
 majestic theatre language; nor are they conscientiously reconstructed 
 Greeks and Eomans, draped in imitation of the antique and speaking on 
 ' the pattern of Thucydides and Tacitus, uncomfortably fearful of taking 
 up modern attitudes or uttering modern sentiments. They are something 
 quite apart, born neither of contemporary manners nor of classical study, 
 but of the peremptory necessities, the irresistible suggestions, of a great 
 and living art. If we would know the origin of Megacles, of Aristea, of 
 Achilles, of Attilia, and of Regulus, let us turn over the scores of Per- 
 golesi, of Leo, of Handel, of Jommelli, and we shall answer: They are the 
 offspring of the music of the eighteenth century. 
 
 VII. 
 
 There was nothing now to compromise Metastasio, nothing now to im- 
 pede his complete success at Vienna. But the success did not come: the 
 Emperor approved of his dramas and gave him a lucrative fiscal post in 
 the Neapolitan States ; the Archduchesses took lessons of him in Italian 
 and declamation, and were adorably civil ; made him sit in their presence, 
 and gave him a snuff-box ; the Countess Althann took him publicly into 
 her favour, and, it was rumoured and believed, gave him her hand ; but 
 beyond these isolated successes things would not go. Neither the appro- 
 bation of the Emperor, nor the favour of the Archduchesses, nor the love 
 of the Countess Althann, obtained for him any higher position than that 
 of Court poet, any influence beyond that over singers and composers 
 and theatre mechanicians. He held, in short, the self-same position he 
 had held in Eome ten or fifteen years before, only gilded with Court titles 
 and hampered by Court restrictions ; he was, as then, nothing beyond a 
 mere writer of libretti ; instead of three hundred scudi a play he received 
 three thousand florins a year ; his employer was an Emperor instead of a 
 manager; his public came to the Favorita Theatre by Imperial invitation, 
 instead of entering the Teatro Aliberti for so many bajocchi; it was all 
 far smarter, loftier, more splendid, but also far less hearty. The Austrian 
 magnates, caring nothing for poetry, only superficially conversant with 
 Italian, took far less interest in his plays than did the shabby priestlets, 
 the shopkeepers, and the populace of Rome, who understood and were 
 pleased with everything ; the very signs of approval were forbidden in 
 the august presence of Cssar, and a successful masterpiece was heard 
 frigidly, silently, without even the excitement of a little cabal and pas- 
 quinade. It was all very distressing and narrowing for a poet : he heard 
 
206 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 of himself as of a great genius from the letters of his friends in Italy; 
 here, in Vienna, he was merely a functionary, an Imperial servant, who, 
 in virtue of imperial perfection, must needs be as good as possible. There 
 was no outlet, no future ; all was dull, as dull as at Gravina's, as dull as 
 just before he was called from Rome, with the difference that he had then 
 been on the steps of the ladder, and was now on the top without hope of 
 getting higher. Caesar had approved of his plays, and had kept him per- 
 sistently at a distance in his appointed place as playwright. For Caesar, 
 surrounded by etiquette and suspicious of all attempts at being circum- 
 vented, was the last man to encourage such forward loyalty, such enter- 
 prising devotion, as Metastasio had from the first displayed. Old Apostolo 
 Zeno he had indeed taken into his confidence, because he felt that he 
 could do so without fear of compromising his dignity, because he knew 
 that this childlike, amiable pedant knew and thought of nothing beyond 
 his books, was blind to any advantages to be obtained from such intimacy; 
 because he could find a sort of friend, something far too simple and 
 pedantic for a courtier, in the good Candiot dramatist ; but this young, 
 pushing, wheedling, flattering Abate Metastasio was not a person to be 
 encouraged : his kisses on the Imperial hand were too sonorous, his 
 humility was too humble, he was seeking for favour. Charles VI. kept 
 him at arm's length. 
 
 To this failure of his Court career were added vexations concerning his 
 brother in Rome. The transfer of the Romanina's inheritance, so useless, 
 so foolish, so unconscientious, towards her desires, had borne its natural 
 result. After a few years Domenico Bulgarelli, her husband, had taken 
 it into his head to marry again. Leopoldo Metastasio, furious at the 
 notion of the Romanina's property (over which he had never ceased to 
 groan) being left to Bulgarelli's second wife or possible children, was 
 violent to prevent the marriage. But Bulgarelli, now wholly independent, 
 snapped his fingers at Leopoldo, and brought home his new wife ; Leo- 
 poldo, an ill-tempered, unreasonable creature, never ceased complaining ; 
 the new wife objected to such a household; and finally, after a deal of 
 quarreling, Bulgarelli gave Metastasio's family to understand that he could 
 no longer live with them. Thus the comfortable household, once presided 
 over by the Eomanina, was broken up ; Leopoldo and his father and 
 fisters sought another abode ; Metastasio was called upon to supply 
 additional money, and was constantly worried by the lamentations and 
 recriminations of his brother, who hated having to work. Metastasio, 
 who had never been very fond of his brother, was weary of his ill-temper. 
 He began to write rarely and sharply, and from that time, perhaps, dated 
 the common saying at Vienna, that Metastasio particularly begged never 
 to be informed whether he had any live relatives. 
 
 Still, he had the occupation (not the amusement, for he protested that 
 
Metastasio and the Opera, 207 
 
 he hated writing) of supplying plays for the Imperial Theatre. But this 
 also ceased. In 1740, just as he had finished his Begulus for the Em- 
 peror's birthday, Charles VI. ate that momentous dish of mushrooms 
 which, according to Voltaire, set Europe on fire — and died. 
 
 The pompous melomaniac Caesar had had the power, the power of tra- 
 dition and habit, to keep the Holy Roman Empire together. As soon as 
 he" was dead, Bavaria, Prussia, Prance, Spain, all suppressed enemies, were 
 let loose upon his daughter and her husband. The danger was not that 
 which had disturbed the pomp of Charles VI. Not merely a long-pro- 
 tracted war with the Turk in the distant East, not a rapid campaign of 
 French and Sardinians against the Imperial possessions in Italy : it was 
 a war at home against the very existence of the house of Austria. Those 
 were the heroic days of Maria Theresa, when young, handsome, with a 
 semblance of legality on her side, without troops, without money, with 
 nothing but her indomitable courage, her unblushing cunning, heT aspect 
 of conjugal and motherly devotion, and the enthusiasm, personal and 
 traditional, which she aroused, when this strange, picturesque figure had 
 to. fight it out with the whole dull, sceptical. Machiavellian world of 
 rococo conventionalities, and at last came out victorious. 
 
 But patriotism was not a growth of the eighteenth century, nor was 
 active loyalty; and least of all did it exist in Metastasio. He, who had 
 made Cato, Themistocles, Regulus, speak, and speak with superb breadth 
 of intonation, was but little moved by the political cataclysm. What 
 most afifected him was its extreme discomfort to himself; what his 
 sensitive feelings shuddered at was the suspension of salaries, the cessa- 
 tion of theatrical amusements, the extreme dulness and disorder of the 
 Court ; he felt mentally and morally chilly in this great storm, and 
 thought more of the petty ailments it caused in himself than of the im- 
 mense dangers and miseries which it brought to others. He felt himself 
 neglected by everyone, he was mortified at the Empress-Queen being 
 constantly surrounded by generals, ambassadors, ministers, and such like, 
 and never glancing at him ; he shrank into a corner by the side of the 
 Countess Althann, and moped, and began to think that he had some 
 mysterious nervous disease. 
 
 When the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle settled matters, when Maria Theresa 
 was thoroughly reinstated in her imperial position, when Austrian finances 
 began to be set right, and the Viennese Court was reorganised, Metastasio 
 was already an elderly man, a hypochondriac, an idle routinist, without 
 the desire or the power to work. His ambition was dead, his desire for 
 power and fame was dead; he was beginning to be purely passive, living 
 on the past, caring only to secure a future as safe as the present, dread- 
 ing change, excitement, incapable of great joys, seeking only for trumpery 
 pleasures. The peculiar nature of his position had forced him, when a 
 
208 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 certain level was once attained, to become stationary, and his character 
 was such that to be stationary meant to be stagnant. He had no interest 
 in life beyond himself, so that himself once provided for he ceased to 
 have any at all ; egotism so absolute as to refuse thoughts and action to 
 any exterior aims or objects must needs grow into a passive scepticism, 
 and finally into hypochondriac cynicism. Metastasio had no enthusiasms, 
 political, religious, or personal; no love for any idea whose triumph 
 would be his triumph, no passion for any discovery which would be his 
 discovery ; he had not even a pleasure in the movement of society, and of 
 things in general. The eighteenth century was sterile of political or 
 religious enthusiasms ; political and religious forms were both too utterly 
 dried up and crumbling ; but it had intense social and scientific Utopias, 
 hopes of reform and perfection in which even the most timid, even the 
 most frivolous, joined; but Metastasio had neither of these. He found it, 
 as he himself declared, more conducive to peace of mind to accept dogmas 
 than to examine them; yet he expressed every degree of aversion to over- 
 zealous belief ; he saw the way the century was going, he even foretold 
 great convulsions, but he neither rejoiced at the movement nor regretted 
 it : he was never astonished, never moved. In the days of active reform, 
 of philanthropy tinging even the most frivolous and corrupt, of reactionary 
 disgust warping even the noblest, in the days of Beccaria and Filangieri, 
 of Baretti and Gozzi, Metastasio remained wholly indifferent. 
 
 Nor did any interest in his own art absorb his energy; he worked im- 
 willingly, like a cobbler at his shoes (according to his own words), and for 
 the works of others he did not care. The ancients he had learned to hate 
 at Gravina's ; about the French and Spaniards he was lukewarm; Mosii 
 Eacine, as he called him, seemed a prig, and Comeille a ranter ; he would 
 not decide between Ariosto and Tasso, and cared probably but little for 
 either ; Dante he mentioned with deprecating respect. Voltaire's books 
 he bought, with Voltaire's praise he was pleased, but he did not even 
 attain to the point of saying, with Parini, that he was too much praised 
 and too much blamed. Abont contemporary Italian literature he was 
 equally indifferent ; the verbose magnificence of Frugoni he disliked but 
 praised, because Frugoni was court poet at Parma ; the comic genius of 
 Goldoni he probably admired, but mentioned coldly, because Goldoni was 
 a heretic in the eyes of the upholders of the old Italian stage. The only 
 intellectual concern about which Metastasio displayed any genuine feeling 
 was music ; nor did he perhaps ever show so much abstract interest as 
 when he entreated the composer Jommelli not to change his style, or 
 when he groaned with the famous singing-master Bernacchi over the 
 decay of cantabile singing. It was the same with his social relations. 
 At forty-two he made it a point never to dine out ; he shut himself out 
 of general society, seeing only the people who went to the Countess 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 209 
 
 Althann; and those who, from curiosity or business, came to him on 
 Sundays ; he had four or five friends whom he saw daily, almost hourly, 
 and with whom he went through a perfect social routine. He met Count 
 Canale, the Sardinian minister, and a Canon Perlas, regularly three times 
 a week to read Horace, and when they had finished they began again at 
 the other end. He kept up correspondences with people like the Princess 
 Belmonte and a certain Filipponi, whom he had not seen for years, whom 
 he was nerer likely to meet again, and with whom he had no news to 
 interchange, from the simple fact that they had ceased to have any com- 
 mon interest and almost any mutual friends. Add to this that he was 
 getting apprehensive about his digestion, his nerves, his health, and com- 
 plaining of mysterious symptoms which no one could see. Thus, towards 
 1750, Metastasio was getting mummified. He had weakened his body by 
 over-much care ; he had hampered his actions by rules of conduct ; he bad 
 stultified his genius by routine and indifference; he had weakened his 
 affections by constant and stupefying familiarity within a narrow circle; 
 he had compressed his whole life, and was beginning to suffer by the 
 compression. 
 
 About this time he took a step, almost the last ever taken by him : he 
 contracted a new friendship which elicited the last works which came from 
 his genius. The Emperor Charles VI. had, by way of augmenting his 
 salary, given him the post of Treasurer of Cosenza in Calabria, an ofSce 
 which could be farmed out for about three hundred scudi a year. Scarcely 
 had he received his first payment when war broke out between Austria 
 and Spain. Don Carlos, son of Philip V., seized the Neapolitan States, 
 and was made King of Naples ; all the Austrian officials were replaced 
 by Spaniards, and Metastasio remained, as be expresses it, with his com- 
 mission as Treasurer of Cosenza ready to be made into a bag for sugar- 
 plums or into curling-papers. This loss became the more serious when 
 Maria Theresa began to suspend the payment of his salary; and he en- 
 deavoured to recover his post by means of representations to the Neapoli- 
 tan Government, and by every sort of influence, through cardinals, am- 
 bassadors, and ministers, all in vain. The King of Naples would not 
 hear of any sort of indemnity. But the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle having 
 put an end to the hostile relations between Vienna and Madrid, Meta- 
 stasio bethought himself of applying to the most powerful person, after 
 the King and Queen, in all Spain, to Don Carlo Broschi, Knight of St. 
 lago and of Calatrava, who had been the greatest of Italian singers under 
 the name of Farinello. Metastasio had known him in his happy Nea- 
 politan days, when Farinello had been brought to the Komanina's by his 
 master Porpora ; he had liked the boy, and playfully dubbed him twin- 
 brother ; he had met him later at Eome, Venice, and Vienna, the most 
 indisputedly great among the great Italian singers, an intelligent, hand- 
 
210 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 some young giant. Metastasio had liked him still hetter and continued 
 to call him twin-brother, for he was rich and courted, and there was no 
 reason for thrusting him away. Then Farinello had left the stage and 
 gone to Spain, where, during the long time of war and interrupted com- 
 munication, Metastasio had lost sight of him. During those years a most 
 extraordinary phenomenon had taken place, and when the poet again 
 heard of his singer fiiend it was as the omnipotent favourite of Philip V., 
 of his successor Ferdinand VL, and of his Queen ; as a maker and un- 
 maker of ministries, constantly beset by grandees, governors of provinces, 
 ambassadors, and ambassadresses, and to whom even the immortal Maria 
 Theresa wrote curiously civil little notes. 
 
 That this unexpected recognition of his old acquaintance, of the most 
 unlikely person in the whole world in the very position, only infinitely 
 more defined, more magnificent, more astonishing, which Metastasio had 
 probably dreamed of for himself when he kissed the Emperor's hand with 
 such vehemence; that this realisation of his dreams, a realisation so con- 
 crete and undoubted, but in the person of another, gave the poet a pang, 
 left in him an aching void, is most probable. This was the living com- 
 mentary on his own failure at court, this success of a man so totally dif- 
 ferent from himself. Metastasio, who had looked upon his employment, 
 upon his art, upon his fame, as merely so many steps to imperial favour; 
 who had sought for new friendships and rejected old; who had laid him- 
 self out to please, to flatter, to wheedle ; who had been frantically loyal 
 and sublimely groveling for the sake of court influence, had been super- 
 ciliously passed over, coolly and majestically pushed aside into his allotted 
 place ; and meanwhile his old acquaintance, without a thought beyond his 
 art, his friendships, and amusements, perfectly satisfied with his musical 
 fame, taciturn and haughty (after the manner of singers) with his 
 superiors in rank, bluntly ingenuous in his words, stalking through life 
 without a look or a bow for any save his friends, this imambitious, 
 uninsinuating, self-satisfied singer, had become the most important per- 
 son at the Spanish court, without any sacrifice of dignity or convenience. 
 But Metastasio was not envious where envy could obtain nothing. 
 Farinello had been more fortunate than himself (owing to that perversity 
 of faith of which he was the particular victim); the best thing to do 
 •was to try to turn this unjust good luck to profit. So he wrote to his 
 old acquaintance, reminded him of old Neapolitan days, exposed the 
 lamentable story of his treasurership of Cosenza, called him his dearest 
 twin brother, and waited for an answer ; suspecting, however, that the 
 Cavalier Broschi might no longer care to be reminded of the days when 
 he was still Farinello ; that he might think Metastasio an intolerable 
 claimer of friendship and assistance, that he might politely send his twin- 
 brother to the devil. The answer came. Farinello was overjoyed at the 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 211 
 
 resumption of acquaintance, overwhelmed by the honour of still being 
 the twin-brother of the author of the Olimpiade and of Regulus, im- 
 mensely communicative, from friendliness, rather than from vanity, about 
 his life in Spain, his friends, his relatives, the bad Spanish doctors, the 
 beautiful Spanish ladies — everything. He had already been to the 
 Queen ; he had already written to the King of Naples; he had got the 
 minister Ensenada to make special applications for indemnifying Meta- 
 stasio's loss ; he was willing to do anything merely to enjoy the pleasure 
 of Metastasio's letters. And, if matters went well, would his great 
 twin-brother write him some poems? He wanted this, that, and the 
 other. 
 
 Metastasio was delighted ; a little of his friend's grandeur had fallen 
 upon him. He was the Benjamin of a favourite jaasf-minister, if not a 
 favourite himself. Farinello kept writing, one letter more affectionate 
 than another, offering his services, sending immense presents of chocolate, 
 of vanilla, of snuff — such exquisite snuff — with which the poet regaled 
 the haughty Austrians, informing them from whom it came ; losing no 
 opportunity of boasting of his frieildship with so great a personage. The 
 Austrian grandees opened their eyes; this was a new view of Metastasio. 
 They all had brothers, cousins, friends, whom they wished should be 
 recommended at the Spanish court; would Metastasio intercede for them ? 
 Metastasio graciously granted the request, mentioned the apjflicants to 
 Farinello, adding that they were wholly unrecommendable, but that some 
 civil excuse must be given them. The favour was conferred without 
 hurting the poet's conscience. Metastasio was beset by noble toadies for 
 his friend's patronage; he looked modest and joked over it, but he 
 enjoyed it vastly ; enjoyed having generals, ambassadors, and magnates 
 asking him, " Signor Abate, when are you going to write to your twin- 
 brother? " His heart dilated when Prince Belmonte asked for a letter of 
 introduction from him; when Cardinal Migazzi begged him to speak 
 well of his brother to the great singer ; when Esterhazy embraced him in 
 the street, and thanked him for his recommendation ; when the mighty 
 Kaunitz himself desired him to ask whether the Cavalier Farinello was 
 still as partial to him as in former days. 
 
 In the return for all this second-hand influence Metastasio wrote for 
 Farinello some of his last, but most charming, cantatas: and one day sent 
 him a packet containing the words and music of the famous, most famous 
 canzonet: "Ecco quel fiero istante." It was the last work that came 
 from Metastasio's genius ; all after it was the result of practice and dex- 
 terity. Perhaps it did more for Metastasio's popularity than all his 
 dramas put together ; it was set and reset by every composer, translated 
 and retranslated into every language ; it was not passionate, not very 
 sincere ; it had not the great merits of the best of his works; but it was 
 
 p 2 
 
212 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 happy in conception and execution, complete, spontaneous, perfect as only 
 small and inferior things can be. The people of the eighteenth century 
 made sure, in their blindness to the difference between real emotion and 
 artistic emotion, that Metastasio himself was the hero of the poem ; that the 
 pangs of separation were his. But Metastasio was far too true an artist, 
 far too cold a man, not to feel that neither he nor his love-stories could find 
 a place in poetry; the Countess Althann was too prosaic for artistic repre- 
 sentation ; the Romanina had been too tragic ; he must deal only with 
 ideal passions. " You will find it very tender," wrote Metastasio to Fari- 
 nello, as he sent him the canzonet, " but do not do me the injustice of 
 supposing that I am in love; you know whether I am capable of such 
 imbecility." And Metastasio, the poet of the heart, whose works were 
 being sighed over by all the lovesick people in Italy, was speaking with 
 perfect sincerity. Love was all very fine in novels and on the stage, but 
 a man of his experience of life was far too wise to make himself happy or 
 wretched about other people: emotion was far too dangerous to the 
 digestion, not to speak of its danger to one's social position. 
 
 Metastasio had begun his correspondence with Parinello in hopes of 
 being helped back to his treasurership of Cosenza; he had continued it 
 for the satisfaction of being the friend of a man in power, for the satis- 
 faction of being asked to obtain favours for grand folk ; still when he 
 wrote immense letters in which he deluged the singer with affection, called 
 him his dearest, most adorable, most incomparable twin-brother, he was 
 not insincere nor wholly interested. Parinello pleased him beyond measure ; 
 the mixture of a supremely great singer and of a supremely powerful 
 favourite, of titles and money and reputation, was enhanced in Metastasio's 
 eyes by the addition of a strangely upright and amiable character. Meta- 
 stasio, as a prudent man, had an eye for rank and fortune; but Metastasio 
 as a poet, as the creator of ideally noble figures, had an eye also for fine 
 characters ; he was a connoisseur in Tituses, and FarineUo had something 
 of the Titus in him. It pleased the poet's ideality to hear of his friend's 
 spotless honour in the midst of a court (Metastasio had written so many 
 fine lines against courts and courtiers), of his perfect modesty, of his 
 self-respecting frankness, of his generosity to his detractors, of his in- 
 difference to money and titles, just as it pleased Metastasio to hear how 
 • FarineUo was present at the King of Spain's council, how the Due de 
 Duras and his wife used to beset and wheedle him every time they could ; 
 how, as Beckford expresses it, he was in the habit of drilling sopranos 
 and tenors on one day, and ambassadors and ministers on the next. To 
 FarineUo, on the other hand, Metastasio appeared as a sort of little 
 divinity; the singer, despite his intelligence and prudence, was eminently 
 gullible, impulsive, magnifying the good, closing his eyes to the bad ; 
 obstinate, unconvincible of error. A fervent Catholic, profoundly per- 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 213 
 
 suaded of the graoiousness of the Madonna and of the saints, though 
 holdly rushing into danger of damnation hy his friendship for Antichrist 
 in the person of the atheist poet Crudeli, Farinello was ever ready to add 
 to heavenly more earthly objects of devotion, to make a Madonna out of 
 the amiable mean little Queen of Spain, and a saint, an apostle, out of the 
 philanthropic but unscrupulous minister, Ensenada. Metastasio, with 
 his passionate eloquence, his magnificent tirades about virtue, his infec- 
 tious nobility of sentiment, appeared to the singer something super- 
 naturally beautiful, whose letters were a heavenly gift and a sign of grace. 
 The whispered story of the Eomanina's death Farinello had probably 
 never heard ; if he had he would have indignantly refuted it, have treated 
 it as an infamous lie, even with the proofs before him. Metastasio was 
 the greatest of poets, the noblest of men ; a divinity before whose shrine 
 no sufficient amount of chocolate and snuff could ever be deposited. 
 Metastasio jogged on through life without a mistake, without ever being 
 a dupe of anyone save himself. Farinello, even while this whimsical, 
 flattering correspondence continued, was agitated by troubles of which 
 his friend never dreamed ; the combat between reality and fiction, be- 
 tween the dupe and the deceivers ; the long, bitter struggle to keep in 
 power his friend Ensenada, despite his insolent ingratitude and his un- 
 popularity, and at the same time to serve the Queen, Ensenada's mortal 
 enemy; the struggle to conciliate what to him seemed opposed, but 
 equally generous, plans, which were in reality equally mean and false. 
 Ensenada was a saint, and must be kept in office; the Queen was a saint, 
 and must be helped. Ensenada pretends that he is in reality opposing 
 the dangerous alliance with France ; that he accepts the order of the 
 Saint Esprit and the French money only to gain time to mature relations 
 with England. MeanwhUe he is plotting with Choiseul; everyone in 
 Spain suspects it except Farinello; the proofs are put before him, he 
 refuses to believe in Ensenada's treachery. Ensenada, seeing that his 
 case is hopeless, merely laughs at his credulity, and insults his good faith. 
 The minister is taken, condemned ; the Queen is frantic for revenge. 
 Farinello betrayed, derided, rushes to the King, begs, implores, threatens; 
 Ensenada is let off with mere banishment from court, despite the Queen, 
 who would see him a beggar, a prisoner — best of all, see him dead. In 
 the midst of outward splendour and power, Metastasio's poor twin-brother 
 was but a pitiful dupe, pulled hither and thither by foolish generosity, 
 without real power, and without much real happiness. 
 
 Metastasio would have acted differently, — Metastasio the prudent, the 
 self-restrained, who had prevented the Eomanina from coming to Vienna, 
 who had crawled on the ground before Charles VI., who was so far 
 beyond any imbecility of love. Yet let us not be too hard upon Metastasio. 
 We have had to show him as he has appeared to us, always selfish, often 
 
214 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 servile, sometimes ungrateful, meanest in action when noblest in words ; 
 but, while showing him thus, we must show also the almost irresistible 
 influences which degraded him. Between him and his friend Parinello 
 there lay an immense diiference, far greater than that between a man 
 cold and timid and a man warm-hearted and rash ; the difference be- 
 tween a poet and a singer, between an artist who has a market and an 
 artist who has not. It was easy for Farinello to be independent and 
 self-respecting; sure from his earliest youth of money and applause, know- 
 ing that as long as he had a voice he had the means of subsisting any- 
 where without need of protectors ; it was needful for Metastasio not to be 
 servile and timid, knowing, from his youth, that his existence depended 
 upon the favour of Gravina, of the Eomanina, of the Emperor ; knowing 
 that without a real literary public his writings could support him only 
 inasmuch as they gained him protection and ofiSces: if the singer offends 
 the Emperor, no matter, he will go to England, to Spain, to Venice, and 
 gain as much money and obtain as much credit ; if the poet displeases 
 the Emperor, or the Emperor's friend the Countess Althann, or the 
 Emperor's lacquey, where else will he be sure of a pension for life ? In 
 England? No Italian poet is kept. At Berlin, Dresden, or Munich? 
 He may get five hundred florins at most. Is he to return and write plays 
 for the Teatro Aliberti, at three hundred scudi a piece, and be left to 
 starve when he can write no longer? The singer in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury had a paying public, the writer had not ; the one lived off his talent, 
 the other off his servility; that is why the singers of the eighteenth 
 century, like Caffariello and the Gabbrielli, insulted Kings and Em- 
 presses; that is why Italian poets of the eighteenth century, like 
 Metastasio and Prugoni, crawled before ministers and chamberlains. In 
 Goldoni's plays the singer is well fed and insolent, with a fur coat and 
 jack boots ; and the poet is hungry and humble, in a ragged doublet and 
 broken shoes. A false economical position implies a false social position, 
 and a false social position implies personal degradation. 
 
 In 1755 Metastasio lost the Countess Althann. She was an old 
 woman ; she had even grown-up sons ; she had been his for twenty-five 
 years; yet there had been to the last something of the flavour of romance, 
 ^^ather than of the staleness of domestic life (stale at least to a mind hke 
 his), in this connection with a woman who was his wife and was not, 
 who lived under another roof, who bore another name, who remained 
 his superior in rank, whom he treated in public with a sort of deference ' 
 and courting devotion. "I have never been in greater need of the 
 assistance of a real friend like you," wrote Metastasio to Farinello, " and 
 you, without knowing it, have given it to me in your last most affection- 
 ate letter, whose kind words have proved to me that I am not left in a 
 desert now that we have lost our very dear Countess of Althann." This was 
 
Metastasio and the Opera, 215 
 
 not a shock, not a violent grief like that at .the death of the Romanina; 
 it was a dull sense of forlornness, of being, as he says, in a desert, which 
 made him stretch forth his hand to a man whom he had not seen for so 
 long, who was so far distant, and whom he would probably never see again. 
 
 There is a portrait of Metastasio painted about this time, of which an 
 old copy belongs to the Arcadian Academy : he is seated, half reclining 
 on a sofa, one arm over its elbow, as if about to add a word to the manu- 
 script on the table by his side ; short, fat, rather languid and bent, not 
 sickly, but delicate and lazy in body ; the large head is raised, but the 
 high wide forehead, the imaginatively turned brows, are weighed down 
 and materialised by the lumpish aquiline nose, and the long square jaw, 
 imbedded in double and triple chins; the long slit mouth is smiling 
 sweetly, the eyes are lit up with humour, the heavy cheeks are dimpled, 
 yet there is a melancholy, an absence of animal spirits, a something 
 which tells you that this face is but a living mask, the muscles of which 
 will easily give way, the eye grow dull, the mouth droop, the jaw drop, 
 the whole collapse into vacancy. There is no strong life in the man, 
 though there is a flickering semblance of life : he is amiable, bright, 
 whimsical, humorous, can tell anecdotes well, can make a witty repartee, 
 can seem the very ideal of cheerful old age, when in company or when 
 writing his letters, which is but another way of being in company; but he 
 becomes dreary and apathetic when alone or with his intimates. People 
 compliment him oh his looks, on his activity in mounting the stairs, on 
 his clear voice in singing, on his bright eyes and pink and white com- 
 plexion, which, against his white wig, makes him look like a pretty old 
 lady; but he shakes his head, complains of a mysterious nervous disease, 
 of attacks of trembling, of flushing whenever he gives his attention to 
 anything ; he calls it a hysterical condition, clearer still, hypochondria, 
 confessing, without perceiving it, that he has the vain weak nervousness 
 of indolent, over-pampered women ; the ridiculous depression of broken- 
 down, idle old men; he dreads motion, change, activity, all that can cure 
 him. In reality, what ails him is mental and moral ennui. 
 
 This Vienna of the third quarter of the eighteenth century is an intoler- 
 able place : lifeless, or living only a mean little life. Nothing goes on of 
 any importance : wars are carried on on all sides, sometimes against the 
 English, sometimes against the French, no matter which; they are no sub- 
 ject of excitement; the Austrian Empire is perfectly safe, falling always on 
 the right side. When beaten, making allies of the victor, always ready to 
 tack and veer so as to avoid tempest and meet a mild little breeze. The 
 victories are those of allies, and inspire no heroic joy, like those of 
 yonder Frederick sung by Rammler, Gleim, and Kleist; the defeats are 
 also those of allies, and produce no great convulsions, no terrible ruin like 
 those in which the splendid Polish court of Dresden crashes down; a 
 
216 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 Te Deum is ordered, or a Kequiem with prayers for better luck, both 
 sung by the cheapest possible singers. There are lots of processions 
 in the streets, lots of seizures of books at the custom-houses. This 
 town, which is neither German, nor Sclav, nor Hungarian, nor Italian, 
 is sleepy and indifferent. The court is dull and miserable: the Emperor 
 Francis, mild little busybody, useful conjugal dummy of the Empress, 
 keeps the accounts of the expenses, pares and scrapes, farms out the 
 court-balls to those who will pay most (by giving least lights and refresh- 
 ments), collects the cheapest singers, after much haggling, for the court 
 theatre, makes all as stingy and shabby as things can be, till the blood 
 boils in the breast of Leopold Mozart, Vice-Chapelmaster of Salzburg, 
 who turns away in loyal shame at such a capital, in which there is not 
 money and movement enough to afford any chance for his little pheno- 
 menon Wolfgang. The Empress, the heroic Maria Theresa, is shut up 
 with the dear Minister Kaunitz, scheming to marry off as many as possible 
 of the many archduchesses who are now, by way of philosophic education, 
 sweeping their rooms and making their beds, growing up ignorant, un- 
 bridled, ready to become Carolines of Naples, and Amelias of Parma, 
 or at best, if of nobler fibre, Maria Antoinettes ; plotting to get duchies 
 for some of the many archdukes, who are at present learning carpentering, 
 until, grown into Josephs and Leopolds, they quarrel with their mother, 
 visit the King of Prussia, sweep out Jesuits, and make up for years of 
 servility by bilious, headstrong reformation. She is keeping a shrewd 
 look-out on European affairs, watching for the moment when she must 
 drop her allies and toady her enemies, when she must make friends with 
 the cynical, sneering Frederick, with the philanthropic murderous Empress 
 of Russia, with the poor inflated King of Poland ; when she is to write to 
 Madame de Pompadour beginning, " Ma princesse et cousine;" and in the 
 intervals of this powerful political game she appears proud yet modest, 
 simply dressed, surrounded by an effaced husband and stultified or rebel- 
 lious children, a picture of maternal and conjugal perfection, in church, 
 or reviewing the good pandours of Trenk; she weeps at the sight of a poor 
 widow, gives her her own breakfast, sighs over her inability to reUeve 
 distress ; she raises herself to a majestic height of virtue, and wrathfully 
 exiles to Moravia, to Hungary, to Transylvania, any unlucky lady against 
 ^hose reputation there has been a whisper. A heroine in the eyes of 
 those good English far off, a saint in those of the lower classes, Maria 
 Theresa was but a queer mixtm-e of virtue, of unscrupulousness, of pru- 
 dery, of bigotry, and of cynicism, for those who see and had her in sight. 
 For a poet, a poet dealing especially with tragic and idyllic character, 
 nothing could be worse than to be thus constantly in the presence of such 
 a sovereign — a sovereign too who, for the sake of the past, had to be 
 called glorious. She was, after all, a heroine, a Semiramis, this Maria 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 217 
 
 Theresa; but what an unheroic heroine, what a prudish, bigoted, insult- 
 swallowing Semiramis ! She was a disheartening sight, making humanity 
 seem petty and shabby in her very greatness. And, such as she was, 
 Metastasio. was forced to see her, forced by proximity, by his own rapid, 
 unerring judgment : if he could have seen her as she was not, but should 
 have been; if he could have been duped, his self-respect, his good faith, 
 his faith in goodness, would have been saved; but Metastasio was by 
 nature cool, critical, sceptical; he could not see a saint in every friend, 
 a Madonna in every patroness, like his twin-brother Farinello ; the 
 very saints and Madonna in heaven did not awaken his enthusiasm, 
 and as to seeing them on earth ! he was too shrewd and frigid for 
 that. He could not believe, he could only accept dogmas ; he could 
 not be blind, he could only shut his eyes ; he could not delude, he 
 could only perjure himself ; he was kneeling before altars in whose 
 miracles he did not believe, and kissing relics which he knew to be no 
 better than the refuse in the dustbin. 
 
 And Metastasio, cut out from all life in admiration and belief, had no 
 real life in lower things : he could not, like Goldoni, be satisfied with a 
 little amusement in looking at street squabbles, and a little excitement in 
 playing faro for a scudo ; he could not consume his energies in editing 
 classics and writing pasquinades, like the two Gozzis ; he could not be 
 filled with ineffable pleasure while improvising a stanza over a bottle of 
 maraschino, with a great lady in a new Paris hat opposite, like the gay 
 old rhymester Prugoni ; he could not dilate with holy rage while scourg- 
 ing vice and folly like Parini; he was too selfish to take pleasure in any- 
 thing concerning others, too delicate of mental fibre to take pleasure in 
 mere coarse enjoyment and coarse warfare : he took pleasure, therefore, in 
 nothing, or, at best, but a feeble pleasure in trifles. In this numbing of 
 all his faculties from disuse, two, the most developed, still kept a little 
 sensibility; his vanity and his benevolence could still be tickled. The 
 little notes with which the Empress occasionally testified her remembrance 
 he treasured up with delight; the gold (or gilt?) candlestick with the 
 lampshade which she gave him, bidding him " Take care of his eyes," he 
 displayed and talked over with rapture. So much for his vanity. In 
 1759 he met his former teacher, the composer Porpora, a man often 
 vainly assisted, vainly pushed into comfort, hopelessly spendthrift, quarrel- 
 some and disreputable ; Porpora was old, forgotten, without employment, 
 without money, and applied to Metastasio for assistance. Metastasio 
 wrote off to Farinello a long letter, a masterpiece of pathetic eloquence. 
 " We are bound by every duty to help poor Porpora," he urged ; " he is a 
 man, and we are obliged to assist our fellow-creatures ; he is of eminence 
 and a friend; he is old, and a small pittance will save him. I shall be 
 personally obliged to you for saving me the pain of seeing the wreck of 
 
218 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 a man whom we have respected from our early youth," and so on ; but 
 the letter is too fine a piece of writing : a few dollars, a little endeavour 
 to obtain Porpora employment, above all, a little perception that a really 
 kind man like Farinello required only to know of distress, would have 
 been better. Metastasio's benevolence is too abstract. 
 
 The very same year, 1759, Ferdinand VI. of Spain and his Queen 
 died, Charles II. succeeded, and Metastasio's twin-brother fell from his 
 greatness. A year of terrible suspense, of sickening attendance upon a 
 miserable, loathsome maniac, as the King of Spain became after his wife's 
 death ; of melancholy watching the defection of one friend after another, 
 and the daily diminution of importance, had been at length closed by dis- 
 grace, by unexpected banishment from the country, by finding himself 
 suddenly alone, severed from old connections and habits, powerless, with, 
 out voice or youth, reduced to nothingness ; and all this had smitten down 
 Farinello : the strong, cheerful, warm-hearted giant had been broken by 
 the fall as a man weaker in body and temper would never have been. 
 Metastasio, so to speak, hastened up, took him by the hand, looked into 
 his face with the smile of a friend ; and the rapid, unhesitating, thorough 
 act of friendship was felt and never forgotten. His letters on this occa- 
 sion are full of that tact, of that right balance between cordiality and 
 reticence, between the desire to console and the fear of appearing to do 
 so, which can come only from singularly delicate moral fibre. Farinello 
 could no longer be useful to Metastasio ; he could serve neither his avarice 
 nor his vanity; he had lost all influence, but he had not lost his hand- 
 some fortune, his social standing nor his good name, and he could in no 
 way endanger Metastasio. And Metastasio, so far from being a mere 
 toady to influential people, was singularly disinterested and sincere where 
 he could be with safety: he would have been the most grateful and gene- 
 rous of men had he not sometimes been afraid. 
 
 So Metastasio continued his life of idleness and indifference, writing a 
 play or a copy of verses when absolutely required, but nothing good ; 
 withdrawing more and more from the world, complaining more and more 
 of his health, never going to the theatre, to court, or to any party. While 
 the man was thus fading away, his fame was growing daily. BBs works 
 Ijad been printed and reprinted in all parts of Italy; they were translated 
 into French, English, German, Spanish, and even into modern Greek; he 
 was read in mud villages in Portugal and. in wood villages in Eussia; to 
 foreigners he represented the whole sum of Italian poetry since Tasso. 
 Voltaire, in his preface to SAniramis, praised him up to the skies, with 
 the usual addition of a little depreciation of Italy, operas, and everything 
 that was not French and Voltairian; Eousseau praised him up to the sides 
 pretty well everywhere, with less critical acumen and backbiting. He had 
 been made a member of every possible academy; medals were now being 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 219 
 
 struck in his honour, and sent to him; even the arch-heretic Baretti, who 
 trundled about the world calling all established celebrities the most shame- 
 ful names, wrote a splendid rhapsody on Metastasio, ending that he was 
 truly a poet for Kings and Emperors (even Baretti, being an Italian of 
 the first half of the eighteenth century, could find no higher praise than 
 that). Letters poured in from all parts of Italy, delightfully candid in 
 their obtrusiveness, letters from authors sending their works (which were 
 always pronounced to be excellent), from learned men propounding their 
 theories, from young men asking for a rule of conduct, from young ladies 
 confiding their aspirations and affections. Everyone in Italy had read 
 and re-read Metastasio's works to such an extent that they felt quite 
 intimate with him, persuaded themselves that they knew him most 
 thoroughly, and that it was quite natural to confide everything to so 
 omniscient a creature, just as they might lay all their ideas and troubles 
 before the busy but hopelessly intruded-on Madonna and St. Joseph. 
 
 That Metastasio was the best, wisest, happiest of mortals, seemed 
 evident, even to the people who, like Sir Nathaniel Wraxall and Dr. Bumey, 
 came into his presence on Sunday mornings. He looked so rosy, so 
 cheerful, so placid, such a picture of rewarded philosophy and virtue ; 
 surely he must be the happiest of mortals. He was not particularly 
 happy, and perhaps took a pleasure in being so as little as possible: to be 
 wretched was at least some little excitement in this monotony. His inti- 
 mate, the Canon Perlas, with whom and Count Canale he went on year 
 after year, jogging dully through the classics, wrote to some one (whom 
 we are not told) that " Metastasio is universally considered the happiest 
 of human beings, but in reality no man is more unhappy than he. Since 
 the death of the Countess Althann I have been his confidant; I know 
 his woes, and if I could tell how great they are I could greatly diminish 
 your present grief," &c. Strong words. Heavy woes, heavy enough to 
 make those of other men seem light; no man more happy than he ! We 
 pause before this awful announcement. But no, we cannot be made to 
 condole, to pamper Metastasio's sickly sentiment. 
 
 And Metastasio, in his old age, was not quite alone. The Martinez 
 family with whom he lived were kind and deferential ; nor was this all. 
 About 1769 appears for the first time (from out of a convent or school ? 
 we know not whence) a third Marianna, a girl of singular intelligence and 
 great cultivation. She was called Martinez, the sister of Joseph Martinez, 
 then the head of the family ; but she was also called Metastasio's pupil, 
 his niece, his adopted daughter. Was she the daughter of the poet ? 
 Perhaps she was; perhaps she was not. She seems to have come into 
 existence already grown up. We never see her except as a very mature 
 young lady, with the self-possession and independence of a spinster. 
 Metastasio, who had little paternal instinct, but a great, cool liking for 
 
220 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 intellectual women, especially not too old (charming nymphs, as he 
 called his blue-stocking correspondents), took much pleasure in Marianna 
 Martinez, in perfecting her education, in making her into a sort of female 
 self. She had great musical talents, which were cultivated to the utmost. 
 A poor young scholar was got at a great bargain to teach her the harp- 
 sichord and composition in return for board and lodging : he, in his thread- 
 bare coat, had the honour of sitting at table with the Abate Metastasio, 
 listening solemnly to the great poet's words ; he often spoke of it later 
 when he had become more famous throughout Europe, and, having re- 
 ceived an Oxford degree, was called Doctor Haydn. Metastasio taught 
 Marianna Martinez to sing; he sang beautifully hinaself, as befitted a 
 pupil of Porpora and of the Eomanina, and the intimate friend of 
 Hasse, of the Faustina, of Farinello, of Jommelli ; and Marianna turned 
 out an exquisite singer, in the most noble and delicate style of the early 
 eighteenth century, which was then being fast forgotten ; so that Dr. 
 Burney had no words to express his admiration of her. She was a good 
 linguist, spoke Gei-man, French, English and Spanish, admirably, and 
 was altogether a most admirable young lady. But withal a little cold : 
 why did she not cure Metastasio's melancholy? Why did she not marry 
 him and cheer him by the sight of children? Perhaps she cared but little 
 for this amiable old hypochondriac; perhaps he cared for her only as a 
 pupil, as a dependant, as a kind of nurse. However it may be, the ap- 
 pearance of domestic life is no greater with this daughter or quasi- 
 daughter than it was in the case of his gwasi-wife the Countess Althann : 
 Metastasio had made himself into a hopeless and typical old bachelor. 
 
 Timorous he remained, timorous about his health and about his position. 
 Farinello, the only remaining old friend, had, after long, wretched de- 
 pression, finally consoled himself for his loss of power and for his loss 
 of youth. The rest of his life should not be dismal : he took to him his 
 nephews and nieces and gol to think only of them. One day, in high 
 pleasure, in intense friendliness, he asked Metastasio to become the god- 
 father to his nephew's child. There were other people enough whom he 
 might ask; Bolognese senators, and Cardinals, and Neapolitan princes; 
 but Farinello disdained them for the sake of his old friend. His old 
 |riend answered in most affectionate terms that he regretted, it was an 
 immense mortification to him to disappoint his twin-brother, but he had 
 recently refused to be godfather to the son of a very great personage, and 
 great personages must not be trifled with. Farinello was vexed, but 
 called the child after Metastasio all the same; and soon after, having for- 
 given, astounded the poet by the proposal that he should leave Vienna 
 and live the rest of his days in his house at Bologna. It seemed quite 
 simple to the singer that Metastasio, having ceased to be of any use in 
 Vienna, should be but too glad to abandon a sinecure, to realise a dream 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 221 
 
 of which he was always talking, the dream of ending his days in Italy, 
 out of that cold, proud, beggarly Austria where no one cared for him. 
 Metastasio had indeed talked about his dear Italy, about the pleasure of 
 seeing all his old friends again, of meeting his innumerable admirers ; 
 perhaps he even thought once over the plan. But to move, to travel (he 
 was in the best health), to leave his tiresome old Viennese acquaintance, 
 to give up drawling through Horace, to cease to be what he had been, 
 and then to take up his abode in Farinello's house, a house too in the 
 country (Metastasio considered the country most unhealthy), full of noisy 
 brats, of visitors, with a constant bustle and hubbub; to be dragged out 
 of his dear, dull routine into the life of other people — ^he shrank from 
 the idea; his nerves, his sensitive nerves, could never endure it. He 
 thanked his old friend and chose the philosophical course of staying where 
 he was, of continuing the philosophical life he had hitherto led. 
 
 So he did. The century drew towards a close, and Metastasio, who 
 had been born with it, shrank and withered. Things had gradually 
 changed: mysterious forces were converging to form the revolution; all 
 was palpitating with strange life, even at Vienna. The Viennese were 
 beginning to remember that they were Germans, and instead of transla- 
 tions of Metastasio's plays they crowded to see Emilia Galotti and Qoetz 
 von Berlichingen. The last years of Maria Theresa were being watched 
 with impatience. In 1780 she died, and with her seemed to die the old 
 state of things. The bilious, impetuous Joseph cleared out a new road ; 
 down with the old ceremony, the old prudery, the old bigotry. He was 
 a Frenchman at heart, a passionate admirer of Frederick the Great, a 
 passionate disciple of Voltaire, of Beccaria, and of Filangieri; he would 
 reform everything, and he began by thrusting out the clergy ; seized by 
 that vertigo which made even the kings and emperors of the late eighteenth 
 century hasten on the revolution which was to sweep them away. Meta- 
 stasio disliked all this movement, this pulling up of the bad old pave- 
 ment over which he had jolted for sixty years. Moreover, new poets were 
 arising in Italy, and a new mode of thinking. A wild young man, whose 
 tragedies were fast supplanting Metastasio's plays, came to Vienna with 
 the intention of paying his respects to the old poet. But one day, as 
 Alfieri was walking about the promenade, he saw a modest carriage stop 
 before a splendid gilt coach, the door open, and a little bent old man of 
 eighty get out, go up to the coach, and stand obsequiously at its window, 
 hat in hand. Alfieri saw it, and left Vienna without visiting Metastasio ; 
 a foolish, conceited, unthinking, unsympathising piece of swagger, but 
 which showed that the attitude even of the Italians was undergoing a 
 change. 
 
 Meanwhile, all Metastasio's friends were dead, those friends with whom 
 he had kept up a dull vacant correspondence for years; even those whom, 
 
222 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 like Jommelli, he had encouraged as youths, were fast going; the cen- 
 tury was dying: he who had belonged to it so completely, so slavishly, 
 must die also. He shivered and moped in his third floor in the Kohl- 
 markt, surrounded by the obsequious, cool Martinezes, to whom that third 
 floor, with all its contents, must so soon belong. Farinello, the only sur- 
 viving old friend, and who was still as active and friendly as at forty, 
 not being able since his departure from Spain to send the poet snuff or 
 chocolate, sent him Bolognese grapes, gingerbread, preserved peaches, 
 and other indigestible good things. Metastasio smiled faint thanks, let 
 Marianna Martinez eat the grapes, gingerbread, and preserves, and looked 
 on vacantly. He was beginning to feel a great yearning after affection; 
 to his singer friend he wrote oftener and oftener, short, tremulous notes ; 
 ho thought of his twin-brother as he had been fifty years ago, the slender, 
 light-stepped youth with the broad shoulders and triumphant voice; he 
 let himself, perhaps, be led back by this phantom of a man still living 
 but long altered to his own young days, to the summer walks across the 
 park in Moravia, to the chats and games at cards in the Countess 
 Althann's rooms, perhaps even to the musical parties at Naples, when 
 sixty years ago he, a brilliant young man of twenty-four, had seen the 
 Eomanina lead the boy Farinello to the harpsichord, while Scarlatti, Por- 
 pora, Leo, Vinci, Hasse, all the great composers whose settings of his 
 plays had been forgotten for forty years, looked on and listened. " Ah ! 
 adorable twin-brother, dearest Carlucciello," he wrote, " how much I have 
 to say to you and how little I can say ! What can we do when we can do 
 nothing?" What would he have said had he been able? Perhaps 
 nothing ; memories of old affections, vague desires for love, were sadly 
 and confusedly inarticulately speaking within him. All that he would 
 have said remained unspoken. He wrote no more to Farinello, nor to 
 anyone. In the spring of 1782 he caught cold, fell ill, and in a few days 
 was beyond recovery. Pius VI., who had come to Vienna to humiliate 
 himself and Catholicism before Joseph II. (who, having sore eyes, did 
 not even go to meet him), sent his benediction to the dying poet; the 
 Nuncio brought him the sacrament, and as he took it he sang, with 
 strange self-assertion, a verse of his own paraphrase of the psalm 
 Miserere; then he subsided into lethargy and silence. In those hours of 
 Eolation did he go over the past, remember Gravina, the Eomanina, and 
 the Countess Althann, ask himself how much sweetness he had got out 
 of that long life of philosophic prudence, of sacrifice to peace and 
 safety? 
 
 A little later Marianna Martinez, most cultivated and best mannered 
 of spinsters, sent off a long letter to the Cavalier Don Carlo Broschi, 
 commonly called Farinello, at his villa outside the Porta San Felice at 
 Bologna, beginning, " The loss of a mortal who did honour to humanity 
 
Metastasio and tlie Opera. 223 
 
 must be felt by all," &o. and winding up with thanks for a box of pre- 
 served fruit ; the whole to inform him, with all due ceremony, indifference, 
 and frigidness, that the Abate Pietro Metastasio had died on April 14, 
 1782. Very cold was this letter of the woman to whom, with her 
 brothers, Metastasio had been as a father, and had left his whole fortune; 
 cold as had been the letter, written sixty-four years ea,rlier, by which 
 Metastasio had informed those concerned of the , death of Gravina. 
 Farinello did not take it so coolly ; to him Metastasio had never ceased 
 to be the greatest of poets, the noblest of men, the dearest of friends. A 
 few months later the great singer died, giving his last thoughts to a 
 certain harpsichord and music-books ; all the rest his nephews might 
 dispose of as they chose, but that they must keep, for it had been the 
 gift of a saint, of the wife of Ferdinand VI. What became of harpsi- 
 chord and music-books heaven only knows; the heirs of Metastasio's 
 " adorable twin-brother " left Bologna, and abandoned his villa to utter 
 decay. For ninety years did it stand empty and tenantless, dismantled 
 and crumbling ; a strange weird spot of desolation in the beautiful 
 fields of corn and vines, forgotten like the fame of its owner. The 
 next year, 1783, in a little house of the Campo S. Marcuola, at Venice, 
 died an old couple, a German and his Italian wife, and no one noticed 
 their end ; the husband was Johann Adolph Hasse, the most famous 
 Italian composer of the second quarter of the eighteenth century; the 
 wife, Faustina Bordoni, the greatest singer and most beautiful actress of 
 the day. Of the great melodrama of the year 1730, the joint work of poet 
 and musician, these four, — Metastasio, Farinello, and the two Hasses, — 
 were the last, late survivors. A new school of music had arisen, a new 
 ^school of poetry was arising: Cimarosa and Paisiello reigned without 
 rivals; Alfieri and Monti were about to accede; the old heroic opera, the 
 school which had produced the Olimpiade, Demofoonte, and Begolo, was 
 extinct. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The news of Metastasio's death gave a shock to the Italians: to that 
 generation he seemed ever to have lived, his works seemed always to 
 have existed; many people had probably not realised the fact of his being 
 alive until they heard that he was dead. He had been a name, familiar 
 beyond all others, a name associate^ with a hundred plots of operas which 
 everyone seemed to have known ever since he existed, and with innumer- 
 able rhymes, strophs, and quotations which everybody seemed to have 
 known almost before he was born. But, living at Vienna for fifty years. 
 
224 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 he was not a personality to his countrymen, and even the few who had 
 known him, in person or by letter, knew nothing whatever of his history. 
 His death was felt as a surprise. A number of new editions of his works 
 were published, and the printers hunted greedily for every letter of his 
 that could be discovered; all the hungry literary priestlets set about com- 
 piling biographies of him, bare, barren, and most often apocryphal. All 
 the would-be men of letters penned his eulogiums, gushing, pedantic, full 
 of quotations from Horace and Eousseau, enriched with foot-notes, in 
 which they displayed their learning and lampooned their adversaries with 
 equal want of connection. All the academies convoked all their mem- 
 bers to a great Church ceremony round a richly- scrolled catafalque, or to 
 a meeting in the black-draped academic rooms, and speeches were made, 
 and sonnets read and distributed. At Turin the literati gave Metastasio 
 a grand funeral, with the famous Marchesi to sing ; at Alexandria the 
 clever ex-Jesuit Cordara extemporised an immensely long and compli- 
 cated oration; but the most was of course done at Metastasio's own birth- 
 place, Eome. The Arcadians all met at the Bosco Parrasio, hetero- 
 geneous, cosmopolitan, and rather frivolous Arcadians, very unlike those 
 Metastasio had seen there sixty years before: English milordi led about 
 by tutors; German princes led about by equerries ; artists, antiquaries 
 of all nations, Angelica Kauffman, Piranesi, Gavin Hamilton, Tischbein, 
 and Zeoga; a motley crowd, not knowing very well nor caring very much 
 what this Arcadian business might be. To them, the Abate TaruflB, 
 former secretary to the Nuncio at Vienna, most Voltairian, Ossianesque, 
 altogether fashionable of ecclesiastics, friend of Goldoni, of Gluck, of 
 Beccaria, of all that in those days meant rebellion, held forth in praise 
 of his dear friend Metastasio, showing how great a man and how very 
 great a poet he had been. And winding up his discourse the Abate 
 Taruffi declared, that, though the Italian stage had lost much in Meta- 
 stasio, there was present one who could repair the loss ; and he waved 
 his hand gracefully in the direction of that singular, violent, red-haired 
 young man who drove the many horses and wrote the tyrannicide trage- 
 dies, and made love to the wife of the last of the Stuarts; singing, in the 
 same breath, the requiem for Metastasio and the Te Deum for Alderi. 
 This incident represents a vast fact. Metastasio's fame was indeed 
 •still alive, but it was a fame born of the past and not destined to live in 
 the future. People continued to write, speak, and even think of him as 
 great, but the reality of his greatness came less home to them year by year. 
 The civilisation of which Metastasio had been the spokesman was break- 
 ing up ; the work of art of which he had been the chief craftsman was 
 falling to ruins. Metastasio had represented the awakening of the purely 
 Italian mind out of the long slumber of the seventeenth century, its spon- 
 taneous shaking-off of Spanish and erudite influences; but this movement 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 225 
 
 was now over ; Italy had become cosmopolitan and eclectic, borrowing 
 French, English, German, and antique modes of feeling ; and thinlcing 
 already of borrowing topboots, guillotine cravats, and Grecian sandals. 
 Metastasio's strong, delicate, natural, simply speaking and rapidly moving 
 characters were even more insipid to the enthusiastic admirers of Lovelace, 
 of Julie, of Fingal, of Werther, and of Brutus, than were his old-world 
 wisdom, his old-world morality, to the readers of Diderot, Eousseau, and 
 Chamfort. 
 
 To the Italians of the latter eighteenth century, saturated with every 
 sort of exotic fashion, medleys of every sort of cosmopolitan exaggeration, 
 Metastasio was necessarily insufficient : he did not satisfy their craving 
 for morbid sentimentation, for strong action, for bold theory; he did not 
 help to drag them along towards that mysterious, magnetic future which 
 hid the revolution. 
 
 Moreover, Metastasio, who could no longer command sympathy in the 
 closet, was rapidly ceasing to awaken admiration on the stage. The 
 opera, such as he had known and treated it, had put all the action and 
 dialogue into recitative, and had retained only the solo air or at most the 
 duet for expressions of lyrism or passion. Very early, as soon as the 
 public had grown fairly acquainted with his plays, the recitatives had 
 begun to be curtailed; later, the words of airs were changed to suit com- 
 poser or singer ; little by httle his plays became mutilated patchworks. 
 Moreover, a gradual change took place in music ; rhythm, accompaniment, 
 and concerted pieces developed, while at the same time musical forms 
 became softer, slighter, less massive and heroic; boldness of modulation 
 diminished; and the recitatives, become threadbare and monotonous,. were 
 gabbled over imnoticed, except when relieved by instrumental passages. 
 As the recitatives became worse and less noticed, concerted pieces became 
 more complicated, better and more popular : trios, quartets, and quintets 
 were made out of Metastasio's pages of recitative. The effect was obvious. 
 Not only did the verses thus inserted by theatre rhymesters disgrace the 
 original play, but the very play was deformed by the action, whose 
 rapidity was its great merit, being arrested or rather forced to move in 
 the treadmill of concerted pieces. Anyone curious to see what a play by 
 Metastasio had become by the year 1790 may compare the Clemenza di 
 Tito as printed in his works with the Clemenza di Tito as set by Mozart : 
 the powerful opening scene between Sextus and Vitellia is fiddle-faddled 
 into a duet ; the rapid scene of the discovered conspiracy is drawn out into 
 a quintet ; the pathetic meeting of Sextus and Titus is fugued and twisted 
 into a trio, and the exquisite outburst of Sextus's remorse is frittered away 
 into a long rondo, in which he repeats a dozen times and to all sorts of 
 tunes — " Tanto affanno soffre un core — nfe si muore — di dolore.'' 
 
 Meanwhile the universal taste for whimpering, semi-serious comedy, 
 
226 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 which had already done so much harm to Goldoni in Italy and to Lessing 
 in Germany, affected even the opera. A famous singer, Marchesi, 
 thought he could show off his fine figure to better adyantage in modem 
 dress than in the pseudo-antique works of Metastasian tailors, and could 
 move more ladies to tears as a deserter, a reformed prodigal, or a game- 
 ster, than as a Koman consul ; so he imported from France a number of 
 plays of the lachrymose, middle-class sort, which were duly transformed 
 into Italian opera texts. The heroic subjects, with Greeks and Eomans, 
 kings and dictators, were still kept for the stately gala performances, to 
 which people went in full dress, in the powder, hoops, stockings, and em- 
 broidered coats which were replaced in ordinary life by dresses a la Brutus 
 and a la Pamila, limp, lank, and draggled; but the semi-serious plays, 
 like the Nina pazza per amore, the Disertore, the Lodoisha, the Agnese, 
 were what people really enjoyed, what the great composers, like the 
 delicately sentimental Paisiello, worked at with the best will. 
 
 The revolution had burst out ; the old Italian states had been broken 
 up, the Venetian republic had been dissolved for ever, the Papacy had 
 been extinguished for the moment : a new state of things had suddenly 
 arisen: it was the dawning of the nineteenth century; the last hours of 
 the eighteenth were striking. Alfieri and Monti were at their zenith. 
 Ugo Poscolo was arising, the children were already bom who were to be 
 known as Alessandro Manzoni and Giacomo Leopardi; Metastasio was a 
 thing of the past. Yet even then his name carried with it authority ; he 
 was no longer hked, no longer read, but he was still respected. About 
 1798 there came to Eome with the victorious French a strange republican 
 sibyl, once a nun, a mystic, a saint; now a democrat, a philanthropist, a 
 prophetess of progress, the Citizeness Clothilde Suzanne Courcelle La- 
 brousse, who held forth before the Eoman patriots in the mixed language 
 of an encyclopaedist and a fishwife, and whose long, rambling discourses, 
 droll, sickening, pathetic, mixtures of politics, midwifery, and scriptural 
 quotations, were printed by the republican printer PuccineUi; the original 
 in wondrous French on one page, the Italian translation on the other. In 
 this exceedingly rare little pamphlet, which gives a greater insight into 
 the French revolutionary invasion than all Botta's volumes put together, 
 there is the following curious passage, which we transcribe with the 
 Citoyenne Clothilde Suzanne Courcelle Labrousse's own spelling and 
 punctuation : 
 
 " Vous Romaines, qui vous pleignez de toutes ces choses, je va vous faire 
 voir encore comme quoi tout vient en haut et que c'est d'un Eomain dont 
 est venue I'origine de tout ceci au reste je va vous dire ce qui ma ete 
 raporte, car je n'en sai point positivement I'histoire ; mais cela me paroit 
 si vraisemblable que cela m'engage a le raporter, le principe de tout ceci 
 vient dont d'un sertin Metastaze qu'on dit etre de son origine un petit 
 
Metastasio and the Opera, 227 
 
 pauvre enfant de Rome, et qui se trouvant avoir la voie agrable chantoit 
 souvant et vercifioit avec una grande facilite, gens d'etude, I'entendant 
 lui dirent s'il voiiloit venir aveo eux qu'il lui aprendroit quelque chose qui 
 lui faciliteroit a ce tirer d'affaire, lui soudain accepta, et fit tant de pro- 
 gres que dans peu temps il les surpassa a tons, cela etant il demanda au 
 Pape de ce temps I'a une pension pour vivre afin de ne penser qu'a I'etude, 
 le Pape I'ayant constament refuse il s'en fut a Viene, soudain ses talens 
 firent du bruit, et parvinrent a Marie Therese Imperatrice, qui le voulut 
 voir, et elle en fat si satisfaite qu'elle le fit Eegent de ces enfants qui 
 comme tout le monde sait dtoient en grand nombre, comme ce Metastase 
 etoit vraiment eclaire, il faisoit presenter a cette cour que I'homme quoi 
 qu'il soit d'une grand naissance, il n'est pas pour cela dans le vrai plus 
 grand que le reste des hommes, et qu'il n'est pas pour cela plus a I'abri 
 des evenements de la vie que tout autre ; enfin en consequence des prin- 
 cipes qu'il insinuoit a cette cour I'Imperatrice fit aprendre a tons ses 
 enfants un art comme I'agriculture etc. tout comme s'ils eussent &t6 
 oblige d'avoir besoin de cela pour vivre, a ses filles, elles leur faisoient 
 balier leur chambre etc. et lors que les grands de sa court le voyoient, et ■ 
 qu'il lui observoient qu'elles n'auroient jamais besoin de ce savoir etc.; elle 
 leur repondoient hela! qui le sait, de sorte done que se soit par principe 
 ou par pressentiment que ce fesoit cette cour ; mais reste qu'etant imbue 
 de ces sentiments; ils se disposoient deja, et disposoient tout cbose aux 
 evenements du temps .... de maniere que toute ses lumieres s'etant re- 
 pendues dans toutes les cours et des cours dans le peuple il en resulte 
 joint a tant autres circonstances favorables; a pa que les choses en sont 
 venues ou elles sont, ainsi Romaines prenez vous en a vous memes, et 
 non a d'autres."* 
 
 Whether the Roman citizens, citizens ex-abati, ex-princes, ex-spies, 
 and ex-fiunkeys, assembled at the republican club in the month of Floreal 
 of the year six, were deeply impressed by the truth of Citizeness La- 
 brousse's remarks, whether they ever took Metastasio into consideration 
 as a philosopher, a philanthropist, and the original cause of the revolution, 
 we shall never know. All that we do know is, that as a poet Metastasio 
 was daily losing ground. By the end of the last century his plays had 
 been transformed into monsters which could scarce be recognised as his ; 
 in the first years of this . century they had disappeared altogether from 
 the stage, routed by the invasion of pseudo-knights, ■pseaio-chatelaines, 
 pseudo-pages, pseudo-ghosts, and all the other supposed representatives 
 of chivalry which came with romanticism from Germany to France, and 
 from France to Italy. 
 
 * Disooiirs prononoes par la CUoyenne Couroelle Labrousse au Club de Rome 
 dans le mois Floreal de Van VI. faits eft revus par elle-mSme. A Eome chez Pnc- 
 cinelli Joachim Imprimenr National, p. 224. 
 
 q2 
 
228 Metastasio and the Opera. 
 
 Driven from tlie opera stage, Metastasio could find no asylum on the 
 tragic stage ; his plays were now useless as operas, and had always been 
 unavailable as tragedies: they could never be declaimed, and they now 
 ceased to be sung. Off the stage everything was against Metastasio ; he 
 was not descriptive, not oratorical, not elegiac; he was dramatic, and his 
 swift, impetuous action, his light, firmly-marked points of pathos, ap- 
 peared to the reader dry and bare, thin action and thinner pathos, im- 
 bedded in insipid gallantry and entangled in complicated plots. The eye, 
 running rapidly over his blocks of blank verse, was for ever arrested by 
 those continual little lyrical strophs, insignificant little appendages which 
 stood out like flourishes from the white paper. If anything was remem- 
 bered it was these strophs, these pretty, insignificant little similes and 
 conceits, formerly given over by the poet, who had done his work, to the 
 composer who was to begin his ; trifles of little value save as a theme for 
 melody and vocal execution, trifles in which the opera of the eighteenth / 
 century paid for having been almost an acted tragedy by becoming almost ' 
 a motionless concert. These remained, and on these Metastasio's fame 
 began to rest; on these rhymes, which had been intended to be enlarged, 
 changed, given new metre, new movement, new life, breadth, and dignity 
 by music, but which, when read off, were a mere pretty, ridiculous little 
 fiddle-faddle. 
 
 Thus Metastasio was gradually placed in a position in which he could 
 never be fairly judged, the position of an unacted dramatist, of an unsung 
 song-writer; while, at the same time, the general way of thinking and 
 judging became necessarily hostile to him. The Italians, checked by 
 the French invasion in their self-elaborated civilisation of the eighteenth 
 century, had become pedantic and utilitarian ; the literature of the days 
 of former freedom, and the literature of aspiration after future liberty, 
 were alone valued ; in their reviving national spirit, in their state of 
 struggle against oppression, the Italians disdained that artistic life which 
 had made them, as it seemed, the sesthetical slaves, the jesters of the rest 
 of Europe. Metastasio had belonged to the slavish eighteenth century, 
 had been a court pensioner, a flatterer of the house of Austria ; he was 
 utterly scorned; his works, which had been opera texts, were reviled as 
 effeminate pieces of trumpery, which, with their falsified history, their 
 ' royal pieces of perfection, their love-sick heroes, their roulades and their 
 ritomellos, had been good only to amuse tyrants and to enervate slaves ; 
 artistic Delilahs, sending the nation to sleep with meretricious delights, 
 that it might awake to find itself shorn of its strength and blind to its 
 shame. Even now, when criticism is getting the better of enthusiastic 
 injustice, Metastasio is scorned and, at the best, condoned; his jesting 
 and unconscious prophecy has been fulfilled, and people write of him 
 almost in his own mock humble words: " In the eighteenth century there 
 
Metastasio and the Opera. 229 
 
 liTed a certain Abate Metastasio, a tolerable poet among bad ones." This 
 is all the recognition he receives from the intellectual classes : if his 
 works are still re-printed, it is for the benefit of old-fashioned prigs, who 
 think him a safe moralist ; of uncultured gushing women, who think him 
 a consolation in unhappy love; of illiterate peasants, who use his plays 
 on their own stages of planks and sheets. His true worth, which is his 
 artistic worth, will be recognised only when the eighteenth century shall 
 cease to be studied merely as a precursor of the nineteenth; when the 
 musical efflorescence of the last century shall be recognised as a national 
 and artistic phenomenon analogous to the plastic efflorescence of the 
 Renaissance ; and when with this musical efflorescence shall be associated 
 the efflorescence of the Italian tragic drama ; when, in short, the Italians 
 shall recognise that their last great artistic gift to the world was the 
 opera. 
 
THE COMEDY OF MASKS. 
 
THE COMEDY OF MASKS. 
 
 The Comedy of Masks, the farce partially improvised by typical buf- 
 foons, is as old as the Italian race. It has existed in rudiment ever 
 since the earliest days of Latin, Oscan, and Italo-Greek civilisation: it is 
 the elder comedy, for ever thrust aside by the younger comedy, the un- 
 written for ever banished by the written, driven out of sight by Aristo- 
 phanes, by Plautus, by Terence, by the erudite comic writers of the 
 Kenaissance ; despised, reviled, ignored ; forced to hide in fair-booths and 
 village taverns, till at last, after two thousand years of ignominious lurk- 
 ing, it issues forth strong, brilliant, and victorious with the great invasion 
 of the dialect literature of the lower classes, of the peasants and lazzaroni 
 and vagabonds who saved the Italian nationality in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries. 
 
 One or two allusions of contemptuous ancient satirists and furious 
 fathers of the Church, one or two ten-a-cotta statuettes and comic wall- 
 paintings, have sufficed to prove not only that the Comedy of Masks was 
 a mere continuation of the Atellan farces of old Italic days, but that 
 the principal buffoons have undergone little change since the days when 
 Pulcinella, under the name of Maccus, displayed his double-hump and 
 prodigious nose to the ancient Neapolitans; when the Oscan Pappus 
 and Casnar let themselves be duped by valets, daughters, and wards, just 
 like the Venetian Pantalone and the Roman Cassandrino ; when Harle- 
 quin, once the satyr- like buffoon of the dionysiac revels of Sicyon, played 
 his pranks and danced on his head, flatshod (planipes), begrimed with 
 soot (fuligine faciam obductam), and dressed in motley patches (mimus 
 centunculus), before Cicero and Apuleius. In the days of Boman civili- 
 sation and eclecticism the old Italic farce, the Comedy of Masks of 
 antiquity, was rejected as coarse and rustic by a society requiring the 
 more refined and artistic filthiness of Greece; but when the austerity, 
 which is always the companion of the highest depravity, began to grumble 
 with the Stoics and thunder with the Saints against the written and 
 polished comedy, when the Christian Emperors and Popes began to pro- 
 scribe the elegant abominations of the stage, the old Italian farce, safe 
 from imperial and ecclesiastic censure in its unwritten licence, began once 
 more to raise its head. And, in proportion as the intellectual culture of 
 antiquity diminished, and the austerity of Christianity increased, the 
 
234 The Comedy of Mash 
 
 Italian mimes returned to power. We can dimly watch the buffoon 
 masquers, with their gibbosities and sootiness and patches, playing their 
 antics and cracking their jokes amidst the crumbling remains of anti- 
 quity, in the fast increasing darkness involving the world; until at 
 length, when Eome has been reduced to a heap of ruins and Italy to a 
 Babel of nationalities, when memory of the past, consciousness of the 
 present, and care for the future, seem simultaneously extinguished, we 
 lose sight of the old Mask Comedy in the general obscurity, and strain 
 vainly through the gloom to see the silhouette of the buffoons of antiquity. 
 What became of them during that long period of darkness ? Did they 
 lurk, with the last remnants of paganism, in the rural festivals, playing 
 their pranks in honour of antique gods disguised as medieval saints ? 
 Did the Church absorb them, as it absorbed all the life that remained, and 
 let them loose to dance, gesticulate, and jest among the donkeys and 
 drunken clerks of the feast of fools or the mummers of shrovetide, 
 humouring the love of the ridiculous and the gross in the same way as 
 it did in the dirty and grotesque apishnesses of the cathedral fronts ? 
 Be it as it may, the old buffoons continued to live, perhaps to hibernate, 
 throughout the Middle Ages ; they doubtless showed themselves in the 
 carnival processions of Italy, by the side of the mummers of shoemakers, 
 of pastrycooks, of grasshoppers, and of antique divinities for whom 
 Lorenzo de' Medici wrote his clever indecencies. But, as the culture of 
 Greece had thrust them aside in Eome, so also did the revival of antique 
 literatm'e thrust them aside in the Renaissance ; the humanists of the fif- 
 teenth century would hear only of Plautus and Terence, and drove back 
 the barbarous mimes, little dreaming of their antiquity, into the arms of 
 the uneducated classes. Machiavelli, Ariosto, Bibbiena, Speroni, Tris- 
 sino, devoted their talents to imitating the ancient comic writers ; Baldas- 
 sare Peruzzi constructed ingenious stage scenSry ; prelates, like Fedra 
 Inghirami, learned the parts of antique prostitutes and panders, and Leo 
 X. and Clement VII. laughed like schoolboys at humanistic adaptations 
 such as the Calandra and the Suppositi, which would have made even an 
 ancient blush. 
 
 But when the brilliant civilisation of the Renaissance broke up, when 
 humanities were forgotten in the strife for existence, when Popes and 
 prelates began to think of Luther rather than of Aristopbanes, when the 
 Italian merchants, turned into thriftless nobles, began to be weighed upon 
 by Spanish solemnity, when the Inquisition began to prick up its ears at 
 every profane joke, when the misfortunes of Italy had set in, then the old 
 buffoons reappeared, Maccus become Pulcinella, Casnar grown into Pan- 
 talone, the sanniones turned into the two zanni, Arlecchino find Brighella; 
 then the unwritten comedy came as a consoler. It is a strange and sug- 
 gestive fact that the man who first gave to the Gommedia dell' Arte a 
 
The Comedy of Masks. 235 
 
 separate and honourable position, who counterbalanced with his frank, 
 tender, genuine comic genius the clever imitations and adroit obscenities 
 of the humanists, the Paduan actor and dialect poet, Angelo Beolco, sur- 
 named Euzzante, was also the man who first mourned in the simple and 
 touching dialect of Venetia the misery of Italy in the second quarter of the 
 sixteenth centmy, the wretchedness of the peasantry and townsfolk ruined 
 by the long wars and continuous massacres of the French, the Germans, 
 and the Spaniards. " The world is no longer what it was," said Euz- 
 zante; " there is nothing but slaughter and famine; in the fields there is 
 no longer any sound of laughter and singing ; the young people no 
 longer make love and marry; we seem choked by the plague in our 
 throats; the very nightingales no longer sing as in former days ; happy 
 are the dead quiet under ground. Let us therefore, since we cannot cry 
 freely, laugh in our misery." 
 
 Laughter in misery, such was the origin of the revived Comedy- of 
 Masks : bufiboneries to drown the recollection of ignominy, merriment to 
 hide seditious sorrovr, local satire to hide national satire, dialect to save 
 Italian; the typical mask as a mantle wherewith to cover the object of 
 derision, and the improvised jest, obscene and fleeting, wherewith to strike 
 without leaving a trace. The police of the Viceroy, or the censors of the 
 Holy Office, may indeed get scent of some stir in men's thoughts: let 
 them come and pry ; what can they find ? merely Harlequin kicking 
 Pantaloon with some rabelaisien drollery; there is no proof, no paper, no 
 definite actioi^to lay hold of, the sedition has evaporated. Thus the 
 Comedy of Masks kept alive the interest of Italy in itself at a time when 
 Italy had been superseded by so many Spanish fiefs and Spanish king- 
 doms ; crushed and mangled as a whole, the country maintained its 
 vitality in its fragments: fragments too insignificant, too heterogeneous 
 to create suspicion, living on separate and unnoticed until at length per- 
 mitted to reunite ; and the Comedy of Masks, the jumble of Bergamascs 
 and Sicilians, of Neapolitans and Bolognese, the Babel of dialects the 
 most dissimilar, is the product and the expression of this provincial life 
 ever tending towards forbidden national unity. 
 
 The wonderfully rapid development of the Comedy of Masks proves its 
 intense vitality : by the middle of the sixteenth century the principal masks 
 had abeady become traditional: old men were typified in Pantalone dei 
 Bisognosi the Venetian merchant, wearing the obsolete costume, — the 
 scarlet stockings, black robe, and long-tailed hood, of the burgher of a medi- 
 seval commonwealth; thetwo ideal classes of servants, the hypocritical rogue 
 and the gluttonous sly simpleton, were represented respectively by Brighella, 
 dressed in the loose-striped shirt and linen cap of the artisans of the six- 
 teenth century; and by Arlecchino, wearing tight-fitting hose and jerkin of 
 motley stripes and patches, suggestive of the grotesque dress of the youths 
 
236 The Comedy of Masks. 
 
 in Signorelli and Carpaccio's paintings. Both Brighella and Arlecchino 
 came to be associated with the town of Bergamo, the Lombard dialect of 
 which, wholly distinct from the Venetian of Pantalone, they continued to 
 the last to employ. These two servants, the arch buffoons of the play, were 
 called the two Zanni, perhaps in reminiscence of the Sanniones of antiquity; 
 and Harlequin in especial never lost his antique character of mime, — 
 dancing, playing tricks, and performing gymnastic feats in the midst of 
 his parts. To these three was added the Doctor, sometimes called Doctor 
 Graziano or Doctor Balanzon, the typical man of learning : dressed as a 
 jurist, with an immense wine-stain on one cheek : always a Bolognese, 
 always blustering and pedantic, oscillating between a knave and a fool, 
 holding forth in maccaronian Latin. These four, Pantalone, Brighella, 
 Harlequin, and the Doctor, were called the four masks ; they were the 
 most popular, the most typical, the most universally known and the 
 longest of life. But opposite this quartet of North Italians arose another 
 quartet of Neapolitan buffoons : Pulcinella, the ancient Maccus, the 
 modern Punch or Polichinelle, with immense nose and double hump, 
 dressed in white, a terrible violent sort of comic Bluebeard or Nero ; the 
 bully and intriguer Scaramuccia, dressed in blacl^sAhe archetype of the 
 military adventurer; the simpleton and stammererJCartaglia; the long, 
 dancing, fiddling, singing vagabond Coviello; — these Southern masks 
 being more violent, more savage, -more indecently antique, than the 
 Northern, and perhaps more restricted to their own provinces. Eound 
 these two quartets of masks swarmed an infinity of other buffoons, varie- 
 ties, individual or provincial; rising up and dying away, altering, multi- 
 plying to all infinity: the Milanese Beltrame and Meneghino, the im- 
 mense class of Scappinos and Trivelinos of various shades, born of the 
 Brighella trilje; the Truffaldinos, Mezzettinos, Pedrolinos, and Cavicchios, 
 children or brothers of Harlequin; and a legion of others, Burattinos, 
 Francatrippas, Giangurgolos, Pasquariellos, Travaglinos, whom, in their 
 rapid appearance, disappearance, and metamorphose, we cannot even 
 plainly identify. To these masks — half actors, half acrobats, half jesters, 
 — were added regular actors and actresses, speaking Tuscan and probably 
 improvising but little, the pair of lovers borrowed with but slight alteration 
 t from the written comedy and retaining its pseudo-antique names : Lelio, 
 Leandro, Orazio, and Florindo; Lavinia, Flamminia, Ortensia, Giacinta, 
 and Kosaura, dapper figures with no comic work to do, but necessary for 
 the action of the play. And finally, superposed as it were on to the 
 Italian comedy, was the type of the military adventm-er, of the Spanish 
 hidalgo, violent, tyrannical, overbearing and rapacious : a mixture of Don 
 Juan, Pizarro, and Don Quixote; at first rather terrible than ridiculous, 
 and growing into a bona fide comic figure, into a threadbare and hungry 
 adventurer, a cowardly sonorous fire-eater, a Captain Fracassa or Mata- 
 
Tlie Comedy of Masks. 237 
 
 moros, only in proportion as the redoubtable kingdom of Philip II., 
 odious but dignified, turned into the tattered Spain of the sevenceenth 
 century, execrable but ludicrous. 
 
 Moreover, the stability of the characters was only one peculiarity of 
 the improvised comedy ;_ the types were not only fixed, they were abso- 
 lutely personal; a man who had once chosen to play Pantaloon, Harlequin, 
 Pulcinella, or the Captain, never played anything else ; the part was a 
 costume which, once worn, could never be changed ; the various characters 
 were not abstractions like the characters of other comedies, they were 
 concrete individuals. Instead of the playwright inventing a figure, a 
 Falstaff or a Tartuffe, and then instructing an actor how to embody his 
 conception, the playwright of the Comedy of Masks was given so many 
 living creatures, so many embodied types, not Jacopo, Andrea, or Gio- 
 vanni, whom he must bid strip off his every-day dress in order to assume 
 some characteristic costume, and paint his face with any new device of 
 wrinkles, but Arlecchino, with his patches and stripes, his black mask, 
 his kicks, capers, and jokes; or Pantalone in his red hose and long black 
 hood; or Lelio in his dainty slashed silk doublet and curled mustachios ; 
 each as complete, as ready-made in character, gesture, intonation, and 
 moral being, as in exterior appearance. The Mask actors were in short 
 scarcely actors at all: they were fantastic realities, they no more needed 
 a part to be written for them than does any other reality ; they neces- 
 sarily and from their essential nature felt, acted, and spoke in a consistent 
 and characteristic way. The consequence was evident: no parts were 
 written for them, they were placed opposite each other, and the meeting 
 of Pantaloon and Brighella, of Harlequin and the Doctor, of Pulcinella 
 and Scaramuccia, produced, by the automatic movement of the characters, 
 an action and a dialogue ever new and ever natural. Ideal types of 
 buffoons, made up of local caricature, of obsolete fashions, of antique 
 traditions, moulded together by the reckless fancy of the people ; and real 
 friction of character, real dialogue, real action, real repartee; such was 
 the strange dual nature of the Mask Comedy, such the secret of its long 
 fascination for the fancy and its ever renewed dramatic interest. 
 
 The Comedy of Masks had started with being but a sort of extravagant 
 offshoot of the written comedy imitated from the antique, an adaptation 
 thereof to the wants of less refined classes, and to the peculiarities of 
 popular actors ; the buffoons had at first tried to perform for the lower 
 classes what the academic actors performed for the upper ; Pantaloon and 
 Harlequin had wished to act Terence and Ariosto. But, as the Comedy 
 of Masks developed, it separated from the classic comedy and diverged 
 further and further, till it stood perfectly alone, a unique phenomenon in 
 the history of the drama. About 1540 Beolco and his imitator Calmo 
 had still written their comedies, leaving but little to the improvisation of 
 
238 The Comedy of Masks. 
 
 the actors, and their plays can still be read and thoroughly enjoyed in 
 the reading; but their successors were obliged to leave half of the 
 dialogue to be extemporised, and in a very few years the written part of 
 the plays was reduced to a mere skeleton plan of the action divided into 
 scenes, which was hung up in the green-rooms for the instruction of 
 the actors, who filled up all the outlines according to the whim of the 
 moment. Thence it is that nothing has come down to us of the Comedy of 
 Masks of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries save a volume pub- 
 lished about 1610 by the actor Flamminio Scala, containing fifty outlines 
 of comedies in narrative form, which read like some duller Bandello or 
 Cintio, threadbare tales of scurrilous intrigue, which are to the Comedy 
 of Masks like the shapeless scaffoldings which remain after some wonder- 
 ful exhibition of fireworks : of those enchanted palaces of light spring- 
 ing suddenly from the ground, of those fountains of flames, of those 
 showers of sparks and sheaves of rays, of all that wondrous world of fire, 
 there remains nothing but dreary rows of posts and bleak archways of 
 wire. 
 
 The Comedy of Masks was not an invention, not a revelation, it was a 
 natural product ; it did not sieze hold of national taste, it sprang up and 
 developed everywhere because its seeds had long existed in the Italian mind, 
 and because the intellectual temperature of the latter sixteenth century 
 necessitated its germination and development. From the humbler quarters 
 of the towns it spread to the nobler, until the high-bom and learned 
 Academicians, reciting antique and pseudo-antique plays in their palaces, 
 were interrupted by the yells of laughter of the spectators of Pantaloon 
 and Harlequin over the way. The noble amateurs, trying to reconstruct 
 Attic drama, strutting about in antiquarian splendour of toga and cothur- 
 nus, yelling choruses according to Pythagorean recipes and stumping 
 pyrrhic sarabands after the fashion of Batthylus, looked down with 
 infinite scorn upon these ignoble modern buffoons who dared to be moie 
 amusing than themselves. They refused to prostitute the noble name of 
 comedy to the farces which, as the learned Niccolb Secchi contemptuously 
 writes, " are performed here, there, and everywhere by dirty mercenary 
 raggamuffins, who introduce the Bergamasc Zanni, Francatrippa, Panta- 
 loon, and such like buffoons, who can be compared only with the Atellani 
 mimes and planipedes of the ancients." The dirty mercenary ragga- 
 muffins of Messer Niccolb were by that time, about 1580, neither dirty 
 nor raggamuffins, and could afford to snap their fingers at the written 
 comedies and the would-be Rosciuses of the Academies. Mercenary they 
 were, they lived off the laughter they could command, and lived honourably 
 and even magnificently ; and they accepted for their unwritten comedy 
 the contemptuous epithet given it by the academic actors : professional 
 comedy, artisan comedy, trade comedy, in the Italian of the sixteenth 
 
The Comedy of Mashs. 239 
 
 century, which associated no sesthetical ideas with the word art, Corn- 
 media delV Arte. In the last quarter of the sixteenth century Italy was 
 full of comic companies, — Venetian, Lombard, Tuscan, and Neapolitan, 
 but more commonly mixed, who wandered from place to place performing 
 with incredible success. The upper classes and the prelates and princes 
 patronised superior companies of highly-trained actors and beautiful 
 actresses, richly remunerated and highly honoured. The very Academi- 
 cians became proud to recite verses in honour of some famous Harlequin 
 or some lovely Flamminia. The Church, so far from excommunicating 
 and refusing Christian sepulture to actors, did all to attach them to 
 religion, and was rewarded by occasionally discovering that some celebrated 
 buffoon had been in the habit of wearing a hair shirt beneath his motley 
 garb, and had died almost in odour of sanctity; nay, a real saint. Carlo 
 Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, was in the habit of examining, correcting, 
 and annotating the skeleton manuscripts submitted to his censure by 
 pious managers, and some of these curious, half holy, half profane relics, 
 were still extant in the eighteenth century. At the end of the sixteenth 
 century Italy was still the teacher of fashions, and the young foreigners 
 travelling about with their tutors and their fencing-masters brought back 
 to England, to France, and to Germany, the taste for Mask Comedies, 
 until at last they encouraged Italian actors, as their great-grandsons of 
 the days of Queen Anne were to encourage Italian singers, to try their 
 fortunes abroad. About 1570 the Austrian and Bavarian courts already 
 kept Italian companies with Arlecchino, Brighella, and the Doctor; in 
 1577 a company of Mask actors headed by a certain Drusiano migrated 
 to England, introducing the clowns and fools employed by Shakspeare ; 
 about the same time Juan Ganassa attempted, with but small success, to 
 graft the Italian masks on to the Spanish drama of Lope and Moreto ; and 
 in 1577 Henri III., himself the strangest buffoon that ever played a 
 part in tragedy, called to Blois, to amuse the Huguenots and Ligueurs 
 there assembled, the comic company of the Oelosi, whom he had perhaps 
 seen during his Italian journey, and which numbered, besides the director 
 Flamminio Scala, the two excellent Zanni, Simone Bolognese and Pedro- 
 lino, Francesco Andreini, famous by his stage name of Captain Spavento 
 della Valle Inferna, and his wife the beautiful Isabella, queen of Italian 
 actresses, celebrated throughout Italy for her beauty, her learning, and 
 her excellent conduct. The taste for things Italian increased with the 
 marriage of Henri IV.; the Gelosi were again invited to Paris, subse- 
 quently succeeded by a new company called the Fedeli, headed by a 
 younger Andreini ; and finally, in 1645, the Italian Mask actors were 
 established in the Hotel du Petit Bourbon, where they performed al- 
 ternately with French actors, and where the young upholsterer Jean 
 Baptiste Poquelin, known on the stage as Moliere, studied acting from 
 
240 The Comedy of Masks. 
 
 the admirable Scaramuccia Tiberio Fiorilli. Moliere not only learned 
 from the Italians how to construct his plays and how to perform them, 
 but he also borrowed from them largely, taking several of their Mask 
 types, like Truffaldin, Sganarelle, Pantaloon (Geronte), and Brighella 
 (Scapin), and deliberately using Mask frameworks for several of his playe, 
 such as L'Etmirdi and Le Festin de Pierre; nay, some critics go so far 
 as to assert with M. Moland that wherever in Moliere there is com- 
 plicated action and comic movement we may trace the influence of the 
 Italian comedy. Thus the Gommedia delV Arte, which had perhaps 
 afforded suggestions to Shakspeare and to Lope de Vega, proximately 
 produced the comedy of Moliere by offering a definite artistic mould in 
 which to cast all the heterogeneous comic elements which had existed 
 chaotically in the old French fabliaux, nouvelles, and farces. 
 
 The historians of the Comedy of Masks, from the archaeologist-actor 
 Riccoboni, " dit L61io, comedien ordinaire du Roy," down to M. Maurice 
 Sand and M. Moland, have universally declared that the establishment 
 of these colonies in England, Spain, Germany, and France, marks the 
 highest point, the golden age, of the Gommedia delV Arte, and that its 
 decline dates from the year 1600. In this decision we cannot possibly 
 concur. That the Comedy of Masks obtained its most artistic shape and 
 its highest polish in the days of the Gelosi and the Fedeli ; that in the 
 hands of these admirable actors it was a happy mixture of written and 
 improvised dialogue, of Tuscan and of dialect, of classic tradition and 
 popular inspiration, is undeniable ; but the very nature of the Gommedia 
 delV Arte was to be deficient in artistic shape and literary polish, to be 
 wholly improvised and totally unliterary, to be unhampered by traditions 
 and fluctuating according to the caprice of the people. The comedy of 
 the Gelosi and of the Fedeli still partook too much of the written comedy 
 of Machiavelli and Bibbiena, the actors were still too much influenced by 
 academic models, and spectators were still too accustomed to humanistic 
 unities. Italy in the sixteenth century, broken as was its nationality and 
 crumblingjas were its institutions, was still too much of the well-organised, 
 polished Italy of the Renaissance to permit of the full development of the 
 Mask Comedy : for that was required the final stage of national stagna- 
 tion and ferment. The golden age of the Gommedia delV Arte is precisely 
 the period which has been assigned to its decline, the time when the re- 
 straints of culture and civilization had rotted away, and when comedy fell 
 into the hands of the rabble ; the Gommedia delV Arte flourished most 
 luxuriantly in the depth of that strange swamp, bog, and quagmire of the 
 Italy of the seventeenth century. 
 
 A swamp, a bog, a quagmire indeed ; a confused expanse of stag- 
 nating ideas, of rotting forms, of rank and inextricable abuses, of; 
 melancholy dried vegetation of better times ; a slippery, muddy, puddly 
 
llie Comedy of Masks. 241 
 
 piece of noisomeness, from whose approach we are scared by the monoto- 
 nous croak of a legion of literary reptiles ; such is the Italy of the seven- 
 teenth century. Yet let us be fair even to this evil piece of historical 
 land ; to this putrescence of the vigorous things, good and evil, left by 
 the Renaissance. Hidden in the corruption of death are the germs of 
 life; among the putrid waters trickle little invisible streamlets, pure and 
 limpid, acquiring daily more volume and more current ; hidden by the 
 rotting vegetation of the insolent rank marsh-grass are little plants, 
 gradually pushing their shoots upwards till they will have overtopped 
 the evil weeds ; in this atmosphere of death there is a microscopic, in- 
 finitesimal but infinite life, a life as of maggots, or of millions of ugly 
 little vermin, born of the very putrefaction : the swamp, which seems 
 dead, is alive, and the day will come when it will be redeemed and fruitful 
 for the world. 
 
 Let us not, therefore, turn away in contempt and disgust at this ugly 
 Italian seventeenth century ; let us remember that in this miserable, 
 loathsome period took place that process of disintegration and revivification 
 of national elements which gave us, instead of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, 
 ,\'fto and Beccaria ; instead of Politian and Ariosto, Metastasio and 
 GWdoni; instead of Leonardo, Michel Angelo, and Titian, Marcello, 
 Pergolesi, and Cimarosa. In those dismal days when the solemn osten- 
 tatious houses of the rich were full of domestic degradation, when the 
 husband would fall by his wife's side stabbed by the wife's lover; when 
 the wife would pine away for months with the sickness of mysterious 
 poison ; when the father, stained with every vice, would be strangled 
 by night and cast by his sons into some foul hiding-place ; and people 
 would shrug their shoulders and the police raise their eyebrows as sole 
 comment ; when the dapper young men kept retinues of murderers dang- 
 ling at their heels, and the sainted nuns filled the convent wells with 
 little children's bones ; when the learned academies disputed in Greek, 
 Latin, and Italian, whether the stone hurled against the Virgin's picture 
 was to be considered a holy relic or a sacrilegious abomination ; when old 
 women and young were burned for going to the witches' meetings in the 
 shape of cats ; when poets were crowned for calling the heavens a shining 
 sieve; when the upper classes had become poisoned and bevritched 
 maniacs, and the literati exuberant superstitious pedants ; when the 
 society, literature, and language of Italy, sick with the excesses of the 
 Eenaissance, were weighed upon and oppressed by the huge rotting mass 
 of dead Spain ; then in that dismal seventeenth century the lower classes, 
 the beggars, the vagabonds, the illiterate, the whipped serfs of Naples, 
 the malaria-poisoned peasants of the Maremma, the starved artisans of 
 the towns, all the tattered, bruised, ulcerated, homeless, workless, nameless 
 oppressed, upon whom national degradation and foreign tyranny fell 
 
242 The Comedy of Masks. 
 
 hardest, arose in their rags and their filth, and proclaimed in their multi- 
 fold jargon of dialects that Italy was not dead. "While the upper 
 classes became day by day more grave, more sad, more imbecile with their 
 Spanish solemnity and vacuity ; while the Italian poets, with Marini at 
 their head, became day by day more nauseously insipid with their Spanish 
 unmeaningness and inflation ; the lower classes became daily more way- 
 ward, more powerful, more passionate, and their dialect poet more fan- 
 tastic and original. While the upper classes sat yawning in their plaster- 
 bedizened palaces, listening to some vapid, turgid pastoral rubbish, some 
 bastard Amyntas or mongrel Pastor Fido ; the lower classes in the open 
 squares, in the fairs, among the nostrum vendors, the gibbets, the wine- 
 shops, the pillories, the strings of onions and tin ware, among the maimed, 
 armless, legless beggars, the giants and giantesses, the preaching friars 
 and the fortune-telling gipsies, the whole squalid, fantastic, grotesque 
 world which Callot has etched in his " Fair at Impruneta," listened to 
 the wandering dialect poets, singing of Bertoldo and Bertoldino like 
 the Bolognese Croce, ai>d to the vagabond actors of the Mask Comedy- 
 Then it was that, without poets and without actors of any fame, the 
 Gommedia delV Arte attained to its full size ; gigantic, gigantically vigor- 
 ous and monstrous : born of laughter among misery in the days of 
 Eavenna and Marignano, it attained to maturity amid oppression, starvsh 
 tion, and squalor in that dreary half-century of lethargy during which 
 Italy paid for the Thirty Years' War in Germany, and was bled of money 
 and men for the great strife between Catholic Austria and Protestant 
 Sweden. Plays and playwrights there were none ; subjects were taken 
 helter-sfcelter from Spain, from the older comedy, from the written 
 comedy ; the dialects were in their most wondrous vigour ; the burlesque 
 style, under Tassoni, Maggi, and the great Kedi, was triumphant. Every- 
 where swarmed new varieties of masks, acrobats, jesters ; grotesque, ter- 
 rible ; obscene and ludicrous shapes, only half-human, suggesting the 
 broken egg-shells, melon-rinds, and bundles of rags of their native 
 dust-holes and drain-vaults. Spanish Rodomonts, wondrous in deed, 
 with slashed jackets and cobwebbed swords, of names without end, Coeco- 
 drillo, Spezzamonti, Bellorofonte, Martellione, Basilisco, Einoceronte, 
 Escarabombardon della Papiroutonda, swaggered about with bristling 
 whiskers and mangy plume before the Spanish garrisons, boasting that 
 they were sons of Earthquake and Thunder, cousins of Death, and bosom 
 friends of Beelzebub; Trivelinos, Fritellinos, Formicas, Coviellos, dancing, 
 fiddling, kicking creatures, with long noses and slit mouths, tumbled 
 about in the face of the monks and Jesuits, singing heathen songs with 
 jargon burdens; Giangurgolos and Scaramuccias, ceremonious and stately, 
 with tattered clothes and spectacles, fandangoed about before the terrible 
 coaches of Neapolitan Viceroys ; Pulcinella, ogre-like, terrific, a volcano 
 
The Comedy of Masks. 243 
 
 of jest and gibe, lashed up the lazzaroni like a precursor of Masaniello. 
 The Inquisition, the Jesuits, the Viceroys were powerless against this 
 ever-increasing and ever-yarying swarm of buffoons ; the vagabonds, 
 the raggamuffins and their dialects, were saving the Italian nationality : 
 the masks of the comedy, — bold, insolent, serious, jesting, unseizable Pro- 
 tenses, — were saving the Italian lower classes from the fate of their 
 Spanish fellow-sufferers. Yes, this middle of the seventeenth century was 
 the golden time of the Comedy of Masks ; and the representative man, the 
 supreme and universal genius of the day, the Michel Angelo of vagabonds, 
 as Bernini was the Michel Angelo of nobles and pedants, — Salvator Rosa 
 — was one of the shining lights of the Gommedia dell' Arte. This strange 
 jumbled genius, — wild, pedantic, ferocious, gentle, and playful, whose 
 cynically imaginative paintings, with their smoking battle-fields, then- 
 brawls of ragged soldiers, their grimacing beggars and bandit-haunted 
 ravines, contrast so singularly with his coarse verbose satires, sweepings 
 up of erudite dirt-heaps, and with his charming, quaint, half-undeveloped 
 music, — this arch-adventurer and arch-rebel wandered about in his youth 
 with other tattered artist vagabonds, acting the part of the Neapolitan 
 buffoon, dancer, singer, affiil jester, Coviello, in a masterly manner, as 
 another confused and ragged genius, caricature of poet and composer like 
 Salvator Eosa himself, Hoffmann, has shown him us in his admirable 
 story " II Signer Formica," in which Salvator Eosa, with his opponents the 
 Pyramid Doctor and thelittledeformed soprano Pitichinaccio, form a group 
 perfectly in the spirit of the Comedy of Masks. Later in life, when Eosa 
 had settled down in Florence, he continued to play his parts of Coviello 
 and Pascariello in the comedies improvised at his own house, in which 
 Torricelli the mathematician, Viviani the brother of the astronomer, and 
 Carlo Dati, the Hellenist, performed the other mask characters ; while 
 Carlo Dolci, Alessandro Stradella, and Eedi, the author of the magni- 
 ficent rollicking dithyramb in Tuscan dialect, may have been present as 
 worthy spectators. 
 
 With Salvator Eosa the improvised Comedy of Masks, the proteus-like 
 representative of the vagabond life and dialect buffoonery of the seven- 
 teenth century, culminates and begins to decline. As the seventeenth 
 century drew towards its close, as foreign oppression and national exhaus- 
 tion diminished, as brigands and bravos vanished, as society became re- 
 organised in its upper strata ; as, in short, the marsh, with its stagnation, 
 its garish weeds and vermin inhabitants, gradually turned into arable 
 land, so also the Comedy of Masks began to lose vitality. The opera, 
 attaining to maturity, gradually usurped its national powers ; in the 
 southern provinces comic musical interludes began to supersede the mask 
 buffooneries ; in the northern, French imitation began to substitute bad 
 tragic declamation for comic improvisation. The Gommedia dell' Arte 
 
 K 2 
 
244 The Comedy of Masks. 
 
 maintained, it is true, its possession of the smaller theatres for another 
 half century ; all actors were mask actors, all comedies were mask 
 comedies ; but the life of the style was fast ebbing ; no new types 
 appeared ; the old became stereotyped ; the jokes and gestures and acro- 
 batic feats became traditional ; the Comedy of Masks began to be con- 
 sidered as legitimately enthroned as perpetual soyereign of the ItaUan 
 comic stage ; its days of battle and adventure were over. The day of its 
 dethronement was fast approaching ; and the man who was to disinte- 
 grate the old national comedy, and to cast its elements into a new mould, 
 was already born. 
 
GOLDONI 
 AND THE EEALISTIC COMEDY. 
 
GOLDONI AND THE REALISTIC COMEDY. 
 
 I. 
 
 Carlo Goldoni was born at Venice, in a house at the corner of the 
 via Ca Cent' anni, in the parish of St. Thomas, somewhere in the year 
 1707. Sent into the world with the sole object of moulding into an 
 artistic whole the heterogeneous elements of the mask comedy, and of 
 substituting a national for a local stage, his birth, parentage, education, 
 his whole life and whole character, were ingeniously arranged by fate for 
 this purpose. He was an admirable mechanism, such as can be evolved 
 hut not constructed, for producing the greatest possible number of excel- 
 lent comedies ; and he was interesting only as such, as his life is interesting 
 only inasmuch as it served as a long apprenticeship to his art. A man 
 of insignificant temperament, of limited intelligence, but with an enor- 
 mous endowment for comic observation and construction, and a series of 
 influences calculated to develope this genius, — such is Goldoni, and 
 such Goldoni's life. Nature would waste no other material upon him, 
 and fate would give him only comic adventures : his character and his 
 life resemble nothing so muclj as his works. 
 
 Bom a mongrel Italian, half Modenese and half Venetian, in the house 
 of a grandfather who squandered his fortune upon actors and actresses, 
 Goldoni was made a present of a puppet-show when he was four ; he was 
 encouraged to compose a play when he was eight, and was, in his earliest 
 childhood, bundled off on a series of journeys throughout Italy. His 
 father, a sort of irregular genteel physician, and his amiable intelligent 
 mother, made several attempts to turn him into an ordinary child and an 
 ordinary youth by means of teachers, colleges, logical barbaras and bara- 
 liptons and theological transcendental metaphysics ; but even they were 
 forced to help the irresistible fate which destined Carlo Goldoni to be a 
 comic writer and nothing else. At Perugia the urchin was made to play 
 a woman's part in a comedy performed by the seminarists in the Antinori 
 
^48 Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 
 
 palace ; a few years later, being left at school at Eimini, he was so 
 fascinated by a company of actors as to leave all his books and shirts 
 behind, and embark with them for Chiozza, where his mother was living, 
 enjoying beyond all things the life on board, among the harlequins and 
 pantaloons, the parrots, cats, dogs, monkeys, and pseudo-mothers of the 
 actresses. At Chiozza the boy, intensely anxious to see his family, can- 
 not summon up courage to present himself at home ; the good-natured 
 Leander of the Company offers to help him, takes him home, and hides 
 him in the passage while breaking the news of his arrival to his mother. 
 " Signora," says the Leander, " I have brought you news of your son 
 from Eimini." " My son ! how is the boy ?" " Very well, but he does 
 not like his position ; he suffers very much from being parted from his 
 mother." Signora Goldoni is intensely moved by the pathetic words of 
 •the buffoon. " Poor child ! How I wish I had him with me ! " Leander 
 siezes his opportunity. « I offered to bring him here." " You did ! 
 and why has he not come?" "Would you have approved of such a 
 step?" gravely asks Leander. "Of course," cries Signora Goldoni, in 
 an agony of motherly affection. " But his studies —what of his studies ? " 
 " His studies ! Oh — why — he might have gone back to them later." 
 " Then you would really have been glad to see him, Signora ? " " Glad! 
 I think so, indeed! " " Signora, here he is," and Leander throws open 
 the door, and the boy rushes into the good woman's arms. The same 
 scene, with the addition of hiding under the valance of a dressing-table, 
 is repeated on the return home of the father ; comic scenes, absolutely 
 of the kind which Goldoni used in his plays. At fifteen Carlo is sent to 
 finish his studies at the ecclesiastical college of Pavia— studies which had 
 mainly consisted in reading the Latin, French, and Spanish dramatists, 
 and, on these being confiscated as unfit for youth, of the horrible comedies 
 of Machiavelli, innocently furnished as a consolation by an unsuspecting 
 old canon. At Pavia more surreptitious reading of comedies, varied with 
 flirtations with sundry professorial young ladies ; the whole wound up by 
 the writing of a dramatic satire, on the model of the ancient Atellanae, 
 an immense scandal and hubbub in consequence, and ignominious expul- 
 sion from college. 
 
 Goldoni's Memoirs— a huge work undertaken in his extreme old age- 
 tire unlike anything else of the kind. They are neither romantic, nor 
 scandalous, nor philosophic : they are intensely professional ; they are 
 neither the outpourings of a man of feeling, nor the gossip of an old man 
 of the world, nor the psychological study of a novelist or metaphysician; 
 they are a series of analyses on all of his innumerable plays, embedded in 
 a biography which reads like a running commentary upon them ; the 
 man's feelings, actions, and adventures appearing like the rough material 
 for his works. As in his plays, so in Goldoni and in Goldoni's life there 
 
Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 249 
 
 is nothing sentimental, tragic, libertine, and adrenturous ; all his 
 emotions and impressions have the levity, the good-natured simplicity, of 
 his works ; all his actions and adventures have the light movement, 
 the comic complication of his comedies. We no more expect a deep 
 mental conflict, or a real catastrophe in this book, than we do in the 
 Smanie per la Villeggiatura or the Putta Onorata ; neither Goldoni nor 
 any of the other actors in the Memoirs will ever commit any desperate 
 action, experience any violent passions, or suffer any great misfortune ; 
 all the mistakes will be cleared up, all the peccadilloes condoned, all the 
 scrapes got out of ; all will come right at the end of the comedy. Gol- 
 doni is the hero or the victim of a dozen love adventures and matrimonial 
 schemes with citizens' daughters, lemonade sellers, waiting-maids, and 
 smart young ladies ; from the first love for the chai-ming girl whose 
 abigail, in true Goldonian-Colombina style, fomented his passions with 
 forged letters and interviews at windows, in which she acted her lady's part, 
 until she finally deluded the youth into expressing his love by means of a 
 set of glass beads, worth six sequins, which she sold for double the price 
 to her unsuspecting mistress ; from this little early comedy down to his 
 final breaking off his match with the lovely young lady of the Friulian 
 journey, on the sagacious reflection that if she were to fall into ill health 
 and fade as her elder sister had done he would find it difiScult to remain 
 faithful in his affection ; these loves are a series of strange little imbroglios, 
 out of which Goldoni invariably emerges, crestfallen indeed, but never 
 broken-hearted or remorseful. As it is with love so it is with all else : Gol- 
 doni slips in and out of social positions and professional arrangements with 
 the same light-hearted, well-behaved, imperturbable slipperiness. Edu- 
 cated for the law, and successful at the Venetian bar, he throws up every- 
 thing at Venice because he doubts of the wisdom of another matrimonial 
 scheme, and because he is seized with the desire to present a tragic poem 
 to the opera directors of Milan. The reading of the opera libretto being 
 interrupted by the criticisms, harpsichord strummings, and general imper- 
 tinence of the singers, and the manuscript committed to the flames, 
 Goldoni, with nothing, or next to nothing, in the world, takes service 
 as secretary with the Venetian minister ' at Milan. A little later, being 
 accused of treachery by the minister, he goes off with a company of 
 actors; arrives at Genoa, and seeing a beautiful young lady at a 
 window, makes a deep bow, and gives her a tender glance. The young 
 lady curtsies ; Goldoni returns again next day and the following days ; 
 more bows, more curtsies, more tender glances : a perfect little comedy 
 courtship, with a stage-like quiet street and balcony, and two stage-like 
 little graceful silhouettes, Florindo and Rosaura. After a few days 
 Goldoni is introduced to the lady's father ; invites him, like some Signor 
 Pantalone de' Bisognosi, to the play ; asks for the hand of his daughter. 
 
250 Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 
 
 and is immediately accepted, and almost immediately married. And, 
 like the marriages in his plays, this off-hand marriage, a marriage 
 neither of passion nor of interest, but of whim, proves extremely happy ; 
 Goldoni and his wife live childless, without quarrels or jealousies, for 
 more than fifty years, as we imagine that Sior Menegheto does with Siora 
 Lucietta, or the Signor Evaristo with the Signora Chiara. For ever 
 falling on his feet, or, if falling elsewhere, up in a trice and with no 
 bruises upon him, Goldoni, amiable, honest, superficial though perfectly 
 sincere in all his attachments, never once, as he himself tells us, lets any 
 misfortune interfere with his supper. He is no cynic ; on the contrary, 
 all his feelings are on the right side : he never succumbs to temptation, 
 he is never drawn down to vice ; he is for ever flitting about, skimming 
 over the surface of life with a little reproachful shake of the head for the 
 unfortunates who stick in its mire, and a little nod of approbation for 
 heroes who trudge manfully up its rough and dangerous paths. For ever 
 shifting his quarters, Goldoni saw a great deal of the world, and a great 
 deal of life : he never failed to visit Eoman ruins, alum-mines, or cele- 
 brated writers ; he never failed to hear all good music and to attend all 
 good sermons ; but though he forgot nothing, and could tell the number 
 of arches of the amphitheatre, of cartloads of alum in the mines, of sub- 
 jects of conversation of the writers ; although he remembered the tunes 
 of the operas and the arguments of the preachers, nothing of all this 
 was assimilated by his own nature, neither history, nor art, nor literature. 
 The man's nature was capable of really absorbing only those common- 
 place comic scenes and incidents which came before him. He was for 
 ever getting into the way of that lightly treated but serious and most 
 eventful war of Bourbon Spain against the house of Hapsburg, con- 
 tinually renewed from about 1732 to 1745. He almost witnessed the 
 battle of Parma ; he was jammed up between the Austrian and French 
 armies in the Milanese, seeing sieges and capitulations ; he was robbed 
 of his clothes and money by marauders, and fled before the enemy reading a 
 comedy of his — the only thing remaining to him — to a fellow traveller ; he 
 was retained, — after being abandoned by his coachman, losing his trunks, 
 and carrying his wife on his back through swollen torrents and along 
 broken roads, — as a sort of comic prisoner by the Austrian troops at 
 ;^imini ; but all these personal experiences of warfare left only comic im- 
 pressions in the cheery, flighty, little man, and served to produce no 
 other pictures than those of officers gambling and making love to quarter- 
 masters' daughters, of soldiers stealing fowls and eggs, of wandering 
 hucksters selling their wares at monstrous prices; of the misery, the 
 ruin, the wounded, and the widowed. Carlo Goldoni, true son of the 
 light, cheerily benevolent eighteenth centm-y, appears to have remembered 
 nothing. Goldoni was eminently respectable : to swindle, to live off 
 
Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 251 
 
 others, to live the Gil Bias life of many another Venetian of his day, was 
 impossible for him ; it savoured too much of romance, and romance was 
 quite out of his line, as the rope ladders, daggers, disguises, and other 
 cloak and sword paraphernalia of Moreto and Calderon were foreign to 
 his comedy. A good husband though not a passionate lover, an agree- 
 able acquaintance though not a devoted friend, an honest and kind- 
 hearted man though not a hero, he was fully persuaded of the necessity 
 of a decent mode of life. He was first a lawyer at Venice, then attached 
 to the Venetian resident at Milan, then Genoese consul at Venice, then 
 lawyer again in Tuscany, working just as much or as little as was 
 required by honour and poverty ; doing what had to be done properly, 
 with indifference, and then throwing up the profession without reluctance: 
 neither love of work, nor avarice nor ambition, could anchor him to any 
 occupation. 
 
 But light as was Goldoni's character, and fickle as were his habits, he 
 had one mental ballast, he had one loadstone ; the ballast was his comic 
 genius, the loadstone was the comic stage. Comedy, either in the shape 
 of plays which he had written and acted, of actors and actresses whom he 
 had followed, or of comic accidents which had befallen him, had been 
 wound up with his whole life : comedy absolute was for ever haunting bim. 
 He had from the earliest a vague feeling of dissatisfaction at the absence 
 of really Italian written comedies ; he had a hazy notion that he might 
 do something himself, a notion which gradually developed into a quiet, self- 
 satisfied belief in his own mission to give Italy what it lacked. As a youth 
 he had written one or two comic interludes for his Priulian lady-love ; at 
 Milan, while attached to the Venetian minister, he wrote some scenes for 
 the excellent mask actors in the service of a quack doctor, BuOnafede Vitali, 
 who, after wandering through Asia, had made his fortune in Italy by the 
 alexipharmacon which he sold in the streets with interludes of mask 
 comedy to attract the crowd. The quack introduced Goldoni to Casali, 
 generally called the Tooth Extractor, a famous capo comico, for whose 
 company some more trifles were written. Expelled from the house of 
 the Venetian resident, and buffeted to and fro by the war of 1734, 
 Goldoni made acquaintance in the amphitheatre of Verona with another 
 capo comico named Imer, and was engaged by him to write for the 
 theatre of St. John Chrysostom at Venice. For St. John Chrysostom 
 he continued to write after his marriage and during his tenure of the 
 Genoese consulate at Venice, but on losing this post he gave up the 
 stage for good and sought his fortune elsewhere. But comedy would not 
 let him slip : taken prisoner with his wife by the Austrian army at 
 Cesena, he was immediately set to work writing plays by military com- 
 mand. At length, delivered from this courteous servitude, he settled at 
 
252 Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 
 
 Pisa as a lawyer, and in a year or so obtained a ^promising practice : no 
 more comedies for the rest of his life. So, at least, it seemed. But one 
 day an enormously tall and fat man, dressed in Quakerish fashion, stalks 
 into the Advocate Goldoni's study ; he has come on business. Doubtless 
 some steward or shopkeeper wishing to consult on legal matters. The 
 fat stranger seats himself, and rolling to and fro on his chair, and 
 making the most wondrous grimaces, explains his errand. He has 
 come to offer employment to the Advocate Goldoni, come with sequins 
 in his pocket, and full liberty to treat : the employment is that of 
 comic writer to the company directed by the capo comico Medebac ; he 
 himself is Cesare Darbes, pantaloon of the above company. Will the 
 Advocate Goldoni name his terms ? The Advocate Goldoni declines : he 
 has made law his profession, he is very sorry to be unable to give his 
 time, &c. &c. Pantalone Darbes presses ; Goldoni becomes obdurate ; 
 Darbes supplicates, making the most deliciously comic grimaces the 
 while ; the man of law protests ; but the grimaces of the pantaloon are 
 too much for him ; while refusing louder and louder he is in reality 
 giving way ; he smiles, he laughs. Darbes siezes his opportunity ; 
 Goldoni is lost for evermore to the legal profession. Medebac drags him 
 to Venice, where he has hired the theatre of S. Angelo, places at Gol- 
 doni's disposal his magnificent comic company, and bids him write any- 
 thing, everything, bids him summon up all his powers to please the most 
 ingenious, the most fanciful, the most artistic, the most fastidious and 
 fickle comic audience in Italy. 
 
 In 1740 Venice was still something of what she had been in 1540. 
 The development of northern nations and of northern commerce which 
 had, in a moment as it were, broken to pieces and bled to death Florence, 
 Milan, and Genoa, had not dispatched Venice, but had imprisoned and 
 starved her: she had been let off with her life, permitted to linger on and 
 die slowly of paralysing inaction and bloating anemia. In the eighteenth 
 century she had become very incapable of exertion, very subject to ail- 
 ments, so wretchedly sick that she died of the first storm-blast of the 
 revolution; but she retained her general aspect of manner of other days. 
 The mode of life and way of thinking of the Benaissance were maintained 
 i^ Venice, as were the institutions and dresses of the sixteenth century. 
 It is this something of former days, mixed with the modern, which gives 
 Venice in the eighteenth century so peculiar an aspect, something 
 analogous to the portraits of doges in the robes of the Middle Ages over 
 knee-breeches, and the cap of Byzantine days stuck upon a powdered 
 bagwig. The Spaniards and the Jesuits had not been at Venice and 
 covered all things with the dirty white monotony of their social and 
 moral whitewash: the old colours, the old patches of half-mediseval, half- 
 
Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 253 
 
 oriental gold and colour, the old dabs of sea-stain and filth, still remained 
 in the spirit of Venice as on its walls. It had kept the licence, the 
 practical spirit, the incredulity, the magnificence, fancifulness, and 
 splendid cynical corruption of the Renaissance : it was the town of bro- 
 caded courtezans and dare-devil adventurers; of learned dissipated nobles, 
 who spent their mornings in the council-room, their evenings in their 
 libraries, their nights, masked and dominoed, over the great public 
 gaming-table : half Cato, half Petronius ; it was the town of enterprising 
 booksellers, who, under the eye of a censor who cut out all which 
 " offended princes and good morals," openly sold the boldest diatribes, 
 the foulest romances of the encyclopsedists ; it was the town whence 
 medals were sent to Voltaire, and in which Montesquieu, crossing the 
 lagoon, threw his note-book into the water for fear of the terrible Messer 
 Grande and his spies; the town of all the strange picturesque anomalies 
 of the Renaissance, with a semblance of Renaissance life about it; with 
 an art and a literature, and a corruption and a beauty of its own ; with 
 Marcello, Lotti, and Galuppi composing, instead of Giorgione, Titian, and 
 Tintoret painting; with an infamous Baifo instead of an infamous Aretino ; 
 with a clever local poet Gritti instead of Beolco ; with a judicious, elegant 
 purist Gasparo Gozzi instead of Bembo ; with all it had once possessed 
 except vitality to endure. Venice, in the year 1740, was the head- 
 quarters of Italian gaiety, and as such the head-quarters of Italian 
 comedy. The Comedy of Masks, gradually degraded into puppet and 
 acrobat performances by the music of Naples and the della Cruscan 
 purism of Tuscany, was in full force at Venice; indeed its characters 
 had become gradually reduced to the four Venetian masks, Panta- 
 lone, Arlecchino, Brighella and the Doctor. Venice, where the mask 
 and domino were habitually worn for several months in the year ; where 
 high-borii nuns frizzled their hair, and invited their friends to see harle- 
 quinades and to dance furlane in convent refectories ; where the people 
 crowded round stoiy-tellers and extemporary poets under the Palace 
 arches ; Venice, whose whole superficial life was a profane farce, was the 
 natural home of the Commedia delV Arte. The whole population crowded 
 the comic theatres : the senators in their robes and perriwigs, the priests 
 and monks disguised in domino, the flaunting painted Jezebels, the severe 
 ascetic merchants with their quaker-Hke wives and daughters, the ribald 
 scum of the square of St. Mark's, the simple, patriarchal fisherfolk of 
 Torceles, the blustering gondoliers in red sash and loose jacket, the quiet 
 black-dressed familiars of the State Inquisition; all this motley mixture 
 filled the theatres, forming an audience fastidious like the effeminate 
 nobles, judicious like the solid men of law, austere like the merchants' 
 wives of the Merceria, free and easy like the libertines of the Piazza, 
 
254 Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 
 
 wonder-loving like the townsfolk, rough and violent like the fisherpeople, 
 intriguing like the spies and adventurers ; and altogether laughter-loving 
 and fickle, like all good Venetians. How please, how satisfy, how fasci- 
 nate such a chaotic audience ? 
 
 Goldoni, violently pushed forward by the manager Medebac, looked 
 round him, doubted, advanced a few steps, receded a little ; felt his way, 
 looked from one side of the audience to the other, fumbled, and only 
 gradually began to understand what to do. He was to amuse this many- 
 headed monster: he began by examining the instrument upon which he 
 had to play for its amusement. This instrument was the Comedy of 
 Masks; in 1748 it was already going to pieces. The old masks were 
 daily dropping off, and no new ones arose to take their place; the sig- 
 nificance, local and historical, of many of the types had been lost. The 
 people of the eighteenth century, accustomed to pacific soldiery and 
 rapid, orderly, almost courteous warfare, forgetful that any Spanish had 
 ever been spoken. in Italy, took no interest in the rodomontades of Captain 
 Matamoros or the ceremonious swagger of Giangurgolo ; they had ceased 
 to delight in the mouthings and caperings of such children of the dnst- 
 h'eap as Francatrippa, Pritellino, and Coviello ; all this had too much of 
 the fair-booth and tavern smell to be endurable in a civilized theatre ; 
 the upper and middle classes, once more the life of the country, took no 
 pleasure in the ruffianly buffoons who had arisen triumphant out of the 
 slums of Naples and Eome. As the Comedy of Masks had left the 
 streets and the fair-sheds for tidy urban theatres, and found itself before 
 a cultivated and respectable audience, it had been obliged to trim and 
 clean itself, to conform to the decencies of civilized life ; to exchange its 
 rags for smart fancy dresses or for gala suits. The actors were once 
 more a class of educated artists, instead of being mountebanks and ballad- 
 singers as in the days of Salvator Rosa ; they had more artistic sense, 
 but less spontaneity than their predecessors ; in proportion as they were 
 well-trained they ceased to be inventors ; the jokes and acrobatic feats 
 began to be learnt by rote. To interest the public something new was 
 required, and that something new could be found only in the written 
 element ; the improvisations were all stale, the only hope of novelty was 
 in the plots of the written dialogue. Goldoni set about weaving his 
 works on the old frame. He began by merely new setting old stories 
 like that of Don Giovanni Tenorio and of Griseldis, adding a character 
 or an incident here and there to some old play of Spanish or French 
 origin ; manufacturing new frameworks for the improvisation of the 
 masks, as in the Thirty-three Misfortunes of Harlequin, adding more and 
 more of his own as he was emboldened by applause. He left the four 
 old masks, Pantaloon, Harlequin, Brighella, and the Doctor, to their own 
 
Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 255 
 
 devices, merely giving them a rough outline of action,* and turning all 
 his attention to the other characters, those not belonging to the Mask 
 Comedy, and which had been in it mere insignificant lay figures. These 
 parts, which he was free to dress, employ, and write for as he pleased, he 
 made into clever sketches of living types, slight at first — card-sharpers, 
 waiting-maids, cavalieri serventi of the eighteenth century — gradually 
 assuming new importance by the side of the masked and fantastic bufibons 
 who were wont to lord it over them. He unconsciously took up and de- 
 veloped the two most insignificant parts of the comedy, the two lovers, 
 who had been there merely to give opportunity for the action of the other 
 characters ; these dramatic shadows, with but a dim outline, vague 
 features, lifeless voice, and limp action, gradually took body and shape, 
 became alive, real men and women, strongly marked, vigorously acting 
 realities; and at length, — Oh! wonder of wonders ! — the audience began 
 to be perfectly engrossed in the loves and adventures of Lelio and Beatrice, 
 of Eosaura and Florindo, of Leandro and Giacinta. One day the mask 
 actors awoke and found themselves subordinate : Harlequin might tumble 
 and giggle, Brighella might plot and caper as he pleased, the audience 
 
 * As a sample of Goldoni's treatment of the masks, we give the following : — 
 
 II Buon Compatriatto, alto 1°. 
 
 Leandro. Quest'aomo, signora contessa, mi figure clie sara il vostro servo. 
 
 Mosina. Si certo, 6 il mio seryitore. 
 
 Traccagnino (Taroeoa, e dice piano a Bosina che non vuole passare per 
 aermtore). 
 
 Henna. Tase, abiS pazienza ; za nol ve cognosse ; no perdS gnente del vostro. 
 
 Traeeagniiio (Insists che non vuole, e aeoprira tutto, 
 
 Rosina. TasS, no me rnvinfe, no me precipit^ : Soffiri per mi e per la patria. 
 
 Traccagnino (die non viwl far questo disonore ai auoiparenti, che sono cent'am/ni 
 die f anno a Bergamo i ciaiattini, e non vuole paasare per un servitore), &c. &c. 
 
 SCENA V. 
 
 Bosina, e detti. 
 
 Segue come in soggetto. 
 
 SCENA VI. 
 Bosina e Traccagnino. 
 
 scBNA vn. 
 
 Costanza e detti. 
 
 scENA vni. 
 
 Bidolfo e detti. 
 
 SCENA IX. 
 
 Pantalone e Brighella. 
 
256 Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy, 
 
 gave them but partial attention. Goldoni developed the unmasked and 
 written parts, and in so doing naturally restricted the masked and im- 
 provised parts ; as the lovers, the housekeepers, the mothers, and tutors 
 became all important, so gradually the buffoons were reduced to little 
 or nothing ; Harlequin, as a servant bringing a message, or Brighella 
 as an innkeeper, had little time to amuse the public ; Pantaloon him- 
 self, the immortal Venetian father, was hurried through his parts by 
 the all-engrossing interest in his offspring. Moreover, in proportion as 
 Goldoni imitated the real types and habits of his time, the old ideal buf- 
 foons were forced down to reality ; Harlequin could not jabber and stand 
 on his head in the midst of a real scene of Venetian life with the freedom 
 he had enjoyed when surrounded by the fantastic world borrowed from 
 Tirso de Molina or Lope de Vega. It was one thing to be the servant 
 of Don Juan, introducing the marble visitor ; and another to be the hus- 
 band of Catte, the washerwoman of Castello. For a long while indeed 
 the four masks continued to form strange spots of outlandish colour in 
 the midst of the sober reality of Goldoni's comedy ; for a long time, and 
 even in some of Goldoni's masterpieces, Pantalone dei Bisognosi, in his 
 grey beard, mediaeval hood, and scarlet stockings, is the father of some 
 modern Venetian girl, with powdered hair beneath her black net zendado, 
 and buckle-shoes peering from beneath her hoop. Harlequin, in his 
 patches, with his rabbit's tail and lath, is the brother of some gondolier in 
 scarlet scarf and velveteen knee-breeches ; Brighella, in his white-striped 
 dress of the sixteenth century, is the valet of a well-shaven, pig-tailed 
 Sior Momolo, with his three-cornered hat beneath his arm, and his 
 snuff-box in his hand ; once or twice the old Bolognese man of law. 
 Doctor Graziano, habited like Portia's uncle, comes forward to draw out 
 his marriage contract between Venetian contemporaries of Clarissa and 
 Sir Charles Grandison. The tradition of centuries could not be destroyed 
 in a day, nor could men even dream of destroying it. Gradually Goldoni 
 began to feel that these buffoons were anachronisms, that these masks 
 on the faces of some of the actors were wholly out of harmony with 
 the subtly moving features of the others ; the pantaloons and har- 
 lequins also began to feel that their talents were beginning to be hidden, 
 to be wasted on parts which had become unimportant, that, if they 
 ■would regain their former popularity, they must strip off their fanciful cos- 
 tumes and appear as realities. But they shrank from throwing aside those 
 beloved absurd old garments, from showing their real face, hitherto hidden 
 by the black mask, to the audience ; the audience, on the other hand, though 
 tired of the masks would not summon up the courage to bury the old 
 friends of its childhood, the friends of its grandfathers and great-grand- 
 fathers. But the step must be taken. Goldoni, without any sentimental 
 attachment for the past, bold from levity of nature as well as from con- 
 
Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 257 
 
 viction, took the fatal step : Collalto, a handsome and intelligent young 
 man, recently engaged as pantaloon to replace Davbes, was sent on to the 
 stage in plain clothes and unmasked, trembling at his own transformation 
 into a real human being. The audience applauded ; it had given its 
 consent to the final demolition of the old Comedy of Masks, and to the 
 building up of a modern national comedy in its stead. 
 
 But the new comedy owed its existence to the old ; it was built with 
 the old materials, not only with the old bricks and stone but with 
 the old pillars and lintels ; it was also built upon the same basements. 
 The ground-plan could not be altered, the fragments of old masonry 
 could not be displaced ; the site, the substructions, and the materials of 
 the old building necessarily implied also its general shape. The comedy 
 of Goldoni was constructed out of the old Comedy of Masks ; its audience, 
 its actors, its habits, its whole being was dependent upon the national 
 improvised comedy : it was therefore a national written comedy. The old 
 elements left by Beolco and Calmo could not be moulded into imitations 
 of Moliere and Eegnard ; the old popular types born of the market-place 
 and the tavern could not be metamorphosed into types borrowed from La 
 Bruyere and La Eochefoucauld ; the old multifarious, largely plebeian 
 audience, from the shops and canals quite as much as from the palaces, 
 could not be turned into a polished and subtle audience like that which 
 filled the French theatres; the actors who had been trained to talk dialect 
 in grotesque costumes, and to cut capers while making extemporary jokes, 
 could not be taught to declaim verse with nobility, and to represent a 
 subtle, delicately-marked character : add to all this, that Italy in the 
 eighteenth century was far less feudal, less aristocratic, less polished, 
 less intelligent, less cynical and depraved than France even in the seven- 
 teenth; and that Goldoni, its comic representative, was as frivolous, as 
 plebeian, as frankly cheerful, as unpsychological as Moliere had been the 
 contrary. Add up all this, and it will be clear that the theatre of St. 
 Angelo at Venice could never produce the Misanthrope or Tartuffe, as the 
 theatre of the Petit Bourbon could never have produced the Baruffe 
 Chiozzotte, or Zelinda e Lindoro. 
 
 The basement of the new comedy was the basement of the old : the 
 whole general cut and tendency of the play was therefore the same. The 
 Comedy of Masks, popular, unliterary, improvised above all things, was 
 essentially a comedy of action. There could be no psychological interest 
 in a play intended mainly for the lower classes and performed by typical 
 buffoons ; the analysis of character and of feeling would have been 
 unintelligible to the audience and unfeasible to the actors ; the illiterate 
 artisans, boatmen, labourers, and bravos, the violent or business-like 
 nobles, wanted to be interested by action and amused by buffooneries ; 
 the pantaloons and harlequins, in their traditional fantastic costume, 
 
258 Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 
 
 with their grinning pieces of black leather instead of faces, with their 
 local dialects and acrobatic tricks, could wrangle, tussle, scream, kick, 
 fly at each other ; they could pour forth volleys of street jests and street 
 abuse ; they could dance and tumble, and play tricks ; they could move 
 and amuse, and that was all. Moreover, the traditional, conventional 
 types, and the extemporarising of the parts, precluded any original study 
 of character, any class satire, any defined impersonation : the words and 
 the gestures were left to the individual actor's whim, — how then could 
 the writer instruct him to produce a given effect ? The actor's move- 
 ments and sallies depended on the other hand on the movements and 
 sallies of his companion ; where all was extemporaiy nothing could be 
 concerted, and, where nothing could be concerted, only the roughest 
 outlines of character and situation were possible, only effects of move- 
 ment and plot could be directly counted upon. Thus, then, the comedy 
 of Goldoni, inasmuch as it was founded upon the Comedy of Masks, was 
 necessarily a comedy not of character, type, and satire, but a comedy of 
 movement ; derived from an unwritten performance, it could not pos- 
 sibly be a thing for the closet. The Comedy of Masks gave Goldoni 
 not only action, but natural action ; the business of the play, being 
 extemporary, was almost a reality ; the actors had so great a habit of 
 realising their parts, of moving and speaking really on the spur of the 
 moment, that, even when their words and their actions were prescribed to 
 them, they retained their old naturalism : the word had so long been 
 spontaneous that the intonation long continued to be so. Moreover, 
 these actors could not deliver artificial speeches ; their sole art had con- 
 sisted in having none, in being real ; they had no habit of artistic, ideal 
 performance ; they would have repeated, like a page of catechism, with- 
 out inflexion or gesture, the speeches of Molifere's Alceste or Chiysale ; 
 unaccustomed to rhetoric, nay, to anything written, they could be trusted 
 only with such words as might have been improvised by themselves. 
 Thus, while the general framework of the old comedy, the absolute 
 preponderance of movement over character, remained unchanged, the 
 written dialogue with which Goldoni filled it up remained also equivalent 
 to the improvised dialogue of former days. Moreover, the mask actors, 
 accustomed to perform the typical buffoons of the populace, could scarcely 
 be used except in the parts of middle and lower class people ; the Har- 
 lequins and Columbines, Pantaloons and Brighellas of the Comedy of 
 Masks, could turn into gondoliers and maid-servants, into shopkeepers 
 and card-sharpers, but never into dapper Dorantes and stately Dori- 
 mcnes ; they could never learn to talk and sit and walk with courtly 
 elegance ; they could never forget to cry, shout, jabber, jump, scuffle, and 
 tussle together. The written offspring of the plebeian Comedy of Masks 
 was necessarily democratic. At the same time the old comedy, which had 
 
Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 259 
 
 indulged largely in scenes of magic and other raree shows, gave to the 
 comedy of Goldoni great scenic and mechanical means which despised 
 the monotony of the no-place no-where of Moliere, and encouraged a 
 reckless changing of scene, from house to street and from street to canal, 
 and which produced those wonderful complete pictures of everyday life 
 like the village street in the Ventaglio, the outside of the theatre in the 
 Putta Onorata, the whole camp in La Guerra, and the street, the strand, 
 and the shipping in the Baruffe Chiozzotte. Ahove all, the Comedy of 
 Masks had bequeathed to Goldoni its mixed audience. The nobles and 
 the men of letters in the theatre might, perhaps, have enjoyed a comedy 
 like that of Moliere, a comedy of psychology, of satire, and of wit; but 
 on the innumerable shopkeepers, artisans, and fishing-people, everything of 
 the sort would have been lost ; they would have clamoured for intelligible 
 dialect, for feats, for scenes of common life, for intrigues and squabbles. 
 And this audience, inasmuch as it was mixed, required a comedy purified 
 of the evil which each class, taken in itself, might have required : the 
 healthy feeling of the lower classes precluded any Congrevian impurity of 
 subject and inuendo which might perhaps have pleased the nobles ; the 
 refinement and elegance of the upper classes precluded that clownish 
 grossness of word and gesture which might have been relished by the 
 artisans and boatmen ; the austere and patriarchal shopkeepers kept in 
 check the giddy buffoonery of the idlers ; and the wit and love of fun of 
 the idlers leavened the over domestic gravity of the shopkeepers. 
 
 Thus the comedy born of the Comedy of Masks was by virtue of its 
 parentage a comedy not of character but of movement, not of wit but 
 of fun; not of eloquent speeches but of easy dialogue; not courtly but 
 popular; not confined to an ideal nullity of place but indulging in scenic 
 realisation; not a satire but an amusement; neither elegantly dissolute, 
 nor coarsely simple, nor giddily farcical, nor whimperingly serious ; the 
 offspring of the Comedy of Masks could be neither the comedy of Con- 
 greve and Wycherley, nor the comedy of Tabarin and Hanswurst, nor the 
 comedy of Goldsmith, nor the comedy of Diderot : it could be nothing 
 except the comedy of Goldoni. 
 
 82 
 
2G0 Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 
 
 II. 
 
 . The genius of Goldoni, like his character and his life, was in perfect 
 harmony with his allotted work. The artistic perfector of the demo- 
 cratic, unliterary, essentially natural and dramatic Comedy of Masks, was 
 by nature and education a man of the middle classes — nngenteel and im- 
 aristocratic, a man of no literary faculty, incapable of regarding writing 
 as an art ; without the moral fibre or intense sense of disproportion of 
 the satirist ; cheerful, good-natured, regarding mankind with indulgence 
 and optimism, disbelieving in great evil, refusing to examine beneath an 
 agreeable surface ; a man of immense powers of light dialogue and light 
 action. Given the style, no individual could be imagined more supremely 
 its master : he had the perfect facility of conception, the perfect ease of 
 execution, the absolute felicity of finish and detail, the immense fecun- 
 dity of the providentially sent artist. He was never at a loss for a 
 subject, and never at a standstill for its treatment; — a moment at a 
 window, a glance round a drawing-room, a word caught in the street, was 
 sufficient material for a comedy. The sight of the dirty grey-beard 
 Armenian goody-seller, snarling out " Baggigi, Abaggigi " over his 
 basket of lollipops, near the clock-tower of St. Mark's, produced the 
 delightful little play, " I pettegolezzi delle donne ; " Goldoni's mind im- 
 mediately caught at the ludicrous notion of making this nasal old 
 Oriental the supposed father of a Venetian girl ; and in a second he 
 heard all the sneers, the whispers, the mocking words, he saw all the 
 movements and gestures, which such a situation would produce. When 
 no external incident suggested a plot, Goldoni would quietly take a piece 
 of paper and boldly write, " Act I. scene I. Rosaura and Florindo," and 
 by the time the two names were down a fragment of dialogue was ready, 
 and after that another, until at length, without any apparent why or 
 wherefore, the play had taken shape. When Goldoni, having achieved 
 tlie almost supernatural feat of writing sixteen comedies in a twelve- 
 month, fell ill and exhausted, the exhaustion was more bodily than 
 intellectual, for as soon as he had recovered from his prostration one 
 
Goldoni and ilie Realistic Comedy. 261 
 
 comedy flew from imder his pen after another, comedies showing a 
 greater richness and elasticity of invention than their predecessors. Gol- 
 doni's genius lay particularly in this power of making something out of 
 nothing, of creating a play out of an incident the most insignificant, out 
 of a situation the most ordinary ; he did not construct his plays, he 
 created them — blew them out like soap-bubbles ; a drop of prose dilated 
 into a delicate, delicately-tinted, winged bubble by the breath of genius. 
 He never manufactured a plot like Calderon and Goldsmith, he never 
 borrowed one like Moliere ; a plot, a stiff, angular, awkward piece of me- 
 chanism, whereon to stick bits of character and satire, whereon to hang 
 out elaborate humour; — what could he want with such a thing ? Had 
 he not what perhaps only Sterne possessed in equal degree, that 
 subtle, fluid, floating essence of action; that ever-shifting, moving, 
 oscillating reality of incident and feeling, which disdained fixed 
 and ready-made shapes ? Goldoni was a Sterne in dramatic form; 
 the same power of realising with a single touch, of filling trifles with the 
 importance of life and feeling, of riveting and charming us with a couple 
 of figures employed in unimportant action, with a simple every-day inci- 
 dent, with a simple every-day character; Sterne on the stage in short, 
 but of a simpler, purer essence than Sterne, with the indefinable, just per- 
 ceptible relish of good bread or pure water, not made up and flavoured like 
 Sterne with the mysteiious and subtle mixture of poetry and nastiness, and 
 having no insipid or nauseous aftertaste. Goldoni was entirely destitute 
 of either wit or poetic feeling, and wholly without any hankering after 
 either: in him this was less a deficiency than the absence of faculties 
 which would have marred his particular style. Goldoni's excellence lay 
 in his realism and life; his artistic merit consisted in the perfect spon- 
 taneity and simplicity, in the absence of the artist in his own work ; 
 the lifelike scenes, carefully sifted and arranged by a delicate intention, 
 have the additional charm of apparent absence of arrangement ; a con- 
 scious ornament of poetiy or wit, an underlining of any thought or feeling 
 would mar the whole. In these bright, light, fresh, and spontaneous 
 pieces of realism there is not a metaphor, not a thought, not a jest; Gol- 
 doni's figures, with their wonderful ease and grace of movement, neither 
 attitudinize nor grimace. They are never caricatures, as they are never 
 made-up ideals. Goldoni never blunted his pencil-tip from the anxiety to 
 bring out a salient characteristic, he never dabbed colour on to a given 
 feature; such an emphasized figure as Tartuffe, as Trissotin, or ns Oronte, 
 he could not conceive; his instrument was the etching-pen, sharp, light, 
 delicate, leaving the lights white and clean, distinctly marking the 
 shadows, avoiding every unnecessary line, giving the living, moving, 
 individual outline, grjigeful and natural in gesture. The Hogarthian 
 
262 Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 
 
 satire, coarse and insipid, alternations of ugly vacuity and ugly grimace, 
 as of some dull old almanack caricatures or would-be humorous Longhi, 
 of his imitators Albergati and Pepoli, was entirely hostile both to Gol- 
 doni's genius and to the nature of his comedy. Goldoni, averse to 
 caricature, preferred subjects where it could be avoided; and, where satire 
 there must be, it was attenuated away into mere comic drollery. The 
 gentry, the small titled nobility, as distinguished from the patrician 
 class, which no Venetian dramatist could handle, he did not like : it was 
 too tiglit-laced, too tight-shoed, too painted and dancing-master'd, to 
 afford the light comic elements he required; it might suggest strongly- 
 marked and heavily-coloured caricature, but that he did not want; it 
 was too artificial, too vicious, and too ridiculous for him. His aristo- 
 cratic figures, when not mere dummies, are xisually insignificant outline 
 satires : ruined gamblers, cardsharpers, rakes and prigs, kept in the 
 background of the play. When he dealt with the upper classes he ap- 
 proached as far as possible to the burghers: counts and marquises of 
 little fame and modest habits, different from shopkeepers only by the 
 prefix Don to their names, as in the Ventaglio, Zelinda e Lindoro, La 
 Villeggiatura, and other comedies not in dialect. In all cases he sim- 
 plified aristocratic society, attenuating its vices and absurdities, turning 
 the ridiculous and the disgusting into the merely amusing. The cavw- 
 liere servente, that miserable and loathsome piece of rococo drawing- 
 room furniture, is never in Goldoni what he is in Parini, in Gaspare 
 Gozzi's satu'es, or in the Marchess Albergati's plays : a social disgrace, 
 a bedizened conceited puppy, a sort of fashionable fungus. Even in the 
 Cavaliere e la Dama, a play directly turning upon this stale and pre- 
 scribed sort of gallantry, the cavalieri serventi are mere light idiots, 
 dangling, without any harm, after their ladies; Goldoni shrank from 
 any thought of domestic corruption. In the delightful Dama Prudente 
 Goldoni has turned the cavaliere servente theme into a most charming 
 comic stuff totally without satire or inuendo. Don Eoberto, madly 
 jealous of his wife, and nervously desirous of hiding his jealousy, mortally 
 afraid of a cavaliere servente, and mortally afraid of appearing to be afraid, 
 insists upon giving Donna Enlaria not only one, but two of these ap- 
 ^pendages, the one to check the other. Donna Eularia, devoted to her 
 husband, is continually pulled from side to side by his jealousy and his 
 desire to appear indifferent, by his wish that she should appear perfectly 
 unwatched and his desire to watch over her ups and downs of temper; 
 which cause continual absurd blunders and scrapes, heightened by the 
 rivalry of the two cavalieri serventi, both indifferent to the lady bnt 
 jealous of each other ; a concatenation of bungles and contradictions from 
 which the prudent lady gets loose only by carrying off her husband. 
 
Ooldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 263 
 
 unknown to everyone, to a remote countiy town, where a husband may 
 walk out and pay visits with his own wife and where the fashion of 
 cavalieri serventi has yet to be introduced. 
 
 To these attenuated, simplified gentry, Goldoni vastly preferred the 
 middle classes, shopkeepers, doctors, and lawyers, people of more domestic 
 life and easier manners, into whose houses it was less difficult to introduce 
 the audience. He enjoyed giving, as it were, a vertical section of a middle- 
 class house, showing at the same time the inhabitants of the various 
 floors, letting us see the riclier and poorer inmates at their amusements 
 and occupations, at their meetings ; displaying two or three households at 
 once, with their efforts to make a fine show to each other, with their whole 
 life not only of the parlour and the office but of the staircase and house ■ 
 door. He would let us see the supposed head of the family walking 
 about in dressing-gown and slippers, eating dates out of a paper, assenting 
 feebly to every order of a younger brother, always referred to but never 
 displayed in public ; or the old bullying dotard, continually blustering 
 with his children and led by the nose by some sly housekeeper or defe- ' 
 rential agent, endless types of Pantaloon, lightly and rapidly sketched ; 
 he would display the son and heir running into debt, attempting to 
 reform, determining to marry and live an orderly life, and then borrowing 
 more money in order to entice a wife. Above all, Goldoni delighted in 
 pulling the wires of his female puppets, of his charmingly simple, vain, 
 lecturing, half stupid, half sensible girls, from the little weak-headed 
 daughter of Pantalone, who plays with her dolls at fifteen and asks the 
 first man she ever meets to marry her, up to the independent and serious 
 Giacinta of the Villeggiatura trilogy — gentle, self-sacrificing, resisting her 
 own passion, but with just a little vanity and desire to be better dressed 
 than her sister-in-lawj Beatrices, Rosauras, Vittorias, Giacintas innume- 
 rable, little figures, lively or sedate, malicious or forgiving, invariably 
 graceful and sympathetic, alive and individual, infinitely different from 
 the insipid, ever bashful and resigned, ever properly behaved young ladies 
 of Moliere; for Moliere's girls were mere pieces of stage mechanism, 
 required for the plot, and replacing for the moral public of the seventeenth 
 century the slaves and light damsels of Terence and Ariosto ; whereas 
 Goldoni's girls were realities, really moving and chattering in every 
 burgher's house in Italy, reproduced by the dramatist for their own sake. 
 Goldoni shows us these young women in their visits, affectionate and sar- 
 castic to each other, kissing on both cheeks while counting up the yards 
 of ribbon on each other's dresses ; in their agonized consultations with 
 dressmakers and ladies' maids ; in their tragic rage at not going to the 
 country, in their malicious jubilation at their neighbours staying in town. 
 The country ! that was Goldoni's richest theme : not the trees, and skies 
 and flowers, for which he cared as little as did his dramatis personce, but 
 
264 Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 
 
 the villeggiatura, with its financial and tailoring preparations, its prologue 
 of entreaties and sulks and rages, and usurers and dressmaking and 
 family agonies ; its joys of card-playing, flirting, chocolate-drinking and 
 scandal-mongering, and its tragic sequel of unpaid bills, recriminations, 
 and domestic shipwreck. Goldoni wrote at least a dozen plays about villeg- 
 giatura, its preparations and consequences : villeggiatura on the Brenta, in 
 the Euganean hills, on the Montagnola of Bologna, and at Montenero near 
 Leghorn, summing up everything in that almost epic trilogy, the " Smanie 
 per la Villeggiatura," the "Awenture della Villeggiatura," and the 
 " Eitorno dalla Villeggiatura" — Villeggiatura! talismanic word, which now 
 means solitude in a country-house or town-life at a watering-place, but 
 never fails to evoke in our mind, thanks to the genius of Goldoni, the 
 thought of those immense parties of five or six families, huddled together 
 on the top of some hill or on the banks of some stream,' for ever going in 
 and out of each other's houses, for ever gambling, eating, drinking, 
 singing, dancing, love-making, gossipping, squandering during a month 
 the revenue of a year — villeggiatura ! delightful pastoral life among 
 autumn rains, floods, mud, mosquitoes, and damp yellow foliage, bought 
 cheaply by a winter without carpets or fires, and a summer within red-hot 
 city walls. Yes, the word has retained a quaintness and a charm, and we 
 cannot now pass before the rusty gates of the melancholy suburban 
 gardens, with their drenched sere groves and broken earthenware statues 
 and vases; nor go up and down the long flights of steps between the con- 
 gregated stained houses, with battered shutters, blackened escutcheons, 
 faded sun-dial, and tawdry soaking autumnal flowers, without thinking of 
 the Pantaloons and Rosauras and Leandros whose delight they were in 
 the days gone by. And when we enter that vast half-furnished entrance, 
 with gilded high- backed chairs marshalled stiffly round the walls, and 
 card-tables pushed into every corner, we cannot help fancying that 
 Giacinta and Lelio may be whispering behind yonder screen; that the 
 parasite Ferdinando may just have shuffled the cards on yonder green 
 baize; and we catch ourselves half expecting that the folding gilded doors 
 may open, and the foolish, jolly old Signor Filippo, in his Iniee-breeches, 
 embroidered waistcoat, and little wig, enter, beaming with vanity and 
 pleasure, and cry out, rapping his snuff-box : " What, children ! no one 
 playing, no one eating, no one drinking? The country is made for amuse- 
 ment, and in my house it shall never be wanting. Quick ! cards and 
 lights ! and chocolate and lemonade ; and afterwards call the fiddlers, and 
 we'll dance a couple of minuets— and those who won't, need not; let all 
 do as they choose ! Long live liberty and long live the villeggiatura !" 
 
 Goldoni was best pleased with the humblest, forming in this a strange 
 contrast with the French comic writers; the shopkeepers, ridiculous 
 gullible M. Jourdains and Sganarelles in the eyes of MciUIre, neyer 
 
Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 265 
 
 ceased to be respectable for Goldoni; in the Putta Onorata he made the 
 Venetian shopkeeper Pantalone address the half-feudal card-sharping 
 Marquis of Eipaverde, bidding him order people about elsewhere: "La 
 Taga a commandar en tel so marchesato," in a manner which would 
 have shocked the public of Gresset and of Diderot. In the delightful 
 Locandiera he showed a noble who had jnst sold his title, and another 
 who had just bought his, treated like monkeys by a pretty and inde- 
 pendent hostess, who, after bringing them and another woman-hating and 
 gruffer specimen of nobility on to their knees, laughs in all their faces 
 and marries her faithful head-waiter; while in the three comedies, bearing 
 the names of Zelinda and Lindoro, he showed the loves and jealousies of 
 a poor secretary and a waiting-maid with a sympathy, a tender homely 
 admiration, which makes this trilogy the most suggestive companion-piece 
 to Beaumarchais' picture of the courtship of Figaro and Suzanne. This 
 democratic, domestic Goldoni naturally refused to show us the effeminate, 
 corrupt Venice of nobles, and spies, and courtesans, which shameful 
 adventurers like Casanova, heaping up all the ordure of their town and 
 times, have made some of us believe to have been the sole, the real Venice 
 of the eighteenth century. But Goldoni has another Venice to show, a 
 Venice imdiscovered by gallant idlers like the President de Brosses, or 
 pedantic guide-book makers like La Lande. Let us follow Goldoni across 
 the square of St. Mark's, heedless of the crowd in mask and cloak, of the 
 nobles in their silk robes, of the loungers at the gilded coffee-houses, of 
 the gamblers and painted women lolling out of windows; let us pass 
 beneath the belfry where the bronze twins strike the hours in vain for the 
 idlers and vagabonds who turn day into night and night into day ; and 
 let us thread the network of narrow little streets of the Merceria. There, 
 in those tall dark houses, with their dingy look-out on to narrow canals 
 floating wisps of straw, or on to dreary little treeless, grassless squares, 
 in those houses is the real wealth, the real honour, the real good of 
 Venice; there, and not in the palaces of the Grand Canal, still lingers 
 something of the spirit and the habits of the early merchant princes. 
 Merchant princes no longer, alas ! only shopkeepers and brokers, but 
 thrifty, frugal, patriarchal as in olden days, the descendants of the great 
 Pantalone de' Bisognosi, once clothed in scarlet-lined robe and pointed 
 cap, now dressed austerely in black, without hair-powder, gold lace, 
 swords, or scarlet cloaks; active, honest, gruff, and puritanical; with wives 
 and daughters forbidden to wear silk, permitted to go alone no further 
 than to church, early and with rapid step, their face half concealed beneath 
 the black net zenda; with sons in the counting-house and the store- 
 rooms, working from dawn till dusk, strictly forbidden to go near the 
 square of St. Mark's, and too afraid to even wish for the forbidden joy. 
 Over all this family the father, the merchant, the patriarch, lords it undis- 
 
266 Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 
 
 puted, the married sons and daughters submitting as if they were ten 
 years old. The father is sometimes an intolerable puritan tyrant, like Ser 
 Todero Brontolon and the four Rusteghi, making his unfortunate family 
 live like anchorites, and driving his servants like negroes ; but more, often, 
 beneath all the puritanism and gruffness, there is deep kindliness and 
 charity; and in the austere dark house there is excellent eating and 
 drinking, and hearty laughter and bluff merriment when the master 
 invites his friends and their wives and daughters. 
 
 This is all that remains in the eighteenth century of the frugal, indus- 
 trious, austere Venice of the Middle Ages. Let us follow Goldoni yet 
 further from St. Mark's to the distant wharves, to the remoter canals and 
 campieli, to the further islands of the archipelago of Venice, and he will 
 show us all that remains of the force of the city, of the savage simplicity 
 and austerity of the boatmen, and fishers, and working classes. There 
 are the gondoliers, forming a link between the artisans and the seamen — 
 a strange, Janus-like class which Goldoni loved to depict: servants of the 
 upper classes, devoted, faithful and pliant; steering along with equal 
 indifference political conspiracy, household corruption, or venal gallantry 
 beneath the black, tasselled roof of their boats ; witnesses of all the most 
 secret life of the nobles and merchants, and, while on their prow, mute 
 and cynical; but, once on shore, independent, arrogant, despising the 
 in-door servants, contemptuous towards their masters, whose secrets they 
 possess, frugal and austere at home, jealous and revengeful among each 
 other. Goldoni has shown us the gondoliers seated on the slimy steps by 
 their moored boats, exchanging witticism on witticism, criticising the 
 performances at the theatres, discussing city life with ineffable arrogance: 
 he has shown them coming along the Grand Canal, chanting the flight 
 of Erminia through the ancient forest; he has shown them again, quar- 
 reling in the narrow twisting channels, each refusing to make way for 
 another, yelling and cursing, forcing their passengers to alight in terror, 
 and then pursuing each other with their oars and their short, sharp tatare 
 daggers. The gondoliers, besides being good comic stuff for Goldoni, were 
 an influential part of his audience, and had to be propitiated by being 
 shown on the stage in all their originality and waywardness. The gon- 
 foliers lived, when off their boats, among a savage population of ferry- 
 men, bargees, and fishers; poor, violent and austere, whose daughters had 
 at once the freedom of speech and strength of action of amazons, and the 
 purity, nay prudery, of nuns: large-limbed, sun-bm-nt, barefoot creatures, 
 with the golden tints of hair and cheek of Titian and Palma, with the 
 dark, savage eyes of an animal, with the arms of an athlete and the lan- 
 guage of a trooper, of whom Goldoni has painted a magnificent portrait, 
 idealised but intensely real, in his Bettina, who, in her perfect self- 
 reliance, her complete knowledge of evil and deteiinination to avoid it, 
 
Goldoni and the Realisiic Comedy. 267 
 
 her ferocious chastity, refusing to let her own betrothed enter the house, 
 and her passionate tenderness and dog-like attachment, is one of the 
 grandest female figures which any stage can boast. Such deep apprecia- 
 tion of the lower classes, such a really idyllic conception of the life of the 
 people, equalled in Italian literature, though in more poetic realism 
 perhaps, only by the Nencia of Lorenzo dei Medici, can be explained in 
 the middle of the eighteenth century, in the midst of the Dresden china 
 shepherdesses and cotton wool, beribboned lambs of Boucher and Dorat, 
 of the fashionable milkmaids and cow-boys of Rousseau and of Greuze, 
 only by the fact that the comedy of Goldoni, as the offspring of the 
 Comedy of Masks, had its origin in the very heart of the people. 
 
 Bettina is a single individual, a splendid savage creature, half lost in 
 the artificial world of gentlemen who cheat at cards and ladies who borrow 
 money from gondoliers; but Goldoni can show us the world to which she 
 belongs, which is made up of nothing but her brothers and sisters. Let 
 us call Goldoni's favourite gondolier, the rough and caustic Menego 
 Cainello, and bid him steer us through the last canals, among the 
 remotest Venetian islands, leaving the towers of Venice behind us ; bid 
 him row us across the shallow open lagoon, with its vast snake -like rows 
 of sea-corroded posts, its stunted marine reeds, and its tangled sea-grass 
 \f aving lazily on the rippled water ; row on till we get to that tiny other 
 ^'Venice, still perhaps like the greater Venice in the days of her earliest 
 doges, to the little fishing-town of Chiozza. There, in the port, Goldoni 
 will show us the heavy fishing-boat, grimy and oozy, just returned from a 
 week's cruise in the Adriatic, with her yellow sail, emblazoned with the 
 winged lion, leisurely flapping, and her briny nets cast over her sides; the 
 master of the boat, Paron Fortunato, is shouting in unintelligible dialect, 
 Venetian further insularised into Chiozzot, and Ohiozzot rarefied on sea 
 into some strange nautical lisping jargon; the rest of the fishermen, Tita- 
 Nane, and Menegheto, and Tom, are collecting the fish they have brought 
 into baskets, reserving the finest for his Excellency the Governor of 
 Chiozza. And, when the fish are disposed of, follow we the fishermen to 
 the main street of the little town, where, facing the beach, their wives, 
 daughters, and sisters sit making lace on their cushions, chattering like 
 magpies ; some eating, others holding disdainfully aloof from the baked 
 pumpkin with which the gallant peasant Toffolo Marmottina regales them. 
 Suddenly a tremendous gabble begins, gabble turning into shrieking and 
 roaring, and upsetting of chairs and cushions ; and a torrent of abuse 
 streams forth in dialect, and all is lost in scuffling confusion ; the men 
 come up, seize sticks, daggers, and stones, and rush to the rescue of their 
 female relatives, till the police hasten up and separate the combatants. 
 Then let us watch the recriminations of the lovers, hear them accusing 
 each other of perfidy, calling each other dog, assassin, beggar, ginger- 
 
268 Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 
 
 bread, jewel, pig, all in turns; clinging and nudging, weeping and roaring, 
 till at length the good-natured little Venetian magistrate of Chiozza, con- 
 temptuously called " Mr. Wig-of-Tow " {Sior paruca de stopa), makes 
 lip all the quarrels, bids the innkeeper send wine and pumpkins and 
 delicious fried things, and, after regaling the pacified Chiozzoti and 
 Chiozzote, calls for fiddles and invites them all to dance some furlane. 
 Is it a reality ? Has Menego rowed us over the lagoon ? Have we seen 
 the ship come in and the fish put in baskets? Have we seen the women 
 at their lace cushions ? Have we heard that storm of cries, and shrieks, 
 and clatter, and scuffling feet? Have we really witnessed this incident of 
 fishing life on the Adriatic ? No ; we have only laid down a little musty 
 volume, at the place marked '• Le Baruffe Chiozzotte." 
 
 The public of the theatre of S. Angelo were delighted and dazzled by 
 this series of ever new, ever varying pictures, which Goldoni projected for 
 them through the wonderful magic lantern of his genius. The plays were 
 printed at Venice, at Florence, at Pesaro, at Bologna; Venetian nobles 
 formed an association to smuggle in pirated editions ; Goldoni, travelling 
 about Italy during the dead season of the Venetian theatres, was every- 
 where beset by entreaties for new comedies ; a custom-house officer, over- 
 whelmed with enthusiasm, risked his position rather than let the illus- 
 trious dramatist pay duty on his parcels of snuff and of chocolate. About 
 1755 M. de Voltaire himself addressed to Goldoni a strange polyglot 
 epistle, half prose, half verse, saying : " Je voudrois appeller vos comedies 
 ritalia Liberata dai Goti," exclaiming " Che felicita ! mio signore, che 
 puriti, !" and winding up by making Nature declaim some verses to the 
 
 effect that — 
 
 Tont antenr a ses defauts 
 
 Mais ce Goldoni m'a peinte ; 
 
 and about the same time Lessing, then working at his " Hamburgsche 
 Drammaturgie,'' and Emilia Galotti, vprote that he was busy reading 
 and adapting some of the plays of Doctor Goldoni, a Venetian lawyer, 
 whose name at least must be familiar to his correspondent Moses Men- 
 delssohn. Goldoni, beset by managers and actors, petted by cardinals 
 and senators, praised by a host of critics and imitators, and receiving a 
 ^Bort of preliminary immortality from the Sage of Forney, seemed at the 
 very summit of all possible good fortune. But while the fabric of his 
 fame spread wider and rose higher and more splendid, it was being 
 sapped at the base, and, strange to say, Goldoni himself was blindly help- 
 ing to undermine it. As soon as the written comedies of Goldoni had 
 begun to be popular, he had been attacked by the managers of rival 
 theatres, whose audience streamed to the Teatro S. Angelo; and by 
 mask actors, whose buffooneries and repartees were being thrown into 
 the shade by the written parts of the unmasked actors, mere obscure and 
 
Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 269 
 
 stupid libels, pricks of invisible critics. But they caused Goldoni to look 
 up. He thought fit to answer his accusers by his seventeenth comedy, 
 // Teatro Comico, in which he brought on to the stage the masked 
 actors and the unmasked actors in succession, and held forth to prove 
 that leathern faces and chequered bodies were detrimental to real dramatic 
 interest. This answer provoked a reply, and the reply produced a retort. 
 Goldoni, attacked in his practice, took refuge in theory, and the theory 
 in its turn had to be supported by practice; thus, little by little, Goldoni 
 let himself be goaded into entirely suppressing all improvisation, into 
 entirely rejecting the masks; into abusing the old Commedia delV Arte, 
 from which his own style had originated, and into appealing to French 
 models with which his own style had nothing in common; injustice made 
 him unjust; folly was to make him foolish. His detractors, ever multi- 
 plying, accused him of being incapable of anything above prose dialect 
 plays. Goldoni immediately set to ■work on rhymed comedies, ill versified, 
 in bad Italian, and extremely dull; they accused him of being unable to 
 rise above the squabbles of boatmen and the intrigues of servants. Goldoni 
 instantly scribbled off half-a-dozen romantic plays, with bravos, daggers, 
 sultanas, noble savages, and every species of dramatic vermine. They 
 accused him of being deficient in pathos and moral tone ; Goldoni forth- 
 with patched up a number of whimpering, paternal, maternal comedies, 
 with patterns of virtue, attempted seductions, reformed prodigals, Milor 
 Bonfils, Miledy Duvres, Mosu Wamberts, and scraps of morality and 
 sentiment cut out of Eichardson, Diderot, and Mme. Riccoboni. He was 
 accused of being new-fangled and incorrect; Goldoni rushed oiF and 
 dramatised the persecutions of three other literary innovations, Terence, 
 Tasso, and Moliere, who turned out respectively a sentimental professor 
 of ancient literature, a crackbrained academic sonnetteer, and a melan- 
 choly jocose comedian. He was accused of being limited ; he immediately 
 jumped over the limits of his genius in order to show himself limitless. 
 Goldoni, the author of masterpieces in his own style, weakly and foolishly 
 let himself be deluded into writing inanities in the style of other people; 
 he was accused of ruining the national Italian stage ; he declared that he 
 had come to reform it. He was told that he was nobody; he answered that 
 he was omnipotent and providential. The faults of Goldoni's bad pieces 
 were exaggerated by numberless imitators, by the scribes who worked for 
 the other comic theatres, which, without having a Goldoni to write, 
 followed the fashion of written plays ; the pretensions of Goldoni as a 
 reformer and destroyer were exaggerated by numberless foolish fashionable 
 critics, who, without really understanding Goldoni's genius and position, 
 made his theories a theme for invective against things Italian and lauda- 
 tion of things French. Little by little the trumpery libels of theatre 
 proprietors and rival authors turned into criticisms of greater importance ; 
 
270 Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 
 
 Goldoni, serenely conceited, answered in prose and in Terse, answered 
 stupidly and offensively; the number of critics increased. In a few years 
 the most original dramatist of the eighteenth century, the most intensely 
 Italian of writers, the most moral of humorists, had raised against him- 
 self nearly all the original thinkers, the patriots and the moralists of 
 Italy, and found himself supported only by those very frenchified, vicious, 
 vapid people of fashion whom he most despised. In the rapid succession 
 of his plays, the critics of the eighteenth century, uncritical and hasty, 
 did not distinguish the genuine style of the man from his imitations ; they 
 confounded masterpieces with imbecilities; they condemned the grace, 
 the life, the truth of such plays as La Locandiera and Le Baruffe Chiozotte 
 on account of the dullness, the vulgarity, the falseness, the lachrymosity 
 of the Sposa Persiana, the Bella Peruviana, and the Pamela. Moreover 
 they credited Goldoni with all the imbecility and immorality and galli- 
 cisms of the numberless scribblers whom the destruction of the improvised 
 comedy had brought into existence; they tied like a stone to Goldoni's 
 neck the immense weight of nauseous idiotcy of the plays of a certain 
 Abate Pietro Chiari, the dullest, coarsest, most sentimental scribbler of 
 melodramatic rubbish about Polish castles, Bussian shepherdesses, arti- 
 ficial cows, harems, negroes, and slave-dealers, that ever lived. Goldoni 
 had no connection with Chiari, either personal or literary; he hated and 
 despised the reptile, yet in the furious polemics which his own thought- 
 lessness had produced it was Goldoni's fate always to have this odious 
 idiot as a companion, never to be mentioned except in the same breath 
 as Chiari. The confusion between Goldoni's good and bad plays, the 
 confusion between Goldoni and Chiari, the connection between Goldoni and 
 the odious French imitation, raised a humcane against the unfortunate 
 reformer. Every immoral novel translated, every lachrymose play imitated 
 from the French, every encyclopedic disbelief, every un-cruscan expression, 
 was more or less put down to Goldoni's baleful influence; he was con- 
 founded with Helvetius and Eousseau; he was associated with the too 
 open boddices of ladies, with gambling-tables, with the use of new- 
 fangled words like Toelette and Fricandb, with pastoral inanities, with 
 masonic mysteries; and this miserable depraved idiot, who was perverting 
 Jtalian morals and corrupting the Italian language, was in reality the 
 mere tool, the toy, the laughing-stock of that horrible M. de Voltaire, 
 whose mixture of royalism and irreligion, of morality and indecency, of 
 jest and earnest, whose strange laugh of scorn, indignation, and cynicism 
 entirely baffled the good Italians of the eighteenth century. This Gol- 
 doni was destroying the Italian comedy, the national comedy which Italy 
 had possessed for two centuries, in order to introduce French lachrymosities 
 and immoralities, and was being told that he had liberated Italy from 
 the Goths— by whom ? By the evil being who had twitted Tasso, patted 
 
Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 271 
 
 Maffei contemptuously on the shoulder, and had declared (oh sacrilege of 
 sacrileges !) that Father Dante was crazy and the Divina Commedia a 
 monster, and had carried his audacious and insolent ignorance so far as 
 to call Can Grande della Scala " Le Grand Khan." No, Goldoni could 
 never be forgiven his unpatriotic imbecility and insolence, his frivolous 
 frenchified wickedness, his criminal attempts upon the old Italian comedy; 
 all the pedants who two centuries before would have spat upon the Com- 
 media deW Arte with Messer Niccolb Secchi and Messer Giorgio Trissino, 
 now rushed forward to defend the honour and existence of the ever 
 venerated Harlequins and Pantaloons. Pamphlet upon pamphlet, and 
 volume upon volume, was hurled against Goldoni; Baretti, the patriotic 
 and rabid, lashed Goldoni's plays to rags with his " Literary Whip," and 
 the two Gozzis poured forth epigram and sonnets by the bushel to 
 annihilate him; the storm was raging. 
 
 In the middle of it, one fine day about the year 1760, rumour was 
 spread through Venice that the advocate Carlo Goldoni had accepted an 
 offer to go to Paris and provide plays for the Italian stage, which had 
 been established there ever since the days of the Gelosi and the Fedeli; a 
 few months later, while the enemies of Goldoni were still wondering 
 whether they were to believe their ears, a new play called " One of the 
 last Evenings of Carnival " was performed at the Teatro S. Angelo. It 
 was one of those charming, simple pictures of Venetian merchant life 
 which were Goldoni's masterpieces ; in it was represented the departure 
 from Venice of a certain Sior Anzoleto, a designer of patterns for silk 
 stuffs, who had been called away to Russia, and was leaving with a heavy 
 heart the weavers whose looms he had so long provided with patterns ; 
 the allegory was evident : the weavers were the comedians of S. Angelo, 
 the designer of patterns was the comic writer. Russia meant Paris, and 
 when Sior Anzoleto came forward for the last time, and said, in the 
 quaint, graceful Venetian lisping dialect, "This is not the first time that 
 I go away, and wherever I have been I have carried the name of Venice 
 engraven in my heart ; I have always remembered the good offices and 
 kindness I have received ; I have always wished to return ; when I have 
 returned, it has always been with joy .... and so it will be this time 
 also, if Heaven permit me to return. I attest on my honour that I go 
 away with a sore heart ; that no pleasure, no fortune, if I have any, will 
 be able to compensate the pain of absence from people who are fond of 
 me. Preserve your love for me, dear friends; and God bless you. I say 
 so from my heart — '' when Anzoleto, moved by the part he was playing, 
 bowed before the spectators, the audience, half crying, half laughing, 
 forgetful of whatever pasquinades they might have written, and awake 
 once more to the greatness of Goldoni, burst out like one man, shouting, 
 " Good-bye, Goldoni ! A good journey to thee ! Remember thy pro- 
 
272 Goldoni and the Realistic Comedy. 
 
 mise ! Eeturn soon ! Eeturn soon!" Goldoni did not show himself ; 
 he was perhaps crying behind the scenes ; in the midst of his hopes of 
 future success and of speedy return, this farewell of his old public sad- 
 dened even his light and cheerful nature. " A good journey, and return 
 soon !" cried the last spectators in their dominoes, as they loft the already 
 darkened theatre. Goldoni never returned, never saw again the theatre 
 of S. Angelo, never again heard his beloved Venetian, never again wrote 
 a masterpiece.* A frivolous, cheerful old man, called Carlo Goldoni, 
 was indeed destined to live some thirty years more, obscurely and happily, 
 and to leave the world unnoticed in the midst of the chaos and darkness 
 of the year '93 ; but Carlo Goldoni, the great Venetian comic writer, the 
 incomparable author of the Ventaglio, the Locandiera, and the Baruffe 
 Chiozzotte, ceased to exist as the curtain of the Teatro Sant' Angelo fell 
 upon that "last of the Evenings of Carnival." 
 
 * The charming plays Zdinda e Zindoro were merely corrected and copied ont 
 in Paris, as they had long existed in rough form under the name of " Gliamori di 
 Arlecchino e Cammilla," in Goldoni's portfolio ; the Burbero Benefice (Le Bonrrn 
 Bienfaisant) ^ a weak and insipid French adaptation of the " Casa Nova," with all 
 the best parts left out. 
 
CAELO GOZZI 
 
 THE VENETIAN EAIEY COMEDY. 
 
CARLO GOZZI AND THE VENETIAN 
 FAIRY COMEDY. 
 
 Goldoni's plays had been the artistic development of the purely comic 
 and realistic elements of the Commedia delV Arte; its other elements, 
 fantastic and humorous, its masks, its transformations, and its extempo- 
 rised quips and cranks, Goldoni had roughly eliminated and contemptu- 
 ously cast aside. There they had lain during the days of Goldoni's 
 popularity, neglected and despised ; but the eyes of one man had been 
 fixed upon them with sorrow and admiration in their ignominy, and when 
 Goldoni's style was on the wane, he had silently approached the heap of 
 degraded tinsel and gimcrack, and tenderly, rererently, picked out of the 
 dustbin the ragged checks of Harlequin, the battered mask of Pantaloon, 
 the tarnished tinsels of the fairy Morgana; had carried them away like 
 relics under his cloak, close to his heart. What would he do with them ? 
 The tall, gaunt man, stalking about in his old-fashioned clothes, splash- 
 ing into every pool of water, letting his scarlet cloak trail along the 
 muddy steps of every Venetian bridge; always silent, self-absorbed, his 
 eyes fixed on an unseen world, his lips smiling at unspoken jests ; the 
 kindly, idle, half-crazy Count Carlo Gozzi could himself not have ex- 
 plained why he had treasured tip all that discarded trumpery of the Com- 
 media delV Arte. Had you asked him, he would have answered with 
 some half-serious, unintelligible jest, he would have told you that it was 
 his veneration for the antiquity of Harlequin's lath, his gratitude for the 
 laughter the poor dethroned buffoons had given him as a child, his hatred 
 of new-fangled French things ... a hundred ill-defined reasons, pedantic 
 and grotesque and pathetic, jumbled up into an argument which you 
 could not understand, at which you laughed and felt the while as if you 
 would have cried . . . Enough, Carlo Gozzi was whimsical, sentimental, 
 metaphysical ; in short, a humourist of the temper of Sterne and of Jean 
 Paul : he believed in the superior wisdom of childishness, in the philo- 
 sophy of old nurses' tales, in the venerableness of clowns; why, he knew 
 not. So he scolded against the prosaic Goldoni, who was driving 
 romance and buffoonery off the stage ; sighed at the world growing daily 
 more dull, more obtuse, more philosophical; and cherished the cast-off 
 mummeries of the Commedia dell' Arte as if sunshine and youth were- 
 
 T 2 
 
276 Carlo Gozzi and the Venetian Fairy Comedy. 
 
 lurking in their tatters; objectless and heedless, until one day it flashed 
 across him to build a temple in which the dear and venerable relics would 
 be enshrined and worshipped. 
 
 Baretti tells the story how one day Goldoni, with the swagger of suc- 
 cess, sauntered into the shop of the bookseller Bettinelli, in the narrow 
 streets behind the clock- tower of St. Mark's, and began holding forth to 
 the literati there assembled on the grandeur and success of his reforma- 
 tion of the Italian comedy; until at length Carlo Gozzi, outraged by the 
 upstart's insolence towards the Commedia dell' Arte, jumped up from 
 the pile of books on which he was seated, and cried out : " I wager that 
 with the masks of the old comedy I will draw a greater audience to hear 
 the story of the Love of the Three Oranges than you can with all your 
 Ircanas and Bettinas and Pamelas ! " Goldoni burst out laughing at 
 this threat : the Love of the Three Oranges was a fairy tale told by 
 every nursemaid from Venice to Naples, a ridiculous childish piece of 
 nonsense, whose mere name was enough to make people laugh: it was 
 like telling Sheridan that Jach and the Bean Stalk would draw a larger 
 audience than the School for Scandal. 
 
 But Carlo Gozzi was sincerely persuaded that nursery tales were worth 
 all Goldoni's volumes of comedies : the Love of the Three Oranges had a 
 charm for his mind, the charm of fancy and of association; the Pamelas 
 and Ircanas had his hatred as a hater of French things, as a hater of 
 false sentiment, as a hater of modern philosophy, as a noble, a Venetian, 
 a poet, and a humourist; so Carlo Gozzi set to work to make good his 
 threat. Some weeks later the comic company, directed by the famous , 
 Truffaldino- Harlequin Sacchi, which had recently returned from Portu- 
 gal in consequence of the earthquake at Lisbon, announced at its theatre 
 of S. Samuele a new comedy entitled The Love of the Three Oranges. All 
 Venice stared at this announcement. Was Sacchi gone mad ? Had they 
 read correctly? Were they really invited to hear a nursery tale? Every- 
 one rushed to S Samuele for the explanation of this mystery. The 
 curtain rose, and displayed the strangest medley ever conceived. The 
 King of Clubs, dressed as on the playing cards, consulting with Panta- 
 loon, in his mediseval robe and scarlet hose, about the mysterious 
 melancholy malady of his son, the Prince Tartaglia; Pantaloon, the 
 inimitable fat Cesare Darbes, who, with all the best mask actors, had 
 left the Medebac company in consequence of Goldoni's reforms, answering 
 the King of Clubs that the malady of the prince must be attributed to 
 his having been "poisoned by the opiate verse of Goldoni and Chiari ; 
 the Prince Tartaglia, stammering heroic verse, vrith his thick Neapolitan 
 utterance, smitten with the Love of the Three Oranges, and going out to 
 seek them in company with the harlequin Sacchi ; the first orange being 
 opened, giving birth to a beautiful maiden, who withered into thin air for 
 
Carlo Gozzi and the Venetian Fairy Comedy. 277 
 
 want of a draught of water. Harlequin, in his anxiety to slake her thirst, 
 breaking open the second orange, and thus liberating a second princess, 
 who vanished like her sister; the agony of Prince Tartaglia at the 
 thought of losing his only remaining bride, enclosed in the rind of the 
 third orange; the jealousies of the negress, Smeraldina, who, cast into 
 the flames, issued forth white like a clay pipe ; the battles between a 
 hideous witch, Margana, talking the tumid gibberish of Chiari's plays, 
 and a ridiculous wizard spouting the semi-legal verses of Goldoni's bad 
 plays; . . . enchantments, harlequinades, satire, nursery tales, all mixed 
 up together. The Venetians were puzzled, then amused, then delighted : 
 they shouted that the old masks and their improvisations were after all 
 more amusing than the Pamelas and Monsi Wamberts, that the en- 
 chantments of nursery tales were more delightful than the whimperings 
 of French translations, that the Love of the Three Oranges was a master- 
 piece. Like the Prince Tartaglia of the play, the Venetian public, sick 
 with the stupefying drugs of the pseudo-wizard Goldoni, and the dotard- 
 witch Chiari, had laughed and found itself cured. 
 ^ The popularity of Goldoni began rapidly to sink ; the popularity of the 
 Sacchi company began to rise; the fickle Venetians abandoned S. Angelo 
 for S. Samuele: the old centenarian masks, banished out of sight for a 
 few years by the real men and women of Goldoni, re-appeared with all the 
 charms of youth and novelty. No more realisms, no more lachrymosities, 
 away with the unpatriotic prosaic Goldoni : fairy tales, harlequinades, 
 wizards, witches, kings of clubs, pantaloons, and brighellas, aristophanesc 
 absurdities improvised in dialect, — that was what really and truly suited 
 the poor deluded Venetian public. Truffaldino-Sacchi, overjoyed at the 
 miracle, beset and clung to Carlo Gozzi, entreating him for more fairy plays, 
 more fiabe, Jiabe daputet, more Loves of the Three Oranges. Carlo Gozzi, 
 dreading to become a regular hack playwright, who might be called upon 
 to produce sixteen plays in a year, like Goldoni, — lazy, whimsical, and 
 with the instinct of a dilettante, — refused all Sacchi's offers of money, 
 refused to enter into any engagements, refused to promise to write. 
 But Carlo Gozzi had created a new style, and he who creates a style 
 becomes its slave; he had, unconsciously, evoked the weird grotesque 
 world of the supernatural, and the supernatural would not let its wizard 
 
 go- 
 Carlo Gozzi himself was of opinion that the invisible world obtamed 
 some mysterious power over him from the moment of his writing the 
 Love of the Three Oranges, and that the series of persecutions which he 
 relates in his very quaint autobiography were due to the vengeance of the 
 fairy world, which he had dared to bring on to the stage. But in this 
 Carlo Gozzi was certainly mistaken; his connection with the supernatural 
 world was much older. Carlo Gozzi had been destined from his birth to 
 
278 Carlo Gozzi and the. Venetian Fairy Comedy. 
 
 be the familiar, the crony, and the butt of all the fairies and goblins who 
 still haunted Venice in the first half of the eighteenth century ; some 
 crabbed and contradictory fairy godmother must have been present at his 
 birth, have endowed him with the humour and fancy of Beckford and 
 Jean Paul and Hoffmann, and then, irritated at the sceptical levity of 
 Count Giaqomo Gozzi and the patrician haughtiness of the Lady Tiepolo, 
 his wife, have cursed her godchild with the terrible curse of being misun- 
 derstood by his contemporaries and forgotten by posterity. The ancestral 
 Gozzi palace at S. Canziano, at Venice, was the chosen abode of all the 
 hobgoblins of the lagoons: the doors were off their hinges, the window- 
 panes broken, immense spiders dangled from the rafters. Of the magni- 
 ficent furniture of former days, long since gone to the pawnbrokers, there 
 remained only a couple of senatorial portraits by Titian and Tintoret, 
 looking down grimly in their purple and ermine and cobweb upon the 
 miserable disorderly household of the noble Counts Gozzi. All in this 
 Gozzi palace was melancholy, ludicrous, and grotesque: an old, paralysed 
 father, dying by inches, with every piece of ancestral property which had 
 to be sold; an elder brother. Count Gasparo, absent-minded, slovenly, 
 contented, poring over his books and writing his satires and commentaries, 
 while his innumerable brothers and sisters were growing up without pro- 
 fession or chance of marriage; devoted to a blue-stocking wife considerably 
 older than himself, who translated plays and set up journals, while her 
 babies, hungry, dirty, and tattered, played with the ragamufiins of the 
 quarter; money continually wanting, squabbles for ever arising; state 
 halls turned into dirty kitchens, gala clothes cut up into children's pina- 
 fores ; musty books encumbering the floors : dust, cobwebs, rats, ink- 
 stains, howling brats — such were the surroundings of Carlo Gozzi on his 
 return from military service in Dalmatia at the age of twenty. About 
 1740 his combat had begun with those invisible enemies who were to per- 
 secute him throughout his life. Carlo Gozzi manfully determined to 
 break the spell which hung over his family : he went about examining the 
 Gozzi property on terra-firma; he tried to let part of the premises ; he 
 sought for the title-deeds of bonds left by his father; but the goblins met 
 him on all his journeys with flooded roads and broken bridges, with bugs 
 €ind thievish stewards. They sent to him polyplike tenants who never 
 paid, scandalised the quarter by their doings, and, when legally ejected, 
 clambered back into their former premises daring the night ; they inspired 
 the Countess Gasparo Gozzi with the happy thought of selling all the 
 family papers and parchments to a neighbouring porkshop. However, 
 Carlo was victorious : he reclaimed the terra-firma property; he finally 
 ejected the non-paying, disreputable tenants; he recovered, among the 
 heaps of cheeses, the rolls of sausages, and the compact rows of hams, 
 the venerable documents of his family; he put his younger brothers into 
 
Carlo Gozzi and the Venetian Fairy Comedy. 279 
 
 government offices, his sisters into convents; had the little Gaeparo 
 Gozzi swashed and shoed and stockinged; quietly shipped off the resigned 
 philologist Gasparo and his furious poetess wife to Pordenone; and then, 
 with a few books and just sequins enough to eat meagrely and dress tidily 
 for the rest of his days, he established himself alone in the haunted palace 
 at S. Canziano, with his Spanish plays and his collections of Arabian and 
 Neapolitan fairy tales. But the goblins did not let him off so easily: 
 they delighted in pulling, pinching, twitching, and tripping him up; they 
 led his silk-stockinged feet into every pool of water; they jolted his 
 coffee-cup out of his hand on to every new pair of satin breeches; they 
 enveloped him in some mysterious cloud which made people mistake him 
 for opera directors, Greek merchants, and astronomers, and give him 
 playful blows intended for other persons ; they lost the letters addressed 
 to him, and wrote answers of which he knew nothing, so that one evening, 
 returning travel-worn, weary, and ravenous, from Friuli, he found his own 
 house brilliantly lit up and garlanded, filled with cooks and lacqueys, and 
 with a crowd of masked rioters eating, drinking, and dancing to celebrate 
 the accession to the patriarchal chair of Monsignor Bragadin, whose 
 flunkeys politely told the astonished owner of the house that he had written 
 to give permission for the momentary annexation of his palace, and that 
 for the three days and nights of Monsignor Bragadin's festivities he had 
 better retire to the nearest inn. The hobgoblins, the fairies, the enchanters, 
 and their earthly representatives, the fantastic Pantaloons and Harlequins 
 of the Gommedia delVArte — unearthly, swarthy, gibbose, imp-like creatures, 
 two thousand years old — this world of the supernatural and the' grotesque, 
 in which Carlo Gozzi had been born and bred, completely enslaved him 
 immediately on the appearance of the Love of the Three Oranges. He had 
 written one fairy comedy, one fiaha teatrale, as he styled it; the fairy 
 comic style, the flabesque, was created; he must continue. 
 
 And we must not be astonished that this grotesque and fanciful mixture 
 of the comic and the supernatural, which at first sight seems the exclusive 
 creation of northern imagination, should have originated in this hum- 
 drum Italy of the humdrum eighteenth century; for in the midst of this 
 Italy of the eighteenth century, with its prim little ways, its dapper little 
 costume, its minuet-tripping cavalieri serventi and sonnetteering abatini, 
 its stuccoed house-fronts and shell grottoes and volumes of academic 
 verses ; its novels, caps, boddices, and philosophy supplied by third-rate 
 Parisian milliners and philosophers — in the very midst and heart of all 
 this was one strange, weird, beautiful, half oriental, half mediseval thing, 
 one city of gorgeous colour and mysterious shadow, in which the creole 
 wizard of Fonthill felt as if he were moving in his own magic world of 
 Vathek; and that city was Venice. Even now-a-days, when we return to 
 
280 Carlo Gozzi and the Venetian Fairy Comedy. 
 
 Venice after an interval of years, melancholy with the first impression of 
 the livid green canals, the dilapidated discoloured palaces, the black and 
 brown stains and shadows on stone and water, lugubrious beneath the 
 grey twilight, our first sight of the squares of St. Mark's in the summer 
 evening is like the transition from the world of Childe Harold to the world 
 of the Love of the Three Oranges. The two squares, smooth like huge 
 ball-rooms, enclosed by the lace-like stonework of the Proccuratie and the 
 Ducal Palace, the arcades brilliant with yellow light of the jewellers and 
 bronze and glass shops, and of the gilded and painted cofiiee-houses 
 crowded with loungers ; the middle of the square, where the yellow light 
 from the porticos dies away into the white twilight, with its scantier pro- 
 menaders; the indistinct shapes and colours of St. Mark's, with its con- 
 fused stories of pillarets and piles of cupolas and gleaming mosaics and 
 gold, facing the hazy sea; the great belfry rising, shooting up into the 
 dim, distant sky ; — all this is fairy-like, ^a6e«5?/e in Carlo Gozzi's sense of 
 the word. And if we re-people it with the crowd in domino and mask, 
 the nobles in their scarlet tabarro mantle, the Greeks and Dalmatians in 
 their plaited skirts and red caps, the fiddlers and singers at the coffee- 
 houses, the mask buffoons surrounding the nostrum-seller shouting the 
 virtues of his alexipharmacon, the story-tellers and improvvisatori beneath 
 the half-lit arches of the palace: if we do this, we get the background of 
 one of Carlo Gozzi's comedies, and we can imagine how in the last gay 
 days of Venice, when Marcello was teaching his psalms in the palace 
 near the Rialto, when Porpora was directing the choruses of girls at the 
 Mendicanti, when Longhi was painting his carnival caricatures and Gritti 
 writing his dialect drolleries, when the dying republic gathered its tar- ' 
 nished grandeur about it and awaited its death in merriment, ih^Jiahesque 
 comedy, the precursor of Beckford and Hoffmann's fantastic buffooneries, 
 originated in the brain of the amiable, crochety, humorous, haunted 
 Carlo Gozzi. We can fancy him sauntering lazily through the crowd of 
 masks and idlers, unconscious of greetings and nudges, dreaming over his 
 boyish loves with the fierce little sultanas of Zara, of his serenades 
 beneath Ragusan windows, of his wanderings in the Epirot hills among 
 the fierce Morlac brigand-peasants and the half-oriental Greek women, 
 listening to their tales of revenge and murder, to their nasal, dirge-like 
 songs : we can fancy him meditating over the hobgoblins in the Palazzo a 
 S. Canziano, over the squabbles with Goldoni, over the ignominy of the 
 dear, venerable Comedy of Masks; thinking perhaps how best to make a 
 play, with Pantaloon, Harlequin, and Smeraldina, of some Arabian tale of 
 Turandot or Zobeide, of some nursery tale of the Staff King or the Little 
 Oreen Bird, just heard for the hundredth time from the red-sashed story- 
 teller Cigolotti, vociferating " e cussi, sior mio benedetto , , , le piu bele 
 
Carlo Gozzi and the Venetian Fairy Comedy. 281 
 
 eose, le piu maraviose," to his audience of gondoliers, even as Carlo Gozzi 
 was to make him appear on the stage, carrying the magic parrot of the 
 sorcerer Durandarte. 
 
 Carlo Gozzi, as we have remarked, took up and artistically manipu- 
 lated just those elements of the old Commedia deW Arte which Goldoni 
 had rejected — the masks, the buffoonery, the supernatural, and the tragic. 
 The stuff upon which he worked was essentially different from that of 
 Goldoni ; the artist's own nature and endowment was also essentially dif- 
 ferent. Goldoni was much less a Venetian than an Italian, and less an 
 Italian than a man of the eighteenth century. Of the middle class him- 
 self, and wholly without imagination, he saw of the upper classes only the 
 despicable artificiality: he detested illusions, having none himself; he 
 enjoyed the manners of the shopkeepers and gondoliers, and painted them 
 as he saw them, with a keen interest in natural character, action, and 
 speech ; the past for him was neither a reality as to the student nor a 
 poem as to the dreamer ; it was an uninteresting blank for which he felt 
 no sympathy ; to him Venice was merely a state rather older and more 
 eccentric than any other ; the canals of Venice were the same canals as 
 the canals of Leghorn or the canals of Holland, had he seen them ; the 
 ducal palace was a large building with arcades very convenient in rainy 
 weather; the motley dress of the old comedy, the magic and transfor- 
 mations of the Spaniards, were to him imbecilities good for children, and 
 children, in the eyes of Goldoni, were silly ignorant little donkeys. With 
 an immense power of sympathising with everyday feeling and arranging 
 prosaic plots, Goldoni was wholly destitute of the power of weaving subtle 
 . and fanciful shapes, of colouring and gilding with the imagination, of 
 realising, in dream or nightmare, the distant and the impossible ; he had 
 all the faculties required to do what he wished to do, he was complete 
 because he was limited, and his work was executed with the same felicity 
 with which it was conceived ; there was no horizon for Goldoni, he could 
 grasp all that he could see. Carlo Gozzi was totally different ; he was 
 as fragmentary, as incomplete, as those very elements of humour and 
 fancy which he had saved out of the wreck of the Commadia dell' Arte ; 
 he was full of poetic aspirations and humorous fancy, thrust back by 
 reality, and without the force to create a world of their own. A Venetian 
 citizen on his father's side, a patrician on his mother's, he clung with 
 tenderness and veneration to the Eepublic: he loved its traditions, its 
 glamour, its unrealities; its realities, its corruption and meanness, pained 
 him intensely ; he was neither a bigot nor a retrograde, but, though 
 seeing the good which might come of the revolutionary and pre-revo- 
 lutionary movements, he shrank back from their hardness, their prosaic 
 materialism: a poet and a humourist, he loved the ivy and the delicate 
 fanciful cobweb ; the ivy might mean ruin and the cobweb might mean 
 
282 Carlo Gozzi and the Venetian Fairy Comedy. 
 
 dirt, but he had not the heart to tear ofif the one and sweep down the 
 other. He did not like realities like Goldoni ; an aristocrat and a dreamer, 
 he did not sympathize with the people ; he would accept their poetry, 
 their fairy tales and quaint sayings, but he would not endure their prose. 
 His matter-of-fact century, philosophic and pedantic, drove him hack 
 upon himself, and made him brood over his fancies and whimsies more 
 than is healthy for an artist. He found little sympathy without, and he 
 had not enough in himself to suffice for himself. The world surrounding 
 him was prosaic and dull and could not satisfy him, and he had not the 
 power to create a world for himself which should he satisfactory. Every 
 great poet and great humourist creates a sphere into which he can rise 
 and in which dwell in happiness, be it among clouds and rainbows like 
 Shelley, among moss and leafage like Keats, or among Uncle Tobys like 
 Sterne, or advocates of the poor like Jean Paul ; Carlo Gozzi could not 
 do this ; both as a poet and as a humourist he could rise out of reality 
 only for a few minutes, and then drop back into it wearied and bruised ; 
 he was full of aspiration and suggestion: wondrous dreams, beautiful and 
 grotesque, flitted before him without his being able to seize them, like 
 that fiddler trying for a lifetime to reproduce the exquisite sonata heard 
 in sleep from the fiend ; here ! here it comes, the wierd melody — quick ! 
 the bow across the strings —alas ! — that was not the piece. Carlo Gozzi, 
 like every imaginative mind, saw in everything much more than it con- 
 tains ; but, unlike the great artist, he could not extract that something 
 and make it his own. In his plays he seems for ever pointing to some 
 suggestion of poetry, of pathos, and of humour, calling upon us to under- 
 stand what he would do but cannot ; saying almost piteously, " Do you 
 not see, do you not feel ? Does not that situation, that word, appeal 
 to your fancy ? Do you not see dimly those fairy princesses, too beautiful 
 
 to be seized, there, do you not hear the music ? Do you not feel 
 
 that a worjd of wonder is half visible to you ? Always suggestive, and 
 sometimes successful in working out the suggestion; such must be the 
 final verdict on Carlo Gozzi's plays ; and it explains why they have been 
 so warmly admired by individuals and so completely forgotten by the 
 public. Give the world of suggestion contained in The Stag King, in 
 *Turandot, in The Raven, to such readers as Goethe and Madame de Stael, 
 as Schiller and Hoffmann, and it will suffice; they will see what poor Carlo 
 Gozzi can only point to. They can sympathize, imagine, and complete. 
 But humanity at large cannot: it can see only what is absolutely shown 
 it; mediocre Mr. A, B, or C, must have complete realization, absolute 
 perfection; he must have Homer, Shalcespeare, Raphael, the finished statue 
 with every inch properly chiselled, the finished picture with every line in 
 its place and every colour well laid on; the block of stone with the mys- 
 terious figure still veiled in its rough mass, the sketch with its vague 
 
Carlo Gozzi and the Venetian Fairy Comedy. 283 
 
 faces and forms rising shadowlike out of the confusion of blurs ; the 
 indistinct voice in the wind, the hazy shapes in the moonlight, all this 
 is incomprehensible to him; he wants art, and he is right; but below art, 
 below the clear, the realized, the complete, is a limbo of fair unborn 
 ghosts, shadowy and vague, of distantly heard melodies, of vaguely felt 
 emotions of pathos and joy. Let us not despise that limbo, that chaos; 
 out of it emerges every masterpiece, and in it lies hidden many a charming 
 or sublime shape which those who know the secret spell can evoke out of 
 the mist of ever-changing forms which surround it. 
 
 To this limbo belong the fairy plays of Carlo Gozzi; they are things 
 which in order to be thoroughly enjoyable must be completed; in our 
 days they can be thus completed only by the fancy of the reader; in his own 
 time they were completed by the scenic realization of the excellent comic 
 company directed by Sacchi. The machinery, improvisations, acting; and 
 dresses of the Teatro San Samuele filled up the gaps left by the in- 
 sufficient talents of the writer ; the grotesque shape of Pantalone Darbes 
 with his immense paunch protruding beneath his mediaeval robe, the 
 mouthings and gestures of Fiorilli-Tartaglia, stammering Neapolitar 
 brogue and blinking through his goggle spectacles, the capers and jesti 
 of the admirable Truffaldino-Sacchi, witty, quaint, and graceful ; th< 
 coquettish audacity of the servant Smeraldina, the dignity and passioi 
 of the beautiful Teodora Ricci, Gozzi's capricious platonic flame; thi 
 outlandish and shrovetide dresses, the admirable effects of scenery, anc 
 lighting, and mechanism — all this realised and rendered visible upon th( 
 stage of San Samuele that grotesque and fantastic world of the Thre^ 
 Oranges, the Blue Monster, the Serpent Woman, and the Stag King 
 which Gozzi had conceived and suggested, but unlike the greater master! 
 of the art, Shakespeare, Beckford, and Hoffmann, had been unable t( 
 display. With the Sacchi company at his command, Carlo Gozzi ap 
 peared a genius; as soon as the Sacchi company broke up he was for 
 gotten; and if another such company could be formed, if we could havi 
 another Truffaldino-Sacchi, another Brighella-Zannoni, another Panta 
 lone-Darbes, another Fiorilli-Tartaglia, another Teodora Ricci, if we couli 
 resuscitate those admirable last buffoons of the Commedia dell' Arte, th 
 fiabesque comedies of Carlo Gozzi would once more be as popular as 
 hundred years ago ; and Carlo Gozzi would seem as great an author t 
 those compilers of histories of Italian literature in which his very nam 
 is omitted, as he seemed to Hoffmann, to Schiller, and to Schlegel. 
 
 There is, however, one of Carlo Gozzi's plays which, by some fortunat 
 accident, is almost perfect, which might be read and enjoyed even affce 
 Vathek or Chapelmaster Kreisler, or Alfred de Musset's Fantasio; an 
 that is the philosophic fairy play VAugellino Bel Verde, or, if we ma 
 translate the untranslateable — The Little Bird Fair Green; for in i 
 
284 Carlo Gozzi and the Venetian Fairy Comedy. 
 
 Gozzi has almost shown us the masks, almost let us hear the improvisa- 
 tions, and has given all the quaint charm of the old nursery tale, originally 
 told by some ancient Hindoo poet to the Persians, moulded into shape 
 by some beautiful Sheherazade, written out in grotesque Neapolitan 
 dialect by Basile in the sixteenth century, re-written in dainty and stately 
 French by Perrault, the architect of Versailles, wandering from country to 
 country, changing now into Princesse Belle Etoile, now into Peau d'Ane, 
 and still repeated, as the Uccello Biverde, in thick-mouthed Eoman or lisping 
 Venetian, by many an illiterate granny beside the blazing ruddy month 
 of the bread-baking oven, or in the cool gloom of the farmyard beneath 
 the spreading fig-tree, to the sound of the sawing cicala and the splash- 
 ing fountain. In this comedy Carlo Gozzi has woven together with 
 wonderful art the prose buffoonery of the Comedy of Masks with the 
 stateliest tragic verse and the sharpest moralising of a satire ; his love of 
 the droll Venetian dialect, of the supernatural, of the grotesque, and his 
 moral indignation against the philosophic sophisms of his day, hare 
 balanced each other, and united to form a little masterpiece, in which for 
 the only time perhaps in his life Carlo Gozzi has succeeded in making 
 us see and feel completely and satisfactorily all that he wants us to see 
 and to feel. The wicked old queen-mother Tartagliona has buried alive 
 her daughter-in-law Ninetta, on the pretence that she has given birth 
 to two spaniel puppies, and has bid Pantalone, the prime minister, drown 
 the real twin children of the King and Queen. Good old Pantalone has 
 not had the heart to execute the order, but has made a parcel of the 
 twins with twenty-four ells of oilcloth and let them float down the river, 
 whence they are rescued by Smeraldina, the wife of the pork-seller 
 Truffaldino, who adopts and educates them as her own children. But 
 Truffaldino, who is a lying, bullying, and cynical sort of harlequin, hates 
 the twins, and when they are grown up turns Eenzo and Barbarina out 
 of doors. The brother and sister, who have read odd pages of Helvetius 
 and Holbach, in which Truffaldino was wont to wrap up his cheese and 
 sausages, wander about destitute but philosophical, having come to the 
 conclusion that morality is a social fiction, that all human action springs 
 from self-love, and that the only wisdom is to suppress every feeling and 
 to hold aloof from mankind. While thus philosophising they are met by a 
 broken, noseless, ancient statue, who tells them that four hundred years 
 before, he also, Calmon the philosopher, reasoned as they reason, dis- 
 believed in good, and hardened himself against his fellow men, until by 
 degrees his heart became a stone, his limbs turned to marble, and he fell 
 upon the ground there to lie, the butt of ignominy, among weeds and 
 filth, for fom* centuries. Renzo and Barbarina argue with him, try and 
 persuade the statue that according to all natural laws statues cannot 
 speak, and go off as philosophical and famishing as ever. But at last 
 
Carlo Gozzi and the Venetian Fairy Comedy. 285 
 
 this hunger humbles their reason, and they throw into the air a magic 
 stone given them by Calmon and invoke the philosopher statue. Im- 
 mediately a fairy palace, full of magnificent furniture and splendidly- 
 arrayed servants, rises out of the ground and receives them as its owners. 
 This sudden change of worldly position entirely changes the philosophy 
 of the twins ; and when Truffaldino, who is also a philosopher of the 
 modern school, comes to them, and, thinking to please them, cynically 
 avows that he drove them away when they were poor, hut that he comes 
 to them when they are rich because self-love is the sole motive of human 
 action, Eenzo has him kicked out of the palace as an ill-conditioned cur, 
 and consents to re-admit him only when Truffaldino goes in for the most 
 abject hypocrisy and knee-kissings: a humorous scene admirably indicated 
 by Gozzi, and which must have been magnificent in Sacchi's hands. 
 Barbarina, on her side, becomes so vain and conceited as completely to 
 despise the attentions of a certain little green bird, the " Augellino Bel 
 Verde," whose courtship had been her solace while living in poverty. 
 Meanwhile the unwitting father of the twins, the blinking, stammering 
 Tartaglia, King of Shadowland, little guessing that his wife is still alive 
 (owing to the provisions brought her in her tomb by the benevolent Little 
 Green Bird), is for ever whimpering over his lost spouse, shedding tears 
 at the sight of the floor upon which his Ninetta (one of the magic damsels 
 of the Love of the Three Oranges) was wont to tread, of the kitchen in 
 which, appearing in the shape of a bird to the cook Truffaldino, she had 
 caused the royal dinner to be burnt ; lamenting and cursing his mother 
 Tartagliona, who vainly tries to cheer him by suggesting that he should 
 play at blind man's buff and similar games; nothing can amuse him. At 
 last Pantalone the minister rushes in to tell the King that a palace has 
 risen up in one night opposite his ; the King languidly consents to go 
 on to his balcony, and there, with Pantalone, he examines the magic 
 palace and its inhabitants through an opera-glass. He has scarcely seen 
 Barbarina on his terrace before he falls madly in love with her — " Panta- 
 lone," he cries, " she has on a dress made by the dressmaker Ganziani ! 
 Her hair has been dressed by Carletto ! I am in love as a donkey; look 
 at my eyes, do they not shed sparks? " Pantalone entreats his Majesty 
 not to lose his gravity, especially as the young woman on the balcony is 
 turning her back upon him. King Tartaglia kisses his hand at Barbarina, 
 who laughs contemptuously ; he entreats Pantalone to teach him some 
 pretty speech to make to her. Pantalone, disapproving of such un- 
 dignified conduct, demurs, so Tartaglia begins, " Wait a bit; I want to 
 begin the conversation in a brilliant way. Beautiful lady, do you feel 
 this scirocco, blowing ? Do you not think the sun has risen very bright 
 this morning?" Barbarina, determined to conquer the King, answers 
 rudely and leaves the terrace; and Tartaglia immediately despatches 
 
286 Carlo Cfozzi and the Venetian Fairy Comedy. 
 
 Pantalone to ask her to marry him, little dreaming that she is his 
 daughter. But the old wicked Queen Mother has a cavaliere servente 
 who is a poet and a prophet, Brighella, whose mixture of Bergamasc 
 prose and tumid prophetic verse is intensely funny, and he warns her 
 that danger bodes her from Barbarina, bidding her refuse her consent to 
 the King's marriage unless the bride can bring as dower the Singing 
 Apple, the Dancing Water, and the Little Green Bird, all of which are 
 in the possession of a fairy, who guards them with numberless monsters. 
 Of all the princes who have gone in search of the Singing Apple, the 
 Dancing Water, and the Little Green Bird, not one has ever returned ; 
 but Barbarina, blinded by ambition, entreats her brother to go in quest of 
 them. Eenzo refuses to risk his life ; but, when he hears that a feather 
 of the Little Green Bird (who has ceased visiting his sister) is necessary 
 to give life to a beautiful female statue of which he is enamoured, he sets 
 off with Truffaldino, leaving with Barbarina a magic knife, whose blade, 
 clean as long as he lives, will be blood-stained as soon as he dies. After 
 some time Barbarina looks at the knife and sees it is bloody ; forgetting 
 all her vanity and ambition, and in despair at having caused her brother's 
 death, she sets off with Smeraldina to share his fate. This generous 
 impulse breaks the spell hanging over the twins ; Barbarina meets 
 Calmon, who, calling to his assistance the statues of Moors of the Campo 
 dei Mori at Venice, who hold open the magic door with their shoulders, 
 and the fountain nymph of Treviso, who spirts water out of her breasts 
 and extinguishes the magic flames, he enables her to get the Green Bird 
 in his cage. The Little Green Bird bids Barbarina tear a feather out of 
 his wing and touch with it his brother and Truffaldino, who stand turned 
 into statues in niches among many other seekers of the Singing Apple 
 and the Dancing Water; Barbarina does so, and Eenzo and Truffaldino 
 resume life. Then Barbarina touches with the feather all the other 
 statues, kings and princes and sultans, among whom is also CSgolotti, 
 the story-teller of St. Mark's, who, taking a pinch of snuff, remarks in 
 Venetian that he ought never to have let himself be tempted by the hope 
 of getting the Apple, the Water, and the Green Bird, and making a 
 fortune by showing them off at Venice, and that henceforward he will be 
 faithful to his tales of Bovo d'Antona and King Pepin. The Green Bird 
 reveals that Eenzo and Barbarina are the children of TartagUa ; Eenzo 
 marries his statue vivified; Barbarina the Little Green Bird, who turns 
 into a handsome prince ; Truffaldino returns to his pork-shop ; the Queen 
 Mother and her poet Brighella are metamorphosed into a toad and an 
 ass, and the good stone philosopher, Calmon, is promised a restored nose 
 as soon as the audience of San Samuele shall have paid their money. 
 Thus ends the comedy of the Little Bird Fair Green, which, with its 
 buffooneries, its transformations, its tfagic passion, its philosophising, its 
 
Carlo Gozzi and the Venetian Fairy Comedy. 287 
 
 aoralising antique statue, its apple singing opera songs, accompanied by 
 ;he dancing water as orchestra, its whimpering comic king, its mephis- 
 bophelian pork-selling harlequin, its clown poet-seer Brighella (who 
 restores his prophetic vein at the tavern), its hero Eenzo madly ena- 
 moured of a woman of stone, its bird in love with a mortal, its fantastic, 
 semi-philosophic suggestiveness, has altogether a strange analogy with 
 the second part of Faust ; an enigmatic work, we know not whether too 
 loftily meaningful or too childishly meaningless for full comprehension ; 
 amusing, tickling, pleasing; above all filling the mind with a queer and 
 delightful medley of thoughts. The Jiabesque comedy of Carlo Gozzi was, 
 in its mixture of humour and pathos, of the grotesque, the fanciful, and 
 the supernatural, the apotheosis of the Comedy of Masks, its highest 
 triumph given it by its most fervent votary; but the apotheosis is a 
 funeral rite, and shows that the old Commedia deW Arte had expired. 
 Little by little discord began to arise in the once united company directed 
 by Sacchi. Teodora Eicci, Gozzi's pupil and goddess, behaved scandal- 
 ously and went off to France. Sacchi, old and worn out, became can- 
 tankerous and headstrong. Darbes died or retired; the other actors, one 
 by one, took other engagements or entirely left the stage ; the finances 
 of San Samuele got into disorder, furniture and stage properties were 
 seized ; lawsuits began among the various actors ; the owner of the 
 theatre ejected the manager ; the magnificent Sacchi company, the last 
 company of mask actors in all Italy, was dissolved. One day, about 
 1782, poor old Truffaldino-Sacchi came to see Carlo Gozzi, and took 
 leave of him all in tears. " You are the only person to whom I pay a 
 farewell visit; for my departure from Venice must be secret," said Sacchi, 
 " I shall never forget the favours you have bestowed upon me, Signer 
 Conte ; vouchsafe to grant me your pardon for any offences, your pity, 
 and the honour of embracing you." " Poor Truffaldino," writes Carlo 
 Gozzi, " pressed me in his withered old aims ; he gave me a last sad 
 glance out of his goggle-eyes full of tears, and then ran away, leaving me 
 alone, wandering disconsolate through Venice, separated from my dear 
 comedians, and twenty-seven years older than when they returned from 
 Lisbon. Oh, my poor heart ! Oh, national comedy ! All around me I 
 cannot find one single person who still shares my love for this comedy, so 
 
 original and so eminently Italian ! But I am waxing pathetic 
 
 Quick, let me wipe the cheek upon which Truffaldino has kissed me: the 
 fellow must have been eating garlic. At the same time I may brush away 
 unnoticed the tears on my face ; and then I can go off and dine, proud to 
 have succeeded in appearing philosophical, that is to say, heartless." 
 
 The Commedia delV Arte was dead. Carlo Gozzi relapsed into ob- 
 scurity. Old, whimsical, and solitary, he wandered about through Venice, 
 with scarce a person to point him out as the author of the Little Green 
 
288 Carlo Gozzi and the Venetian Fairy Comedy.- 
 
 Bird. The tempestuous political and social horizon scared his fanciful 
 mind; he watched with wonder and terror the bursting of the great ; 
 revolutionary storm; he watched with vague heart-ache the fall of his ] 
 beloved republic of Venice. His friends and relatives dropped away one 
 by one; the eighteenth century drew to a close. We have one last 
 glimpse of him, seated solitary and silent on a certain bench on the Quay 
 of the Slavonians at Venice, watching vacantly the boatmen gambling at 
 the coffee-houses, the water-sellers going up and down with their yoked 
 pitchers, the women hurrying to and fro in their black skirt and veil; the 
 fishing-smacks moored to the posts, the green water lapping lazily on the 
 steps, the clouds sailing over the tower of St. George and the cupolas of 
 the Giudecca; listless, wistful, seeing perhaps nothing of the life around 
 him, going over the past, seeing again his loves at Zara, the haunted dis- 
 mantled palace at S. Canziano, the theatre of San Samiiele with its HarT 
 lequins and Pantaloons and Arabian princesses and transformations; 
 thinking of his fiahe, of the Stag King, of the Love of the Three Oranges, 
 of the dear, venerable, dead Comedy of Masks. How often may poor old 
 Carlo Gozzi have returned and sat upon that bench? When did, the 
 boatmen and coifee-house loungers of the Quay of the Slavonians miss 
 that familiar grey, bent old man, with the wistful, fanciful face ? We 
 know not ; for, in the total oblivion into which Carlo Gozzi has fallen, no 
 one has even recorded the exact year of his death ; he and aU that he did 
 is forgotten. 
 
 Out of the old, venerable Comedy of Masks, born in Greek and Oscan 
 days, given shape by Beolco and Calmo in the sixteenth century, deve- 
 loped to its utmost among the tattered buffoons of the days of Salvator 
 Eosa, originated two forms of comedy, the realistic comedy of Goldoni 
 and the fantastic comedy of Carlo Gozzi, both essentially national and 
 spontaneous artistic productions. But the fate of the two comedies has 
 been as dissimilar as the talents of the two men : Cai-lo Gozzi, the fan- 
 ciful, the suggestive, the romantic, the artist incapable of embodying his 
 finest conceptions, has been forgotten ; Goldoni, the clear, the realistic, the 
 positive, the intensely limited and concentrated genius, has been remem- 
 bered. The bookstalls of Venice, crammed with quaint and useless 
 literary rarities, may be ransacked in vain for a copy of one of the only 
 two editions ever made of Carlo Gozzi's plays. If we ask for Carlo Gozzi, 
 ten to one we shall be offered the works of his brother Gaspare: the 
 clever mediocre, puristical satirist has survived ; the quaint, fantastic, 
 incorrect poet has been forgotten. 
 
 If we want Goldoni we need only enter the first best bookseller's, and 
 we shall be offered our choice of twenty different editions of his plays ; or, 
 
Carlo Gozzi and the Venetian Fairy Comedy. 289 
 
 better, we need only bid our gondolier steer to the little theatre of San 
 Benedetto, and, entering its pit, we shall behold a perfect resuscitation of 
 Goldoni's men and women, in their real striped coats and powdered hair 
 and scarlet cloaks and Venetian skirts and veil, with their real every-day 
 looks and intonations and movements : not so much an admirably-per- 
 formed comedy as a magic evocation of the daily life of a hundred years 
 back. And, returning home through the little silent squares, across the 
 staircase bridges with their solitary gondola light in the distance, through 
 the network of narrow streets behind St. Mark's, we have^none of the 
 feeling of having been to the play : Siora Menegheta, in her chintz and 
 veil, may be wheedling some black-dressed, horse-hair wigged, snarly Sir 
 Todero Brontolon behind yonder shutters .... Menego Cainello may 
 be asleep on the prow of yonder moored gondola; the spendthrift Eugenio 
 may be gambhng in yonder lit-up coffee-house; and, hearing steps behind 
 us in the narrow, twisting streets, we turn round and almost expect to see 
 beneath the lamp at the corner the disconsolate, ruined Sior Anzoleto, 
 flying from his creditors in his black cloak and three-cornered hat . . . ; 
 for after more than a century after the fall of the republic of Venice, after 
 the death of the Comedy of Masks, after every connecting link with the 
 eighteenth century has long been broken, Goldoni remains ; and his men 
 and women are realities to-day even as they were on that day & hundred 
 and twenty years ago when, in the book-shop of BettinelU, Carlo Gozzi 
 challenged Goldoni with the Love of the Three Oranges, and the author of 
 the Baruffe CMozzotte laughed at the challenge of his rival. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 -reading the foregoing pages there has come home to us an 
 on felt but vaguely while writing them ; the impression that in 
 ch for art we have been wandering through rooms long closed 
 cened; that we have been brushing away, perhaps over roughly, 
 and dust which lay reverently on things long untouched, that we 
 3n intruding into a close weird atmosphere filled with invisible 
 The men and things of the Italian eighteenth century have not 
 exhumed and examined and criticised and classified; they have 
 been arranged, properly furbished and restored, like so many 
 £ dolls decked in crumbling silks and lace, like so many pretty, 
 or preposterous nicknacks in the glass cases of our historical 
 , to be gaped or sniffed at by every vacant idler or heartless 
 y, like the men and things of our English, French, and German 
 ith century. They have been forgotten and neglected, but not 
 ; the dust of their own day has lain thick upon them, and that 
 I brought home to our hearts that the men and women once lived 
 i, and the things once charmed or amused. An old book of 
 of Porpora, an old volume of plays of Carlo Gozzi, does not 
 3 in the same manner as a darkened canvas of Titian or a 
 I folio of Shakespeare ; these latter have passed through too 
 mds, been looked at by too many eyes, they retain the person- 
 none of their owners. But the volume of Gozzi's plays was 
 r touched last by hands which had clapped applause to Truf- 
 Sacchi or Pantalone-Darbes ; the notes in the book of cantatas 
 t have been glanced over by singers who had learned to sing them 
 srpora himself ; with this dust, which we shake reluctantly out of 
 volumes, vanishes we know not what ■ subtle remains of person- 
 It is different with the Eenaissance : its men and women are as 
 int to us as their calm effigies by Rossellino or Donatello ; they 
 dead because they have never, for our feelings, been alive. They 
 uperior sort of mummy. We buy their old garments to hang 
 larlours, we knock against their old armour as we would knock 
 a brand new fender, we ransack their papers, their lives ; we feel 
 Die in handlinsr their dead personalities; they are totally dried, 
 
294 Conclusion. 
 
 dislike anything we do to them or say about them ; it is so long since they 
 lived that the very ghosts of them are dead. 
 
 But no such stratifications of humanity and of events separate us from 
 the people of the eighteenth century ; we indeed have never known them, 
 but we have met occasionally men and women who have ; like those two, 
 now themselves become part of the past, to whom this book should have 
 been dedicated, if dedications were not advertisments to the living rather 
 than homage to the dead : that sweet and sunny lady, whose hand, which 
 pressed ours, had pressed the hands of Fanny Bumey, and that old 
 musician who had sung with boyish voice to Cimarosa and Paisiello those 
 airs which he hummed over for us in faint and husky tones. Thence it 
 is that our study of the things of the last century ends with a sort of 
 sadness which should not belong to historians or sestheticians. 
 
 Moreover, we must repeat it, the art of the Italian eighteenth century 
 is extremely forgotten ; indeed with the exception of a few plays by 
 Goldoni, wholly forgotten. The music and the drama may, will, nay 
 certainly must, sooner or later be exhumed ; but the revival will have 
 taken place too late, they will be things of culture and eclecticism, the 
 tradition will be gone. The old Italian Comedy of Masks, so quaint, so 
 coloured, so fantastic in its humour, has long disappeared ; a few local 
 masks revived and altered in our day, like the Florentine Stenterello 
 or the Neapolitan Pulcinella, cannot in their isolation give a notion of 
 the imaginative charm of the coming together of the various droll and 
 uncouth figures of the mask comedy. Perhaps the performance we 
 chanced to witness one autumn evening in a shed behind the cathedral 
 of Perugia was the last real representative of the Commedta dell' Arte. 
 It was only a company of rough wooden puppets, a couple of feet high, 
 jerking in rectangular fashion and bobbing with rotatory movement for 
 the amusement of the artisans and apprentices of Perugia; and very 
 humble, very shabby, and very much humiliated they all were, this Harle- 
 quin in his checkered doublet, this Pantaloon in his red hose and black 
 Dantesque cap, this swarthy Brighella in loose-girdled garb; but they 
 were the last of a long and mighty line. Their ancestors had amused men 
 and women long before the brazen griffin had first spread his porcupine 
 ' wings on the front of the grim battlemented townhouse, long before 
 Augustus had built his gate, perhaps even before the first Etruscan wall 
 had been planted upon the bleak steep of Perugia ; they were as venerable 
 as anything in Italy, these poor little wooden mannikins, clacking their 
 legs and bobbing their heads on their stage of planks, and we looked upon 
 them with reverence. 
 
 With respect to the Italian music of the last century, much has been 
 torn up, much has been made into new paper, much has been used for 
 the inner binding of books, much has been made into firework papers, ■ 
 
whizzed and flamed out of existence in the shape of rockets ; 
 rtainly still remains, carefully locked up and catalogued, and 
 illy unopened, in public and private libraries, and much ought to 
 )ut perhaps does not (for no one takes the trouble to discover), in 
 ives of the chapels of St. Mark's, of St. Peter's, of St. John 
 
 and of other great musical establishments. But the men and 
 rho could still remember how it ought to be performed are long 
 i while they were still alive no one cared to learn their art and 
 iitions. This music of Pergolesi, of Durante, of Lotti, of Jom- 
 d of Cimarosa, will certainly soon be remembered and sought for, 
 ted and performed, well or ill. The Itahan eighteenth century 
 3 Antiquity, like the Middle Ages, like the Renaissance, con- 
 ts share to our eclectic culture ; its men and women will be 
 1, restored, put into glass cases and exhibited mummy-fashion in 
 )rical museum ; we shall gape at them, pry into them, hit up 
 hem, understand them and feel nothing for them, just as we do 
 le other classified human fossils which we possess ; but that time 
 yet come. The men and women of the Italian eighteenth century 
 
 mere ghosts, whom we have scared in our search after art; for 
 ! yet feel we know not what vague friendship and pity. And now 
 
 away from them with reluctance, from these men and women 
 re have met in our rambles through the forgotten world of the 
 aghteenth century, these poets, and composers, and playwrights, 
 fers, to whom we have listened so long and so often ; nay, even 
 
 crabbed little academic pedants and fops, at whom we have so 
 .ughed, have become something to us, and even to them, with 
 surdities as to the others with their greatness, we bid farewell with 
 ig akin to sorrow. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 
 
 ;sor Ernesto Masi's admirable monograph, " Francesco Albergati, 
 
 npi ed i suoi amici," published at Bologna in 1878, came too late 
 
 more than a mere note to our first Essay. "We have made con- 
 use of Cesare Cantu's " L' Abate Parini e la Lombardia nel 
 
 riii°;" of Tipaldo's " Dizionario degli Italiani Illustri nel secolo 
 
 of Corniani's " History of Italian Literature," continued by 
 
 of Lombardi's " Continuation of Tiraboschi ;" of the volumes of 
 
 • History of Italy," containing the eighteenth century; of Bumey's 
 
 f of Music," vol. iv. 1789 ; and of Maurice Sand's " Masques 
 
 )ns de la Comedie Italienne." 
 
 Jlowing is a list of some of the works we have used less largely: — 
 
 Maria de' Crescimbeni, " Notizie Istorictie degli Arcadi Morti." 
 
 721, 4 vols. 
 
 Elogj Italiani. Venice, 1782. 
 
 Compendio della Vita del celebre Pietro Metastasio, tradotto in 
 Rome, 1783. 
 
 , Storia dell' Ab. Pietro Metastasio. Assisi, 1783. 
 
 mous, Vita del Sig. Ab. Metastasio. Roma, a spese di G. Pucci- 
 
 56. 
 
 3s Burney, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Abate Meta- 
 
 London, 1796, 3 vols. 
 
 :o Mattel, Memorie per servire alia Vita del Metastasio, ed Elogio 
 
 amelli." Colle, 1785. 
 
 ra, Discorso in Morte del Metastasio. Roma, 1783. 
 
 10 Arteaga, Le Rivoluzioni del Teatro Musicale Italiano. Venice, 
 
 vols. 
 (Andrea), Origine, Progressi e Stato Attuale della Musica 
 Venice, 1822. 
 
 y, The Present State of Music in France and Italy. 1 vol. 1773. 
 
 y, The Present State of Music in Germany, 1773. 
 
298 Appendix. 
 
 Earl of Mount Edgcumb, Musical Eeminiscences from 1773. 1834. 
 Baretti, La Frusta Letteraria. Ee-edited 1828. 
 M^moires de M. Charles Goldoni (Autobiography). 
 Hawkins, History of Music, 1764. 
 Moland, Moliere et la ComMie Italienne. 
 
 Lmis Riccohoni, dit Lelio, Hist, du Theatre Italien. Paris, 1725. 
 Paul de Musset, M^moires de Ch. Gozzi. 
 O. B. Magrini, Carlo Gozzi e le Fiabe. Cremona, 187S. 
 We have made use of various editions of Metastasio's Works and 
 Letters and of Goldoni's Plays. 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Epphorion : Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval 
 
 in the Renaissance. Second Edition. Demy Svo, cloth, 7s. 6d. 
 
 "The book isJaold, extensive (it does not claim to be exhaustive) in scope, and replete with 
 well-defined and unhackneyed ideas; clear impressions and vigorous and persuasive modes of 
 writing. . . . Large questions have been scrutinized in a comprehensive spirit, and are treated 
 withboth respect, breadth and minuteness, according to the scale of the work.-. . . Lastly 
 comes the longest essay of all, ' Mediaeval Love,' filling nearly one hundred pages. This is 
 certainly a masterly performance." — Athena:uin. 
 
 " The impressions it records are as vividly individual as ever, the knowledge which informs 
 it is fuller and riper. It deals with a period incomparably more interesting than the * teacup 
 times of hood and hoop/ through whose mazes her first work led lis so pleasantly ; . . . The 
 exquisite paper Qn the ' Outdoor Poetry.' " — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 "Afresh and original contribution to the history of civilization and art; written in grace- 
 ful and often eloquent English." — Spectator, 
 
 Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy. Crown 
 
 , 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d. 
 
 " Vernon Lee . . . has written one of the most fascinating books that it has been our 
 good fortune to meet with for a very long time." — Westminster Revieiv. 
 
 " Of the fascinations of this book there can be no question." — Daily News. 
 
 "We have said enough to show that Vernon Lee's book is eminently suggestive." — 
 Academy. 
 
 "These studies show a wide range of knowledge of the subject, precise investigation, 
 abundant power of illustration and healthy enthusiasm. . . . Can be cordially recommended 
 as treating an important and little-known theme with conspicuous ability." — Athen^wn. 
 
 "This thoroughly interesting and, in many respects, admirable book." — Si. Jaines's 
 Gazette, 
 
 "A subtle and imaginative critic, a picturesque and vigorous writer, who has profoundly 
 studied a subject in which he takes a passionate interest, and who has written of Italy and 
 Italian art with a wonderful artistic intuition, comparably only with that shown in some of 
 Robert Browning's poems on Italian subjects." — Fajtfulla della Dovienica. 
 
 ' The rare qualities of this learned, subtle, imaginative, and eloquent critic." — Rassegna 
 Setiivianale. 
 ^,^^" This is true life, revealed to us in brilliant and various, but never exaggerated colours. 
 *W^\\& severity of his studies and the patience of his research are evident at every step." — 
 Nnova Antologia. 
 
 Belcaro : being Essays on Sundry yEsthetical Ques- 
 tions, Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. 
 
 " This way of conveying ideas is very fascinating, and has an effect of creating activity in 
 the reader's mind which no other mode can equal. From first to last there is a continuous, 
 and delightful stimulation of thought." — Academy, 
 
 " Vernon Lee writes well about poetry, better upon painting and sculpture, and best upon 
 music. The essay on ' Cherubino ' is the finest in the book, and is a perfect gem in its way." 
 — St. James'' s Gazette. 
 
 " We could say a good deal more about this book as the product of a remarkably acute 
 critical mind ; it would bear to be read a second time and be found to repay the trouble." — 
 A theneeiim. 
 
 " We would express our special admiration for the essay * A Dialogue of Poetic Morality,*" 
 with which the volume concludes." — Spectator. 
 
 London : T. FISHER UNWIN, 26, Paternoster Square, E.C 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Baldwin : Being Dialogues on Views and Aspirations. 
 
 Demy 8vo, cloth, I2s. 
 
 " * Baldwin/ like most good books, is worth careful study from more than one side. It has 
 a message for all people, to which only indolence or indifference can be deaf. . . , One cannot 
 read a page of ' Baldwin ' without feeling the wiser for it." — Academy. 
 
 " The author shows herself a most vigorous dialectician, working from an unusually wide 
 range of reading and of eager intellectual interest, and stimulating us constantly with 
 tlxoughtful remarks and happy illustrations." — Contemporary Review. 
 
 "There are occasional sayings in this book which show a certain power of epigram and 
 even of imaginative wit : ' " Upon my word," put in Rheinhardt, '* I don't knpw which is the 
 greater plague, the old-fashioned nuisance calle^ a soul, or the new-fangled bore called man- 
 kind.'' ' ' T here is something as beautiful in the, rough cleanness of belief of a Scotch or 
 Swiss artizan as there is in a well-scoured deal table and a spotless homespun napkin.' ' You 
 .spunge out the God-like from all the world. Everything is but an accident, and of these 
 accidents God is the earliest and man's soul the latest.' * The sense of duty in handling in- 
 decent things can never lead to their being handled like this ; the surgeon washes his hands ; 
 and this Guy de Maupassant, nay, rather this French nation, goes through no similar ablu- 
 tion.' ' It is no part of an honest man's duty to wash his dirty consciousness in public* 
 —Pail Mall Gazette. 
 
 Ottilie : An Eighteenth Century Idyl. Square 8vo, 
 
 cloth extra, 3s. 6d. 
 
 " A graceful little sketch. . . . We have nothing but praise for this agreeable little sketch, 
 which is drawn with full insight into the period described, and very considerable grace of 
 style ." — spectator. 
 
 " A graceful little picture. . . . Charming all through."*— ^crtrf«;y. 
 
 " Everywhere we note lightness, delicacy, and felicity of touch, and a sweet sympathy 
 with human nature.'' — Literary World, 
 
 " To all who relish a simple, natural, and most pathetic story admirably told, we recom- 
 mend thi.s eighteenth-century idyl." — St. James's Gazette. 
 
 " The simplicity and grace with which it is written will cause it to be read with keen enjoy- 
 ment by young people as well as their elders." — Harpej^s Magazine. 
 
 The Prince of the Hundred Soups : A Puppet Show 
 
 in Narrative. Edited with a Preface by Vernon Lee. Four Illustra- 
 tions in Sepia, by Sarah Birch. Cheaper edition, square 8vo, cloth, 
 3s.6d. 
 " This preface is highly curious, odd and interesting." — Saturday Review. 
 " What ' Vernon Lee ' tells us about him in her preface is even more interesting than ' The 
 Prince of the Hundred Soups ; ' and that— as we hope our readers will find out for themseWes 
 — is saying a good ^^?i\.." ^Academy . 
 
 "A very clever and admirably illustrated burlesque. . . . The preface is quite as inte- 
 resting as the book itself. . . . There is more humour in the volume than in half a dozen 
 ordinary pantomimes. " — Spectator. 
 
 " It is a choice little volume, from its title — indeed, from its outer cover — to its final page.*' 
 — Daily Neivs. 
 
 "Though, when I took it up, I was utterly wear^' and dazed with the number of books I 
 had gone through, yet I devoured it from cover to cover with a new zest." — Trttth, 
 
 London: T. FISHER UNWIN, 26, Paternoster Square, E.C.