ITALIAN LITERATURE

As I have said in the Introduction, in spite of the supreme greatness of the artistic products of Columbus’ Century, its paintings, sculpture and architecture, the literature of the time was not only not neglected, but occupies a place in the history of culture only second to that of the Periclean age of Athens. For a long time, indeed, the Age of Leo X, as it was called, was considered to be a serious rival in its literary treasures to that marvellous period of Greek thinking and writing. Subsequently the literary world passed through a period of exaggerated critical depreciation of it. There has been, however, a growing tendency in recent years, indeed during the last half century, to restore older appreciation of the literature of this period and to value it highly.

In every country in Europe there were books written during this time which not only will never die, but which are part of the familiar reading of the scholars at least of all time. Not that there are not many popular elements in this literature, but its scholarliness has made it a special favorite, and there are not a few books written at this time which no one with any pretence to education would willingly confess to being ignorant of. Ariosto, Machiavelli, Rabelais, Villon, Sir Thomas More, Erasmus, St. Teresa, Marguerite of Navarre and the Pleiades, as well as the Collects of the English Prayer Book, all these have an enduring significance in the realm of world literature that has brought about the publication of editions and translations of them in every cultivated language even in our generation over four centuries after their original production.

The Italian literature of the century is especially rich. It would be quite impossible to give it any adequate treatment in a chapter, for this is the Renaissance period, and the literature of the Italian Renaissance has been treated in many volumes. The most important of the writers is undoubtedly Ariosto, who has been much more appreciated by his own people than by other countries, though at times of deep interest in literature he has always had a profound influence on writers beyond the bounds of Italy. Saintsbury, in “The Earlier Renaissance,” has summed up his best qualities in some sentences that, considering the distance in time and place and temperament which separate poet and critic, may very well be taken as highest praise. Ariosto, he says, “is very nearly if not quite supreme in more than one respect. It may also be said that he never fails and that this freedom from failure is not due to tame faultlessness or a cowardly absence from the most difficult attempts that it will go hard but we must rank him, at lowest, just below the very greatest of all. Such a place is, I believe, his right even on the calculus of those who refuse the historic estimate or at least admit it with grudging. It has been said that as Rabelais he represents the greatest literature of his time penetrated most fully by the extra literary as well as the literary characteristics of that time; and it may be added not merely that few times have been so thoroughly represented, but that few have ever so thoroughly lent themselves to representation.”

With what is perhaps almost pardonable compatriotic enthusiasm, considering his really great merits as a poet, he has been called the Italian Homer, and his great work, "Orlando Furioso" has been called “the most beautiful and varied and wonderful romantic poem that the literature of the world can boast of.” In it are woven together with charming art the two great romantic cycles of Charlemagne and Arthur. It is the poetic apotheosis of chivalry written in wonderful perfection of style and taking form and with marvellous variety of incident. While the great poem has been a favorite rather with the Italians than with foreigners, when one realizes how deeply cultured Italian readers have been as a rule for all the centuries since Ariosto’s time, it is probable that no higher compliment than this devotion of his compatriots could be paid to him. The “Orlando” has not been without honor, however, in foreign countries, among those whose opinion is most to be valued. It cast into the shade the numberless poetical romances that had been written during the preceding century. None of the many imitations that it evoked have approached it either in beauty of form or style or in deep underlying human interest. Ariosto knew above all the human heart and had excellent control of pathos. He is especially capable in making the impossible or the improbable seem reasonable. Now, after four centuries, we know that he is of all time and belongs to the culture of all centuries.

Modern readers unacquainted with the writings of the older time are often inclined to think that the interests of the older writers were very different from those of humanity to-day and that, as a consequence, the reading of them would surely be a great bore. Even a little reading of Ariosto would show how eminently human and for all time a classic writer is and how literally it is true that he is often a commentary on the morning paper. One or two of Ariosto’s comparisons which show his interest in humanity and in life around him will serve to illustrate this. His observation of children is as close as that of Dante:

“Like to a child that puts a fruit away
When ripe, and then forgets where it is stored,
If it should chance that after many a day
Thither his step returns where is his hoard.
He wonders to behold it in decay.
Rotten and spoiled, and richness all outpoured;
And what he loved of old with keen delight
He hates, spurns, loathes, and flings away in spite.”

Like Dante, too, he was an observer of animals and noted especially the ways of dogs.

“And as we see two dogs the combat wage,
Whether by envy moved, or other hate,
Approaching whet the teeth, nor yet engage.
With eyes askance, and red as coals in grate,
Then to their biting come, on fire with rage.
With bitter cries, and backs with spite elate,

So came with swords and cries and many a taunt
Circassia’s knight and he of Chiaramont.”

Ariosto’s other poems, besides his Epic, are of minor significance. He wrote a series of satires that are rather chatty essays, on subjects literary and personal, in verse, than satires in our sense of the word. Above all, Ariosto took his own disappointments in life good-humoredly, and his optimism would remind one of Cervantes in certain ways. Garnett in his “History of Italian Literature” says, “His lyrical pieces are not remarkable, except one impressive sonnet in which he appears to express compunction for the irregularities of his life:

“How may I deem that Thou in heaven wilt hear,
O Lord divine, my fruitless prayer to Thee,
If for all clamor of the tongue Thou see
That yet unto the heart the net is dear?
Sunder it Thou, who all behold’st so clear,
Nor heed the stubborn will’s oppugnancy.
And this do Thou perform, ere, fraught with me,
Charon to Tartarus his pinnace steer.
By habitude of ill that veils Thy light.
And sensual lure, and paths in error trod.
Evil from good no more I know aright.
Ruth for frail soul submissive to the rod
May move a mortal; in her own despite
To drag her heavenward is work of God.”

In Italy the sacre rappresentazioni, as the Miracle and Mystery plays were called, had a distinct period of development, though not equal to that of the English, and good specimens of them have not been preserved for us. We have evidence of the influence of them, however, in the fact that some of the scholarly poets of the time wrote plays founded on the myths of the old Olympian religion after the model of some of these mystery plays. Politian’s "Orfeo" is perhaps the best example of this. It was little better than an improvisation composed in the short space of two days at Mantua on the occasion of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga’s visit to his native town in 1472, but it marks an epoch in the evolution of Italian poetry. Addington Symonds has even gone so far as to say that “it is the earliest example of the secular drama, containing within the compass of its brief scenes the germ of the opera, the tragedy and the pastoral play.” It contained portions that were to be sung as well as to be spoken, and there are episodes of terza rima, Madrigals, a Carnival song, a Ballata as well as the choral passages that are distinctly operatic. After Orpheus has violated the law that he must not look upon his wife until they have reached the upper world, his complaint is of lyric quality that has something of the Grecian choric ode in it. Addington Symonds in his “Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe” has translated the passages so as to give an excellent idea of the character of the play:

“Who hath laid laws on Love?
Will pity not be given
For one short look so full thereof?
Since I am robbed of heaven,
Since all my joy so great is turned to pain,
I will go back and plead with Death again!

TISIPHONE

Nay, seek not back to turn!
Vain is thy weeping, all thy words are vain.
Eurydice may not complain
Of aught but thee albeit her grief is great.
Vain are thy verses ’gainst the voice of fate!
How vain thy song! For death is stern!
Try not the backward path: thy feet refrain!
The laws of the abyss are fixed and firm remain.”

Addington Symonds has given a number of examples of the popular Italian poetry of the Renaissance which show the qualities of this mode of literature very well, and above all illustrate how like in its character it is to the lighter modes of verse at all times and especially our own. Politian, the great scholar whose learning filled the lecture rooms of Florence with students of all nations and whose critical and rhetorical works marked an epoch in the history of scholarship, was able to unbend at times and write ballate, as they were called, though they were very different from our ballads, which were to be sung during the dances in the piazzas on summer evenings. Stanzas from some of these will serve to show their character. The last stanza, for instance, of his May Ballad is on the world-old theme, “Gather ye rose-buds while ye may.”

“I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day.
In a green garden in mid month of May.

For when the full rose quits her tender sheath.
When she is sweetest and most fair to see.
Then is the time to place her in thy wreath,
Before her beauty and her freshness flee.
Gather ye therefore roses with great glee.
Sweet girls, or ere their perfume pass away.

I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.”

Many of the Italian scholars of the period gave the time to the writing of ballads, and one which has been ascribed to Lorenzo dei Medici is often quoted. In it the word signore, which means lord, is used instead of the name of the lady, because she is the lord of the singer’s soul.

“How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free
When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?

One only comfort soothes my heart’s despair.
And mid this sorrow lends my soul some cheer;
Unto my lord I ever yielded fair
Service of faith untainted pure and clear;
If then I die thus guiltless, on my bier
It may be she will shed one tear for me.

How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free
When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?”

These ballads were often on the pagan theme of snatching life’s opportunities while one might, a popular expression of the Renaissance time, an echo of Horace’s Carpe diem, “snatch the day,” which the Roman had taken from his Greek models. Every now and then, however, there is a more serious note in the Carnival songs written to be sung during the revels at the Carnival time, when it is surprising to find such a thought emphasized. One of the best known of these Carnival songs is attributed to Lorenzo de’ Medici:

“Fair is youth and void of sorrow;
But it hourly flies away.
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Naught ye know about to-morrow.

Midas treads a wearier measure:
All he touches turns to gold:
If there be no taste of pleasure,
What’s the use of wealth untold?

What’s the joy his fingers hold,
When he’s forced to thirst for aye?
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Naught ye know about to-morrow.”

After Lorenzo’s death one of these Carnival songs, to express the grief of his people for him, written by Antonio Alamanni, was sung by maskers habited as skeletons who rode on a car of death, the music to it being that of a dead march. As a contrast to the less serious songs it is worth quoting:

“Sorrow, tears, and penitence
Are our doom of pain for aye:
This dead concourse riding by
Hath no cry but penitence!

E’en as you are, once were we:
You shall be as now we are:
We are dead men, as you see:
We shall see you dead men, where
Naught avails to take great care.
After sins, of penitence.

We too in the Carnival
Sang our love-songs through the town
Thus from sin to sin we all
Headlong, heedless, tumbled down;
Now we cry, the world around.
Penitence! oh, penitence!

Senseless, blind, and stubborn fools!
Time steals all things as he rides:
Honors, glories, states, and schools,
Pass away, and naught abides;
Till the tomb our carcass hides.
And compels this penitence.”

Strange as it may seem, the Italian prose of Columbus’ Century has had a wider vogue and influence than its poetry. Two literary springs in prose have flowed out of Italy fiction and history. The greatest of modern historical writers is undoubtedly Machiavelli. His name has been so much deprecated because of the doctrines that he is thought to have suggested that very few people realize what a profound student of human nature he was and how deep was his philosophy. His famous book, "Il Principe" (The Prince), was written within a decade of Columbus’ death and at once attracted wide attention. This great political monograph is a calm analysis of the various methods whereby an ambitious conscienceless man may rise to sovereign power. It is usually supposed to be a setting forth of his own absolutely principleless philosophy. As a matter of fact, it is quite as much a lesson in politics for all the world, and while it might be studied faithfully by a man who wanted to usurp sovereign authority in a free state, it contains a series of lessons, which he who runs may read, for all citizens to know just how the downfall of their liberties may be brought about. There probably was never a contribution to political philosophy that has attracted so much attention. It is one of the few books that the serious politicians of all countries and nearly every generation since Machiavelli’s time have considered it worth while to read. As a matter of fact, it is esteemed so highly as a human document that it is almost considered a serious defect in scholarship for anyone who claims to be educated to confess ignorance of it.

After a set of discourses on Livy, Machiavelli was commissioned to write the history of Florence. This is the first attempt in any literature to trace the political life of a people, showing all the forces at work upon them and the consequent effects. He places the portrait of Florence on the background of a very striking group of pictures drawn from Italian history. Necessarily, since he was employed at their suggestion for the purpose, the Medici are given a place of first rank and very great prominence. This was not mere subserviency, however, but was a very proper estimation of the rôle played by that house in the fortunes of Florence. He puts into the mouths of his historical characters speeches after the manner of Livy and Thucydides, and some of these speeches are masterpieces of Italian oratory. His style is vigorous and without any thought of ornamentation, informed only by the effort to express his meaning completely and forcibly. Later he wrote a play which John Addington Symonds, the English critic whose deep knowledge of Italian literature gives his opinion much weight, did not hesitate to call “the ripest and most powerful single play in the Italian language.” There may be difference of opinion as to Machiavelli’s place in philosophy, and above all in ethics, but there can be no doubt about his genius as an historian and a writer, as a profound student of men and their ways and one of the greatest contributors to political philosophy.

We have come to discount all that has been said in derogation of Machiavelli’s personal character, though it must not be forgotten that even in the older time there were men who realized that his book was an essay in political philosophy that made a wonderful revelation and not in any sense a confession of personal opinions. It has been said that we owe the expression, “Old Nick,” as used familiarly for the devil, to the fact that Machiavelli’s first name Was Nicholas. Sam Butler long ago wrote:

“Nick Machiavelli had ne’er a trick,
Though he gave his name to our old Nick.”

In our own time some of the men whose wide knowledge and large experience have best fitted them to express an opinion on Machiavelli have been most emphatic in their high estimation of his character and influence. Above all, they have insisted on the enduring character of his work and the fact that it appeals to the essential in human nature, not to the passing fads of any single generation. Two such different men in intellectual training as John Morley and Lord Acton are agreed on this as they could not have agreed on most other things. Morley said that “Machiavelli was a contemporary of any age and a citizen of any country.” Lord Acton said that he was “no vanishing type, but a constant and contemporary influence.”

Besides a novel, which we quote from later in this chapter, and his political and historical works, Machiavelli wrote a series of plays and poems which are of high literary value. Garnett in his “Italian Literature” says that “he came nearer than any contemporary, except Leonardo da Vinci, to approving himself a universal genius. No man of his time stands higher intellectually, and his want of moral elevation is largely redeemed by his ample endowment with the one virtue chiefly needful to an Italian of his day, but of which too many Italians were destitute patriotism.”

Another of Columbus’ great contemporaries among Italian writers was Guicciardini, the Italian historian (1483-1540). Unlike most of the great historians, he was a man of affairs. When less than twenty he was sent as Florentine Ambassador to the King of Spain, and in his early twenties, under Pope Leo X, governed Modena and Reggio with such talent as drew wide attention to him. He was the Lieutenant-General of the Anti-Imperial Army in 1527, later was one of the Eight at Florence, and from 1531 to 1534 ruled Bologna as Papal Vice-Legate. He tells the story of Italy from 1492 to 1534 in great detail. He writes as an eye-witness who had himself been prominent in most of the scenes that he describes. The mass of matter is not allowed to obscure the picture as a whole, and the work has distinct literary value. Probably never in the world’s history has such a description of events come from a man who was himself one of the most prominent actors in them. His work has been declared “the greatest historical work that had appeared since the beginning of the modern era” ("Encyclopædia Britannica").

About the middle of the nineteenth century Guicciardini’s hitherto unpublished works were given to the public in ten volumes and served to throw wonderful light on the historian himself. His "Ricordi Politici" deserve to be placed beside Machiavelli’s “Prince,” and it is easy to understand, after reading them, that Guicciardini regarded his friend Machiavelli somewhat as “an amiable visionary or political enthusiast.” There has probably never been a set of human documents that illuminated the heights and depths of humanity so well as these writings of the Renaissance. To read Machiavelli, Guicciardini’s "Ricordi," Benvenuto Cellini’s “Autobiography” and Rabelais is to see the contradictions that there are in this microcosm man better than is possible in any other way. If we but add Montaigne, who was educated in our century, the picture is complete. These men of the Renaissance saw clearly and deeply into humanity through the lens of themselves. Guicciardini, devoid of passion as well as of high moral standards in personal life, eminently loyal to his patrons at all times, just so far as administration of law went, and unquestionably able, possesses all that ordinarily is assumed to bring the admiration if not the respect of men, yet no one can read his “Reminiscences” without feeling the deepest repugnance for his cynicism, selfishness and distrust of men. Ranke has impugned his good faith as an historian, and his quondam repute is gone. It is this very contrast, as exhibited in his writings, that makes Guicciardini’s works as valuable a contribution to the story of humanity as the many masterpieces of his contemporaries.

One of the writers of this time who must not be omitted, though his merit has not always been recognized, is Vasari, whose “Lives of the Painters” has interested every generation in every country who have occupied themselves much with the great artists. Himself an artist, living on intimate terms with many of the men whose lives he sketched and gathering anecdotes about them and rescuing many a personal trait from oblivion that otherwise would have been lost to posterity, Vasari succeeded in making an extremely valuable as well as interesting book. Some of his anecdotes have been discredited, and he has often been open to the criticism of lack of critical acumen in his compilations of materials, but his industry, his recognition of what was likely to be of interest and his untiring efforts to make his sketch as complete as possible, deserve the recognition which they have obtained. While his style is apparently most artless, he possesses, as Garnett has said, “either the science or the knack of felicitous composition to an extraordinary degree.” It must not be forgotten that this apparent lack of art is often the highest art, and so it is not surprising to hear Vasari spoken of as the Herodotus of art. His good taste in art as well as in literature is demonstrated by his admiration for the first fruits of the early Tuscan school which were neglected in his day. He was one of the genial, lovable men of the time who made many friends.

The most popularly interesting phase of the literature of the Renaissance and Columbus’ Century for our time is doubtless the fiction that was written so plentifully and so widely read during the period. Whenever a large number of people become interested in reading, after a time more and more superficial reading is provided for them until finally the most trivial of story-telling becomes the vogue. This has happened at a number of times in the world’s history. It can be traced in Rome with the decadence, in the Oriental countries, as Burton’s edition of the “Thousand and One Nights” shows so clearly, and in our own time as well as during the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Another interesting development is the tendency for the fiction that is popular among the better and supposedly more educated classes, gradually to be occupied more and more with sex problems and sexual questions of all kinds. Whenever many have leisure and a smattering of education, this occurs. It is quite noticeable during the Renaissance period, though a great many good stories were written of excellent literary quality without any tinge of this.

The writing of novels in Italy had begun with Boccaccio in the fourteenth century, and continued with Sacchetti and Giovanni Il Fiorentino. About the middle of the fifteenth century, however, this mode of writing became all the fashion, and the number of novels, though of course by the word novelle the Italians meant a short story, is almost without end. Very many of them have been lost, but a very large number have been preserved. The first of the writers of the time was Massuccio Salernitano, who flourished during the latter half of the fifteenth century and died towards its close. Doni has said of him, “Hail then to the name of Salernitano, who, scorning to borrow even a single word from Boccaccio, has produced a work which he may justly regard as his own.” It is to him that we owe the first form of what afterwards became “Romeo and Juliet.” Massuccio was a realist and called “Heaven to witness that the whole of his stories are a faithful narrative of events occurring during his own time.” Fifty of his novels at least are extant.

Often these novel writers did not attempt any other mode of literature, and indeed not infrequently were not scholarly in any sense of the word, but the next of the Italian novelists of the time, Savadino degli Arienti, was an accomplished scholar and historian. His history of his native city Bologna is still considered very valuable by his countrymen. He entitled his tales “Porretane” because he declared that they had been recited at the baths of Porreto, which was the favorite summer resort and place of public amusement for the Bolognese. The recital of these would be supposed to occupy somewhat the place that moving pictures do now. There is a variety of amusing adventures, witty stories, love tales, and sometimes tragic incidents for contrast. Besides his novels and his history, Ariente wrote an account of illustrious ladies, Delle Donne Clare, dedicated to Giunipera Sforza Bentivoglio, which shows very clearly how the women of the Renaissance, as we have come to know them, were appreciated by their masculine contemporaries very early in Columbus’ Century.

After Savadino comes Luigi da Porto. Crippled by a wound early in life, he turned from the army to literature and became the friend of many of the scholars of the time, especially Cardinal Bembo and members of the Gonzaga family. To him we owe “Juliet” in its best and purest form. It is the only story we have from him, but it secured world-wide reputation at the time and has never lost its interest for mankind. Porto was followed by Leonardo Illicini, another writer of a single novel which has been preserved and has gone through a number of editions. Illicini, or Licinio, as his name is sometimes given, was a physician, for a time the court physician to the Duke of Milan, afterwards professor of medicine at Ferrara and one of the distinguished philosophers of the time. Every man is said to have one good story in him, if he only has the time and energy to write it, and Illicini wrote his and attracted the attention of his distinguished friends and contemporaries by the nobleness and beauty of the sentiments which he incorporated into it and which make it a singular exception to the usual tenor of Italian novels.

Like Illicini, Machiavelli, the historian and political philosopher, took it upon himself to write a novel which few people have read and yet which has a certain exaggeration of social satire which sets it rather closely in touch with our time. The story represents indeed a curious ever-recurring phase of the attitude that men are accustomed for jest purposes only to assume toward marriage. According to the story, the devils were very much disturbed over the fact that most of the married men who came to hell blamed their coming on their wives. Hell had been well enough so long as people were willing to admit that they were punished deservedly, but society there became very uncomfortable under this new dispensation. The devils resolved to send one of their number up to earth to find out about it. Belphagor, one of the fallen Archangels, having assumed the body of a handsome man of thirty and a large fortune, is commissioned to marry and live with a wife for ten years. He finds no difficulty in getting a bride, having “soon attracted the notice of many noble citizens blessed with large families of daughters and small incomes. The former of these was soon offered to him, and Belphagor chose a very beautiful girl with the name of Onesta.” The name, which signifies purity, is evidently chosen for a purpose by Machiavelli, for, while the wife is as pure as an angel, she has more than the pride of Lucifer.

A good idea of the way the story develops can only be obtained by quoting a passage from the translation of the novel:

“He had not long enjoyed the society of his beloved Onesta before he became tenderly attached to her, and was unable to behold her suffer the slightest inquietude or vexation. Now, along with her other gifts of beauty and nobility, the lady had brought into the house of Roderigo such an insufferable portion of pride that in this respect Lucifer himself could not equal her, for her husband, who had experienced the effects of both, was at no loss to decide which was the most intolerable of the two. Yet it became infinitely worse when she discovered the extent of Roderigo’s attachment to her, of which she availed herself to obtain an ascendency over him and rule him with an iron rod. Not content with this, when she found he would bear it, she continued to annoy him with all kinds of insults and taunts, in such a way as to give him the most indescribable pain and uneasiness. For what with the influence of her father, her brothers, her friends and relatives, the duty of the matrimonial yoke, and the love he bore her, he suffered all for some time with the patience of a saint. It would be useless to recount the follies and extravagancies into which he ran in order to gratify her taste for dress and every article of the newest fashion, in which our city, ever so variable in its nature, according to its usual habits, so much abounds. Yet, to live upon easy terms with her, he was obliged to do more than this; he had to assist his father-in-law in portioning off his other daughters; and she next asked him to furnish one of her brothers with goods to sail for the Levant, another with silks for the West, while a third was to be set up in a goldbeater’s establishment at Florence. In such objects the greatest part of his fortune was soon consumed. At length the carnival season was at hand; the festival of St. John was to be celebrated, and the whole city, as usual, was in a ferment. Numbers of the noblest families were about to vie with each other in the splendor of their parties, and the Lady Onesta, being resolved not to be outshone by her acquaintance, insisted that Roderigo should exceed them all in the richness of their feasts. For the reason above stated he submitted to her will; nor, indeed, would he have scrupled at doing much more, however difficult it might have been, could he have flattered himself with a hope of preserving the peace and comfort of his household and of awaiting quietly the consummation of his ruin. But this was not the case, inasmuch as the arrogant temper of his wife had grown to such a height of asperity, by long indulgence, that he was at a loss in what way to act. His domestics, male and female, would no longer remain in the house, being unable to support for any length of time the intolerable life they led. The inconvenience which he suffered, in consequence of having no one to whom he could intrust his affairs, it is impossible to express. Even his own familiar devils, whom he had brought along with him, had already deserted him, choosing to return below rather than longer submit to the tyranny of his wife. Left, then, to himself, amidst his turbulent and unhappy life, and having dissipated all the ready money he possessed, he was compelled to live upon the hopes of the returns expected from his ventures in the East and the West. Being still in good credit, in order to support his rank, he resorted to bills of exchange; nor was it long before, accounts running against him, he found himself in the same situation as many other unhappy speculators in the market. Just as his case became extremely delicate, there arrived sudden tidings, both from the East and West, that one of his wife’s brothers had dissipated the whole of Roderigo’s profits in play, and that while the other was returning with a rich cargo uninsured, his ship had the misfortune to be wrecked, and he himself was lost.”

Belphagor fled and, having suffered much from his pursuers, finally escapes, and at the end of the novel is having a rather good time at the court of the King of France, where he has entered into possession of the daughter of the King and is attracting much appreciated attention from friends, relatives, courtiers, physicians and the clergy by the acts which he causes her to perform. An Italian to whom Belphagor had confided his secret comes to Court and recognizes the particular devil’s activities. He tries to persuade Belphagor to leave his victim, but the demon refuses absolutely. Finally the Italian, catching Belphagor unawares, calls out that his wife is coming after him. With a shriek, the poor devil abandons his victim and is glad to find his way back to hell.

During the first half of the sixteenth century there are a whole series of Italian novelists, each one of them the writer of many novels. One of the earliest of these is Firenzuola, who is said to have been a monk and who was a scholar, for among his collected works are a translation of “Apuleius’ Golden Ass,” treatises on animals, two comedies, as well as critical and literary work of other kinds. After him came Cinthio, who wrote “Hecatomithi or Hundred Fables.” He was a very prolific writer, perhaps the most popular in his own time, with recurring periods of popularity since. His praises were celebrated by nearly all the scholars of the period. His writing was vivid but daring, and the style shows the beginning of that degeneration, from over-consciousness of effort to make it scholarly, so often characteristic of a period when genius is giving place to mere talent. One of his stories furnished the incidents for Shakespeare’s “Tragedy of Othello,” and this has given Cinthio a place in the commentators on Shakespeare. Another of the Italian novelists whose memory has been frequently renewed for a similar reason was Matteo Bandello, who is often spoken of as the best from a literary standpoint, as he is the most voluminous of the Italian novelists of this period. He is almost the only one of them, besides Boccaccio, known beyond the confines of Italy, and though he was a priest and afterwards a bishop, his stories are as immoral as those of the other novelists of the time.

Indeed, the most important characteristic of all this novel-writing in Italy is that most of the stories were quite without moral qualities, not a few of them were licentious and some of them made their appeal mainly through the liking for descriptions of cruelty to which mankind is apparently always attracted. In our time the corresponding reading is the daily newspaper. The stories of the crime and cruelty of the day before that are told each morning are about of the average length of these novelle as written by the Italian novelists of the Renaissance. There is the same demand for them and they are just as much talked about. For literary quality the novels are infinitely higher than our modern newspaper stories. The interesting thing about these novels of indecency and cruelty is that the claim of their authors at least was that they were written in order to bring about reformation and the correction of evil by spreading the knowledge of it and so making people realize its hideousness. Whenever any excuse is given for our publication of the cruel and immoral details of crime in our newspapers, it follows this same specious line of reasoning. Not a few of the writers of the popular novels were clergymen. Bandello was made a bishop, yet continued his writing of novels. It is perfectly possible for good, well-meaning men at any time to be mistaken in the accomplishment of a purpose, and popularity was as great a bait as the making of money is in our time.

One of the most interesting contributions to Italian prose at this time is the “Autobiography” of Benvenuto Cellini, which finds its place very properly after the fiction of the period. The book has been famous in the modern time, particularly since Goethe translated it, and has gone through many editions in nearly every language in Europe. Long ago, Walpole pronounced it “more amusing than any novel,” and it is probably rather as fiction than as genuine autobiography that it must be judged. The style is simple, direct, straightforward, and the wonderful romance has great historical value, for Cellini was in contact with most of the great men and many of the higher nobility of his time, and he has used his experiences as the groundwork of the story. It is hard to tell now how much of it may be true, for Cellini’s great works of art would seem to contradict it, in so far as it represents him as a frequent brutal murderer, while the amount of labor that he must have given to the many works we have from him would seem to make impossible that he should have spent quite so much time as his life would hint in light living and idleness, while the affection of his contemporaries and their respect for him in his declining years would seem to be further contradiction. He was evidently one of those men who like to be thought worse than they really are and like so many of the artists of all times who are anxious to produce the impression that their works were flashes of genius and not the result of careful patient labor as well.

One of the books that had a very wide influence at this period and which deserves much more than Benvenuto’s romance to be thought typical of the time is Baldassare Castiglione’s "Cortigiano," in which the author depicts the ideal courtier or gentleman of the time. The method of presentation is by a series of conversations held at the Court of Urbino among the distinguished persons who frequented it in the time when most of the best-known characters of the Renaissance found their way occasionally up to the little hill town. Castiglione’s standard for the gentleman is very high, not only in personal conduct, but especially in intellectual accomplishment. His purpose to draw the picture of a scholar-gentleman, the ideal of an accomplished knight, seemed to his contemporaries to have been successfully fulfilled. The book was widely read. It influenced not only Italy and France and the Latin-American countries, but above all affected the English deeply. Mr. Courthope says that, “Carried to the North of Europe and grafted on the still chivalrous manners of the English aristocracy, the ideal of Castiglione contributed to form the character of Sir Philip Sidney. Augustus Hare in his “Ladies of the Italian Renaissance” (New York, 1904) says:

“Spenser declared that the aim of his book is the same: ’To fashion a gentleman in noble person, in virtuous and gentle discipline.’ We might fill a volume with instances of the marvellous influence which the work of Castiglione had upon Elizabethan literature, as we hear it echoing through the sonnets of Shakespeare, Spenser’s hymns ’Of Heavenly Love,’ Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Burton, the poets and early dramatists, even the grave Ascham; and, amongst later writers, Shelley’s ‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’ is steeped in the same Italian Platonism.”

As a rule, indeed, it may be said that what was best in the literature and art of the Italian Renaissance had a much wider influence than the worse elements in it. It is only in after-times that many of the unfortunately too human contributions to the intellectual life of this period have been revived among scholars and have come to be looked upon as expressive of the spirit of the time. In every movement there are always the lesser men whose notes are discordant and who exaggerate the significance of their own ideas and often exhibit the worst side of human nature. To conclude from them, however, as to the real temper of the time and its influence would be a sad mistake. Castiglione meant ever so much more in the Europe of his day than Cellini. The “Courtier” sank deep into the minds of poets, artists and literary and educated folk of all classes and aroused what was best in those who were influencing their generation. The “Autobiography” was read much more widely, but mainly by people whose influence over others was to be slight, while the poets and writers and artists did not take it very seriously, but spent a leisure hour or two over it as over any other romance, and turned to their work again.