Imatges de pàgina
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riment, to be soon repeated. Surely, if an illustration of the comparative inefficacy of such institutions were wanted, it would be furnished by that revolution. A few lean and sallow Cassiuses are a more portentous evil in any country, than a million of Neapolitan Carbonari.

Let those then who sympathize with the supposed wrongs of Naples, and who deduce, from the numbers and extension of the Carbonari, a conclusion that the revolution thus suppressed by Austria was the native offspring of the public mind of the country, guided and enlightened by these societies-be at their ease. They furnish no inference whatever of an improved state of national intellect. It is not by the mummery and mysticism of secret clubs, that the mind of a country is to be strengthened and developed: an accelerated and stimulated growth ends in premature decay; the fruit becomes rotten before it is ripe. The health of moral vegetation requires that it should pass through the gradations of progressive increase. The aim of the Carbonari seems to have been that of obtaining an imposing appearance by mere numbers. Is this a fair criterion of the mental advancement of a people?

We have dwelt the longer upon these particulars, because the Carbonari have of late engrossed some space in political speculation; and because the facts we have stated are an ample commentary on the habits and feelings of a people who scarcely assimilate in one point with any other European nation; and of whom, perhaps, what was applied by Tacitus to the ancient Germans, "sincera gens, et sui tantum similis," is the truest description. We shall now proceed to offer a few remarks on the literary history of this nation, as far as it is capable of being considered apart from the history of the literature of Italy in general.

Count Orloff's book is divided into three parts: the first being historical only; the second confined to policy and legislation; and the third, to literature. Of such a plan, at least as far as regards the first two divisions, the inconveniences are numerous. As a portion of general history, it fritters and disperses the reader's attention, instead of leading it on by a continuous chain of facts; it rises no higher than to the level of a meagre chronicle, and is without that which is appropriate to a chronicle order and arrangement. It is an unskilful severance of subjects not susceptible of division. The political condition of nations must be surveyed in parallel lines, as it were, with their historic incidents; because those incidents, whether of revolution, of invasion, of conquest, of migrations, of admixtures of the popu lation, or of change of dynasties, are the causes that influence and indicate that condition. The separation of topics so closely

allied breaks up the connexion of cause and effect, which it is the peculiar province of history to exhibit. Of this disjointed scheme, Dr. Henry's work, though left by its ingenious author in an unfinished state, had proceeded far enough to show the disadvantage.

Distinct dissertations, indeed, on literary history, are not liable to similar objections. Literature, rarely mixing itself with the public transactions of mankind, holds a more secret affinity with national character, and great historical vicissitudes. It is the current which flows in stillness, and pays its tribute to the ocean, without noise or tumult. We are sorry we cannot compliment our author upon the successful execution of this part of his task. His catalogue of literary names and literary works is sufficiently copious; but do these compose the whole of literary history? Much, probably, of our discontent arises from unreasonable expectation: having framed an estimate of those qualities of mind and learning which are requisite for a complete historical disquisition, we are, perhaps, unjustly dissatisfied with performances that fall short of our standard. To be always looking for the rare faculty of intuitively comprehending the leading principles of human action, of embodying and concentrating the diffused spirit of ages into pregnant aphorisms and great practical verities; of making history, in short, what it has in its perfection been said to be, "philosophy teaching by examples," might be too exacting; yet we must be permitted to complain, that the plan adopted by Count Orloff has hurried him along too rapidly to admit of any collateral research, or incidental illustration. Neither is the diction that which the academy in its best days would have tolerated. It is only much better than that of his self-complacent annotator, M. Duval; both the textwriter and his commentator, both master and man, indulge themselves ad nauseam in that sentimentality which the modern school of French writers holds to be one of the essential elements of fine writing on all subjects, whether history, philosophy, or romance. Pursuing, however, the line which he has traced, but occasionally filling it with details and observations the absence of which is one of the chief defects of his book, we proceed to a slight historical analysis of the literature of that part of Italy which constitutes the modern kingdom of Naples.

Materials for this purpose are abundant; for the south of Italy is rich in historical learning. Its archives have, indeed, suffered considerably from invasions, and particularly from those of the Vandals; but the greater portion, by a rare felicity, has escaped the ravages of time and barbarism. The monasteries of La Trinita della Cava and Monte Cassino contain inestimable treasures of original documents pertaining to the history of the kingdom,

Foreigners, and more particularly the inhabitants of northern Italy, are apt to smile with incredulity when they are told of the number of Neapolitan historians. Giannone's name is well known; but the sources from which he derived his materials are little known out of the kingdom. The names of Summonte, Costanzo, Pontano, Collenucio, Carracioli, and Capecelatro, are only a few of them. Besides these, various writers have compiled chronicles, from the provincial archives, which would form a rich collection, independently of the MS. registers of private families. The Libro del Duca di Montelone is of the highest authority. It is a series of historical facts, from the time of Joan II., and exhibits most curious pictures of the manners and transactions of the two following reigns. Moreover, every province, and even the smallest provincial town, boasts of its history.

Of the remote antiquity of this country, there are, of course, but scanty documents. The authors who flourished before the schools of Magna Græcia, and who could alone have guided us through the labyrinth, have not left so much as a name behind them. The Greek historians are too intent upon magnifying the importance of their own country, to deserve implicit faith when they treat of the people who were colonized and civilized by Greece. The loss of the early Roman historians is irreparable. Cato the censor * had devoted one entire book of history to inquiries concerning the origin and peopling of the old towns of Italy. Diodorus the Sicilian, Dionysius, and Dio, who explored all the antiquities of Italy, have come down to us in a state deplorably imperfect; and neither Plutarch, Sallust, nor Livy, has supplied the loss. But it is certain that the Greek republics of Italy rose rapidly to prosperity and power. The Brutians, in the fifth century of Rome, made the Greeks tremble for their own safety. Luxury and corruption, however, kept an equal pace with their prosperity. Cuma, Crotona, Tarentum, Rhegium, fell quickly under the Roman domination. In the time of Polybius, the very name of Magna Græcia was disused.

Great names adorned those republics. Zaleucus (whose existence is questioned by Bentley), and Charondas, were the legislators of Locris and of Thurium; but the name of Pythagoras is still greater he was born at Samos; and having accidentally heard the philosopher Pherecydes discourse upon the immortality of the soul, he abjured the low occupation to which he had been educated, and became himself a philosopher. Having enlarged his mind by travel, and enriched it with all the learning

Corn. Nep. in vit. M. P. Cato.

of his time, he settled at Crotona, and established his celebrated sect, which he governed by a peculiar code of ethics. Exemplary abstemiousness, scrupulous ablutions, and daily exercise, were among its primary duties. At the close of every day, each disciple instituted a rigorous self-examination into the mode in which he had employed it. The silence enjoined this little community was probably an imitation of the reserve and mystery in which the priests of Egypt, in whose doctrines Pythagoras is supposed to have been initiated, locked up their knowledge. Whether the metempsychosis of this philosopher was borrowed from India, or was symbolical merely of the changes and reproductions which prevail through animal and vegetable life; whether it was a part of his religion to worship fire, as the purest emanation from the Supreme Being; or this also was a mere external symbol of some occult doctrine; are matters which must still remain in darkness. But the philosophy of Pythagoras was an era in the civilization of man. The school which survived him continued the parent and nurse of that long succession of philosophers who flourished in the south of Italy during the two following ages.

The Eleatic sect arose soon after in this part of Italy. From this school emanated that false logic which, under the name of dialectics, confounded right and wrong, the weapon which was afterwards so dexterously wielded by the sophists who overran Athens and the other cities of Greece. From a passage in one of the epistles of Seneca, it should seem that Zeno, who was the leader of this sect, had adopted the hypothesis respecting the non-existence of matter which is so fully developed by Berkeley. Zeno died the death of a patriot; having made an ineffectual effort to recover the liberties of the little republic (Elia or Velia), which were destroyed by the tyrant Nearchus : Leucippus was the successor of Zeno. He invented the celebrated system of atoms, which Democritus and Epicurus adopted after him. Is it not to this philosopher also, that Descartes is indebted for his vortices, and the great mechanical axiom of the centrifugal qualities of rotatory bodies?

Of this period, the poetry has perished; but the ancient historians have preserved a few fragments of it. Plato cites so me of the verses of Parmenides; and Athenæus has preserved an entire poem (the Meleager) of Cleomenes of Rhegium. Tarentum produced three poets-Apollodorus, Leonidas, and Alexis, of whom Brunck, in his Analecta, has inserted some interesting remains. Alexis of Thurium was a celebrated writer of what is called the middle comedy. According to Suidas, he was the uncle of Menander, and wrote upwards of two hundred

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dramas. Athenæus, Julius Pollux, and Aulus Gellius, have cited them occasionally; and several detached sentences of them are to be found in the valuable collection of Grotius.*

In short, the south of Italy, in this remote period, might boast of a constellation of genius in philosophy and poetry. The cities of Magna Græcia had, for the most part, adopted a species of government which, though aristocratic, preserved enough of the popular form to nurture and encourage the competition of talent. But the glory of these little communities was destined to be extinguished in the overwhelming domination of Rome. They lost indeed their liberties; but the Romans preserved to them their municipal forms and native institutions. The twelve divisions into which Italy was distributed by Augustus, were afterwards changed by Adrian, by whom the whole peninsula was again partitioned into seventeen provinces. Of these, Cam pania, Samnium, Apulia, and Lucania, comprised the territory which now constitutes the Neapolitan kingdom; an arrangement fatal to the privileges of the free cities. Campania was governed by consuls, Apulia and Lucania by censors, and Samnium by prefects.

These provinces gave birth to Livius Andronicus, Pacuvius, Nævius, Ennius, and Lucilius; but Rome was the theatre of their fame. The former of these may be considered the founder of the Roman stage. He supplanted the barbarous satires which were called Atellan, or Oscan, by something that approached the regular drama. Nævius, a native of Campania, seems to have advanced the dramatic art still further. Cicero speaks in commendation of the purity of his style, and Virgil honoured him by borrowing more than one of his verses. Macrobius + points at the beautiful passage in the first book of the Æneid, where Venus complains to Jupiter of the storm that dispersed her beloved Trojans, as entirely taken from Nævius:

O qui res hominumque deûmque

Eternis regis imperiis, et fulmine terres,

Quid meus Eneas, &c.

If, indeed, Virgil borrowed this noble passage from Nævius, and made use also of entire lines from Ennius, as is also asserted by Macrobius, it is to be lamented that the verses, which that exquisite poet thus polished into brightness, are lost to us. We can discern neither the value of the obligation, nor the amount of the usury with which it was repaid. We have unfortunately too little of Ennius. But what remains of the Amphora makes us sigh, with the old woman in Phædrus, for what it once con

* See also Henry Stephen's Comicorum Sententiæ. Ed. Paris, 1586 +Saturnal. lib. 6.

VOL. XIX. NO. XXXVII.

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