century. Salvator Rosa, the painter, was the most distinguished amongst them; he was a native of Naples; his satires have the bitterness and sternness of Juvenal. He writes also with the flowing eloquence of that poet; but he abuses his own fertility, and knows not how to stop. His great fault is saying too much. In the drama, Porta arrived at great excellence; his genius was indeed universal. His tragedies of Il Georgio, and l'Ulisse, still maintain their reputation. But in the pastoral drama, a Neapolitan barber, Gian Battista Breggazano, shone nearly without a rival. The comedies of Porta also were deservedly admired in his day. Count Grloff observes of this extraor dinary being,

«C'est vraiment une chose très remarquable, qu'au milieu d'études sérieuses, et de travaux d'un genre si différent, Porta ait pu composer un si grand nombre de piéces dramatiques. Dans ses comédies on trouve le sel de Plaute, et tout l'art de l'Arioste. Et peut-être se montre t-il supérieur a l'un comme a l'autre, dans le choix de ses sujets, dans l'emploi des incidents, dont il se sert pour renouer et sou tenir l'action." (Tom. iv. p. 381.)

In a language so easily wedded to music, the opera is almost of indigenous growth; and in the age on which we have been occupied, it rose to great perfection. Antonio Basso, Sorren tino, the author of Ciro, and others, whose names alone would extend our article to an unreasonable length, prepared the way for Zeno and Metastasio, from whose hands the Italian opera received its last touches.

The eighteenth century was the age of the severe sciences, rather than of poetry. Count Orloff has only strung together a barren nomenclature of the Neapolitan poets of this period; names too obscure for commemoration, and scarcely heard of beyond the limits of their own country. Nor is this silence a matter of condolence; the times are gone when cities were built by the sound of a lyre, or armies inflamed by the strains of a Tyrtæus. The spirit of imitation has so long subsisted in Italy, that we may reasonably despair of seeing again the sublimity of Dante, the pencillings of Tasso, the opulence of Ariosto. On the other hand, sonnets, madrigals, elegies, canzoni, were every day starting into sickly existence, and then disappearing for ever.

"Versus inopes rerum, nugæque canora."

It is in this age, nevertheless, that we contemplate the human faculties in their grander movements. A sounder logic, and more rational philosophy, were cultivated in Europe. The kingdom of Naples had been transferred to Austria, but the policy of the Spanish administration was still continued. Financial disorders, vexatious imposts, harassed and afflicted this

VOL. XIX. NO. XXXVII.

D

devoted country. But in spite of her arbitrary and oppressive governments, Naples could boast of many establishments friendly

to science and letters.

In Giannone, jurisprudence found one of its greatest ornaments, who was born in the province of Capitanata, and studied at Naples. He began his celebrated Civil History of Naples at an early period of his life. He was a zealous, not to say virulent, opponent of the usurpations of Rome; a circumstance to which he owes much of his reputation, and almost all his misfortunes. His work, on which he had bestowed twenty years of unremitted labour, appeared in 1723. But the liberality of its tenets soon earned it the honour of a place in the Index expurgatorius of Rome. He was, moreover, excommunicated by the archiepiscopal court of Naples, and exiled from his country. The principal events of his life are compendiously stated by Count Orloff.

"Il alla chercher un asyle et la paix a Vienne, ou il trouva un appur dans le prince Eugene, qui savoit allier la philosophie à la plus grande gloire militaire. Ce prince et quelques savants qui le protegèrent, parvinrent a lui faire obtenir une pension de l'empereur Charles VI. Ce fut alors que Giannone se crut assez puissant pour se venger de l'injustice dont il était victime. Il fit circuler, pour sa defense, quelques opuscules manuscrits, dans lesquels il ne put contenir son humeur satirique. Le même sentiment lui dicta l'ouvrage très curieux qui avait titre: Triregno, ossia del regno del Cielo, della Terra et del Papa. La cour de Rome s'empressa d'en faire acheter toutes les copies manuscrites qui circulaient, afin d'en empècher la publicité; elle parvint a les faire entièrement disparaître.

pour

"Lorsque Charles VI. perdit le royaume de Naples, Giannone perdit aussi sa pension. Dans cette circonstance, il fut assez imprudent pour retourner en Italie. Accueilli d'abord a Venise, il en fut peu après chasse, traversa l'Italie, déguisé, et se refugia à Genéve. Là, cédant aux instances perfides d'un officier Piedmontais, il se laissa entrainer hors du territoire de cette petite république. Son lâche guide le fit. arrêter par des sbirres, et conduire dans la forteresse de Miolens; on le séparà de son fils unique, le compagnon de ses malheurs et de ses voyages. Apres quelque temps, il fut transféré à la citadelle de Turin. Dans sa triste prison, le malheureux Giannone chercha consolation dans les lettres, commenta des auteurs classiques, écrivit des mémoires, traduisit des livres ; il en fit même un pour soutenir les droits du roi de Sardaigne qui pour recompense l'oublia dans sa prison. Accablé de misére et de chagrins, il se résigna, enfin, à abjurer, à réfuter lui-même les maximes qu'il avait avancées dans sa belle et savante histoire. Apres douze années d'emprisonment, il mourut âgé de 72 ans, en 1748."-(Tom. iv. p. 393, 394.)

John Baptista Vico was a man of universal talent. Philosophy, politics, poetry, the belles lettres in general, he cultivated with equal diligence. Left in a destitute condition, his genius

i

was nursed in solitude, and quickened by misfortune. All his \writings breathe an air of originality: his imagination was ardent and active, and derived its aliment from vast and profound reading. Plato and Bacon were a species of household divinities to this indefatigable student. The celebrated work of the Scienza Nuova dintorno Alla Commune Natura delle Nazioni, is a lasting monument of philosophical powers of generalization which have been rarely equalled. Its obscurity is apparent, rather than real. It requires, indeed, to be read diligently, and even laboriously; and the author himself deprecates the judgment of those who may presume to criticise it on a slight and careless perusal.

The reign of Charles III. was the proudest political era that Naples had yet witnessed. The judicious measures of Tannuci, his minister, and the actual presence of the monarch himself, inspired life and activity into the state, and the Neapolitan people might for the first time be called a nation. The discipline of the university was restored; the magnificent building which it now occupies appropriated for its reception, and the Farnese library consecrated to its use. To this auspicious period belongs Antonio Genovesi, a proselyte from scholastic theology, the study to which he was originally destined, to the pursuits of a liberal and enlightened philosophy. We contemplate in him, perhaps, the most extraordinary man that ever arose in Italy. He was a disciple of Vico, whose doctrines he elucidated, by a commentary which completely cleared them of the perplexities in which his master had intentionally enveloped them. What Bacon was to Europe in general, Genovesi was to Italy. The spirit of philosophy, almost at his bidding, pervaded every science, and the principles of right reasoning diffused a steady light over the labours of succeeding students, for whom he had first opened a way disentangled from mysticism and error. He was in truth the founder of a school in philosophy, which had all that was great or eminent in Italy among its students. He combined the theories of Locke and Leibnitz, extracting from each that which was most consonant to the interests of man, and the improvement of his mind. If he wandered occasionally into the wilds of a boundless speculation, he was led astray by his unlimited confidence in the perfectibility of the human mind; an error that bespeaks generous and enlarged, though not accurate habits of thinking.

Genovesi filled the moral chair at the university. His talents attracted a numerous class; and truths to which they had been heretofore indifferent or inattentive, came mended from his tongue. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the theological professorship; but a munificent individual, Bartolomeo Intieri,

having founded a lectureship on political economy, upon the express condition that Genovesi should be the Professor, it was in his lectures upon that branch of philosophy that he employed the vast resources of his genius, and displayed the great depth of his acquirements. But his greatest work is his Treatise upon Metaphysics: nor is it the least of its merits, that it is divested of the learned nomenclature generally used in metaphysical dissertations, and completely adapted, by its elementary form, to popular use. Exhausted by his labours, this eminent man died in 1769, at the early age of 55.

Emulous of his example, and disciplined by his precepts, se veral accomplished scholars followed in the same department. But our limits admonish us that inasmuch as our mention of them would necessarily be confined to the barren enumeration of their names, it would be better to pass them by, and content ourselves with the selection only of the most prominent and conspicuous merit that belongs to the period under our examination. We conclude, therefore, our slight view of Neapolitan literature during the reign of Charles III. by remarking, that with the exception of poetry and eloquence, every branch of human knowledge made rapid advances.

The long and eventful reign of his son, Ferdinand IV. brings us to Our own times, and involves the actual state of knowledge and letters, in this part of Italy, which partook, in due proportion, of the general amelioration of Europe. In Naples, however, Genovesi left no equal. His plan of instruction was followed, his maxims paraphrased; but his disciples fell far short, in knowledge and genius, of their illustrious master. Naples, a city of lawyers, remained stationary in jurisprudence. The gothic and feudal edifice, with all its anomalies and errors, was still unshaken. Disorder, despotism, and anarchy, prevailed through that shapeless chaos, to which every dynasty and successive monarch had added something to augment its disproportions and multiply its deformities. But, among the theoretic writers who laboured to reform the civil and criminal codes, Francisco Mario Pagano holds a conspicuous place. The bar was then the great theatre of talent. Pagano, a disciple of Genovesi, soon left, however, that stormy occupation for the peaceful retirements of philosophy and study. In 1783, he pubfished his Saggi Politici, a treatise which ranks him with the first writers upon public law; and in his smaller work, entitled Considerazioni sul Processo Criminale, he unfolded the true principles of penal jurisprudence, and urged those mitigations and amendments of retributive law, which had indeed been already recommended by Beccaria in a style more diffuse, but less forcible and impressive. Pagano, having accepted an office from

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the French usurpation of 1799, was sacrificed, on the restoration of Ferdinand, to the vindictive policy of the times, and publicly executed, with numerous other victims of that calamitous period. Filangieri may be styled the Montesquieu of Naples. his early youth, he addicted himself to the diligent study of the mathematics, philosophy, the ancient languages, and the principles of morality and policy. His book upon the Science of Legislation appeared in 1780, when he was scarcely twenty-eight years of age. In glancing at this elaborate work, we are led to ask by what miracle a young man, of high birth and splendid connexions, and of whose life no inconsiderable portion must have been passed in the pleasures of youth and the frivolous pursuits of the Neapolitan nobility, should have amassed such a store of solid information, and acquired so severe and profound a logic? Filangieri attempted, in this work, what was never attempted before in the same department-to introduce, into moral and political, the exactness and precision of demonstrative, science. His plan seems to be as unbounded as his genius. Montesquieu exhibits, as in a mirror, all that had theretofore been done by systems of law and codes of jurisprudence; but Filangieri was not content with mere historical induction. Reasoning from man's capacities and nature, he examines what still remains to be done, by civil institutions and political systems, for his moral amelioration and social happiness. Having laid down the general rules of legislative science, and unfolded the principles of law, civil, economical, and penal, he enters into clear and copious disquisitions concerning education, property, and the reciprocal rights and duties of the parental and filial relations. A mind free from the perturbations and mists of vulgar prejudice, an ardent philanthropy, a style admirably suited by its simple gravity to the subject, are the qualities displayed by this young philosopher, whose early death will be long registered in the affectionate regrets of his country.

In political economy, the Neapolitans have made considerable advances from the time of Genovesi, who first raised it from the mere skill of the merchant or tradesman, to a rank amongst the liberal sciences. Galiani, so well known at Paris, in the circles > of French literati,* for the vivacity of his wit and the smartness of his repartee, was the author of various treatises in this branch of knowledge, in which he attacked, with great success, the principles of the French economists. On his return from the Neapolitan embassy, at Paris, during his residence in which situation he had lived in familiar intercourse with the wits and belles-esprits of the court of Louis XV. and those of the first

* See his Correspondance avec Mad. d'Epinay. Paris, 1821.