But the living charms which were well worth all the rest remained in the bloom of eternal youth, and well rewarded the bold adventurer who roused them from their long slumber.In every line of the Philip and the Saul, the greatest poems, I think, of the eighteenth century, we may trace the influence of that mighty genius which has immortalised the ill-starred love of Francesca, and the paternal agonies of Ugolino.Alfieri bequeathed the sovereignty of Italian literature to the author of the Aristodemus--a man of genius scarcely inferior to his own, and a still more devoted disciple of the great Florentine.It must be acknowledged that this eminent writer has sometimes pushed too far his idolatry of Dante.To borrow a sprightly illustration from Sir John Denham, he has not only imitated his garb, but borrowed his clothes.He often quotes his phrases; and he has, not very judiciously as it appears to me, imitated his versification.Nevertheless, he has displayed many of the higher excellencies of his master; and his works may justly inspire us with a hope that the Italian language will long flourish under a new literary dynasty, or rather under the legitimate line, which has at length been restored to a throne long occupied by specious usurpers.
The man to whom the literature of his country owes its origin and its revival was born in times singularly adapted to call forth his extraordinary powers.Religious zeal, chivalrous love and honour, democratic liberty, are the three most powerful principles that have ever influenced the character of large masses of men.Each of them singly has often excited the greatest enthusiasm, and produced the most important changes.In the time of Dante all the three, often in amalgamation, generally in conflict, agitated the public mind.The preceding generation had witnessed the wrongs and the revenge of the brave, the accomplished, the unfortunate Emperor Frederic the Second,--a poet in an age of schoolmen,--a philosopher in an age of monks,--a statesman in an age of crusaders.During the whole life of the poet, Italy was experiencing the consequences of the memorable struggle which he had maintained against the Church.The finest works of imagination have always been produced in times of political convulsion, as the richest vineyards and the sweetest flowers always grow on the soil which has been fertilised by the fiery deluge of a volcano.To look no further than the literary history of our own country, can we doubt that Shakspeare was in a great measure produced by the Reformation, and Wordsworth by the French Revolution? Poets often avoid political transactions;they often affect to despise them.But, whether they perceive it or not, they must be influenced by them.As long as their minds have any point of contact with those of their fellow-men, the electric impulse, at whatever distance it may originate, will be circuitously communicated to them.
This will be the case even in large societies, where the division of labour enables many speculative men to observe the face of nature, or to analyse their own minds, at a distance from the seat of political transactions.In the little republic of which Dante was a member the state of things was very different.These small communities are most unmercifully abused by most of our modern professors of the science of government.In such states, they tell us, factions are always most violent: where both parties are cooped up within a narrow space, political difference necessarily produces personal malignity.Every man must be a soldier; every moment may produce a war.No citizen can lie down secure that he shall not be roused by the alarum-bell, to repel or avenge an injury.In such petty quarrels Greece squandered the blood which might have purchased for her the permanent empire of the world, and Italy wasted the energy and the abilities which would have enabled her to defend her independence against the Pontiffs and the Caesars.
All this is true: yet there is still a compensation.Mankind has not derived so much benefit from the empire of Rome as from the city of Athens, nor from the kingdom of France as from the city of Florence.The violence of party feeling may be an evil; but it calls forth that activity of mind which in some states of society it is desirable to produce at any expense.Universal soldiership may be an evil; but where every man is a soldier there will be no standing army.And is it no evil that one man in every fifty should be bred to the trade of slaughter; should live only by destroying and by exposing himself to be destroyed;should fight without enthusiasm and conquer without glory; be sent to a hospital when wounded, and rot on a dunghill when old?
Such, over more than two-thirds of Europe, is the fate of soldiers.It was something that the citizen of Milan or Florence fought, not merely in the vague and rhetorical sense in which the words are often used, but in sober truth, for his parents, his children, his lands, his house, his altars.It was something that he marched forth to battle beneath the Carroccio, which had been the object of his childish veneration: that his aged father looked down from the battlements on his exploits; that his friends and his rivals were the witnesses of his glory.If he fell, he was consigned to no venal or heedless guardians.The same day saw him conveyed within the walls which he had defended.
His wounds were dressed by his mother; his confession was whispered to the friendly priest who had heard and absolved the follies of his youth; his last sigh was breathed upon the lips of the lady of his love.Surely there is no sword like that which is beaten out of a ploughshare.Surely this state of things was not unmixedly bad; its evils were alleviated by enthusiasm and by tenderness; and it will at least be acknowledged that it was well fitted to nurse poetical genius in an imaginative and observant mind.
