IV.

lapse of time, and the fickleness of literary fashion, CHAP. conspired with the popularity of his assailants to magnify his defects, and meet the very name of his famous treatise with a kind of scornful ridicule. That Stewart had never read much of Grotius, or even gone over the titles of his chapters, is very manifest; and he displays a similar ignorance as to the other writers on natural law, who for more than a century afterwards, as he admits himself, exercised a great influence over the studies of Europe. I have commented upon very few, comparatively, of the slips which occur in his pages on this subject.

range

ment.

160. The arrangement of Grotius has been His arblamed as unscientific by a more friendly judge, Sir James Mackintosh. Though I do not feel very strongly the force of his objections, it is evident that the law of nature might have been established on its basis, before the author passed forward to any disquisition upon its reference to independent communities. This would have changed a good deal the principal object that Grotius had in view, and brought his treatise, in point of method, very near to that of Puffendorf. But assuming, as he did, the authority recognized by those for whom he wrote, that of the Scriptures, he was less inclined to dwell on the proof which reason affords for a natural law, though fully satisfied of its validity even without reference to the Supreme Being.

161. The real faults of Grotius, leading to er- His defects. roneous determinations, seem to be rather an un

necessary scrupulousness, and somewhat of old

IV

CHAP. theological prejudice, from which scarce any man in his age, who was not wholly indifferent to religion, had liberated himself. The notes of Barbeyrac seldom fail to correct this leaning. Several later writers on international law have treated his doctrine of an universal law of nations founded on the agreement of mankind, as an empty chimera of his invention. But if he only meant by this the tacit consent, or, in other words, the general custom of civilized nations, it does not appear that there is much difference between his theory and that of Wolf or Vattel.

CHAP. V.

HISTORY OF POETRY FROM 1600 TO 1650.

SECT. I.

ON ITALIAN POETRY.

Characters of the Poets of the Seventeenth Century — Sometimes too much depreciated Marini-Tassoni-Chiabrera.

V.

mation of

tisti.

1. Ar the close of the sixteenth century, few CHAP. remained in Italy to whom posterity has assigned a considerable reputation for their poetry. But Low estithe ensuing period has stood lower, for the most the Seicenpart, in the opinion of later ages than any other since the revival of letters. The seicentisti, the writers of the seventeenth century, were stigmatized in modern criticism, till the word has been associated with nothing but false taste and every thing that should be shunned and despised. Those who had most influence in leading the literary judgment of Italy went back, some almost exclusively to the admiration of Petrarch and his contemporaries, some to the various writers who cultivated their native poetry in the sixteenth century. Salvini is of the former class, Muratori of the latter. *

* Muratori, Della Perfetta Poe- in the second volume are contained sia, is one of the best books of some remarks by Salvini, a bigotcriticism in the Italian language; ted Florentine.

CHAP.
V.

2. The last age, that is, the concluding twenty years of the eighteenth century, brought with it,

Not quite so in many respects, a change of public sentiment in

great as formerly.

Praise of them by Rubbi.

Italy. A masculine turn of thought, an expanded grasp of philosophy, a thirst, ardent to excess, for great exploits and noble praise, has distinguished the Italian people of the last fifty years from their progenitors of several preceding generations. It is possible that the enhanced relative importance of the Lombards in their national literature, may have not been without its influence in rendering the public taste less fastidious as to purity of language, less fine in that part of æsthetic discernment which relates to the grace and felicity of expression, while it became also more apt to demand originality, nervousness, and the power of exciting emotion. The writers of the seventeenth century may, in some cases, have gained by this revolution; but those of the preceding ages, especially the Petrarchists whom Bembo had led, have certainly lost ground in national admiration.

says,

3. Rubbi, editor of the voluminous collection, called Parnaso Italiano, had the courage to exto the "seicentisti" for their genius and fancy, and even to place them, in all but style, above their predecessors. "Give them," he "but grace and purity, take from them their capricious exaggerations, their perpetual and forced metaphors, you will think Marini the first poet of Italy, and his followers, with their fulness of imagery and personification, will make you forget their monotonous predecessors. I do not advise you to make a study of the seicentisti; it would spoil your

V.

style, perhaps your imagination; I only tell you CHAP. that they were the true Italian poets; they wanted a good style, it is admitted, but they were so far from wanting genius and imagination, that these perhaps tended to impair their style.

*

Salfi.

4. It is probable that every native critic would Also by think some parts of this panegyric, and especially the strongly hyperbolical praise of Marini, carried too far. But I am not sure that we should be wrong in agreeing with Rubbi, that there is as much catholic poetry, by which I mean that which is good in all ages and countries, in some of the minor productions of the seventeenth as in those of the sixteenth age. The sonnets, especially, have more individuality and more meaning. In this, however, I should wish to include the latter portion of the seventeenth century. Salfi, a writer of more taste and judgment than Rubbi, has recently taken the same side, and remarked the superior originality, the more determined individuality, the greater variety of subjects, above all, what the Italians now most value, the more earnest patriotism of the later poets. Those immediately before us, belonging to the first half of the century, are less numerous than in the former age; the sonnetteers especially have produced much less; and in the collections of poetry, even in that of Rubbi, notwithstanding his eulogy, they take up very little room. Some however have obtained a durable

* Parnaso Italiano, vol. xli. + Salfi, Hist. Litt. de l'Italie (Avvertimento.) Rubbi, however, (continuation de Ginguéné), vol. gives but two out of his long col- xii. p. 424. lection in fifty volumes, to the writers of the seventeenth century.