with Webster, is written so as to display an actor's talents, and he has followed the received history sufficiently to abstain from any excess of slaughter at the close. Webster is not without comic wit, as well as a power of imagination; his plays have lately met with an editor of taste enough to admire his beauties, and not very overpartial in estimating them. 103. Below Webster we might enumerate a long list of dramatists under the first Stuarts. Marston is a tumid and ranting tragedian, a wholesale dealer in murders and ghosts. Chapman, who assisted Ben Jonson and some others in comedy, deserves no great praise for his Bussy d'Amboise. The style in this, and in all his tragedies, is extravagantly hyperbolical; he is not very dramatic, nor has any power of exciting emotion except in those who sympathize with a tumid pride and self-confidence. Yet he has more thinking than many of the old dramatists; and the praise of one of his critics, though strongly worded, is not without some foundation, that we " seldom find richer contemplations on the nature of man and the world." There is also a poetic impetuosity in Chapman, such as has redeemed his translation of Homer, by which we are hurried along. His tragi-comedies, All Fools and The Gentleman-usher, are perhaps superior to his tragedies.* Rowley and Le Tourneur, especially the former, have occasionally good lines, but we cannot say that they were very superior dramatists. Rowley, however, was often in comic partnership * Chapman is well reviewed and at length, in an article of the Re trospective Review, vol. iv. p. 333., CHAP. VI. CHAP. VI. with Massinger, Dekker merits a higher rank; he co-operated with Massinger in some of his plays, and in his own displays some energy of passion and some comic humour. Middleton belongs to this lower class of dramatic writers; his tragedy entitled "Women beware Women" is founded on the story of Bianca Cappello; it is full of action, but the characters are all too vicious to be interesting, and the language does not rise much above mediocrity. In comedy, Middleton deserves more praise. "A Trick to catch the Old One" and several others that bear his name are amusing and spirited. But Middleton wrote chiefly in conjunction with others, and sometimes with Jonson and Massinger. CHAP. CHAP. VII. HISTORY OF POLITE LITERATURE IN PROSE FROM 1600 TO 1650. SECT. I. Italian Writers- Boccalini― Grammatical and Critical Works — Gracian 1. It would be vain probably to inquire from what general causes we should deduce the decline of taste in Italy. None at least have occurred to my mind, relating to political or social circumstances, upon which we could build more than one of those sophistical theories, which assume a causal relation between any concomitant events. Bad taste, in fact, whether in literature or the arts, is always ready to seize upon the public, being in many cases no more than a pleasure in faults which are really fitted to please us, and of which it can only be said that they hinder or impair the greater pleasure we should derive from beauties. Among these critical sins, none are so dangerous as the display of ingenious and novel thoughts or turns of phrase. For as such enter into the definition of good writing, it seems very difficult to persuade the world that they can ever be the characteristics of bad writing. The metes and bounds of Decline of taste in Italy. VII. CHAP. ornament, the fine shades of distinction which regulate à judicious choice, are only learned by an attentive as well as a naturally susceptible mind; and it is rarely perhaps that an unprepared multitude does not prefer the worse picture, the worse building, the worse poem, the worse speech to the better. Education, an acquaintance with just criticism, and still more the habitual observation of what is truly beautiful in nature or art, or in the literature of taste, will sometimes generate almost a national tact that rejects the temptations of a meretricious and false style; but experience has shown that this happy state of public feeling will not be very durable. Whatever might be the cause of it, this age of the Italian seicentisti has been reckoned almost as inauspicious to good writing in prose as in verse. "If we except," says Tiraboschi, "the Tuscans and a very few more, never was our language so neglected as in this period. We can scarce bear to read most of the books that were published, so rude and full of barbarisms is their style. Few had any other aim than to exercise their wit in conceits and metaphors; and so long as they could scatter them profusely over their pages, cared nothing for the choice of phrases or the purity of grammar. Their eloquence on public occasions was intended only for admiration and applause, not to persuade, or move."* And this, he says, is applicable alike to their Latin and Italian, their sacred and profane harangues. The academical discourses, of which *Vol. xi. p. 415. Dati has collected many in his Prose Fiorentine, CHAP. are poor in comparison with those of the sixteenth.* 2. A later writer than Tiraboschi has thought this sentence against the seicentisti a little too severe, and condemning equally with him the bad taste characteristic of that age, endeavours to rescue a few from the general censure.† It is at least certain that the insipidity of the cinque cento writers, their long periods void of any but the most trivial meaning, their affectation of the faults of Cicero's manner in their own language, ought not to be overlooked or wholly pardoned, while we dwell on an opposite defect of their successors, the perpetual desire to be novel, brilliant or profound. These may doubtless be the more offensive of the two; but they are perhaps not less likely to be mingled with something really worth reading. VII. Galileo. 3. It will not be expected that we can mention many Italian books, after what has been said, which come very precisely within the class of polite literature, or claim any praise on the ground of style. Their greatest luminary, Galileo, wrote with clear- Style of ness, elegance and spirit; no one among the moderns had so entirely rejected a dry and technical manner of teaching, and thrown such attractions round the form of truth. Himself a poet and a critic, he did not hesitate to ascribe his own philosophical perspicuity to the constant perusal of Ariosto. This I have mentioned in another place; but we cannot too much remember that all objects of intellectual pursuit are as bodies acting with re *Vol. xi. p. 415. + Salfi, xiv. 11. VOL. III. SS |