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than those, which lie in the way of the nineteenth century young gentleman. Corrupt texts, and scarcity of them, inexperienced and but partially competent teachers, unsettled and very little understood principles of exegesis and criticism, the absence of all that luxury of philological apparatus, which waits on the modern scholar, made the path of the medieval explorers into the jungle of the ancient literature, a very different thing from that of the traveller along its roads, cleared and embellished by the assiduous labour of three hundred years.

Much indefatigable industry, many long and weary hours passed in bending over books, while others were spending youthful hours in youthful enjoyments, and very considerable aptitude for appreciating the beauties, analogies, and delicacies of language, must have gone to the acquirement of that amount of scholarship which Olympia possessed at sixteen. But the same amount of industry and talent expended on any other subject would not have produced any such meed of enthusiastic admiration. And the position she occupied in her own day, must be considered as a curious indication of the avidity with which the cultivated minds of Europe seized on the new field opened to them, and seemed to think that it might be made to yield all that the human intelligence was then thirsting

for.

But Olympia's classical successes, her Greek psalms, her Platonic dialogues, and her Ciceronian Latin, would not have made her more to the nineteenth century than one of the remarkable figures in the great picture of her time, worth preserving the outline of for the sake of the completeness of the general representation. And in truth she is something more than

NOT SPOILED BY LEARNING.

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this;-something more interesting to us, as a representative woman," than a miracle of scholarly learning, an example of adversity nobly endured, or even a sufferer for conscience' sake.

The especial interest of Olympia Morata's story lies, for us, in the very remarkable contradiction it gives to the theories of those who object to learnedly-or as the habits of our time unfortunately make it correct to say-masculinely educated women. If ever there was a case in which adventitious circumstances contributed to bring about a result which would have furnished a moral on the other side of the question, it was that of Olympia. The advocates of the knitting needle and Lindley Murray may well have thought that the case was going all their own way, when that Greek verse exultation over abandoned feminalities was declaimed to an applauding court circle. Learning surely never had better vantage ground for effecting the mischief dreaded from it.

Yet how closely within call the while was all that is most valuable and womanly in woman! How promptly it was all forthcoming at the first touch of softening sorrow, or the first awakening thrill of maidenly love -those master agents in completing and perfecting woman's moral nature! Did Olympia's learning make her a less loving, or even a less housewifely wife? Did her competency to correspond with the scholars of Europe render her less capable of gaining the affection of friends of her own sex? Her Homeric studies did not keep her from visiting the poor in the plaguestricken poor-house of Schweinfurth; or detain her from her solitary watch by her sick husband's bedside. No Ciceronian paradoxes were running in her head when all her energies had to be devoted to the

reconstructing her own and her husband's home in a strange city; nor did love of study make her forget that "a household was sure to go wrong when the mistress's back was turned."

Vittoria Colonna was learned, and a good womanly woman to boot, though she was far less learned, and of far shallower moral nature than Olympia. But then Vittoria was a princess, and therefore much less to the purpose as a sample of the compatibility of high education and intellectual pursuits, with the exemplary discharge of all a woman's ordinary duties. Olympia was the wife of a poor man, and one struggling with difficulties of no ordinary kind. Yet it would be difficult to imagine for him a fitter, more helpful, or more wifely helpmate than Andreas Grünthler found in his reclaimed "Grecian virgin."

ISABELLA ANDREINI.

(1562.-1604.)

Italian love for the theatre.—Italian dramatic literature.—Tragedy.—
Comedy.-Tiraboschi's notion of it.—Macchiavelli's Mandragola.-

Isabella's high standing among her contemporaries.—Her husband.
Her high character.-Death and epitaph.-Her writings.—
Nature and value of histrionic art.

ISABELLA ANDREINI, say her Italian biographers,* was one of the greatest actresses who ever lived. She was also a writer of dramatic and other works, much esteemed by her contemporaries.

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She was born in 1562, two years before the birth of Shakspeare; and was therefore delighting the courts. of Italy and France at the same time that he was catering for the amusement of a more mixed audience at the Globe. It is true that Shakspeare is Shakspeare, by virtue of his creative genius, and not of his histrionic talent; while Isabella owed the larger portion of her fame to the latter source. Besides, it would be of course unjust to the Italian actress, as well as preposterous, to dream of instituting any comparison between her and nature's unique master-piece; though her reputation among her contemporaries was probably greater and more noisy than any which

* Mazzuchelli, tom. i. p. 711.

testified that the England of Elizabeth's time had a suspicion that a poet for all time had been born among them.

No such comparison is meant even to be hinted. But the contemporaneousness of the English and Italian dramatic artist suggests an inquiry into the materials with which the latter had to work.

We know what quality of dramatic literature was provided for the actors who plied their calling at the Globe and the Bankside. And it is certain that no one of them has left that histrionic reputation among us which Isabella Andreini has left in Italy.

With this in one's mind, then, one is surprised to find at the first glance that Italian literature in its Augustan age was especially weak in the department of the drama. Quite the reverse might have been anticipated from the national characteristics. No people are at the present day more passionately fond of theatrical representation. The theatre is with them almost a necessary of life to all classes of citizens, and takes rank among the articles of an Italian's budget, if not absolutely side by side with sufficient food, yet in very many cases, immediately after it, and always has precedence of very many matters that with us would be considered necessaries. And the impressionable nature of the people makes this very intelligible. Every Italian is an actor more or less,-has a natural talent for "externating" the feelings that are in him, to use a very expressive Italian phrase,—a talent that Englishmen are perhaps more deficient in than any other people under the sun. To us how often is it distasteful, how often impossible to "externare,"-to make outwardly manifest-that which is inside us. How frequently is the act of another doing so revolting

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