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crime; he regrets that "being a Christian and a Priest," he cannot with propriety curse all persons guilty of her death, as violently as he should like to do; and altogether has written some score of pages in a style of monstrous bombast, which seems caricature of the well-known absurdities of the Italian style of that epoch.

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Finally, there is volume, entitled, "Il Pennello lagrimato," published at Bologna in the year of her death, which consists of a great variety of orations, odes, sonnets, anagrams, funeral conundrums, and epitaphs, in Latin and Italian, by all the literary and learned men of the city, proving the high place poor Elisabetta had held in the affections and esteem of her contemporaries, and the extremity of bad taste, puerility, and abasement, into which a century or so of "orderly" despotism had plunged the nation.

LA CORILLA.

(1740-1800.)

CHAPTER I.

THE APPRENTICESHIP TO THE LAUREL.

IN the Via della Forca, at Florence, the eye of an observant traveller may remark a marble slab let into the front of an otherwise undistinguished house, and bearing the inscription "Here lived La Corilla in the eighteenth century." The laconic stone vouchsafes no further word of enlightenment; those who placed it where it stands, for the information of future generations, having evidently imagined that nothing more would be necessary, and that posterity, on seeing the brief announcement, would gaze on the dirty plastercoloured tenement with enthusiasm, while it exclaimed, "Ha! 'twas within these walls, then, that the bright poet-spirit, the marvel of her age, the divine Corilla, lived while she was in the flesh!" &c., &c. posterity unfortunately has already in the century next after the one so illustrated begun to exclaim instead, "Corilla lived here! And who the deuce was Corilla?" And then posterity, it is to be feared, would think nothing more about the matter.

But

And yet the question is worth answering. For "La Corilla," forgotten as she is, and in nowise worthy of

being remembered on any other ground, was the quintessential product and expression of the literary life of her time and country. And, what is more important, that literature, and those literary tastes and habits, which may be said to have culminated in La Corilla, were the normal product, evolved according to certain unchanging and ascertainable laws, of the general social system then prevailing in Italy. And this again was with perfect regularity of cause and effect brought about in due course of historical development; so that from Dante, who was exiled, to La Corilla, who was crowned at the Capitol, the march of Italy across the centuries may be traced almost as surely in the history of its literature, as in that of its material life and political changes.

Yes. The lady who lived in the Via della Forca in the eighteenth century was crowned at the Capitol in Rome in the year 1776. This is the principal fact of her story, tellable in very few words. But for the reasons stated above, it is worth while to spend a few minutes in examining what that crowning at the Capitol was and meant, and how La Corilla came to 'deserve that remarkable distinction.

We find that she had three predecessors on that throne in the Roman Campidoglio: Petrarch, Tasso, and "Perfetti." Petrarch and Tasso the world knows, though it knows little of their Roman crowning. And diligent Dryasdust researches will discover "Perfetti” to be the name of a man-and a cavalier-who in that same eighteenth century was similarly operated on, and whom not even Dryasdust could have dug out from the underlying strata, had he not been so treated.

And here we are struck by the remarkable fact of the long abeyance of the laurel crown. From Tasso

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HER UN-ARCADIC NAME.

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in the sixteenth, to Perfetti and Corilla in the eighteenth century, it should seem, none were found crownable in Italy. Are we to consider that these recent crowned heads take rank in their country's Pantheon next after the author of the "Gerusalemme"? Or must it be supposed that the significance of Campidoglio crowning became changed yet more rapidly than the national literature, fast as it moved in the same direction, could follow it; so that the knight Perfetti and the lady Corilla were the first who overtook the standard of the crown conferrers, and came up to the modern mark?

Let us see whether any explanation of these puzzling circumstances can be obtained from an examination of La Corilla's titles to her high honour.

In the vulgar unpoetical world of baptismal registers, milliners' bills, and such matter-of-fact trivialities, "La Corilla" was known as Maria Maddalena Morelli.

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It was only "in Arcadia' that she was "La Corilla Olympica;" for such was her full Arcadian style and title.

Maria Maddalena Morelli, then, in plain prose, was born of humble parents at Pistoja, a Tuscan city some twenty miles from Florence, in the year 1740, and was educated in a better manner than the means of her parents could have commanded, by the kindness of a noble lady of that city. When she was only ten years old, her lively gracious manners and pleasing appearance obtained for her another and more important patroness. This was the Princess Pallavicini, who took the engaging child with her to Rome, and there completed her education according to the best and most perfect literary methods known to an age and people, who deemed Metastasio "the Prince of Poets."

While still at Rome she began to be favourably known to "the shepherds and shepherdesses, who owned the gentle sway of the blond-haired god of the silver bow," in that city for the quickness of her parts, and inclination towards poetry. And there a third patroness took her by the hand-the Princess Columbrano-who carried the blossoming muse with her to Naples, there to rhyme "amore," "a tutte le ore," for the amusement and admiration of the polite drawingrooms, whose serene and illustrious inmates were unable to perform such feats of intellect for themselves.

Her success in this occupation was great, and was attended by a rapidly increasing and extending reputation. Amid these early triumphs the youthful poetess was wooed and won by Fernando Fernandez, a Spanish gentleman, whose entire biography, so far as recoverable from the greedy maw of dull oblivion, is narrated in the above words. Having given the "Zitella' Maddalena Morelli the social status of "La Signora Fernandez," he retires behind the side-scene, and is no more heard of.

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It may be as well to state at once, however, to prevent misconception, that, notwithstanding the social circumstances which called Don Fernando to live in the shade, while his wife pursued her calling in the sunshine, there is no reason to doubt that La Signora Fernandez was a very good wife to her husband, and devoted herself to her domestic duties whenever she could get out of "Arcadia" for a season.

As for Don Fernando, the one sole fact of his biography will probably authorise us to conclude that he was a shrewd gentleman, with a good eye for the main chance; for in truth the marriage with "La Corilla" was a very good speculation. And the great

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