Io so bene che quanto t"ho mostrato, La vista nol discerna apertamente, Per lo spazio ch"e lungo dov"io guato: Ma quando l"uom che bene ascolta e sente, Ode parlar di cosa che non vede, Immagina con l"occhio della mente.
Such value as the _Dittamondo_ may still retain for students, it owes partly to the author"s enthusiasm for ancient Rome, and partly to the sympathy with nature he had acquired during his wandering as an exile over the sacred soil of Italy.
Another poem of Dantesque derivation was the _Quadriregio_ of Federigo Frezzi, Bishop of Foligno.[180] It is an allegorical account of human life; and the four regions, which give their name to the book, are the realms of Love, Satan, Vice and Virtue.[181] To cast the moralizations of the middle ages in a form imitated from Dante, after Dante had already condensed the ethics and politics, the theology and science of his century in the Divine Comedy, was little less than a hopeless task.
Nor need a word be spent upon the _Quadriregio_, except by way of ill.u.s.trating the peculiar conditions of the poetic art, here upon the border-land between the middle age and the Renaissance. Federigo Frezzi was intent on depicting the victories of virtue over vice, and on explaining the advantage offered to the Christian by grace. Yet he chose a mythological framework for his doctrine. Cupid, Venus and Minerva are confused with Satan, Enoch and Elijah. Instead of Eden there is the golden age. Nymphs of Diana, Juno, and the like, are used as emblems.
Pallas discourses about Christ, and expounds the Christian system of redemption. The earthly Paradise contains Helicon, with all the antique poets. Jupiter is contrasted with Satan. It is the same blending of antique with Christian motives which we note in the Divine Comedy; but the tact of the great artist is absent, and the fusion becomes grotesque. After reading through the poem we lay it down with the same feeling as that produced in us by studying some pulpit of the Pisan School, where a Gothic Devil, all horns and hoofs and grinning jaws, squats cheek by jowl with a Madonna copied from a Roman tomb. The following description of Cupid recalls the manner of the Sienese _frescanti_[182]:
Appena questo priego havea io decto quando egli apparve ad me fresco et giocondo, in un giardino ove io stava solecto.
Di mirto coronato il capo biondo in forma pueril con si bel viso che mai piu bel fu visto in questo mondo.
Creso haverai che su del paradiso fusse el suo aspecto, tanto era sovrano, se non che quando a lui mirai fiso Vidi che haveva uno archo orato in mano col quale Achille et Hercole percosse.
Here is the picture of the Golden Age, transcribed from Latin poetry, much as it was destined to control the future of Italian fancy[183]:
Vergine saggia e bella el ciel adorna di cui Virgilio poetando scripse, nuova progenie al mondo dal ciel torna, Rexe gia el mondo et si la gente visse socto lei in pace che la eta dell oro et seculo giusto et beato si disse.
La terra allora senza alcun lavoro dava li fructi, et non faceva spine, ne ancho al giogo si domava el thoro; Non erano divisi per confine anchora i campi, et nesun per guadagno cercava le contrade pelegrine; Ognuno era fratello, ognun compagno, et era tanto amor, tanta pietade, che ad un fonte bevea el lupo et l"agno; Non eran lancia, non erano spade, non era anchor la pecunia peggiore che "l guerigiante ferro piu si fiade; La invidia allor vedendo tanto amore di ques...o...b..ne ad se genero pene e desto gaudio ad se diede dolore.
A little while beyond this foretaste of the _cinque cento_, we find Charon copied, without addition, but with a fatal loss of poetry, from the _Inferno_[184]:
Vidi Caron non molto da lontano con una nave in mezo la tempesta, che conducea con un gran remo in mano: Et ciaschuno occhio ch.e.l.li havea in testa, pareva come di nocte una lumiera, o un falo quando si fa per festa.
Quando egli fu appresso alla riviera un mezo miglio quasi o poco mancho, scacci sua faccia grande vizza e nera.
Egli havea el capo di canuti biancho, el manto adosso rapezato et uncto, el volto si crudel non vidi un quancho.
Last upon the list of Dantesque imitators stands Matteo Palmieri, a learned Florentine, who composed his _Citta di Vita_ in the middle of the fifteenth century. This poem won for its author from Marsilio Ficino the t.i.tle of _Poeta Theologicus_.[185] Its chief interest at the present time is that the theology expressed in it brought suspicion of heresy on Palmieri. He held Origen"s opinion that the souls of men were rebel angels. How a doctrine of this kind could be rendered in painting is not clear. Yet Giorgio Vasari tells us that a picture executed for Matteo Palmieri by Sandro Botticelli, which represented the a.s.sumption of the Virgin into the celestial hierarchy--Powers, Princedoms, Thrones and Dominations ranged around her in concentric circles--fell under the charge of heterodoxy. The altar in S. Pietro Maggiore where it was placed had to be interdicted, and the picture veiled from sight.[186]
The story forms a curious link between this last scion of medieval literature and the painting of the Renaissance. After Palmieri the meter of the Divine Comedy was chiefly used for satire and burlesque. Lorenzo de" Medici adapted its grave rhythms to parody in _I Beoni_. Berni used it for the Capitoli of the _Pesche_ and the _Peste_. At Florence it became the recognized meter for obscene and frivolous compositions, which delighted the Academicians of the sixteenth century. The people, meanwhile, continued to employ it in _Lamenti_, historical compositions, and personal Capitoli.[187] Thus Cellini wrote his poem called _I Carceri_ in _terza rima_, and Giovanni Santi used it for his precious but unpoetical Chronicle of Italian affairs. Both Benivieni and Michelangelo Buonarroti composed elegies in this meter; and numerous didactic eclogues of the pastoral poets might be cited in which it served for a.n.a.logue to Latin elegiacs. In the _Sacre Rappresentazioni_ it sometimes interrupted _ottava rima_, on the occasion of a set discourse or sermon.[188] Both Ariosto and Alamanni employed it in their satires. From these brief notices it will be seen that _terza rima_ during the Renaissance period was reserved for dissertational, didactic and satiric themes, the Capitoli of the burlesque poets being parodies of grave scholastic lucubrations. But no one now attempted an heroic poem in this verse.[189]
To give a full account of Italian prose during this period of transition from the middle age to the Renaissance is not easy. At the close of the fourteenth century, S. Catherine of Siena sustained the purity and "dove-like simplicity" of the earlier _trecento_ style, with more of fervor and personal power than any subsequent writer. Her letters, whether addressed to Popes and princes on the politics of Italy, or dealing with private topics of religious experience, are models of the purest Tuscan diction.[190] They have the garrulity and over-unctuous sweetness of the _Fioretti_ and _Leggende_. But these qualities, peculiar to medieval piety among Italians, are balanced by untutored eloquence which borders on sublimity. Without deliberate art or literary aim, the spirit of a n.o.ble woman speaks from the heart in Catherine"s letters. The fervor of her feeling suggests poetic imagery. The justice of her perception dictates weighty sentences. The intensity with which she realizes the unseen world of spiritual emotion, gives dramatic movement to her exhortations, expositions and entreaties. These rare excellences of a style, where spontaneity surpa.s.ses artifice, are combined in the famous epistle to her confessor, Raimondo da Capua, describing the execution of Niccol Tuldo.[191] He was a young man of Perugia, condemned to death for some act of insubordination. Catherine visited him in prison, and induced him to take the Sacrament with her for the first time. He besought her to be present with him at the place of execution. Accordingly she waited for him there, praying to Mary and to Catherine, the virgin saint of Alexandria, laying her own neck upon the block, and entering into harmony so rapt with those celestial presences that the mult.i.tude of men who were around her disappeared from view. What followed, must be told in her own words:
Poi egli giunse, come uno agnello mansueto: e vedendomi, cominci a ridere; e volse che io gli facesse il segno della croce. E ricevuto il segno, dissi io: "Giuso! alle nozze, fratello mio dolce! che tosto sarai alla vita durabile."
Posesi qu con grande mansuetudine; e io gli distesi il collo, e chinami giu, e rammentalli il sangue dell"Agnello. La bocca sua non diceva se non, Gesu, e Catarina. E, cos dicendo, ricevetti il capo nelle mani mie, fermando l"occhio nella divina bonta e dicendo: "Io voglio."
Allora si vedeva Dio-e-Uomo, come si vedesse la chiarita del sole; e stava aperto, e riceveva il sangue; nel sangue suo uno fuoco di desiderio santo, dato e nascosto nell"anima sua per grazia; riceveva nel fuoco della divina sua carita. Poiche ebbe ricevuto il sangue e il desiderio suo, ed egli ricevette l"anima sua, la quale mise nella bottiga aperta del costato suo, pieno di misericordia; manifestando la prima Verita che per sola grazia e misericordia egli il riceveva, e non per veruna altra operazione. O quanto era dolce e inestimable a vedere la bonta di Dio!
The sudden transition from this narrative of fact to the vision of Christ--from the simple style of ordinary speech to ecstasy inebriated with the cross--is managed with a power that truth alone could yield. A dramatist might have conceived it; but only a saint who lived habitually in both worlds of loving service and illumination, could thus have made it natural. This is the n.o.blest and the rarest realism.
If we trust the testimony of contemporary chroniclers, S. Bernardino of Siena in the pulpit shared Catherine"s power of utterance, at once impressive and simple.[192] No doubt the preachers of the _quattrocento_ were influential in maintaining a tradition of prose rhetoric. But it is not in the nature of sermons, even when ably reported, to preserve their fullness and their force. Not less important for the formation of a literary style were the letters and dispatches of emba.s.sadors. Though at this period all ceremonial orations, briefs, state doc.u.ments and epistles between Courts and commonwealths were composed in Latin, still the secret correspondence of envoys with their home governments gave occasion for the use of the vernacular; and even humanists expressed their thoughts occasionally in the mother tongue. Coluccio Salutati, for example, whose Latin letters were regarded as models of epistolary style, employed Italian in less formal communications with his office.
These early doc.u.ments of studied Tuscan writing are now more precious than his formal Ciceronian imitations. Private letters may also be mentioned among the best sources for studying the growth of Italian prose, although we have not much material to judge by.[193] The correspondence of Alessandra degli Strozzi, recently edited by Signor Cesare Guasti, is not only valuable for the light it casts upon contemporary manners, but also for the ill.u.s.tration of the Florentine idiom as written by a woman of n.o.ble birth.[194] Of Poliziano"s, Pulci"s and Lorenzo de" Medici"s letters I shall have occasion to speak in a somewhat different connection later on.
The historiographers of the Renaissance thought it below their dignity to use any language but Latin.[195] At the same time, vernacular annalists abounded in Italy, whose labors were of no small value in forming the prose-style of the _quattrocento_. After the Villani, Florence could boast a whole chain of writers, beginning with Marchionne Stefani, including Gino Capponi, the spirited chronicler of the Ciompi rebellion, and extending to Goro Dati in the middle of the fifteenth century. A little later, Giovanni Cavalcanti, in his Florentine Histories, proved how the simple diction of the preceding age was being spoiled by false cla.s.sicism.[196] This work is doubly valuable--both as a record of the great Albizzi oligarchy and their final conquest by the Medici, and also as a monument of the fusion which was being made between the popular and humanistic styles. The chronicles of other Italian cities--Ferrara, Cremona, Rome, Pisa, Bologna, and even Siena--show less purity of language than the Florentine.[197] Italian is often mixed with vulgar Latin, and phrases borrowed from unpolished local dialects abound. It was not until the close of the century that two great writers of history in the vernacular arose outside the walls of Florence. These were Corio, the historian of Milan, and Matarazzo, the annalist of Perugia.[198] In Corio"s somewhat stiff and c.u.mbrous periods we trace the effort of a foreigner to gain by study what the Tuscans owed to nature. Yet he never suffered this stylistic preoccupation to spoil his qualities as an historian. His voluminous narrative is a mine of accurate information, ill.u.s.trated with vivid pictures of manners and carefully considered portraits of eminent men.
Reading it, we cannot but regret that Poggio and Bruno, Navagero and Bembo, judged it necessary to tell the tales of Florence and of Venice in a pseudo-Livian Latin. The "History of Milan" is worth twenty of such humanistic exercises in rhetoric. Matarazzo displays excellences of a different, but of a rarer order. Unlike Corio, he was not anxious to show familiarity with rules of Tuscan writing, or to build again the periods of Boccaccio"s ceremonious style. His language bears the stamp of its Perugian origin. It is, at the same time, unaffectedly dramatic and penetrated with the charm of a distinguished personality. No one can read the tragedy of the Baglioni in this wonderful romance without acknowledging that he is in the hands of a great writer. The limpidity of the _trecento_ has here survived, and, blending with Renaissance enthusiasm for physical beauty and antique heroism, has produced a work of art unrivaled in its kind.[199]
Having advanced so far as to speak in this chapter of Corio and Matarazzo, I shall take occasion to notice a book which, appearing for the first time in 1476, may fairly be styled the most important work of Italian prose-fiction belonging to the fifteenth century. This is the _Novellino_ of Masuccio Guardato, a n.o.bleman of Salerno, secretary to the Prince Roberto Sanseverino, and resident throughout his life at the Court of Naples.[200] The _Novellino_ is a collection of stories, fifty in number, arranged in five parts, which treat respectively of hypocrisy and the monastic vices, jealousy, feminine incontinence, the contrasts of pathos and of humor, and the generosity of princes. Each _Novella_ is dedicated to a n.o.ble man or woman of Neapolitan society, and is followed by a reflective discourse, in which the author personally addresses his audience. Masuccio declares himself the disciple of Boccaccio and Juvenal.[201] Of the Roman poet"s spirit he has plenty; he gives the rein to rage in language of the most indignant virulence. Of Boccaccio"s idiom and style, though we can trace the student"s emulation, he can boast but little. Masuccio never reached the Latinistic smoothness of his model; and while he wrote Italian, his language was far from being Tuscan. Phrases culled from southern dialects are frequent; and the structure of the period is often ungrammatical. Masuccio was not a member of any humanistic clique. He lived among the n.o.bles of a royal Court, and knew the common people intimately. This double experience is reflected in his language and his modes of thought. Both are unalloyed by pedantry, and precious for the student of contemporary manners.
The interest of the _Novellino_ is great when we regard it as the third collection of _Novelle_, coming after Boccaccio"s and Sacchetti"s, and, from the point of view of art, occupying a middle place between them.
The tales of the Decameron were originally recited at Naples; and though Boccaccio was a thorough Tuscan, he borrowed something from the south which gave width, warmth and largeness to his writing. Masuccio is wholly Neapolitan in tone; but he seeks such charm of presentation and variety of matter as shall make his book worthy to take rank in general literature. Sacchetti has more of a purely local flavor. He is no less Florentine than Masuccio is Neapolitan; and, unlike Masuccio, he has taken little pains to adapt his work to other readers than his fellow-citizens. Boccaccio embraces all human life, seen in the light of vivid fancy by a _bourgeois_ who was also a great comic romantic poet.
Sacchetti describes the _borghi_, _contrade_, and _piazze_ of Florence; and his speech is seasoned with rare Tuscan salt of wit. Masuccio"s world is that of the free-living southern n.o.ble. He is penetrated with aristocratic feeling, treats willingly of arms and jousts and warfare, telling the tales of knights and ladies to a courtly company.[202] At the same time, the figures of the people move with incomparable vivacity across the stage; and his transcripts from life reveal the careless interpenetration of cla.s.ses to which he was accustomed in Calabria.[203]
Some of his stories are as simply _bourgeois_ as any of Sacchetti"s.[204]
When we compare Masuccio with Boccaccio we find many points of divergence, due to differences of temperament, social sympathies and local circ.u.mstance. Boccaccio is witty and malicious; Masuccio humorous and poignant. Boccaccio laughs indulgently at vices; Masuccio scourges them. Boccaccio makes a jest of superst.i.tion; Masuccio thunders against the hypocrites who bring religion into contempt. Boccaccio turns the world round for his recreation, submitting its follies to the subtle play of a.n.a.lytical fancy. Masuccio is terribly in earnest; whether sympathetic or vituperative, he makes the voice of his heart heard.
Boccaccio"s pictures are toned with a rare perception of harmony and delicate gradation. Masuccio brings what strikes his sense before us by a few firm touches. Boccaccio shows far finer literary tact. Yet there is something in the unpremeditated pa.s.sion, pathos, humor, grossness, anger and enjoyment of Masuccio--a chord of masculine and native strength, a note of vigorous reality--that arrests attention even more imperiously than the prepared effects of the Decameron. One point of undoubted excellence can be claimed for Masuccio. He was a great tragic artist in the rough, and his comedy displays an uncouth Rabelaisian realism. The lights and shadows cast upon his scene are brusque--like the sunlight and the shadow on a Southern city; whereas the painting of Boccaccio is distinguished by exquisite blendings of color and chiaroscuro in subordination to the chosen key.
Masuccio displays his real power in his serious _Novelle_, when he gives vent to his furious hatred of a G.o.dless clergy, or describes some dreadful incident, like the tragedy of the two lovers in the lazar-house.[205] Scarcely less dramatic are his tales of comic sensuality.[206] Nor has he a less vivid sense of beauty. Some of his occasional pictures--the meeting of youths and maidens in the evening light of Naples; the lover who changed his jousting-badge because his lady was untrue; the tournament at Rimini; the portrait of Eugenia disguised as a _ragazzo de omo d"arme_--break upon us with the freshness of a smile or sunbeam.[207] We might almost detect a vein of Spanish imagination in certain of his episodes--in the midnight ride of the living monk after the dead friar strapped upon his palfrey, and in the ghastly murder of the woman and the dwarf.[208] The lowest cla.s.ses of the people are presented with a salience worthy of Velasquez--cobblers, tailors, prost.i.tutes, preaching friars, miracle-workers, relic-mongers, bawds, ruffians, lepers, highway robbers, gondoliers, innkeepers, porters, Moorish slaves, the panders to base appet.i.tes and every sort of sin.[209] Masuccio felt no compunction in portraying vicious people as he knew them; but he reserved language of scathing vituperation for their enormities.[210]
From so much that is coa.r.s.e, dreadful, and revolting, the romance of Masuccio"s more genial tales detaches itself with charming grace and delicacy. Nothing in Boccaccio is lovelier than the story of the girl who puts on armor and goes at night to kill her faithless lover; or that of Mariotto and Giannozza, which is substantially the same as Romeo and Juliet; or that of Virginio Baglioni and Eugenia, surprised and slain by robbers near Brescia; or that of Marchetto and Lanzilao, the comrades in arms, which has points in common with Palamon and Arcite; or, lastly, that of the young Malem and his education by Giudotto Gambacorto.[211].
It is the blending of so many elements--the interweaving of tragedy and comedy, satire and pathos, grossness and sentiment, in a style of unadorned sincerity, that places Masuccio high among novelists. Had his language been as pure as that of the earlier Tuscan or the later Italian authors, he would probably rank only second to Boccaccio in the estimation even of his fellow-countrymen. A foreigner, less sensitive to niceties of idiom, may be excused for recognizing him as at least Bandello"s equal in the story-teller"s art. In moral quality he is superior not only to Bandello, but also to Boccaccio.
The greatest writer of Italian prose in the fifteenth century was a man of different stamp from Masuccio. Gifted with powers short only of the very highest, Leo Battista Alberti exercised an influence over the spirit of his age and race which was second to none but Lionardo"s.[212]
Sacchetti, Ser Giovanni, Masuccio, and the ordinary tribe of chroniclers pretended to no humanistic culture.[213] Alberti, on the contrary, was educated at Bologna, where he acquired the scientific knowledge of his age, together with such complete mastery of Latin that a work of his youth, the comedy _Philodoxius_, pa.s.sed for a genuine product of antiquity. This man of many-sided genius came into the world too soon for the perfect exercise of his singular faculties. Whether we regard him from the point of of art, of science, or of literature, he occupies in each department the position of precursor, pioneer and indicator.
Always original and always fertile, he prophesied of lands he was not privileged to enter, leaving the memory of dim and varied greatness rather than any solid monument behind him.[214] Of his mechanical discoveries this is not the place to speak; nor can I estimate the value of his labors in the science of perspective.[215] It is as a man of letters that he comes before us in this chapter.
The date of Alberti"s birth is uncertain. But we may fix it probably at about the year 1405. He was born at Venice, where his father, exiled with the other members of his n.o.ble house by the Albizzi, had taken refuge. After Cosimo de" Medici"s triumph over the Albizzi in 1434, Leo Battista returned to Florence.[216] It was as a Florentine citizen that his influence in restoring the vulgar literature to honor, was destined to be felt. He did not, however, reside continuously in the city of his ancestors, but moved from town to town, with a restlessness that savored somewhat of voluntary exile. It is, indeed, noteworthy how many of the greatest Italians--Dante, Giotto, Petrarch, Alberti, Lionardo, Ta.s.so: men who powerfully helped to give the nation intellectual coherence--were wanderers. They sought their home and saw their spiritual _patria_ in no one abiding-place.[217] Thus, amid the political distractions of the Italian people, rose that ideal of unity to which Rome, Naples, Florence, Venice, Ferrara contributed, but which owned no metropolis. Florence remained to the last the brain of Italy.
Yet Florence, by stepmotherly ingrat.i.tude, by Dante"s exile, by the alienation of Petrarch, by Alberti"s homeless boyhood, prepared for the race a new culture, Tuscan in origin, national by diffusion and a.s.similation. Alberti died at Rome in 1472, just when Poliziano, a youth of eighteen, was sounding the first notes of that music which re-awakened the Muse of Tuscany from her long sleep, and gave new melodies to Italy.
In his proemium to the Third Book of the _Family_, addressed to Francesco degli Alberti, Leo Battista enlarges on the duty of cultivating the mother tongue.[218] After propounding the question whether the loss of the empire acquired by their Roman ancestors--_l"antiquo nostro imperio amplissimo_--or the loss of Latin as a spoken language--_l"antiqua nostra gentilissima lingua latina_--had been the greater privation to the Italian race, he gives it as his opinion that, though the former robbed them of imperial dignity, the latter was the heavier misfortune. To repair that loss is the duty of one who had made literature his study. If he desires to benefit his fellow-countrymen, he will not use a dead language, imperfectly comprehended by a few learned men, but will bend the idiom of the people to the needs of erudition. "I willingly admit," he argues, "that the ancient Latin tongue is very copious and of beauty polished to perfection. Yet I do not see what our Tuscan has in it so hateful that worthy matter, when conveyed thereby, should be displeasing to us." Pedants who despise their mother speech, are mostly men incapable of expressing themselves in the latter; "and granted they are right in saying that the ancient tongue has undisputed authority, because so many learned men have employed it, the like honor will certainly be paid our language of to-day, if men of culture take the pains to purify and polish it." He then declares that, meaning to be useful to the members of his house, and to bequeath a record of their ancient dignity to their descendants, he has resolved to choose the tongue in which he will be generally understood.
This proemium explains Alberti"s position in all his Italian writings.
Aiming at the general good, convinced that a living nation cannot use a dead language with dignity and self-respect, he makes the sacrifice of a scholar"s pride to public utility, and has the sense to perceive that the day of erudite exclusiveness is over. No one felt more than Alberti the greatness of the antique Roman race. No one was prouder of his descent from those patricians of the Commonwealth, who tamed and ruled the world. The memory of that Roman past, which turned the generation after Dante into a nation of students, glowed in Alberti"s breast with more than common fervor.[219] The sonorous introduction to the first book of the _Family_ reviews the glories of the Empire and the decadence of Rome with a pomp of phrase, a pa.s.sion of eloquence, that stir our spirit like the tramp of legions waking echoes in a ruined Roman colonnade.[220] Yet in spite of this devotion to the past, Alberti, like Villani, felt that his Italians of the modern age had destinies and auspices apart from those of ancient Rome. He was resolved to make the speech of that new nation, heiress of the Latin name, equal in dignity to Cicero"s and Livy"s. What Rome had done, Rome"s children should do again. But the times were changed, and Alberti was a true son of the Renaissance. He approached his task in the spirit of a humanist. His style is over-charged with Latinisms; his periods are c.u.mbrous; his matter is loaded with citations and scholastic instances drawn from the repertories of erudition.[221] The _vivida vis_ of inspiration fails.
His work is full of reminiscences. The golden simplicity of the _trecento_ yields to a studied effort after dignity of diction, culture of amplitude. Still the writer"s energy is felt in ma.s.sive paragraphs of powerful declamation. His eloquence does not degenerate into frothy rhetoric; and when he wills, he finds pithy phrases to express the mind of a philosopher and poet. That he was born and reared in exile accounts for a lack of racy Tuscan in his prose; and the structure of his sentences proves that he had been accustomed to think in Latin before he made Italian serve his turn.[222] Still, though for these and other reasons his works were not of the kind to animate a nation, they are such as still may be read with profit and with pleasure by men who seek for solid thoughts in n.o.ble diction.
Alberti"s princ.i.p.al prose work, the _Trattato della Famiglia_, was written to instruct the members of his family in the customs of their ancestors, and to perpetuate those virtues of domestic life which he regarded as the sound foundation of a commonwealth. The first three books are said to have been composed within the s.p.a.ce of ninety days in Rome, and the fourth added at a later period.[223] It is a dialogue, the interlocutors being relatives of the Alberti blood. Nearly all the ill.u.s.trative matter is drawn from the biographies of their forefathers.
The scene is laid at Padua, and the essay contains frequent allusions to their exile.[224] No word of invective against the Albizzi who had ruined them, no vituperation of the city which had permitted the expulsion of her sons, escapes the lips of any of the speakers. The grave sadness that tempers the whole dialogue, is marred by neither animosity nor pa.s.sion. Yet though the _Family_ was written in exile for exiles, the ideal of domestic life it paints, is Florentine.[225] Taken in its whole extent, this treatise is the most valuable doc.u.ment which remains to us from the times of the oligarchy, when Florence was waging war with the Visconti, and before the Medici had based their despotism upon popular favor. From its pages a tolerably complete history of a great commercial family might be extracted; and this study would form a valuable commentary on the public annals of the commonwealth during the earlier portion of the fifteenth century.[226]
The first book of the _Famiglia_ deals with the duties of the elder to the younger members of the household, and the observance owed by sons and daughters to their parents. It is an essay _De Officiis_ within the circle of the home, embracing minute particulars of conduct, and suggesting rules for education from the cradle upwards.[227] The second book takes up the question of matrimony. The respective ages at which the s.e.xes ought to marry, the moral and physical qualities of a good wife, the maintenance of harmony between a wedded couple, their separate provinces and common duty to the State in the procreation of children, are discussed with scientific completeness. The third book, modeled on the _Oeconomicus_ of Xenophon, is devoted to thrift. How to use our personal faculties, our wealth, and our time to best advantage, forms its princ.i.p.al theme. The fourth book treats of friendship--family connections and alliances, the usefulness of friends in good and evil fortune, the mutual benefits enjoyed by men who live honestly together in a social state.[228] It may be seen from this sketch that the architecture of the treatise is complete and symmetrical. The first book establishes the principles of domestic morality on which a family exists and flourishes. The second provides for its propagation through marriage. The third shows how its resources are to be distributed and preserved. The fourth explains its relations to similar communities existing in an organized society. Many pa.s.sages in the essay have undoubtedly the air of truisms; but this impression of commonplaceness is removed by the strong specific character of all the ill.u.s.trations.
Alberti"s wisdom is common to civilized humanity. His conception of life is such as only suits a Florentine, and his examples are drawn from the annals of a single family.
I have already dwelt at some length in a former volume on the most celebrated section of this treatise--the _Padre di Famiglia_ or the _Economico_.[229] To repeat those observations here would be superfluous. Yet I cannot avoid a digression upon a matter of much obscurity relating to the authorship of that book.[230] Until recently, this discourse upon the economy of a Florentine household pa.s.sed under the name of Agnolo Pandolfini, and was published separately as his undoubted work. The interlocutors in the dialogue, which bore the t.i.tle of _Governo della Famiglia_, are various members of the Pandolfini family, and all allusions to the Alberti and their exile are wanting.
The style of the _Governo_ differs in many important respects from that of Alberti; and yet the arrangement of the material and the substance of each paragraph are so closely similar in both forms of the treatise as to prove that the work is substantially identical. Pandolfini"s essay, which I shall call _Il Governo_, pa.s.ses for one of the choicest monuments of ancient Tuscan diction. Alberti"s _Economico_, though it is more idiomatic than the rest of his _Famiglia_, betrays the Latinisms of a scholar. It is clear from a comparison of the two treatises either that Alberti appropriated Pandolfini"s _Governo_, brought its style into harmony with his own, and gave it a place between the second and the fourth books of his essay on the Family; or else that this third book of Alberti"s _Famiglia_ was rewritten by an author who commanded a purer Italian. In the former case, Alberti changed the _dramatis personae_ by subst.i.tuting members of his own house for the Pandolfini. In the latter case, the anonymous compiler paid a similar compliment to the Pandolfini by such alterations as obliterated the Alberti, and presented the treatise to the world as part of their own history. That Agnolo Pandolfini was himself guilty of this plagiarism is rendered improbable by a variety of circ.u.mstances. Yet the problem does not resolve itself into the simple question whether Pandolfini or Alberti was the plagiary.
Supposing Alberti to have been the original author, there is no difficulty in believing that the _Governo_ was a redaction made from his work by some anonymous hand in honor of the Pandolfini family. On the contrary, if we a.s.sume Agnolo Pandolfini to have been the author, then Alberti himself was guilty of a gross and open plagiarism.[231]
It will be useful to give some account of the MSS. upon which the editions of the _Governo_ and the _Economico_ are based.[232] In the first edition of the _Governo_ (Tartini e Franchi, Firenze, 1734) six codices are mentioned. Of these the Codex Pandolfini A, on which the editors chiefly relied, has been removed from Italy to Paris. The Codex Pandolfini B was written in 1476 at Poggibonsi by a certain Giuliano di Niccolajo Martini. Whether the Codex Pandolfini A professed to be an autograph copy, I do not know; but the editors of 1734, referring to it, state that the Senator Filippo Pandolfini, member of the Della Crusca, corrected the errors, restored the text, and improved the diction of the treatise by the help of a still more ancient MS. This admission on their part is significant. It opens, for the advocates of Alberti"s authorship, innumerable suspicions as to the part played by Filippo Pandolfini in the preparation of the _Governo_. Nor can it be denied that the lack of an autograph of the _Governo_ renders the settlement of the disputed question very difficult.
Of Alberti"s _Trattato della Famiglia_ we have three autograph copies; (i) Cod. Magl. Cla.s.se iv. No. 38 in folio; (ii) Riccardiana 1220; (iii) Riccardiana 176. The first of these is the most important; but it presents some points of singularity. In the first place, the third book, which is the _Economico_, has been inserted into the original codex, and shows a different style of writing. In the second place, the first two books contain numerous corrections, additions, erasures and recorrections, obviously made by Alberti himself. Some of the interpolated pa.s.sages in the first two books are found to coincide with parts of the _Governo_; and Signor Cortesi, to whose critical Study I have already referred, argues with great show of reason that Alberti, when he determined to incorporate the _Governo_ in his _Famiglia_, enriched the earlier books of that essay with fragments which he did not find it convenient to leave in their original place. Still it should be remembered that this argument can be reversed; for the anonymous compiler of the _Governo_, if he had access to Alberti"s autograph, may have chosen to appropriate sentences culled from the earlier portions of the _Famiglia_.
It is noticeable that the _Economico_, even though it forms the third book of the Treatise on the Family, has a separate t.i.tle and a separate introduction, with a dedication to Francesco Alberti, and a distinct peroration.[233] It is, in fact, an independent composition, and occurs in more than one MS. of the fifteenth century detached from the rest of the _Famiglia_. In style it is far freer and more racy than is usual with Alberti"s writing. Of this its author seems to have been aware; for he expressly tells his friend and kinsman Francesco that he has sought to approach the purity and simplicity of Xenophon.[234]
The anonymous writer of Alberti"s life says that he composed three books on the Family at Rome before he was thirty, and a fourth book three years later. If we follow Tiraboschi in taking 1414 for the date of his birth, the first three books must have been composed before 1444 and the fourth in 1447. The former of these dates (1444) receives some confirmation from a Latin letter written by Leonardo Dati to Alberti, acknowledging the Treatise on the Family, in June 1443. Dati tells him that he finds fault with the essay for being composed "in a more majestic and perhaps a harsher style, especially in the first book, than the Florentine language and the judgment of the laity would tolerate."
He goes on, however, to observe that "afterwards the language becomes far more sweet and satisfactory to the ear"--a criticism which seems to suit the altered manner of the third book. With reference to the date 1447, in which the _Famiglia_ may have been completed, Cortesi remarks that Pandolfini died in 1446. He suggests that, upon this event, Alberti appropriated the _Governo_ and rewrote it, and that the _Economico_, though it holds the place of the third book in the treatise, is really the fourth book mentioned by the anonymous biographer. The suggestion is ingenious; and if we can once bring ourselves to believe that Alberti committed a deliberate act of larceny, immediately after his friend Pandolfini"s death, then the details which have been already given concerning the autograph of the _Famiglia_ and the discrepancies in its style of composition add confirmation to the theory. There are, however, good reasons for a.s.signing Alberti"s birth to the year 1404 or even 1402.[235] In that case Alberti"s Roman residence would fall into the third decade of the century, and the last book of the _Famiglia_ (which I am inclined to believe is the one now called the third) would have been composed before Pandolfini"s death. That Alberti kept his MSS. upon the stocks and subjected them to frequent revision is certain; and this may account for one reference occurring in it to an event which happened in 1438.
Is it rational to adopt the hypothesis of Alberti"s plagiarism? Let us distinctly understand what it implies. In his own preface to the _Economico_ Alberti states that he has striven to reproduce the simple and intelligible style of Xenophon[236]; and there is no doubt that this portion of the _Famiglia_, whether we regard it as Alberti"s or as Pandolfini"s property, was closely modeled on the _Oeconomicus_.
Cortesi suggests that the reference to Xenophon was purposely introduced by Alberti in order to put his readers off the scent. Nor, if we accept the hypothesis of plagiarism, can we restrict ourselves to this accusation merely. In the essay _Della Tranquillita dell"Animo_ Alberti introduces Agnolo Pandolfini as an interlocutor, and makes him refer to the third book of the _Famiglia_ as a genuine production of Alberti.[237] In other words, he must not only have appropriated Pandolfini"s work, and laid claim to it in the preface to his _Economico_; but he must also have referred to it as his own composition in a speech ascribed to the real author, which he meant for publication.
That is to say, he made the man whose work he stole p.r.o.nounce its panegyric and refer it to the thief. That Pandolfini was dead when he committed these acts of treason would not be sufficient to explain Alberti"s audacity; for according to the advocates of Pandolfini"s authorship, the MS. formed a known and valued portion of his sons"
inheritance. Is it _prima facie_ probable that Alberti, even in those days of looser literary copyright than ours, should have exposed himself to detection in so palpable and gross a fraud?
Before answering this question in the affirmative, it may be asked what positive grounds there are for crediting Pandolfini with the original authorship. At present no autograph of Pandolfini is forthcoming. His claim to authorship rests on tradition, and on the Pandolfini cast of the dialogue in certain MSS. At the same time, the admissions made by the editors of 1734 regarding their most trusted codex have been already shown to be suspicious. It is also noticeable that Vespasiano, in his Life of Agnolo Pandolfini, though he professes to have been intimately acquainted with this excellent Florentine burgher, does not mention the _Governo della Famiglia_.[238] The omission is singular, supposing the treatise to have then existed under Pandolfini"s name, for Vespasiano was himself a writer of Italian in an age when Latin scholarship claimed almost exclusive attention. He would, we should have thought, have been eager to name so distinguished a man among his fellow-authors in the vulgar tongue.
Granting the force of these considerations, it must still be admitted that there remain grave objections to accepting the _Economico_ of Alberti as the original of these two treatises. In the first place, the _Governo_ is a masterpiece of Tuscan; and it is far more reasonable to suppose that the _Economico_ was copied from the _Governo_ with such alterations as adapted it to the manner of the _Famiglia_, than to a.s.sume that the _Economico_ received a literary rehandling which reduced it from its more rhetorical to a popular form. The pa.s.sage from simple to complex in literature admits of easier explanation than the reverse process. Moreover, if Alberti admired a racy Tuscan style and could command it for the _Economico_, why did he not continue to use it in his subsequent compositions? In the second place, the _Governo_, as it stands, is suited to what Vespasiano tells us about Agnolo Pandolfini.
He was a scholar trained in the humanities of the earlier Renaissance and a statesman who retired from public life, disgusted with the times, to studious leisure at his villa. Now, Giannozzo Alberti, who takes the chief part in the _Economico_, proclaims himself a man of business, without learning. Those pa.s.sages of the _Governo_ which seem inappropriate to such a character are absent from the _Economico_; but some of them appear in Alberti"s other works, the _Teogenio_ and _Della Tranquillita_. From this circ.u.mstance Signor Cortesi infers that Alberti, working with Pandolfini"s essay before him, made such alterations as brought the drift of the discourse within the scope of Giannozzo"s acquirements. The advocates of Alberti"s authorship are bound to reverse this theory, and to a.s.sume that the author of the _Governo_ suited the _Economico_ to Pandolfini by infusing a tincture of scholarship into Giannozzo"s speeches.[239]
We have still to ask who could the author of the _Governo_, if it was not Agnolo Pandolfini, have been? The first answer to this question is: Alberti himself. The anonymous biographer tells us that he wrote the first three books at Rome, and that he afterwards made great efforts to improve his Tuscan style and render it more popular. It is not, therefore, impossible that he should himself have fitted that portion of his _Famiglia_ with new characters, omitted the Alberti, and given the honors of the dialogue to Pandolfini. The treatise, as he first planned it (according to this hypothesis), has a pa.s.sionate digression upon the exile of the Alberti, followed by a declamation against public life and politicians. To have circulated these pa.s.sages in an essay intended for Florentine readers, after Alberti"s recall by Cosimo de" Medici, would have been unwise. Alberti, therefore, may only have retained such portions of them as could rouse no animosity, revive no painful reminiscences, and be appropriately placed upon the lips of Pandolfini.