I shall perhaps have wearied my readers with these facts about my pedigree and birth. Satirists will not, however, find in them anything to excite ambition in myself or to wing their pen with ridicule. Social ranks have always been regarded by me as accidental, though necessary for the proper subordination on which our inst.i.tutions depend. As for my birth, I think less of whence I came than of whither I am going. Conduct unworthy of a decent origin might cause sorrow to my deceased parents, whose memory I hold in honour, and might cover myself and all my posterity with shame.
My name is Carlo. I was the sixth child born by my mother into the light, or shall I say the shadows of this world. I am writing on the last day of April in the year 1780. I have pa.s.sed fifty, and not yet reached the age of sixty.[103] I shall not put the sacristan to trouble in order to view the register of my baptism, being quite sure that I was christened, and not having the stupid vanity to pa.s.s for a curled dandy. That is obvious, and has been always obvious, from the fashion of my clothes and the way I dress my hair. Besides, I set no value on the age of men. Human beings die at all ages; and I have seen boys who are adult, while grown-up men or grey-beards are often nothing better than peevish and ridiculous children.
II.
_My Education and Circ.u.mstances down to the Age of Sixteen--Concerning the Art of Improvisation, and my Literary Studies._
Our family consisted of eleven children, male and female. I could record nothing but what is creditable of my brothers and sisters, had I proposed to write their memoirs. But this is not my thought; and they are capable of writing their own, if the whim should take them; for the epidemic of literature was always chronic in our household.
A succession of priests with little learning were our domestic pedagogues up to a certain age. I say a succession advisedly; each in turn having earned his dismissal by impertinent behaviour and intrigues with the serving-maids.
From early childhood I was always a silent observer of men and things, by no means insolent, of imperturbable serenity, and extremely attentive to my lessons. My brothers used my taciturn and peaceable temper to their own advantage. They accused me to our common tutor of all the naughtinesses of which they had been guilty. I did not condescend to excuse myself or to accuse them, but bore my unjust punishments with stoicism. I venture to affirm that no boy was ever more supremely indifferent than I was to the terrible penalty of being sent away from table just as we were sitting down to dinner. Smiling obedience was my only self-defence. Enemies may conclude from these traits of character that I was a stupid lout, and friends that I was a philosopher in embryo. Nothing is rarer than the eye of equal justice.
Yet any one who takes the trouble to inquire of my acquaintances and servants, will learn that my taciturnity, my tolerance, my stoical endurance, have not changed with years--that I continue to view the events of this life with a smile, and that only those have nettled me which touched my honour.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SCARAMOUCH (1645)
_Ill.u.s.trating the Italian Commedia dell"Arte, or Impromptu Comedy_]
The growing disorder in our family affairs did not at first deprive us boys of a sound education. My two elder brothers, Gasparo and Francesco, went to public schools,[104] and were in time to drink at all the fountains of the regular curriculum. Extravagant expenditure, however, combined with the needs of a numerous progeny, soon rendered anything like an adequate course of studies impossible for the younger children. I was intrusted for some years to a learned country-parson, and then to a priest in Venice, of decent acquirements and excellent morality. After this I entered the academy of two Genoese priests, who supplied instruction to some youths of n.o.ble birth, and to some of no n.o.bility whatever. There were about twenty-five pupils in this academy.
We pursued the same studies, with some difference according to our cla.s.ses. Here I had the opportunity of observing that teachers are very valuable guides to youths who love learning, and mere images of ineffectual deities to such as hate it. For my part, being fond of books and eager for information, I imbibed my fill of such instruction as a boy can acquire before the age of fourteen. But sloth and vicious habits extirpate the seeds of learning planted by preceptors in the minds of ill-conditioned lads. Therefore I saw, and still see, more than two-thirds of my fellow-pupils sunk in a slough of baseness. Grammar, the cla.s.sics, and rhetoric only taught them to get drunk in taverns, to carry sacks for hire upon their shoulders, and to cry "_Baked apples, plums, and chestnuts!_" about the streets, with a basket on their heads and a pair of scales slung round their waists. Wretched fate to be a father!
When I became aware that our domestic difficulties would prove an obstacle to my remaining long at school, I determined to utilise the little I had already learned, and to carry on my education by myself. My elder brother Gasparo"s example, whose pa.s.sion for study had won public recognition, and my own good-will, kept me nailed to books of all sorts; nor could I imagine any pleasure worth a thought, beyond reading, meditating, and writing.
Poetry, choice Italian, and correct style were then in vogue. The young men of Venice met to discuss these three topics, which have now been utterly forgotten--possibly for the greater advantage and convenience of our citizens. I see crowds of young people, hair-brained, conceited, idle, frivolous, presumptuous, and harmful to society. Heaven knows what their studies are! Not poetry, not the niceties of the Italian language, not correction of style. And then, forsooth, I am to admire a hurly-burly of well-born persons, who claim in their foolhardiness to be omniscient, who produce nothing whatsoever, who cannot write three lines of a letter which shall express their sentiments, and which shall not swarm with revolting faults of grammar and of spelling!
I will omit to observe that respect for n.o.bles in a state is necessary; but that the respect shown simply for their birth and wealth is not respect but false feigned adulation. I will refrain from a.s.serting that a daily correspondence, maintained with a large variety of persons--people who may not perhaps be scientific, but who understand whether a letter is well written or ridiculous--may be capable of securing a large part of the regard, or of occasioning a large part of the contempt, bestowed on n.o.bles. I make no mention of the rich man in Signor Mercier"s comedy of Indigence, who found it impossible to write a letter of the utmost importance because his secretary was away from home. I will say nothing to those scientific tutors of the scions of our aristocracy, who instil derision and disdain for polite literature and the art of elegance in diction into the brains of their pupils, moulding them into geometricians, mathematicians, philosophers, physicists, astronomers, algebraical professors, naturalists, a whole deluge of sciences, but who cannot after all their labour express in writing what they have taught or what the common business of life requires.
All these things, and everything which imposture has presented to my senses and impressed upon my mind, must remain unwritten in my pen. I have no wish to make enemies.
Yet we cannot prevent drops of ink from falling sometimes from the pen and making blots upon our papers. Just so, while I am dictating these memoirs of my life, I shall not be able to avoid splutterings, however out of place and inconvenient.
I am almost ashamed to confess the intense a.s.siduity with which I applied myself to those frivolous literary studies of which I have been speaking. They brought on a haemorrhage from the nostrils, so violent and so frequent, that I was more than once or twice given up for dead in the manner of Seneca.[105] In their anxiety about my health, my friends hid away all my books, and deprived me of paper and inkstand; but I was the cleverest of thieves in searching for them, and went on doggedly reading and writing by stealth in the uninhabited attics of our mansion.
After relating this fact about my boyhood, malicious people may think that I am claiming to be considered worthy of a panegyric. They are quite mistaken. I fix them with my eyegla.s.s, and a.s.sure them that it is rather my intention to provide them with another good reason for quizzing me. The famous Doctor Tissot angrily rebukes excessive application to those studies which are universally esteemed as useless.
He reserves his praise for folk who ruin their health in pursuits considered beneficial to humanity; and such, I do not doubt, are the studies affected by himself and his admirers.
The Abbe Giovan Antonio Verdani, keeper of the select and extensive library of the patrician family Soranzo, was a man of vast literary erudition. He felt compa.s.sion for my weakness, which coincided with his own, and directed my reading by lending me the rarest books, masterpieces of pure Italian diction in prose and poetry. To estimate the quant.i.ties of paper which I covered with my thoughts in verse and prose, would be beyond my powers. I tried to imitate the style of all the early Tuscan writers who are most admired. a.s.suredly I never approached the perfection of their language; but I am none the less sure that the diligent and attentive perusal of a ma.s.s of the best works, treating of a vast variety of subjects, cannot fail to furnish a better head than mine with instruction and ideas, with the power of making just reflections and probable conjectures, and with the principles of sound morality. I am also convinced that the imitation of style in writing, pursued methodically, enables a man to express his own thoughts with facility, propriety of colouring, exact.i.tude of phrase and term, according to the variety of images, grave or gay, familiar or dignified, which we desire to develop and to communicate under their true aspect in prose or poetry.
Without attaining to the mastery of style at which I aimed, I acquired the miserable satisfaction of finding myself in the very select group of persons who know this truth. I also earned the wretchedness of being forced to read with insuperable aversion and disgust the works of many modern Italian authors, which are full of false fancies and sophisms, the rhetoric and diction of which never vary however the subject-matter changes, which are defiled by all manner of gibberish, bombast, nonsense, with periods involved in unintelligible vortices, and with preposterous phraseology. The sciences, the discoveries, the branches of new knowledge which are now so loudly vaunted, ought to be accepted as useful, and are worthy of respect. For this reason it is wrong to profane them and to render them contemptible by barbarous impurity and impropriety of diction. Francesco Redi, that great man, great philosopher, great physician, great naturalist, confirms my doctrine by his written works.[106] As regards the literature of art and wit and fancy, it is obvious that without correction of style this is absolutely worthless and condemned to merited oblivion. No one could count the fine and ample sentiments which perish, smothered in the mire of inartistic writing. Not less numerous, on the other hand, are the small but brilliant thoughts, duly coloured with appropriate terms, and placed at the right point of view by a master-hand, which sparkle before the eyes of every reader, be he learned or simple.
There is no disputing about tastes. Yet I think it could be easily maintained that our century has lapsed into a shameful torpor with regard to these things. I have written and printed quite enough upon the subject; without effect, however; and now I see no reason why I should not utter a last funeral lament over the mastery of art I longed to possess. That mastery, which nowadays is reckoned among the inutilities of existence, has been freely conceded to me by the verdict of contemporaries--blind judges, governed not by intelligence but by ignorant a.s.sumption--so that their opinion does not sustain me with the sure conviction of having attained my purpose. Nevertheless I am grateful even to the blind and deaf, who see and hear what gives them pleasure in my writings.
My pursuit of culture advanced on the lines I have described, whether for my happiness or my misfortune it is worthless to inquire. I read continually, and wasted enormous quant.i.ties of ink; paid close attention to men and manners; profited by the encouragement of the Abbe Verdani and Antonio Federigo Seghezzi; walked in the steps of my brother Gasparo; and frequented a literary society which met daily at our house.
From a Piedmontese, who knew how to read and nothing more, I learned the first rudiments of French; not that I wished to talk French in Italy, an affectation which I loathed; but because it was my desire, by the help of grammar and dictionary, to study the books, most excellent in part, in part injurious to society, which issue daily from the French press.
It was thus that I formed those literary tastes, to which I have always clung for innocent and disinterested amus.e.m.e.nt, and which, now that my hairs are grey, will be my solace till the hour of death. The giants of science, to whom I dare not raise my quizzing-gla.s.s for fear of committing an unpardonable sin, will perceive that in describing the scanty sources of my education, I am only painting the portrait of a literary pigmy in all humility.
As regards my moral training, it is only necessary to observe that the family of which I was a member has always cherished a deep and fervent reverence for the august image of religion, and that my father, careless as he was in matters of economy, never neglected religious duties or the good ensample of honourable conduct. He was a bitter enemy of falsehood.
His delicate susceptibility detected a lie by the inflection of the voice, and he punished it upon the spot with sounding boxes on the ears of his offspring.
Being a bold rider and pa.s.sionately fond of horses, he taught us to ride, and liked to see us every day on horseback during our summer visits to the country. It was useless to plead timidity, or to shrink from the snortings and jibbings of some half-broken beast he wanted us to back. Up we went; a cut or two of the switch across our legs set us off at a gallop; and there we were in full career, without a thought for broken shins or necks. Some jockeys, who came to break in vicious colts, put me up to tricks for mastering a hard-mouthed bolting animal. One of these tricks stood me in good stead upon an occasion I shall afterwards relate. Indeed, I may say that I owe my life to a jockey.
We had a little theatre of no great architectural pretensions in our country-house; and here we children used to act.[107] Brothers and sisters alike were gifted with some talent for comedy; and all of us, before a crowd of rustic spectators, pa.s.sed for players of the first quality. Beside tragic and comic pieces learned by heart, we frequently improvised farces with a slight plot upon some laughable motive. My sister Marina and I had the knack of imitating certain married couples notorious in the village for their burlesque humours. We used to interpolate our farces with scenes and dialogues in which the famous quarrels of these women with their drunken husbands were reproduced to the life. Our clothes were copied from the originals; and the imitation was so exact that our bucolic audience hailed it with Homeric peals of laughter, measuring their applause by the delight it afforded their coa.r.s.e natures. My father and mother took a fancy to see themselves represented in this way. My sister and I were shy at first, but we had to obey our parents. Finally, we regaled them with a perfect reproduction of their costume, their gestures, their way of talking, and some of their familiar household bickerings. Their astonishment was great, and their laughter was the only punishment of our dutiful temerity.
I learned to tw.a.n.g the guitar with a certain amount of skill, and vied with my brother Gasparo in improvising rhymed verses, which I sang to music in our hours of recreation. This was done with all the foolhardiness inseparable from a display which the vulgar are only too apt to regard as miraculous. Since I have touched upon the point, I will digress a little on this so-called miracle. In my opinion, the immense crowds of people hanging with open mouths upon the lips of an _improvisatore_ only prove that, in spite of the contempt into which poetry has fallen, it still possesses that power over the minds and the brains of men which their tongues deny it. Cristoforo Altissimo, a poet of the fifteenth century, is said to have publicly improvised his epic in octave stanzas on the Reali di Francia; the words were taken down from his lips, just as he composed them at the moment. The book was published; and though it is extremely rare, I have read it through the kindness of the Abbe Verdani. Only a few stanzas, out of all that ocean of verse, are worthy of the name of poetry; and yet we may believe that before the work was given to the press, some pains had been bestowed upon it. I have listened to many extempore versifiers, male and female, the most famous of our century. It has always struck me that if the deluges of verses which they spout forth with face on fire, to the applause of frantic mult.i.tudes, were written down, they would have very little poetical value, and that n.o.body would have the patience to read the twentieth part of them. Padre Zucchi, of the Olivetan Order, whom I heard in my youth, surpa.s.sed his rivals; now and then he produced sensible stanzas; but he improvised so slowly that reflection may have had some part in the result. I do not deny that these extempore rhymesters may be people of culture and learning, qualified to discourse well upon the themes proposed to them. Yet they would not be listened to, if they spoke ever so divinely in prose. In order to draw a crowd, they are forced to express their thoughts and images, just as they come, with voluble rapidity, in bad rhymed verses, which often are no better than a gabble of words without sense. This throws their audience into a trance of astonishment. Humanity has always quested after the marvellous like a hound. If a painter sought to depict foolhardiness or imposture wearing the mask of poetry, I could recommend nothing better than the portrait of an improvisatore, with goggle-eyes and arms in air, and a mult.i.tude staring up at him in stupid dumb amazement. These being my sentiments, I am willing, out of mere politeness and good manners, to approve the coronation of a Cavaliere Perfetto or a Corilla on the Capitol. But I can only accept with cordial and serious enthusiasm the honours of that sort paid to a Virgil, a Petrarch, and a Ta.s.so.
The Arcadians will laugh when I proceed to speak about an improvisatore, whom I knew and whom I have listened to a hundred times. Yet I should be committing an injustice if I did not mention him, and declare my opinion that he was the single really wonder-worthy artist in this kind, with whom I ever came in contact. He used to pour forth anacreontics, octave stanzas, any and every metre, extempore, to the music of a well-touched guitar. His verses rhymed, but had no _Clio_, _Euterpe_, _Plettro_, _Parnaso_, _Aganippe_, _Ruscelletto_, _Zefiretto_, and such stuff, in them. They composed a well-developed discourse, flowing evenly, not soaring, but with abundance of well-connected images, and natural, lively, graceful thoughts. He invariably used either the Venetian or the Paduan dialect; which will augment the derisive laughter of Arcadia, and make the Campidoglio ring. On one occasion, while he was improvising on the theme: _diligite inimicos vestros_, it happened that two enemies were present. At another time, he dilated on his own grief for a cavaliere[108] who had been kind to him, and who was then dying, given over by the doctors. Not only did the audience hang upon his lips with rapt attention; but in the former case, the enemies were reconciled, while in the latter tears were freely shed for the poet"s expiring benefactor. Such influence over the pa.s.sions of the heart reveals a true poet; for such a man I reserve the laurel crown upon my Campidoglio. His name was Giovanni Sibiliato, brother of the celebrated professor of literature in the University of Padua.
Returning from this digression, I will resume the narrative of my boyhood. I learned to fence and to dance; but books and composition were my chief pastime. Before a numerous audience in our literary a.s.semblies I felt no shyness. In private visits, among people new to me, the reserve of my demeanour often pa.s.sed for savagery. My first sonnet of pa.s.sable quality was written at the age of nine. Beside the applause it won me, I was rewarded with a box of comfits; and for this reason I have never forgotten it. The occasion of its composition was as follows. A certain Signora Angela Armano, midwife by trade, had a friend at Padua whose pet dog died and left her inconsolable. Signora Angela wished to comfort her friend; indulged in condolements for her loss; and sent a little spaniel of her own, called Delina, to replace the defunct pet.
Delina was to be given as a present, and a sonnet was to accompany the gift, expressing all the sentiments which a lady of Signora Angela"s profession might entertain in a circ.u.mstance of such importance. Though our family was a veritable lunatic asylum of poets, no one cared to translate the good creature"s gossipping garrulity into verse. Moved by her entreaties, I undertook the task; and the following Bernesque sonnet was the result:--
"Madama io vi vorrei pur confortare Con qualche graziosa diceria, Ma la sciagura vuole, e vostra, e mia, Che in un sonetto la non vi pu stare.
Non vi state, mia cara, a disperare, Che la sarebbe una poltroneria, L"entrar per un can morto in frenesia; Chi nasce muor, convien moralizzare.
Vi sovvenite, ch" egli avra pisciato Alcuna volta in camera, o in cucina, Che in quell" istante lo avreste ammazzato.
Io vi spedisco intanto la Delina Che piu d"un cane ha d"essa innamorato, E pu farvi di cani una dezina.
e bella, e picciolina; Di lei non voglio piu nuova, o risposta, Servitevi per razza, o di supposta."
Two years later, a new edition of the poems of Gaspara Stampa appeared in Venice, at the expense of Count Antonio Ramboldo di Collalto of Vienna, a prince distinguished for his birth and writings. Scholars know that this sixteenth-century Sappho sighed her soul forth in love-laments to a certain Count Collaltino di Collalto, doughty warrior and polished versifier, and that she was reputed to have died of hopeless pa.s.sion in her youth.[109] The ladies of our century will hardly believe her story; for Cupid has changed temper since those days, and kills his victims with far different and less honourable weapons. Some verses by contemporary writers in praise of our literary heroine were to be appended to this edition of her works. I dared to enter the lists, and wrote a sonnet in the style of the earliest Tuscan poets. Such as it is, the sonnet may be found printed in the book which I have indicated. It appears from this juvenile production that I already acknowledged a mistress of my heart; compliance with fashion was alone responsible for my precocity.
This trifling composition was read by the famous Apostolo Zeno. He deigned to inquire for the author, who had reproduced the antique simplicity of Cino da Pistoja, Guittone d"Arezzo, and Guido Cavalcanti.
On my presenting myself, Signor Zeno politely expressed surprise at discovering a mere boy in the learned writer of the sonnet, treated me with kind attention, and placed his choice library at my disposal.[110]
The encouragement of this distinguished poet, true lover of pure style, and foe to seventeenth-century conceits, added fuel to the fire of my literary pa.s.sion. From that day forward not one of those collections of verses appeared, in which marriages, the entrance of young ladies into convents, the election of n.o.blemen to offices of state, the deaths of people, cats, dogs, parrots, and such events, are celebrated in Venice and other towns of Italy, but that it contained some specimen of my Muse in grave or playful verse.
Books, paper, pens and ink formed the staple of my existence. I was always pregnant, always in labour, giving birth to monsters in remote corners of our mansion. I scribbled furiously, G.o.d knows how, up to my seventeenth year. Besides innumerable essays in prose and mult.i.tudes of fugitive verses, I wrote four long poems, ent.i.tled _Berlinghieri_, _Don Quixote_, _Moral Philosophy_ (based upon the talking animals of Firenzuola), and _Gonella_ in twelve cantos. The Abbe Verdani took a fancy to this last, and wished to see it printed. Signor Giulio Cesare Beccelli, however, had published a poem at Verona on the same subject, which robbed my work of novelty; and though mine was richer in facts drawn from good old sources, I did not venture to enter into compet.i.tion with him. The three years" absence from home, which I shall presently relate, and the revolution in our domestic affairs which surprised me on my return, exposed these boyish literary labours to ruin and dispersion. It is probable that pork-butchers and fruit-vendors exercised condign justice on the children of my Muse.
III.
_The Situation of my Family, and my Reasons for Leaving Home._
In the course of these years, the early deaths of a brother and a sister had reduced our numbers from eleven to nine. Meanwhile, our annual expenditure exceeded the resources at our command, and left but little for the needs of a numerous offspring, too old to be contented with a toy or plaything. Some lawsuits, which we lost, diminished the estate.
Clouds of doubt and care began to obscure the horizon, and in a few years the family was plunged in pecuniary embarra.s.sment.
My brother Gasparo had taken a wife in a fit of genial poetical abstraction. Even poetry has its dangers. This man, who was really singular in his absolute self-dedication to books, in his indefatigable labours as an author, and in a certain philosophical temper or indolence, which made him indifferent to everything which was not literary, learned to fall in love from Petrarch. A young lady, ten years older than himself, named Luigia Bergalli,[111] better known among the shepherdesses of Arcady as Irmenia Partenide, a poetess of romantic fancy, as her published works evince, was my brother"s Laura. Not being a canon, like Petrarch, he married her in Petrarch"s spirit, but with due legal formalities. This woman, of fervent and soaring imagination, which fitted her for high poetic flights, undertook to regulate the disorder in our affairs. Impelled by the instincts of a good nature, with something of ambition and a flattering belief in her own practical ability, she did the best that in her lay. Yet all her projects and administrative measures revolved within a circle of romantic raptures and Pindaric ecstasies. Thirsting with soul-pa.s.sion after an ideal realm, she found herself the sovereign of a state in decadence. It was the desire of her heart to make us all happy, in the most disinterested way. Yet she accomplished nothing beyond involving every one, and herself to boot, in the meshes of still greater misfortune. Her husband, poring perpetually upon his books, could only oppose her at the sacrifice of ease and quiet. This he was incapable of doing.--In order to judge people equitably, it is necessary that character, temperament, and circ.u.mstances should be thoroughly explained.
I know how unphilosophical it is to ascribe the discords of a family to malignant planetary influences. Our domestic circle consisted of a father, a mother, four brothers, and five sisters, all of them good-hearted, honourable, mutually well-inclined; and yet it became the very mirror of infelicity at every moment and in each of the persons who composed it. Minute investigation into the causes of this painful fact would probably reveal them. But it is better to adopt the language of the vulgar, and to say that a bad star pursued our family. Otherwise, a.n.a.lysis might lead one into acts of unkindness, and involve one in hatred.
The confusion in which we lived at that period, and the bitter discomforts we had to bear, were augmented by expenses due to my brother"s increasing progeny. Our worst disaster, however (and this wound I carry in my heart even to the present day), was a cruel stroke of apoplexy which laid my beloved father low. He continued to exist, an invalid, for about seven years after the sad event; dumb and paralytic, but in possession of all his mental faculties--a circ.u.mstance which rendered his deplorable condition almost unbearable to a man of my father"s extreme sensibility.
The tears of five sisters, the births of nephews and nieces, a house swarming with female go-betweens, brokers, and the Hebrew ministers of our decaying realm--all this whirlpool of economical extravagance and folly, to utter one word against which was reckoned mutiny or treason, drove my second brother, Francesco, into exile. He went into the Levant with the Provveditore Generale di Mare,[112] his Excellency the Cavaliere Antonio Loredano, of happy memory. At that period I was about thirteen.
Letters written from Corfu by this brother describing the kindness shown him by his Provveditore, and the rank of ensign to which he soon attained, awoke in me a burning desire to escape like him from those domestic turmoils, the gravity of which I felt in experience and measured by antic.i.p.ation, but which my state of boyhood rendered me unable to remedy. Our uncle on the mother"s side, Almor Cesare Tiepolo, recommended me to his Excellency Girolamo Quirini, Provveditore Generale elect for Dalmatia and Albania. Furnished with a modest outfit, in which my book-box and guitar were not forgotten, I bade farewell to my parents at the age of seventeen,[113] and went across seas as volunteer into those provinces, to study the ways and manners of my fellow-soldiers, and of the peoples among whom we were quartered.