together, partly by the effect of the crusades, and partly by the Moorish settlement in Spain; and Ariosto had the merit of first combining them into one, in that miraculous poem, which contains more painting, more variety, and more imagination, than any other poem in existence. The fictions of Boyardo are more purely in the taste of the Orientals; and Tasso is imbued far more deeply with the spirit and manner of the Augustan classics.

they were ultimately recovered. The re-ried form than those of the northern romansearches necessary for this, required authority cers. The two styles however were brought and money; and they were begun, accordingly, under the patronage of princes and academies:-circumstances favourable to the accumulation of knowledge, and the formation of mere scholars-but adverse to the development of original genius. The Italians, accordingly, have been scholars, and have furnished the rest of Europe with the implements of liberal study; but they have achieved little for themselves in the high philosophy of politics and morals-though they have to boast of Galileo, Cassini, and a long list of celebrated names in the physical sciences. In treating of subjects of a large and commanding interest, they are almost always bombastic and shallow. Nothing, indeed, can be more just or acute than the following delineation of this part of their character.

The false refinements, the concetti, the ingenious turns and misplaced subtlety, which have so long been the reproach of the Italian literature, Madame de Staël ascribes to their early study of the Greek Theologians, and later Platonists, who were so much in favour at the first revival of learning. The nice distinctions and sparkling sophistries which these gentlemen applied, with considerable "Les Italiens, accoutumés souvent à ne rien success, in argument, were unluckily transcroire et à tout professer, se sont bien plus exercés ferred, by Petrarch, to subjects of love and dans la plaisanterie que dans le raisonnement. Ils se gallantry; and the fashion was set of a most moquent de leur propre maniére d'être. Quand ils unnatural alliance between wit and passionveulent renoncer leur talent naturel, à l'esprit ingenuity and profound emotion,-which has comique, pour essayer de l'éloquence oratoire, ils turned out, as might have been expected, to ont presque toujours de l'affectation. Les souvenirs d'une grandeur passée, sans aucun sentiment de the discredit of both the contracting parties. grandeur présente, produisent le gigantesque. Les We admit the fact, and its consequences: but Italiens auroient de la dignité, si la plus sombre we do not agree as to the causes which are tristesse formoit leur caractère; mais quand les here supposed to have produced it. We really successeurs des Romains, privés de tout éclat na-do not think that the polemics of Constantitional, de toute liberté politique, sont encore un des peuples les plus gais de la terre, ils ne peuvent avoir aucun élévation naturelle.

"Les Italiens se moquent dans leur contes, et souvent même sur le théâtre, des prêtres, auxquels ils sont d'ailleurs entièrement asservis. Mais ce n'est point sous un point de vue philosophique qu'ils attaquent les abus de la religion. Ils n'ont pas, comme quelques-uns de nos écrivains, le but de ré. former les défauts dont ils plaisantent; ce qu'ils veulent seulement, c'est s'amuser d'autant plus que le sujet est plus sérieux. Leurs opinions sont, dans le fond, assez opposées à tous les genres d'autorité auxquels ils sont soumis; mais cet esprit d'opposition n'a de force que ce qu'il faut pour pouvoir mépriser ceux qui les commandent. C'est la ruse des enfans envers leurs pédagogues; ils leur obéissent, à condition qu'il leur soit permis de s'en moquer."-p. 248.

and have little doubt that it originated in that nople are answerable for this extravagance; desire to impress upon their productions the visible marks of labour and art, which is felt by almost all artists in the infancy of the study. As all men can speak, and set words together in a natural order, it was likely to occur to those who first made an art of composition, and challenged general admiration for an arrangement of words, that it was necessary to make a very strong and conspicuous distinction between their composi tions and ordinary and casual discourse; and to proclaim to the most careless reader or hearer, that a great difficulty had been surmounted, and something effected which every In poetry, however, the brilliant imagina- one was not in a condition to accomplish. tion of the South was sure to re-assert its This feeling, we have no doubt, first gave claims to admiration; and the first great occasion to versification in all languages; and poets of modern Italy had the advantage of will serve to account, in a good degree, for opening up a new career for their talents. the priority of metrical to prose compositions: Poetical fiction, as it is now known in Europe, but where versification was remarkably easy, seems to have had two distinct sources. or already familiar, some visible badge of Among the fierce and illiterate nations of artifice would also be required in the thought; the North, nothing had any chance of being and, accordingly, there seems to have been a listened to, that did not relate to the feats of certain stage in the progress of almost all war in which it was their sole ambition to literature, in which this excess has been comexcel; and poetical invention was forced to mitted. In Italy, it occurred so early as the display itself in those legends of chivalry, time of Petrarch. In France, it became conwhich contain merely an exaggerated picture spicuous in the writings of Voiture, Balsac, of scenes that were familiar to all their audi- and all that coterie; and in England, in Cowtors. In Asia, again, the terrors of a san- ley, Donne, and the whole tribe of metaguinary despotism had driven men to express physical poets. Simplicity, in short, is the their emotions, and to insinuate their moral last attainment of progressive literature; and admonitions, in the form of apologues and men are very long afraid of being natural, fables; and as these necessarily took a very from the dread of being taken for ordinary. wild and improbable course, their fictions There is a simplicity, indeed, that is anteceassumed a much more extravagant and va-dent to the existence of anything like literary

ambition or critical taste in a nation,-the sim- | right in saying, that there is a radical differplicity of the primitive ballads and legends ence in the taste and genius of the two reof all rude nations; but after a certain degree of taste has been created, and composition has become an object of pretty general attention, simplicity is sure to be despised for a considerable period; and indeed, to be pretty uniformly violated in practice, even after it is restored to nominal honour and veneration.

We do not, however, agree the less cordially with Madame de Staël in her remarks upon the irreparable injury which affectation does to taste and to character. The following is marked with all her spirit and sagacity.

"L'affectation est de tous les défauts des carac

tères et des écrits, celui qui tarit de la manière la plus irréparable la source de tout bien; car elle blase sur la vérité même, dont elle imite l'accent. Dans quelque genre que ce soit, tous les mots qui ont servi à des idées fausses, à de froides exagérations, sont pendant long-temps frappés d'aridité; et telle langue même peut perdre entièrement la puissance d'émouvoir sur tel sujet, si elle a été trop souvent prodiguée à ce sujet même. Ainsi peut-étre l'Italien est-il de toutes les langues de l'Europe la moins propre à l'éloquence passionnée de l'amour, comme la nôtre est maintenant usée pour l'éloquence de la liberté."-pp. 241, 242.

gions; and that there is more melancholy, more tenderness, more deep feeling and fixed and lofty passion, engendered among the clouds and mountains of the North, than upon the summer seas or beneath the perfumed groves of the South. The causes of the difference are not perhaps so satisfactorily stated. Madame de Staël gives the first place to the climate.

Another characteristic is the hereditary independence of the northern tribes-arising partly from their scattered population and inaccessible retreats, and partly from the physical force and hardihood which their way of life, and the exertions requisite to procure subsistence in those regions, necessarily produced. Their religious creed, too, even before their conversion to Christianity, was less fantastic, and more capable of leading to heroic emotions than that of the southern nations. The respect and tenderness with which they always regarded their women, is another cause (or effect) of the peculiarity of their national character; and, in later times, their general adoption of the Protestant faith has tended to confirm that character. For our own part, we are inclined to ascribe more weight to the last circumstance, than to all the others that have been mentioned; and that not merely from the better education which it is the genius of Protestantism to bestow on the lower orders, but from the nec

Scriptures which it enjoins. A very great proportion of the Protestant population of Europe is familiarly acquainted with the Bible; and there are many who are acquainted with scarcely any other book. Now, the Bible is not only full of lessons of patience and humility and compassion, but abounds with a gloomy and awful poetry, which cannot fail to make a powerful impression on minds that are not exposed to any other, and receive this under the persuasion of its divine origin. The peculiar character, therefore, which Madame de Staël has ascribed to the people of the North in general, will now be found, we believe, to belong only to such of them as profess the reformed religion; and to be discernible in all the communities that maintain that profession, without much regard to the degree of latitude which they inhabit-though at the same time it is undeniable, that its general adoption in the North must be explained by some of the more general causes which we have shortly indicated above.

Their superstition and tyranny-their inquisition and arbitrary governments have arrested the progress of the Italians as they have in a great degree prevented that of the Spaniards in the career of letters and philosophy. But for this, the Spanish genius would probably have gone far. Their early romances show a grandeur of conception, and a gen-essary effect of the universal study of the uine enthusiasm; and their dramas, though irregular, are full of spirit and invention. Though bombastic and unnatural in most of their serious compositions, their extravagance is not so cold and artificial as that of the Italians; but seems rather to proceed from a natural exaggeration of the fancy, and an inconsiderate straining after a magnificence which they had not skill or patience to attain. We come now to the literature of the North, -by which name Madame de Staël designates the literature of England and Germany, and on which she passes an encomium which we scarcely expected from a native of the South. She startles us a little, indeed, when she sets off with a dashing parallel between Homer and Ossian; and proceeds to say, that the peculiar character of the northern literature has all been derived from that Patriarch of the Celts, in the same way as that of the south of Europe may be ultimately traced back to the genius of Homer. It is certainly rather against this hypothesis, that the said Ossian has only been known to the readers and writers of the North for about forty years from the present day, and has not been held in especial reverence by those who have most distinguished themselves in that short period. However, we shall suppose that Madame de Staël means only, that the style of Ossian reunites the peculiarities that distinguish the northern school of letters, and may be supposed to exhibit them such as they were before the introduction of the classical and southern models. We rather think she is

The great fault which the French impute to the writers of the North, is want of taste and politeness. They generally admit that they have genius; but contend that they do not know how to use it; while their partisans maintain, that what is called want of taste is merely excess of genius, and independence of pedantic rules and authorities. Madame de Staël, though admitting the transcendent merits of some of the English writers, takes part, upon the whole, against them in this

controversy; and, after professing her unquali- | is that which enables him to receive the fied preference of a piece compounded of great greatest quantity of pleasure from the greatest blemishes and great beauties, compared with number of things. With regard to the author one free of faults, but distinguished by little again, or artist of any other description, who excellence, proceeds very wisely to remark, pretends to bestow the pleasure, his object of that it would be still better if the great faults course should be, to give as much, and to as were corrected—and that it is but a bad spe- many persons as possible; and especially to cies of independence which manifests itself those who, from their rank and education, are by being occasionally offensive: and then she likely to regulate the judgment of the reattacks Shakespeare, as usual, for interspers-mainder. It is his business therefore to asing so many puerilities and absurdities and grossiéretés with his sublime and pathetic

passages.

certain what does please the greater part of such persons; and to fashion his productions according to the rules of taste which may be deduced from that discovery. Now, we humbly conceive it to be a complete and final justification for the whole body of the English nation, who understand French as well as English and yet prefer Shakespeare to Racine, just to state, modestly and firmly, the fact of that preference; and to declare, that their habits and tempers, and studies and occupations, have been such as to make them receive far greater pleasure from the more varied imagery-the more flexible tone-the closer imitation of nature-the more rapid succession of incident, and vehement bursts of pas sion of the English author, than from the unvarying majesty the elaborate argument

Now, there is no denying, that a poem would be better without faults; and that judicious painters use shades only to set off their pictures, and not blots. But there are two little remarks to be made. In the first place, if it be true that an extreme horror at faults is usually found to exclude a variety of beauties, and that a poet can scarcely ever attain the higher excellencies of his art, without some degree of that rash and headlong confidence which naturally gives rise to blemishes and excesses, it may not be quite so absurd to hold, that this temperament and disposition, with all its hazards, deserves encouragement, and to speak with indulgence of faults that are symptomatic of great beau--and epigrammatic poetry of the French draties. There is a primitive fertility of soil that naturally throws out weeds along with the matchless crops which it alone can bear; and we might reasonably grudge to reduce its vigour for the sake of purifying its produce. There are certain savage virtues that can scarcely exist in perfection in a state of complete civilization; and, as specimens at least, we may wish to preserve, and be allowed to admire them, with all their exceptionable accompaniments. It is easy to say, that there is no necessary connection between the faults and the beauties of our great dramatist; but the fact is, that since men have be-guage of their country, and will probably be come afraid of falling into his faults, no one has approached to his beauties; and we have already endeavoured, on more than one occasion, to explain the grounds of this con

nection.

matist. For the taste of the nation at large, we really cannot conceive that any other apology can be necessary; and though it might be very desirable that they should agree with their neighbours upon this point, as well as upon many others, we can scarcely imagine any upon which their disagreement could be attended with less inconvenience. For the authors, again, that have the misfortune not to be so much admired by the adjoining nations as by their own countrymen, we can only suggest, that this is a very common misfortune; and that, as they wrote in the lan

always most read within its limits, it was not perhaps altogether unwise or unpardonable in them to accommodate themselves to the taste which was there established.

Madame de Staël has a separate chapter upon Shakespeare; in which she gives him full credit for originality, and for having been the first, and perhaps the only considerable author, who did not copy from preceding

But our second remark is, that it is not quite fair to represent the controversy as arising altogether from the excessive and undue indulgence of the English for the admitted faults of their favourite authors, and their per-models, but drew all his greater conceptions sisting to idolize Shakespeare in spite of his buffooneries, extravagancies, and bombast. We admit that he has those faults; and, as they are faults, that he would be better without them but there are many more things which the French call faults, but which we deliberately consider as beauties. And here, we suspect, the dispute does not admit of any settlement: Because both parties, if they are really sincere in their opinion, and understand the subject of discussion, may very well be right, and for that very reason incapable of coming to any agreement. We consider taste to mean merely the faculty of receiving pleasure from beauty; and, so far as relates to the person receiving that pleasure, we apprehend it to admit of little doubt, that the best taste

directly from his own feelings and observations. His representations of human passions, therefore, are incomparably more true and touching, than those of any other writer; and are presented, moreover, in a far more elementary and simple state, and without any of those circumstances of dignity or contrast with which feebler artists seem to have held it indispensable that they should be set off. She considers him as the first writer who has ventured upon the picture of overwhelming sorrow and hopeless wretchedness;—that desolation of the heart, which arises from the long contemplation of ruined hopes and irreparable privation;-that inward anguish and bitterness of soul which the public life of the ancients prevented them from feeling, and

their stoical precepts interdicted them from III.; for all which we shall leave it to our disclosing. The German poets, and some readers to make the best apology they can. succeeding English authors, have produced a Madame de Stael thinks very poorly of our prodigious effect by the use of this powerful talent for pleasantry; and is not very successinstrument; but nothing can exceed the orig-ful in her delineation of what we call humour.

inal sketches of it exhibited in Lear, in Ham- The greater part of the nation, she says, lives let, in Timon of Athens, and in some parts of either in the serious occupations of business Richard and of Othello. He has likewise and politics, or in the tranquil circle of family drawn, with the hand of a master, the strug-affection. What is called society, therefore, gles of nature under the immediate contem- has scarcely any existence among them; and plation of approaching death; and that with- yet it is in that sphere of idleness and frivolity, out those supports of conscious dignity or that taste is matured, and gaiety made eleexertion with which all other. writers have gant. They are not at all trained, therefore, thought it necessary to blend or to contrast to observe the finer shades of character and their pictures of this emotion. But it is in the of ridicule in real life; and consequently neiexcitement of the two proper tragic passions ther think of delineating them in their comof pity and terror, that the force and origin-positions, nor are aware of their merit when ality of his genius are most conspicuous; pity delineated by others. We are unwilling to not only for youth and innocence, and noble- think this perfectly just; and are encouraged ness and virtue, as in Imogen and Desdemona, to suspect, that the judgment of the ingenious Brutus and Cariolanus-but for insignificant author may not be altogether without appeal persons like the Duke of Clarence, or profli- on such a subject, by observing, that she repgate and worthless ones like Cardinal Wolsey; resents the paltry flippancy and disgusting -terror, in all its forms, from the madness affectation of Sterne, as the purest specimen of Lear, and the ghost of Hamlet, up to the of true English humour; and classes the chardreams of Richard and Lady Macbeth. In acter of Falstaff along with that of Pistol, as comparing the effects of such delineations parallel instances of that vulgar caricature with the superstitious horror excited by the from which the English still condescend to mythological persons of the Greek drama, the receive amusement. It is more just, howvast superiority of the English author cannot ever, to observe, that the humour, and in fail to be apparent. Instead of supernatural general the pleasantry, of our nation, has very beings interfering with their cold and impas- frequently a sarcastic and even misanthropic sive natures, in the agitations and sufferings character, which distinguishes it from the of men, Shakespeare employs only the magic mere playfulness and constitutional gaiety of of powerful passion, and of the illusions to our French neighbours; and that we have not, which it gives birth. The phantoms and ap- for the most part, succeeded in our attempts paritions which he occasionally conjures up to imitate the graceful pleasantry and agreeto add to the terror of the scene, are in truth able trifling of that ingenious people. We but a bolder personification of those troubled develope every thing, she maintains, a great dreams, and thick coming fancies, which har- deal too laboriously; and give a harsh and row up the souls of guilt and agony; and painful colouring to those parts which the even his sorcery and incantation are but traits very nature of their style requires to be but of the credulity and superstition which so lightly touched and delicately shaded. We frequently accompany the exaltation of the never think we are heard, unless we cry out; greater passions. But perhaps the most minor understood, if we leave any thing unraculous of all his representations, are those in which he has pourtrayed the wanderings of a disordered intellect, and especially of that species of distraction which arises from excess of sorrow. Instead of being purely terrible, those scenes are, in his hands, in the highest degree touching and pathetic; and the wildness of fancy, and richness of imagery which they display, are even less admirable than the constant, though incoherent expression of that one sentiment of agonizing grief which had overborne all the faculties of the soul.

Such are the chief beauties which Madame de Staël discovers in Shakespeare; and though they are not perhaps exactly what an English reader would think of bringing most into notice, it is interesting to know what strikes an intelligent foreigner, in pieces with which we ourselves have always been familiar. The chief fault she imputes to him, besides the mixture of low buffoonery with tragic passion, are occasional tediousness and repetition-too much visible horror and bloodshed-and the personal deformity of Caliban and Richard

told :-an excess of diffuseness and labour which could never be endured out of our own island. It is curious enough, indeed, to observe, that men who have nothing to do with their time but to get rid of it in amusement, are always much more impatient of any kind of tediousness in their entertainers, than those who have but little leisure for entertainment. The reason is, we suppose, that familiarity with business makes the latter habitually tolerant of tediousness; while the less engrossing pursuits of the former, in order to retain any degree of interest, require a very rapid succession and constant variety. On the whole, we do not think Madame de Staël very correct in her notions of English gaiety; and cannot help suspecting, that she must have been in some respects unfortunate in her society, during her visit to this country.

Her estimate of our poetry, and of our works of fiction, is more unexceptionable. She does not allow us much invention, in the strictest sense of that word; and still less grace and sprightliness in works of a light and playful character: But, for glowing descriptions of

terre, chacun pouvant agir d'une manière quelconque sur les résolutions de ses représentans, l'on prend l'habitude de comparer la pensée avec l'action, et l'on s'accoutume à l'amour du bien public par l'espoir d'y contribuer."-Vol. ii. pp. 5-7.

nature-for the pure language of the affections-for profound thought and lofty sentiment, she admits, that the greater poets of England are superior to any thing else that the world has yet exhibited. Milton, Young, Thomson, Goldsmith, and Gray, seem to be her chief favourites. We do not find that Cowper, or any later author, had come to her knowledge. The best of them, however, she says, are chargeable with the national faults of exaggeration, and 'des longueurs.' She overrates the merit, we think, of our novels, when she says, that with the exception of La Nouvelle Heloise, which belongs exclusively to the genius of the singular individual who produced it, and has no relation to the character of his nation, all the novels that have succeeded in France have been undisguised imitations of the English, to whom she ascribes, without qualification, the honour of that meri-and their Masillon-their D'Alembert-their torious invention.

The last chapter upon English literature relates to their philosophy and eloquence; and here, though the learned author seems aware of the transcendent merit of Bacon, we rather think she proves herself to be unacquainted with that of his illustrious contemporaries or immediate successors, Hooker, Taylor, and Barrow-for she places Bacon as the only luminary of our sphere in the period preceding the Usurpation, and considers the true era of British philosophy as commencing with the reign of King William. We cannot admit the accuracy of this intellectual chronology. The character of the English philosophy is to be patient, profound, and always guided by a view to utility. They have done wonders in the metaphysic of the understanding; but have not equalled De Retz, La Bruyère, or even Montaigne, in their analysis of the passions and dispositions. The following short passage is full of sagacity and talent.

"Les Anglais ont avancé dans les sciences philosophiques comme dans l'industrie commerciale, à l'aide de la patience et du temps. Le penchant de leurs philosophes pour les abstractions sembloit devoir les entraîner dans des systêmes qui pouvoient être contraires à la raison; mais l'esprit de calcul. qui régularise, dans leur application, les combinaisons abstraites, la moralité, qui est la plus expérimentale de toutes les idées humaines, l'intérêt du commerce, l'amour de la liberté, ont toujours ramené les philosophes Anglais à des résultats pratiques. Que d'ouvrages entrepris pour servir utilement les hommes, pour l'éducation des enfans, pour le soulagement des malheureux, pour l'économie politique, la législation criminelle, les sciences, la morale, la métaphysique! Quelle philosophie dans les conceptions! quel respect pour l'expérience dans le

choix des moyens!

C'est à la liberté qu'il faut attribuer cette émulation et cette sagesse. On pouvoit si rarement se flatter en France d'influer par ses écrits sur les institutions de son pays, qu'on ne songeoit qu'à montrer de l'esprit dans les discussions même les plus sérieuses. On poussoit jusqu'au paradoxe un systême vrai dans une certaine mesure; la raison ne pouvant avoir une effet utile, on vouloit au moins que le paradoxe fût brillant. D'ailleurs sous une monarchie absolue, on pouvoit sans danger vanter, comme dans le Contrat Social. la démocratie pure; mais on n'auroit point osé approcher des idées possibles. Tout étoit jeu d'esprit en France, hors les arrêts du conseil du roi: tandis qu'en Angle

She returns again, however, to her former imputation of "longueurs," and repetitions, and excessive development; and maintains, that the greater part of English books are obscure, in consequence of their prolixity, and of the author's extreme anxiety to be perfectly understood. We suspect a part of the confusion is owing to her want of familiarity with the language. In point of fact, we know of no French writer on similar subjects so concise as Hume or Smith; and believe we might retort the charge of longueurs, in the name of the whole English nation, upon one half of the French classic authors-upon their Rollin Buffon-their Helvetius-and the whole tribe of their dramatic writers: while as to repetitions, we are quite certain that there is no one English author who has repeated the same ideas half so often as Voltaire himself-certainly not the most tedious of the fraternity. She complains also of a want of warmth and animation in our prose writers. And it is true that Addison and Shaftesbury are cold; but the imputation only convinces us the more, that she is unacquainted with the writings of Jeremy Taylor, and that illustrious train of successors which has terminated, we fear, in the person of Burke. Our debates in parliament, she says, are more remarkable for their logic than their rhetoric; and have more in them of sarcasm, than of poetical figure and ornament. And no doubt it is so-and must be so-in all the discussions of permanent assemblies, occupied from day to day, and from month to month, with great questions of internal legislation or foreign policy. If she had heard Fox or Pitt, however, or Burke or Windham, or Grattan, we cannot conceive that she should complain of our want of animation; and, warm as she is in her encomiums on the eloquence of Mirabeau, and some of the orators of the first revolution, she is forced to confess, that our system of eloquence is better calculated for the detection of sophistry, and the effectual enforcement of all salutary truth. We really are not aware of any other purposes which eloquence can serve in a great national assembly.

ture-and here we must contrive also to close Here end her remarks on our English literathis desultory account of her lucubrations though we have accompanied her through little more than one half of the work before us. It is impossible, however, that we can now find room to say any thing of her exposition of German or of French literature-and still less of her anticipations of the change which the establishment of a Republican government in the last of those countries is likely to produce,-or of the hints and cautions with which, in contemplation of that event, she thinks it necessary to provide her countrymen. These are perhaps the most curious parts of the work:-but we cannot enter upon them