1859.] How Faith tormented Dymocke. cordant tin trumpet, and a stale morsel of plum-cake. The boy, a sturdy, curly-headed, open-eyed urchin, rising five, resented this wholesale spoliation with considerable energy, and a grand quarrel, not without violence, was the result. The usual declaration of hostility, 'then I wont play,' was followed by a retreat to different corners of the gallery; and a fit of the sulks,' lasting nearly twenty minutes, afforded a short interval of peace and quiet to the household. A child's resentment, however, is not of long duration; and we are bound to admit that in this instance the aggressor made the first advances to a reconciliation. 'You began it, dear,' lisped the little vixen, a thorough woman already, though she can hardly speak plain. Kiss and make up, brother: you began it l And we are persuaded that the honest little fellow, with his masculine softness of head and heart, believed himself to have been from the commencement wholly and solely in the wrong. So Faith, lying in wait for Dy. mocke at a certain angle of the back-yard, where there was not much likelihood of interruption, stood to her arms boldly, and commenced the attack. Are you never going to speak to me again, sergeant?" said Faith, with a half-mournful, half-resentful expression on her pretty face. 'I know what new acquaintances are― the miller's daughter's a good girl, and a comely; but it's not so far from here to Brampton Mill that you need to be in such a hurry as not to spare a word to an old friend, Hugh!' The last monosyllable was only whispered, but accompanied by a soft stolen glance from under a pair of long eyelashes, it did not fail to produce a certain effect. The miller's daughter! Brampton Mill!' exclaimed Hugh, aghast and open-mouthed, dumb-foundered, as well he might be, at an accusation so devoid of the slightest shadow of justice. Oh! I know what I know,' proceeded Faith with increased agitation and alarming volubility. know where you were spending the day yesterday, and the day before, I 695 and the day before that! I know why you leave your work in the morning, and the dinner stands till it's cold, and the horse is kept out all day, and comes home in a muck of sweat; and it's "where's the sergeant ?" and has "anybody seen Hugh ?" and "Mistress Faith, can you tell what's become of Dymocke ?" all over the house. But I answer them, "I've nothing to do with Dymocke; Dymocke don't belong to me. Doubtless he's gone to see his friends in the neighbourhood; and he knows his own ways best.' Oh! I don't want to pry upon you, sergeant; it's nothing to me when you come and go; and no doubt, as I said before, she's a good girl, and a comely; and got a bit of money too; for her sister that married Will Jenkins she's gone and quarrelled with her father; and the brother, you know, he's in hiding; and they're a bad lot altogether, all but her; and I hope you'll be happy, Sergeant Dymocke; and you've my best wishes; and (sob) prayers (sob), for all that's come and gone yet (sob), Hugh! To say that Dymocke was astonished, stupified, at his wit's end, is but a weak mode of expressing his utter discomfiture; the old soldier was completely routed, front, flanks, and rear, disarmed and taken prisoner, he was utterly at the mercy of his conqueror. It's not much to ask,' pursued Faith, her cheeks flushing, and her bosom heaving as she wept out her plaint; it's not much to ask, and I should like to have back the broken sixpence, and the silver buckles, and the-the-the bit of sweet marjoram I gave you yesterday was a fortnight, if it's only for a keepsake and a remembrance when you're married, Hugh, and you and me are separated for ever!' With these desponding words, the disconsolate damsel buried her face in her apron and moaned aloud. What a brute he felt himself! how completely she had put him in the wrong-how his conscience smote him, innocent as he was concerning the miller's daughter, for many little instances of inattention and neglect towards his affianced bride, who was now so unselfishly giving him up, with such evident distress. How his heart yearned towards her now, weeping there in her rustic beauty, and he pitied her, pitied her, whilst all the time, with his boasted sagacity and experience, he was as helpless as a baby in the little witch's hands. 'Don't ye take on so, Faith,' he said, attempting an awkward caress, from which she snatched herself indignantly away, 'don't ye take on so. I never went near the miller's daughter, Faith-I tell ye I didn't, as I'm a living man!' "Oh! it's nothing to me, sergeant, whether you did or whether you didn't,' returned the lady, looking up for an instant, and incontinently hiding her face in her apron for a fresh burst of grief. It's all over between you and me now, Hugh, for evermore!' Never say such a word, my dear,' returned Dymocke, waxing considerably alarmed, as the possibility of her being in earnest occurred to him, and the horrid suspicion dawned on his mind that this might be a ruse to get rid of him in favour of the comely yeoman, after all; ' and if you come to that, lass, you weren't so true to your colours yourself yesterday, that you need to turn the tables this way upon me.' She had led him to the point now. Then he was jealous, as she intended he should be, and she had got him safe. 'I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Sergeant Dymocke,' answered Mistress Faith, demurely, sobbing at longer intervals, and drying her eyes while she spoke. If you allude to my conversation with one of his blessed Majesty's servants yesterday, I answer you that it was in presence of yourself and all my lord's servants; and if it hadn't been, I'm accountable to no one. A poor lone woman like me can't be too careful, I know; a poor lone woman that's got nobody to defend her character, speak up for her, or take care of her, and that's lost her best friend, that quarrels with her whether she will or no. Oh! what shall I do ?-what shall I do?' The action was very nearly over now. Another flood of tears, brought up like a skilful general's reserve, in the nick of time, turned the tide of affairs, and nothing was left for the sergeant but to surrender at discretion. 'It's your own fault if it be so,' whispered Hugh, with that peculiarly sheepish expression which pervades the male biped's counteInance when he so far humiliates himself as to make a bona fide proposal. If you'll say the word, Faith, say it now, for indeed I love you, and I'll never be easy till you're my wife, and that's the truth!' But Faith wouldn't say the word at once, nor indeed could she be brought to put a period to her admirer's sufferings, in which, like a very woman, she found a morbid and inexplicable gratification, until she had well-nigh worried him into a withdrawal of his offer, when she said it in a great hurry, and sealed her submission with a kiss. On the subsequent festivities held both in the parlour and the hall—for Sir Giles drank the bride's health in a bumper, and the ladies of the family thought nothing too good to present to their favourite on the happy occasion of her marriage-it is not our province to enlarge. In compliance with the maxim that 'happy's the wooing that's not long in doing,' the nuptials took place as soon as the necessary preparations could be made, and a prettier or a happier-looking bride than Faith never knelt before the altar. The sergeant, however, betrayed a scared and somewhat startled appearance, as that of one who is not completely convinced of his own identity, bearing his part nevertheless as a bridegroom bravely and jauntily enough. At his own private opinion of the catastrophe we can but guess by a remark which he was overheard to address to himself immediately after his acceptance by the pretty waiting-maid, and her consequent departure to acquaint her mistress. 'You've done it now, old lad,' observed the sergeant, shaking his head, and speaking in a deliberate, reflective, and somewhat sarcastic tone. What is to be must be, I suppose, and all things turn out for the best. But there's no question about it-you've-done-it-now!' 1859.] THERE 697 ENGLAND'S LITERARY DEBT TO ITALY. are few passages, even in the works of John Milton, of more direct and touching interest than that in the Second Defence of the People of England, where, replying to the aspersions of Salmasius, he gives to the world the unvarnished narrative of his early life in Italy. We there see how well and wisely, how prudently and purely, he pursued the even tenor of his way in a country and amongst a people widely different from his own; how the English commoner became the friend of Italian nobles; how the youthful Puritan was the favourite of Romish prelates. It was his fortune, before starting for Italy, to receive the counsels of Sir Henry Wotton, the English diplomatist, beyond all others in that age well acquainted with Italian politics and life; as it was his still greater fortune in after years to pen the instructions in which another English diplomatist, Samuel Morland, bore the high resolve of Oliver to the Duke of Savoy, that the cruelties practised on his Waldensian subjects must cease at once. And his correspondence with his Italian friends shows that to the end of his life he bore an affectionate remembrance of Manso and Diodati, and Frescobaldi and Buonomattei, in whose society he had taken such delight during his stay in Naples and in Florence. He never alludes, save in terms of the warmest gratitude, to these early friends, and to the social intercourse and literary tastes which their names recal. A debt of gratitude akin to that felt and proclaimed by Milton, is due by every English scholar and student, by every lover of English poetry, to the literature of Italy. We are about to trespass on the indulgence of our readers by passing in review some of the claims. They have of late been too much overlooked. Perhaps no greater change was ever witnessed in the current of general education among our countrymen, and still more of our countrywomen, than that by which their studies have been diverted from Italian to German letters. elderly persons are well able to recollect when an acquaintance with All the Italian language formed an essential part of the education of every young lady just entering on life; when a knowledge of Tasso and Alfieri, of Metastasio and Goldoni, was regarded as the crowning grace of her intellectual accomplishments; and when the power of reading and understanding the Egmont of Goethe, or the Wilhelm Tell of Schiller, was hardly less rare than an acquaintance in the original Sanscrit with the Sakantalu of Kalidasa. This state of matters, we take it, is now strikingly reversed. The sunny slopes of the Italian Parnassus are almost deserted for the witch-haunted cliffs and caverns of the Brocken: for one student who has perused the Filippo of Alfieri, there are fifty who have read the Don Carlos of Schiller; for one traveller who has journeyed with Dante from the regions of endless woe to the realms of celestial light, a hundred at least have shuddered when Mephistopheles yells forth his infernal Her zu mir. Nor are the causes of this change in the literary tastes of English society extremely difficult of comprehension. A utilitarian age looks first to immediate utility in its intellectual efforts and requirements. Quite apart from the sympathies of race; from those not less powerful, of religion, other reasons have led to the preference at present given to German over Italian studies. The Italian Muses, whether of epic or lyric poetry, of the drama, or of history, seem smitten with hopeless barrenness. The actual present pressing interests of life are not mirrored forth in their creations. The political speculations of the most popular philosopher and politician whom Italy can boast of in the present century-the ideal pictures of national and reforming Popes which Vincenzo Gioberti held up to his countrymen-are no exceptions to this censure. They would have been simply a most laughable hoax had they not, alas! been something infinitely worse-a mockery, a delusion, and a snare to millions of Italians. The poems of Prati on contemporary events are not wanting in a certain melodra matic effect, which too frequently, it must be owned, passes into bombast; and though no such fault disfigures those of Giusti, the allusions in which the verse of the latter abounds are so local, so exclusively Tuscan-even Florentine in their character that a reader must have lived for years under the shadow of Brunelleschi's cupola before he can thoroughly understand their political bearing or relish their sparkling wit. Manzoni had no sooner given to the world the only historical romance to be mentioned in the same breath with Scott's, than he followed it up by a ponderous dissertation in which the essence of historical romance was rudely assailed, and all writings of that class held up to critical contempt as the offspring of a corrupted taste and the symptoms of a degenerate age. In history one name, and only one, now represents the land of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, of Sarpi and Giannone. That name, however, is Michell Amari, whose narratives of the Sicilian vespers and of the Moslem domination in Sicily may rank worthily by the side of the historical masterpieces of either his own or former times. There are indeed writers on social philosophy and educational science, but they exercise comparatively little influence in their own country, and are almost wholly unknown beyond the Alps. What English student of political philosophy ever turns to the pages of Romagnosi, what jurist to those of Francesco Forti? What zealous preceptor seeks a guidance on his intricate path from the educational treatises of Lambruschini or Tommaseo? Some of these voices are even now uttering words of wisdom at Turin and Florence, but for any echo ever found in England they might as well be addressing an audience of Celestials in the college of Pekin. It was not always so. There was a time-it was the time of Spenser and Raleigh, of Shakspeare and Bacon-when Italian influences were reflected in the scholar's lore, and the courtier's speech, and the poet's song; when love-sick swains were wont to hang over the sonnets of Petrarch, and subtle politicians to seek inspiration from the pages of Machiavelli. We would fain recal the memory of that time, for it is inseparably associated with the grandeur and glory of English literature; nay, even with the political and social progress of our people: the tone of thought and feeling that then prevailed harmonizing so strongly with our national character, that though the literary tastes of later times may have acquired a transitory and fleeting influence, that tone will after all be the one in which the true masters of English poetry will best love to speak, and which all cultivated Englishmen will most delight to hear. The influence of Italian literature on that of Germany and France has been treated within the last few years by two writers, both eminently qualified for that inquiry. Baron Alfred de Reumont, Chargé d'Affaires of Prussia at the late court of Tuscany, has published a carefully written dissertation on the relation between Italian and German letters. M. Rathery, the very learned librarian of the Louvre, has given to the world an essay which gained the prize of the French Academy, On the Influence of Italian on French Literature. Both works are stamped with the habits and pursuits of their respective authors. M. de Reumont examines in detail the influence of Italian tastes, as received and reflected by the petty courts and courtiers of his own country. The librarian of the Louvre passes in review every branch of letters, seldom spares his reader the title of a volume, even when refraining from all criticism on its contents, and clearly regards it as the chief glory of Boccaccio that he furnished materials for the humour of Lafontaine, In a far more philosophical and comprehensive spirit, Arthur Hallam has passed in review the successive phases of the influence which Italian works of imagination have exercised on the development of our own poetical literature. In the following equally beautiful and discriminating passage of his Cambridge Oration, the benefits we owe to Italy are so fully and so eloquently set forth that it may be taken as a text which the literary historian need only expand and comment on :— 1859.] Mr. A. Hallam on the Influence of Italian Literature. We need only cast a hasty glance over the pages of Chaucer to see how readily he drank at the sources of old Roman and Provençal poetry. But we shall perceive also a vein of stronger thought and chaster expression than were common in Cisalpine countries, we shall recognise the subduing, yet at the same time elevating power, which passed into his soul from their spirits, who just before the season of his greatness had 'enlumined Italy of poetrie.' We know that he travelled to that land. We have on recorde his admiration of Francis Petrarke, the laureate-poet, and of that otherwise poet of Florence, bright Dante. From Boccacio he imitated as masters alone imitate, that incomparable composition The Knight's Tale, also the beautiful story of Griseldis, and probably the Troilus and Cresseide. In the latter he has inserted a sonnet of Petrarch; but it is not so much to his direct adoptions that I refer as to the general modulation of thought, that clear softness of his images, that energetic self-possession of his conceptions, and that melodious repose in which are held together all the emotions he delineates. The distinct influence of the Italian character is more evident with respect to the father of our poetry than afterwards with respect to Spenser and his contemporaries, precisely because it was in the first period more pure in itself, and had admitted little of the Northern Romance. The second development of the Italian poetry was, as we have seen, formed out of the old chivalrous stories, and may be considered as formed on the Norman French, just as the first had been on the Provençal. It came, therefore, bearing its own recommendation to our Norman land; exactly the same part of our national temper now caught with eagerness at Ariosto and Tasso, which in less civilized times had delighted in the Brût d'Angleterre, and the Roman de la Rose. No sooner had the mighty spirit of the Protestant reformation awakened all dormant energies and justified all lofty aspirations, than literature of all sorts, but especially poetry, began to arise in England, and one of its first results, or steps of progress, was to bring us into close communication with this second school of transalpine poets. Ascham, in his Scholemaster, informs us that. about this time an infinite number of Italian books were translated into English. It should seem too that our metrical language acquired many improvements from this study. Warton assures us that the poets in the age of Elizabeth introduced a great variety of measures from the Italian; particularly in the lyrical pieces of that time, in their 699 canzonets, madrigals, devises, and epithalamiums. It is needless to multiply instances of so palpable a fact as is the Italian tone of sentiment in those great writers to whom we owe almost everything. What soothed the solitary hours of Surrey with a more powerful magic than Agrippa could have shown him? What comforted the noble Sidney when he sought refuge in flight from the dangerous kindness of his too beautiful Stella? What potent charin could lure that genius, whose ambitious grasp an Eldorado had hardly sufficed, to utter his melodious plaint over the grave where Laura lay? From what source of perpetual freshness did Fletcher nourish his tenderness of soul, his rich pictorial powers, his deep and varied melodies? And what shall not be said of him, that 'sage serious Spenser,' of whom Milton speaks, and whom 'he dares be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas? It is worthy of remark that Spenser, attached as he was to the wilder strains of the chivalrous epic, has not, like most of his time, neglected the higher mood of the early Florentines. The hymns to heavenly love and beauty, and many parts of the Fairy Queen, especially the sixth canto of the third book, attest how thoroughly he felt the spirit of Petrarch, whom the generality of these writers seem to have known only through the Petrarchisti, so little do they comprehend what they profess to copy. It would have been strange, however, if, in the most universal mind that ever existed, there had been no express recognition of that mode of sentiment, which had first asserted the character and designated the direction of modern literature. cannot help considering the sonnets of Shakspeare as a sort of homage to the Genius of Christian Europe, necessarily exacted, although voluntarily paid, before he was allowed to take in hand the sceptre of his endless dominion. I The allusion, in the concluding sentence of this eloquent extract, to the Italian tastes of Shakspeare, may justify a reference to the ad-. mirable tact and sound discretion with which he selected his plots from Northern tradition or Southern romance. Whenever, indeed, his sternest work is to be done, he turns to his native north. In Lear, in Macbeth, in Hamlet, in the spectacle of a whole world falling in ruins, of heroic energies in subjection to the powers of darkness, of a great task imposed by a voice from the tomb, a task that may not be renounced, but is still delayed, in these terrible |