Modern Italian Poets | Page 7

but as yet their
noses are unbroken, and they have all the legs and arms that the
sculptor designed them with; and the fountain, which after disasters
must choke, plays prettily enough over their nude loveliness; for it is
now the first half of the eighteenth century, and Casa Landi is the
uninvaded sanctuary of Illustrissimi and Illustrissime. The resplendent
porter who admits our melodious Abbate Carlo, and the gay lackey
who runs before his smiling face to open the door of the sala where the
company is assembled, may have had nothing to speak of for breakfast,
but they are full of zeal for the grandeur they serve, and would not
know what the rights of man were if you told them. They, too, have
their idleness and their intrigues and their life of pleasure; but, poor
souls! they fade pitiably in the magnificence of that noble assembly in
the sala. What coats of silk and waistcoats of satin, what trig rapiers
and flowing wigs and laces and ruffles; and, ah me! what hoops and
brocades, what paint and patches! Behind the chair of every lady stands
her cavaliere servente, or bows before her with a cup of chocolate, or,
sweet abasement! stoops to adjust the foot-stool better to her satin shoe.
There is a buzz of satirical expectation, no doubt, till the abbate arrives,
"and then, after the first compliments and obeisances," says Signor
Torelli, "he throws his hat upon the great arm-chair, recounts the
chronicle of the gay world," and prepares for the special entertainment
of the occasion.
"'What is there new on Parnassus?' he is probably asked.
"'Nothing', he replies, 'save the bleating of a lambkin lost upon the
lonely heights of the sacred hill.'
"'I'll wager,' cries one of the ladies, 'that the shepherd who has lost this
lambkin is our Abbate Carlo!'
"'And what can escape the penetrating eye of Aglauro Cidonia?' retorts
Frugoni, softly, with a modest air.
"'Let us hear its bleating!' cries the lady of the house.
"'Let us hear it!' echo her husband and her cavaliere servente.
"'Let us hear it!' cry one, two, three, a half-dozen, visitors.
"Frugoni reads his new production; ten exclamations receive the first
strophe; the second awakens twenty _evvivas_; and when the reading is

ended the noise of the plaudits is so great that they cannot be counted.
His new production has cost Frugoni half an hour's work; it is possibly
the answer to some Mecaenas who has invited him to his country-seat,
or the funeral eulogy of some well-known cat. Is fame bought at so
cheap a rate? He is a fool who would buy it dearer; and with this
reasoning, which certainly is not without foundation, Frugoni remained
Frugoni when he might have been something very much better.... If a
bird sang, or a cat sneezed, or a dinner was given, or the talk turned
upon anything no matter how remote from poetry, it was still for
Frugoni an invitation to some impromptu effusion. If he pricked his
finger in mending a pen, he called from on high the god of Lemnos and
all the ironworkers of Olympus, not excepting Mars, whom it was not
reasonable to disturb for so little, and launched innumerable reproaches
at them, since without their invention of arms a penknife would never
have been made. If the heavens cleared up after a long rain, all the
signs of the zodiac were laid under contribution and charged to give an
account of their performance. If somebody died, he instantly poured
forth rivers of tears in company with the nymphs of Eridanus and the
Heliades; he upraided Phaethon, Themis, the Shades of Erebus, and the
Parcae.... The Amaryllises, the Dryads, the Fauns, the woolly lambs,
the shepherds, the groves, the demigods, the Castalian Virgins, the
loose-haired nymphs, the leafy boughs, the goat-footed gods, the
Graces, the pastoral pipes, and all the other sylvan rubbish were the
prime materials of every poetic composition."
III
Signor Torelli is less severe than Emiliani-Giudici upon the founders of
the Arcadia, and thinks they may have had intentions quite different
from the academical follies that resulted; while Leigh Hunt, who has
some account of the Arcadia in his charming essay on the Sonnet, feels
none of the national shame of the Italian critics, and is able to write of
it with perfect gayety. He finds a reason for its amazing success in the
childlike traits of Italian character; and, reminding his readers that the
Arcadia was established in 1690, declares that what the Englishmen of
William and Mary's reign would have received with shouts of laughter,
and the French under Louis XIV, would have corrupted and made
perilous to decency, "was so mixed up with better things in these
imaginative and, strange as it may seem,