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of terminating rhymes, constituting a versification which was first introduced by the Provençals into their own tongue, and which from the Provençal passed into the Italian. The Latin hexameter verse, however, was soon broken into a variety of little verses, or versicles (versetti); and Crescembini contends (and supports his opinion by examples from Nostradamus, Dante, and others) that, even in the time of the Troubadours, this variety extended from trimeters, or versicles of only three syllables, to hendecameters, or verses of eleven. We have some doubt, however, whether these latter verses did not in every instance consist of two metrical lines united into one, the former containing five syllables, and the latter six, or vice versa; and we are supported in this hesitation, by the belief of Castelvetro, that such was their arrangement. Instances of this kind are not uncommon in our own language, and even in verses of less length. Thus, in the termination of Gray's Bard, in which the first and third of the verses quoted consist in reality of two lines each, though generally written and regarded as one; Enough for me, | with joy I see,

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The different doom our fates assign:
Be thine despair, and sceptred care,
To triumph and to die, are mine.'

We have examples still in existence of the extension of Provençal poetry to verses of even more than eleven syllables: but it is probable that all these are of a date considerably below the twelfth century; and our author has in consequence omitted to notice them in the chapter to which we now refer.

The short or broken versicles of the Provençals do not appear to have continued long in favour with the earliest writers of Italian poetry: they gradually sunk into dis-esteem; and were at length so utterly disliked, that all the compositions of Petrarch will not supply us with an instance of a verse below an heptameter, or one of seven syllables. In this respect, the Italian taste appears to have differed essentially from the English, which furnishes us, from the first introduction of vernacular poetry, down to the last century, with versifications of every length, from the trochaic trimeter, or versicle of three syllables, to the heroic of ten, twelve, and even fourteen; of which two last species the Polyolbion of Drayton, and the Homer of Chapman, will furnish us with undeviating examples.

It was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that the Italians began to discover much taste for Pindaric, Anacreontic, and dithyrambic poetry; and the disused versicles of fewer than seven syllables were here occasionally employed with considerable felicity. The success, indeed, that attended their introduction into these classes of metre, induced many poets to try their effect once more in tragic and heroic verse: but the at

tempt seems almost universally to have been disapproved; and the very excellent Canace of Sperone Speroni, which abounds with versicles of this description, has never acquired the fame to which it is entitled, from the use of this defective metre alone.

In the latter days of Provençal poetry, we have already noticed that several writers discovered a taste for a verse longer than the hendecameter, or common Italian heroic of eleven sylTables; and this elongated metre was revived by the Italians themselves, according to our author, about the latter end of the fifteenth, or the beginning of the sixteenth, century: yet even this attempt does not appear to have been attended with much success. It commonly consisted of a twelfth, though sometimes of a thirteenth, fourteenth, or even sixteenth, syllable, with the acute accent falling, in the first instance, on the eleventh, and in the last on the fourteenth, or antepenultima; and constituted a hypermeter, or redundancy of measure, which by the Italians was denominated sdrucciolo, or a slippery verse. Alessandro de' Pazzi, who flourished about the middle of the sixteenth century, composed whole tragedies and comedies with the first of these hypermeters, or the verse of twelve syllables. The following examples, of which the former is extracted from Pantaffio, and the latter from Luigi Olamanni, sufficiently explain our author's meaning.

Pe' falli de' folli, che son troppo felli
Che fanno le fische con fisca favella.'

E' mi conviene ogni mese, com' or, venire a rendere
I miei conti in villa a Simone, il qual sempre dubita,

Che tutti i fattor c' hanno le sue faccende in mano, il rubino,' &c.

In our own language, we have also verses of a similar description; and we shall better illustrate the above to the English reader, by an instance or two selected from our own poets, than by a literal version of these couplets themselves. Our dramatic pieces, even to the present day, abound with verses of a simple redundant syllable: thus Addison

'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us,

'Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter.'

So, frequently, in our didactic poems, even when subject to the control of rhyme, as in the following couplet of Pope:

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Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow:

The rest is all but leather and prunello.'

Here the redundancy consists of but one syllable, and consequently pairs with the former of the two Italian examples. In

the following, which is from the Mausoleum of Mr. Hayley, it extends to two, and of course matches with the latter.

But I taught him to change the loose laugh of futility,
For the sweet melting tear of refined sensibility.'

Occasionally, however, among the Italian poets of as late a date as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we meet with a verse of this length, and even extending to not less than sixteen or eighteen syllables, without any sdrucciolo, or redundancy whatever. Of these, many examples are to be found in Ludovico Zuccolo; and, among the rest, the following:

• Non da terrena musa, non da fallace imaginato nume,
Come già feci errante, chieggio, signor, la sospirata aita;
Solo in te suo principio, fine avrà in te de le mie labra il suono.*

Crescembini, however, agrees with Zuccolo in regarding every verse of this unconscionable longitude, as a compound or combination of two or more versicles, and seems to coincide with him in the following observation:-that, although he perceives rhythm, or number, in the members of each verse, he cannot ascertain any thing of the kind in the verse taken as a whole; whence' says he, I manifestly conclude that we had much better denominate such lines congeries of verses, than verses alone:'-così evidentemente vengo a concludere, che abbiano piu tosto a nominarsi congerie di versi, che versi. The same has been often noticed respecting the verses of our own ancient poets of a similar, or nearly similar, length. Thus the verse of fourteen syllables, which occurs in Warner's Albion's England, as follows

• Three people have as many times got and forgone this shore: It resteth now yee conquer it, not to be conquered more—”

would, in a modern dress, be divided into two verses each, of eight and six syllables alternately, in the ensuing manner :

Three people have as many times
Got and forgone this shore:
It resteth now ye conquer it,

Not to be conquered more.'

And hence the reason why, in the general course of this kind of alternate metre, we only meet with rhymes to the second and fourth versicles, and none to the first and third, which, under the old arrangement, terminate in the middle of their respective verses. In Arabic and Persian, this mode, of writing a couplet in a single line, is continued to the present day, without variation. Thus, as an example may be taken from any period, we select the following from the renowned elegy of Tarafa, one of the writers of the Moallakat.

و في الحي احوي ينفض المرا شادن ضظاهر سمطي لولو وزبرجد

which, in classical prosody, would run thus:

Wǎfil hai | iähwāyān | födhō'lmērol | ǎshadinōn
Modhǎher | Ŏsimthalu | luinwă | zăbārgĭdin

A black-eyed fawn, with pearls and emeralds gay,
There played; and plucked the berry's purple spray.'

All these different branches of superabundant metre were nevertheless disapproved, as equally inelegant, unfortunate, and even monstrous; and Claudio Tolomei contrived a new order of versification, and one which, in the language of Ruscelli, was to have lifted poetry out of the hands of artisans, women, and children, and effectually discriminated the learned from the unlearned. This consisted in a re-introduction of the old Latin harmony and cadence, and especially in the use of the hexameter and pentameter verse. The plan of Tolomei was adopted and followed, for some time, by many of the literati of his age: but this also gradually fell into dis-use, as inconsistent with the genius of the Tuscan tongue.

Mr. Crescembini now proceeds to a description of the different orders of versification admitted in the present, or rather in his own day. These he divides into the two grand classes of blank verse (versi sciolti) and rhyme; respecting which, we unite with him, in believing the latter to have been the elder of the two. The former he subdivides into three species-that of hendecameter, or of cleven syllables, which, notwithstanding the rival claims of Giovanni Rucellai, Sannazzaro, or even Luigi Alamanni, was, in all probability, the invention of Trissino, towards the beginning of the sixteenth century; hendecameter, with a redundant syllable, or the sdrucciolo, which our author attributes to Ludovico Ariosto, who was contemporary with Trissino; and that in which the hendecameter and heptameter, or verses of eleven and seven syllables, are intermixed, which was also introduced about the same period, but by a disputed inventor. Rhyme-poetry, among the Italians, both is at present, and always has been, more common than blank verse. Mr. Crescembini divides it into regular and irregular, both being of nearly equal standing, and almost as old as the very commencement of vulgar Italian poetry of any kind. The tide of opinion, however, ran so much in favour of regular rhyme, in the earlier æras from their common birth, that, towards the close of the fifteenth century, it had almost supplanted its rival upon every occasion: the Canace of Speroni at this period, never

theless, recalled it into notice; and Alessandro Guidi has given it a fashion which it will not readily lose. Regular rhyme has, nevertheless, been at all times more common, and conceived to possess a higher degree of perfection. Mr. Crescembini divides it into two classes: the one with invariable, the other with variable, harmony; meaning, by the former, those compositions in which verse corresponds with verse, rhyme with rhyme, and even pause with pause; and, by the latter, those in which the correspondence of pause with pause is dispensed with. It is the first which constitutes the true perfection of Tuscan poetry, and which, under the form of terzets, quartets, quintets, sestines, and octaves, has been, with but few variations, applied to all Italian canzoni and canzonetti, sonnets, simple and duplicate ballads, and madrigals.

Our author closes his first book with a brief account of the different styles of writing which were progressively adopted by the bards of his own country, from the earliest origin of vulgar poetry, to the æra in which he wrote himself. He observes, that, after the rude and unadorned diction of the earliest poets of Italy, the language acquired its first appearance of dignity under the plastic hands of Guido Guinizelli, by the introduction into his rhymes of the sentiments of the Platonic school; and, immediately afterwards, by the exertions of Dante, who made it a language of philosophy; but that its prime reputation and glory were derived from the labours of Cino da Pistoia and Petrarch, and especially of the latter, who gave it its finest and most laboured polish. This polish, however, from the depraved taste of subsequent ages, it has frequently been in danger of losing: it continued to lose it, till the age of Lorenzo de' Medici, who, in conjunction with Agnolo Poliziani, restored it to all its splendour. It shortly afterwards, however, sustained a still deeper decline, by the barbarous intermixture of the Lombard with the Tuscan dialect, and the absurd and affected orthography of Tibaldeo, Cornazanno, and many others of the same school; and seldom recovered much of its essential glory, till the age of Bembo, Guidiccioni, Sannazzaro, Casa, and their illustrious coevals of the sixteenth century. Finally, it received its utmost purity and exquisite appropriation to heroic subjects, from the immortal genius of Ariosto, and of Torquato Tasso

The remaining books, which treat of the different erders, together with their respective regulations, of the compositions which have been derived from the Provençals, of those invented by the Italians themselves, and the laws to which they are subject, are so truly vernacular, that we could scarcely hope to render an epitome of them acceptable to the English reader. They are, in every instance, however, most exquisitely diver sified by examples, selected with equal erudition, precision, and taste, and offer to the student of the Italian tongue a CRIT. REV. Vol. 38, August, 1803. 2 F

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