OUR EPILOGUE

ON

BOOKS.

LITERATURE.

Alfieri and Goldoni; their Lives and Adventures. By EDWARD COPPING. Addey and Co.-Within the moderate compass of some three hundred pages the author has produced a couple of biographies as complete as the general reader can desire, and written in a very pleasant style. In the life of Alfieri we have the story of a man who squandered away one education, and then addressed himself to the acquisition of another. He forgot all his Latin, and almost all his Italian. Then Montaigne taught him, first of all, to think, and Plutarch to be ambitious. Wearied of travel, which suggested no object, and of dissipation, which imparted no pleasure, he awoke at last to the purpose of his life. A resolution once taken, the idlest of men became the most studious. Nearly thirty, and yet ignorant of grammar, he was compelled to resume the tasks of the schoolboy. Toiling at the Tuscan and Latin tongues, the lionlike Alfieri grew patient as the ox. The creature of passion and caprice, he became the bondsman of method, and lived rigidly by rule. He studied the Italian poets slowly, accurately, often with fatigue and distaste, much as other men study mathematics. He was frequently as tired after reading ten stanzas as he would have been after composing the same amount, owing to the intensity of the attention with which he sought to catch the complete meaning and spirit of the author. To such creeping must this strong man condescend before he can fly. So true is it that strength of will, rather than mere talent, is the quality which most often sets eminence apart from mediocrity.

The following account of the successive processes undergone by his plays will be read with interest :

Each tragedy that he wrote underwent three distinct operations before receiving the last finishing touches. In the first place, the subject being conceived in his mind, he distributed it into scenes, fixed the number of the characters, and briefly wrote in prose the summary of what they were to do and say, scene by scene; this he called conceiving. Having done thus far, he put the imperfect work aside for some time, and did not approach it until his mind was entirely free of the subject. If he did not then quite approve of what he had written, and feel a strong desire to continue it, he burut the manuscript, or changed its plan. The former fate happened to a tragedy he had sketched upon the subject of Romeo and Juliet, and to one upon that of Charles I. If, on the contrary, he approved his first sketch, he submitted it to a second process, which he called development. He

took what he had previously written, wrote out at length in prose the scenes he had merely indicated in the first instance, wrote them with all the force of which he was capable, without stopping to analyse a thought, or correct an expression. He then proceeded to versify at his leisure the prose he had written, selecting with care the ideas he thought best, and rejecting those which he deemed only worthy of such treatment. Even then he did not regard his work as finished, but incessantly polished it, verse by verse, and made continual alterations as he considered them necessary

'Even his manuscripts bear evidence of the care and labour he bestowed upon them. There are several preserved in the Fabre Museum, at Montpelier, and the library at Florence, which have all the neatness and regularity of print. They are written in a firm, distinct hand, are punctuated with scrupulous exactness, and have many of the marks and headings only met with ordinarily in works that have passed through the press.'-Page 103.

The founder of modern Italian comedy was a far more genial and unselfish nature than his brother dramatist, the tragedian. Goldoni was cradled among actors and actresses, festivals and plays, in the gay world of Venice. His new style of comedy was furiously opposed. The four established characters of the Italian stage had always been masked. They were accustomed themselves to improvise the dialogue. Goldoni proposed to remove the absurd disguise, and to substitute written parts for the extemporaneous witticism and small talk. What, cried his antagonists, reduce the actor to a puppet! Banish imagination and poetry from the boards! He was anathematised in the name of Aristotle, of Horace, and of Castelvetro. The three unities of action, time, and place, were unleashed against him like a Cerberus. Gozzi, whom he displaced, was a formidable and venomous adversary. But the new style succeeded at last in spite of all. Fast as Goldoni wrote, he could not write fast enough to meet the demand for those ingenious and sparkling comedies which he alone could supply. He had effected a revolution, or rather he had created an art; and every candidate for popular favour, since his death, has followed in the path he marked

out.

There is no brain-work so trying as that which exercises the inventive or creative faculties. The processes of reasoning and calculation leave a large province of the mind in repose. But literary composi tion frequently excites the imagination and the emotions while calling on the invention to devise, and on the judgment to combine, a fresh series of conceptions. In one year Goldoni produced sixteen pieces. There lies a useful lesson in the narrative of the consequences he suffered from excessive production, and his escape from them :—

'Goldoni spared no exertion in order to deserve the support of the new audience he was writing for. He worked so hard, indeed, that being then only imperfectly recovered from the effects of his previous labour, he fell ill, and was obliged to recreate himself by a trip to Modena. He was subject to nervous feelings-only too common, alas! to those who work much with the brain-which oftentimes filled his mind with the most acute and morbid melancholy. Unfortunately for his complaint, which grows never so rapidly as when fed by sympathy, he became acquainted, on his return to Venice, with a new actor of the company, in the same state as hin self. They spent much of their time together comparing and analysing their symptoms; dangerous occupation, as both soon discovered. The new actor's

Goldoni-Conquest in America.

235

nervousness sprang from a different source from that of Goldoni. He wished to undertake important characters, but was withheld by fear of failure. He yielded at length to his ambition, and appeared before the audience. His reception was most favourable: he obtained the applause of the house; but the excitement acting upon nerves already unstrung, proved too much for him. Immediately he had withdrawn from the stage, at the termination of the piece, he fell down dead!

The event produced a deep impression throughout the theatre. News of it spread rapidly from box to box. People were filled with horror at a catastrophe so unexpected and so sudden. But Goldoni was the most affected. It acted like madness upon his mind. The worst symptoms of his complaint immediately manifested themselves. He seemed at once to lose all control over himself. A thousand gloomy thoughts took possession of his brain. A thousand ghastly phantoms troubled his repose. Misery, despair, powerless wretchedness, seemed his portion for the rest of life's journey. He grew seriously ill in body as well as mind; and no remedies seemed capable of restoring him. Fortunately, his medical attendant understood the real nature of his case. He waited until the first shock had passed away, until his patient was a little calmed in spirit; and then used the only medicine which could be efficacious in such circumstancesmedicine applied to the reason of the sufferer.

Regard your malady,' said he, as a child who comes to attack you, a naked sword in hand. Be on your guard, and he will inflict no wound; but if you present your breast to him, he will kill you.'

'That doctor was a clever man. His words deserve enduring record. Let all who labour with the brain take them well to heart. That one sentence is worth pages of the Pharmacopoeia. It made a lasting impression upon Goldoni. He acted upon the advice it expressed, and ere long was relieved of his oppressive melancholy. Whenever afterwards attacked, he followed the same course, and always with the happiest results. Had he once surrendered himself to the fretting demon who lurks more or less in every nature, by what imperceptible but certain steps he would have been led away until he arrived at that sad mental state which is not perfect madness, but which, in its incompleteness, is even a deeper mockery of human reason!'-P. 235.

The Spanish Conquest in America and its Relation to the History of Slavery and to the Government of Colonies. BY ARTHUR HELPS. Third Volume. J. W. Parker and Son.-The English Opium-Eater, in one of his stormy visions, imagines himself in the midst of the agelong conflict wherewith some great cause is assaulted and maintained. What it is precisely he knows not, in the confusion and obscurity, but it is something for which and against which generations play, and plot, and do battle. There are shouts of triumph and despairing lamentations. The roar of furious multitudes, the shock of armed men, the hurrying feet of fugitives are heard; but how the day is going, and whether light prevails, or darkness, the forlorn dreamer cannot learn. Even somewhat thus, in old and far-off empires, among by-gone states and vanished races, have long feuds of hostile principle been waged; and the memory of the strife wherewith those longforgotten causes were once fought out comes to us dim, and distant, and perplexed with shadows, as were the forms and movements of the Opium-Eater's troubled vision. Yet about these causes-about the strife for the emancipation or suppression of a class, for the elevation or enslavement of a race, for the standing or falling of an order—a system-or a faith, all the worst qualities, and all the best qualities, have gathered, and done their utmost. As we read and endeavour to recall the past, and enter into the old strife, and as the eye glistens

and the pulse beats quicker in so doing, we seem to see the good assuming angelic brightness, and the bad unearthly hideousness by the fitful light of those battle-fields.

Mr. Helps, in the History of the Spanish Conquest of America, is the chronicler of one of these great causes. He describes and explains the various fortunes undergone by the cause of mercy as it strove against rapacity-the cause of wisdom, order, law, as they toiled to set some limit to the soldier's cruelty and the adventurer's greed. To conquer the Indies proved not difficult-but how to govern them? The most serious perplexities of the victor began with victory. How shall he satisfy the demands around him, and the demands from home, yet so control triumphant avarice that the tree shall not be cut down to reach the fruit? A few humane and thoughtful men there were, who toiled and suffered to maintain the cause of the Indians-to save that delicate and gentle race who were perishing by millions before the face of the Spaniard-to bring them, if prosperity were hopeless, relief at least, or respite. To the best of their light and power, they sought to send succour to nations shipwrecked as it were upon their shores, to helpless multitudes around whom their countrymen were ravening like the hungry sea. Surely such efforts, though successful but in part, and though often made in error, have their record above, and should be traced by us with an interest more deep than that which follows the armed heel of the conqueror. Let us remember the times, let us remember the evil,-how vast-how crying, and give due honour to Las Casas, and those devoted Dominicans who laboured with him, or toward the common end. The zeal of these men (as Mr. Helps does not fail to remark) was not the zeal of reaction. In Europe, the ardour of Loyola and his followers-even that to some extent of the Juans, Theresas, and the Borromeos, was the ardour of antagonism. Every feat of asceticism, every exaltation of piety, every penitent and every proselyte, was a blow struck at hateful Protestantism. The rival religion was ever in the thoughts-even in the devotions of the heroes of the counter-reformation, as a something they were to out-pray, out-preach, and out-manœuvre. Their very prayers were stamped on the reverse side with curses. Now no such subtraction (as in this case we cannot fail to make) has to be deducted from the self-denial of the Spanish monks and prelates, who, in the days of Cortes and Pizarro, sought to rescue from extermination the Indians of New Spain. The current of their thoughts had been little disturbed by the rumours of the great schism, and the foremost of them had reached the prime of life in the cloister before the Reformation had been much talked of in Spain.

The reader will learn from the interesting account given in this volume the methods of Spanish administration-what the encomienda was, and what the repartimiento-those rights and privileges, on the exercise or abuse whereof hung the misery or welfare of so many myriads of our species. He will see, too, how many were the conditions to be fulfilled, how many the obstacles to be vanquished, before any measures of amelioration could be made effectual to relieve any

The Latter Days of Cortes.

237

portion of that vast and suffering population. The interest and the value of the history are alike enhanced by those brief and pregnant reflections with which the narrative is interspersed. These remarks always arise, as such passages should do, from the events recorded. Mr. Helps is quite free from a fault which it is not easy for the philosophical historian always to avoid-the tendency to arrange facts in illustration of reflections, rather than to allow any general observations to follow in the train of facts.

The author has been telling us how Cortes was at last so impoverished that he was unable to live with his family for more than a month at a time in that very city of Mexico which he himself had conquered, devastated, repeopled, and rebuilt. He then remarks:

'Those who care to observe human affairs curiously, have often speculated upon the change that would be produced by a very slight knowledge of the future. If men could see, they say, but ten years in advance, the greater part of mankind would not have heart to continue their labours. The farmer would quit his plough, the merchant his merchandise, the scholar his books. Still there would remain a few faithful to their pursuits-lovers, fanatics, and benevolent men. But of all those whom ten years' prescience would induce to lay down their work in utter discontent of the future, as it unrolled itself before their wondering eyes, the conqueror, perhaps, would be the man who first would stay his hand. For the results of conquest are among the greatest disappointments in the world. The policy which seems so judicious and so nicely adjusted that it will repay the anxious nights of thought that have been spent upon it would, even with the small foreknowledge of ten years, be seen to be inconsequent, foolish, and mischievous. The ends which appear so precious that the blood of armies may justly be spilt in the hope of obtaining them, would be clearly discerned to be noxious and ludicrous. All the vast crimes which are gilded by motives of policy would be seen in their naked horror, and the most barbarous of men or emperors would start back appalled at the sufferings he was about to inflict upon the world for inadequate and futile causes. When, however, the conqueror happened to be a fanatic, the future on this earth would not disturb him. He would be equally ready to slaughter his thousands, to devastate provinces, and to ruin, as mostly happens, his own fortunes, whatever the ten years' annals, written prophetically on the wall, might disclose to him.

'Cortes, as a statesman and a man of the world, might have shuddered if he could have foreseen the fate of himself, his companions, and the nations he came to conquer. But sheathed as he was in the impenetrable armour of fanaticism, he would probably have counted these things as no loss, provided that the true faith should thereby be proclaimed more widely in the New World. This must be his excuse, and this, no doubt, was his comfort when he contemplated the sorry end of his labours as regarded himself and his own fortunes.

'Later in life we find him writing to the Emperor in the same strain of com. plaint. The latter days of Cortes bear a strange resemblance to those of Columbus, and, indeed, to those of Charles the Fifth himself. Men of this great stamp seldom know when to put a limit to their exertions, and to occupy themselves solely in securing the conquests they have made, and, as the nature of things is always against an energetic man, some day or other, especially when he grows weaker and older, adverse circumstances to his astonishment triumph over him. Besides, even supposing him to be very prudent, and anxious to undertake nothing which he cannot master, the field for his exertions inevitably widens with success. Instead of a line to pursue, he has a large area to command. Envy, meanwhile, increases as he becomes more conspicuous. Many men lean upon him when he is known to be strong. His attention is distracted; and even without any deterioration of character, or failing of force, he is destroyed by the large development of new difficulties which grow up around him. As the early history of the Indies teems with commanders who ultimately prove unfortunate, it is but fair to look into the