Sayfadaki görseller
PDF
ePub

Civile Conversation was the second edition, for he was INTROunaware of the existence of the earlier one.

DUCTION

COURTESY-BOOKS

Before dealing with Pettie's chief work-now reprinted for the first time-it may be well, by way of introduction, to say a few words on the best-known Courtesy-books that occupied the reading attention of people who lived for some generations before his day. Books such as these form, as a matter of fact, no unimportant part of that great and enlightening movement known as the Renaissance. Beginning with tentative and uncertain steps, these volumes put before the people of an ill-mannered and barbarous age a written embodiment of all that a more cultivated code could impart with reference to better habits of life, to a more generous and self-denying outlook on social intercourse, and, at times, to all that a higher moral standard could effect in brightening and rendering more tolerant the everyday relations between man and man. Italy was, without question, the pioneer in these and many other efforts made for the humanising of the world; and the wonder was that she ever attained success, hampered as she was all through by the all but insurmountable difficulties of her natural position. But, as a great writer has said, when speaking of the later period of the Renaissance :

'The Italians were a peculiar people. They had resisted the Teutonic impact of the medieval past; but they had failed to prepare themselves for the drama of violence and bloodshed

INTRO- which the feudal races played out on the plains of Lombardy. DUCTION They could never be left alone. Successive invasions, followed

by the petrifying stagnation of political and ecclesiastical tyranny, checked their natural solution and suspended the intellectual life, before the fruit-time had succeeded the flowertime of the Renaissance. When all her deities were decayed or broken, Italy still worshipped beauty in fine art and literary form. This is the true greatness of those fifty years of glorious achievement and pitiful humiliation, during which the Italians turned deaf ears to combatant and conqueror, intent on problems that involved the future destinies of man.' 1

Not the least amongst these civilising efforts to foster a new conception of humanity, and to create a common mental atmosphere, modulating the coarser elements of the world, inculcating the form that lends grace and sublimity to art, style to poetry, and urbanity to social manners, stand the Books of Courtesy of the Italian Renaissance. From early in the fourteenth century to the close of the sixteenth their stream continued. The names of their writers were many, but for present purposes it is only necessary to mention a few of the best known among them, such as: Bonvicino da Riva, Francisco da Barbarino, Agnolo Pandolfini (died 1446), Matteo Palmieri (14051475), Baldassare Castiglione, Giovanni Possevini (Dialogo dell' Onore, 1553), Della Casa (died 1556), and Stefano Guazzo.

The most celebrated works of three of these authors had

the good fortune to be turned into English by competent Il Cortegiano, by Thomas Hoby (1561);

translators:

1 See J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: Italian Literature, Pt. ii. 456, 1898 ed.

Il Galateo, by Robert Peterson (1576); and La Civile INTROConversatione, by George Pettie (1581).

Only two of these translations have, in recent years, been made available for readers in a more modern form than a first or very early edition-the Courtier and the Galateo. The third has lain practically unread from generation to generation; though Guazzo's name has been occasionally mentioned in Histories of English Literature and a few other works of a literary character. His existence and that of his translator have been admitted, but of his work and its nature-beyond what is conveyed by its title, The Civile Conversation-no studied information has, except in one case to be mentioned later, been vouchsafed to students of Elizabethan writings from 1586 down to the beginning of the present century. That unnoticed volume is Pettie's translation of Guazzo's Civile Conversation.

DUCTION

PETTIE'S TRANSLATION

'The Civile Conversation of M. Steeven Guazzo, written first in Italian, and nowe translated out of French by George Pettie, devided into foure bookes,' was published by Richard Watkins in London in 1581; small 4to in form, and printed in black letter, with introductory matter and poetical quotations in italic and roman type. This, the first edition, contains only Books 1., 11., and III., the omission of Book iv. being explained by a note at the end of the Preface to the Readers: 'I have not published xxiii

INTRODUCTION

the fourth Booke, for that it contayneth muche triflyng matter in it.'

Further information regarding the translation is furnished by the second edition of the work, which appeared in 1586, the title-page of which states that the fourth book was translated out of Italian . . . by Barth. Young, of the Middle Temple, Gent.'

[ocr errors]

Pettie's Dedication, which is dated the 6th of February 1581, is addressed to the Lady Norrice. She was the wife of Baron Norris of Rycote, whose father had been executed as the alleged lover of Anne Boleyn (1536). Both Lord Norris and his wife were favourites of Queen Elizabeth, who used to call Lady Norris' her black crow.' Elizabeth restored to them the property which Henry VIII. had confiscated. Lady Norris died in 1597.

The Preface to the Readers is in many respects a very interesting piece of writing, admirably expressed, and marked throughout by a strong spirit of personal independence. Against one class of un-English pretenders the writer is full of indignation—those travellers who, on the strength of a visit to some other country, make it their business to speak slightingly of their own. Then, though not himself a scholar, Pettie is whole-heartedly on the side of genuine scholarship and study; urging his readers with a breezy eloquence, backed by convincing logic, not to allow themselves to be ashamed to show their learning. 'Confesse it, professe it, imbrace it, honor it,' he says, ' for it is it which honoureth you, it is only it which maketh you men, it is only it whiche maketh you Gentlemen.' In another passage he takes up the cudgels in good fighting

INTRO

trim against Sir John Cheke and all who with him were then denouncing the use of latinised forms of speech in DUCTION English writing-not that he indulges overmuch in the foreign forms himself, but that he knows no reason why

[ocr errors]

6

he should be prevented from using them; for it is indeed 'the ready way to inrich our tongue, and to make it copious, and it is the way which all tongues have taken 'to inrich them selves.' The English language has certainly broadened richly since Pettie's strenuous appeal against such restrictions; and he is entitled to no small share in the glory that has been won.

The translation of the Civile Conversation takes the form of a dialogue, thus preserving the scheme of the original Italian. The Proeme to the work (page 13) sets forth clearly, and with brevity, the circumstances which led to its being written; the names of the two persons who carry on the conversation of which the whole is composed, with descriptions of them both; and the reasons the author had for writing out their discourses. The late Sir Walter Raleigh, in one of the passing references he makes to Guazzo's name in his Introduction to Hoby's Courtier, tells us that Castiglione, Bembo, 'Aretino, Guazzo, Pasquier, Speroni, and many others of those who shaped the dialogue for argumentative and 'dramatic purposes may fairly claim a place in the Genealogy ' of English Comedy.' I not only agree with this view generally, but I hope to show before finishing my remarks that Guazzo, as translated by Pettie, is perhaps entitled to a more important place than any of such claimants, inas

6

1 Tudor Translations, p. lxxxiv.

« ÖncekiDevam »