3. Voyages dans le Nord de l'Europe consistant princi- palement de Promenades en Norwège, et de quelques Courses en Suède dans l'année 1807. Suivi d'un Ap- pendice contenant des Remarques historiques et phy- siques, &c. &c. &c. Par A. Lamotte. X. Sermons, by the late Rev. Walter Blake Kirwan, Dean of Killala. With a Sketch of his Life. XI. Histoire de France, pendant le Dix-huitième Siècle, XII. The Remorse. A Tragedy. By S. T. Coleridge. Se- XIII. History of the Azores, or Western Islands; containing an Account of the Government, Laws, and Religion; the Manners, Ceremonies, and Character of the Inha- XIV. Experimental Researches concerning the Philosophy of permanent Colours, and the best Means of producing XV. 1. Remarks on the Calumnies published in the Quarterly Review, on the English Ship-builders. 2. Substance of the Speech of William Harrison, Esq. before the Select Committee of the House of Com- mons, on East India-built Shipping, 3. Minutes of the Evidence taken before the Select Com- mittee, to whom the several Petitions of the Ship- builders and others interested in the Building and Equipment of Ships built in the East Indies, were referred, &c. Ordered, by the House of Commons, to 4. The Substance of the Speech of John Adolphus, Esq. 191 - 203 THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. APRIL, 1814. ART. I. 1. Histoire Littéraire d'Italie, par P. L. Ginguené, Membre de l'Institut de France, &c. 2. De la Littérature du Midi de l'Europe, par J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi, &c. Paris, 1813. WE E have placed together the titles of two works which, though every way deserving of distinct commemoration, are yet so nearly allied by their subjects, that it would in some measure be an injury to both to consider them separately. In their origin and design this affinity is further remarkable. The first was undertaken in 1802, for the Athenæum at Paris, as the commencement of a series which should embrace the whole range of modern literary history. The extent of this plan may be estimated from that of the portion before us; which, in six volumes, distributed into two parts, comprehends the annals of Italian literature, to the end of the sixteenth century. Its history during the seventeenth and eighteenth, is to be the subject of a third division. It is not surprising that the vastness of the original plan excluded, by degrees, all hope of its accomplishment; and that the author abandoned to others the remainder of a task, undertaken in favour of that nation 'with which he is best acquainted, and which, perhaps, is the object of his warmest affection.' Of M. Sismondi's work, two volumes only are yet before us. They are the substance of public lectures, delivered by him at Geneva, and comprise the sketches, rather than the details, of the literary history of the Arabs, the Provençaux, the writers in the 'Langue Romane,' and the Italians. In two more we are to be conducted through Spain and Portugal. This author, like the former, had proposed to himself a plan of much greater magnitude than he has since found it convenient to execute. It extended, he says, to the whole of Europe, and indeed, if we understand him rightly, it is not to be considered even now as absolutely abandoned. The name of M. Sismondi has long ranked very high in our estimation, and being taught not to expect any immediate continuation of his work on the Italian Republics, we were not a little gratified to find that his attention had in the mean time been VOL. XI. NO. XXI. A been turned to other subjects so nearly connected in interest, and to which his competency could admit of no question. The labours of M. Ginguené demand our first consideration, in a general view of Italian literature; but we shall occasionally recur to the professor of Geneva, whom we may at some future period have to follow, exclusively, as our guide to the literary treasures of the Western Peninsula. The origin and formation of the Italian language must naturally be the first object of inquiry to those who are desirous of attaining a just notion of Italian literature; and it undoubtedly adds to the interest of this inquiry, when we reflect that the very language which first, of all the modern dialects of Europe, served as a vehicle for any great and lasting efforts of human genius, was the last in order of birth, and actually burst into the full splendour of maturity, while yet the world was almost unconscious of its existence. A whole generation of Italian poets intervenes between the age of Dante and that of Chaucer: yet the latter was but the morning star' of English poetry; the former is the meridian sun which rivals in splendour the brightest luminaries of all ages and nations. On the other hand, the language of Chaucer had been that of the people of England, and of English writers, for ages; while the first faint and imperfect articulations of that speech which Dante raised at once to perfection, are with difficulty to be distinguished before the thirteenth century, to the conclusion of which he himself belongs. The solution of this remarkable phenomenon has long employed the conjectures, and directed the researches of the learned. They bid us ascend to a period of the remotest, even of unknown antiquity, when the Celtic nation, ('whose language, if not primitive in an absolute sense, is so at least relatively to almost all known languages,') divided itself into two immense bodies; the one occupying the western shores of Asia, the other spreading through the northern countries of Europe, and following the course of the Danube from its mouths to the source, passing the barrier of the Rhine, and establishing itself at last in the regions that lie between that river, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, the northern and the Mediterranean seas; in short, between those which have of late years been humourously denominated the natural boundaries of the French republic. In process of time, the increase of population forced them, we are told, to infringe these sacred barriers; and the Celtic nation, together with the Celtic language, (already contaminated by its mixture with the forgotten dialects of forgotten people,) poured itself, with little resistance, through the fair fields of Italy,' till it met, mid-way in its course, another torrent flowing from a totally different source; for the Greeks had in the the mean time colonized the south eastern extremities of the same peninsula, and the superabundance of population impelled them towards the Alps, just as the same cause drove the others in a contrary direction. What convulsions may have attended the first shock of the two nations, are beyond the reach of history. Wars there were no doubt, car tel a toujours été l'abord de deux peuples qui se rencontrent;' but judging from the natural progress of human events, it is reasonable to imagine that these wars were terminated by the principle of mutual convenience. To cut short the romance, (for, after all, it is no better,) the conflicting nations at last amalgamated together, and thus was formed the new society of the Latin people, and the new dialect to which they imparted their name; a dialect compounded therefore of Gallo-celtic and Greek, combined with a variety of unknown ingredients, the reliques of the various indigenous idioms, which it is not to be imagined the new settlers took the pains to eradicate. In this mixture, the Celtic had a vast advantage. The Greek (as yet far from being the language of Homer and Plato) was in itself no better than a compound to which the Phoenicians, the Macedonians, the Phrygians, the Illyrians, and even the Celts, (those of the great Asiatic division,) had contributed certain unassignable proportions. 'From so multiplied a combination as this, arose the Latin; which, coarse in its origin, but polished and perfected by time, became at last the language of Terence and Cicero, of Horace and Virgil; and it is this same language, which, after so brilliant an empire, terminated by so long and dismal a declension, mingled itself anew with its ancient Celtic, the common source of all the barbarous dialects of Goths and Lombards, Franks and Germans; to become at length that of Dante, Petrarch, and Bocaccio.' Of the three hypotheses now submitted to our election, we may safely smile at the national partiality which dictated the two former. That which was first asserted by Leonard Aretin, and afterwards maintained by Bembo, supposed the Italian to be co-eval with the Latin itself; that the one was at all times the lingua volgare,' the dialect of the common classes,-while the other was the chosen vehicle of learning and state-affairs. The Marquis Maffei was the author of the second opinion, scarcely more probable than the former; and evidently suggested by the same national bias. Unwilling to admit the too probable pollutions of barbarous idioms, he imagined that the Latin, without aid from any external cause, gradually corrupted itself, by receiving from time to time into the regular forms of composition, all the slang of the illiterate vulgar. However gratifying such dreams may prove to the vanity of a native, the third and last is the only hypothesis that can be seriously entertained by an impartial inquirer. It is that which, even with out proof, would be universally adopted for its probability, and which Muratori has established on internal evidence. 'Invasions,' observes a learned Frenchman, (the president de Brosses,) 'invasions are the scourge of idioms, as well as of nations; but not altogether in the same order. Of nations, the strongest always takes the lead. So it is with languages, but the strongest language is often that of the weakest people, and therefore takes place of that of the conquerors.' It was thus with the Latin language, which the barbarous con querors of Italy successively agreed to take in exchange for that which they had brought with them: but though its original strength enabled it to survive a first, a second, and a third collision, it was gradually weakened by each following shock; and received in its turn the inflexions and phrases, the pronunciation (perhaps)and much of the vocabulary, even of the idioms which it despised, and which were ready to acknowledge their inferiority. From the age of Constantine to the 12th century, that which by courtesy was called the Latin, still continued to be the only public language of Italy; but the public records sufficiently prove its rapid degeneracy, and the writings of the learned, though of a standard of purity somewhat superior to that of the men of business, conspire to prove that, in common use, the ancient idiom was wholly superseded by a jargon which, towards the end of the period we have mentioned, gradually assumed the form of a distinct language, and in that state awaited only the powers of a creative genius, to mould it into the regular and beautiful symmetry which it has ever since retained. It would seem a sufficient confirmation of this doctrine, (if it wanted any,) that each dialect, in proportion as it approaches the assigned limits of separation, most strongly partakes of some of the characteristics of the other. The Latin records of the 12th and 13th centuries are full of Italian terminations and phrases; while the poems of Dante, and of the few writers in Italian who preceded him, abound in latinisms, which we find only gradually to wear away as we descend to Petrarch and Bocaccio, who may be considered as the finishers of the modern structure. At the same time, so distinct were these kindred idioms, that when the Patriarch of Aquileia, towards the end of the 12th century, pronounced a Latin homily before the people, the Bishop of Padua thought it necessary to translate it into the lingua volgare,' in order to render it generally intelligible. The first efforts of all languages have been poetical. It was thus even with the Italian, late as was the period of its formation. -The first written specimens extant are the verses of a few obscure Sicilian poets, about the beginning of the thirteenth century. After ascertaining the origin of the language, therefore, the next most important |