he is always at his best, is the story of a and the measured orthodoxy of his sentigenius fallen upon evil times and evil ments is expressed in his work. Yet tongues. Evil times, because the age of when one considers the character of the song was past, and it is calumny, not man, his extreme sensitiveness and egoglory, to emulate the dead; evil tongues, tism, his restlessness and impatience of because his whole life was spent in un- control, it is strange to see how Pegasus worthy quarrels with men who could not can be ridden by a priest; and in fact understand the nobleman who claimed Pegasus often escapes to his own pastures homage as a poet, and the poet who_de- and streams, elweds loveolaι expрeios noтaμoio, manded precedence as a nobleman. The and "the force by which the plot moves romantic epic had been completed by is love." "Tasso in truth thought that Ariosto; and his own Rinaldo was but a he was writing a religious and heroic Virgilian Orlando. What Tasso did was poem. What he did write, was a poem of to inaugurate the Christian epic-more sentiment and passion. . . . He displayed, learned, more contained, more orthodox in indeed, marvellous ingenuity and art in art and creed than Ariosto. He was a so connecting the two strains of his sublearned swan, a smaller Milton, the Homer ject, the stately Virgilian history and the of churchgoing folk. No one, we imagine, glowing modern romance, that they should who is not both leisurely and composed, contribute to the working of a single plot. can read the "Gerusalemme" without te- Yet he could not succeed in vitalizing the dium; nor can any one who cares for former, whereas the latter will live as long poetry at all be insensible to its beauty. as human interest in poetry endures."* The verse is fluent, smooth, and weighty, What survives of 'Tasso is not his learnthe sentiment noble, the story full of ing and his academic form, but that chargraceful flow and interspersed with epi- acteristic of his poems which was spontasodes which are both beautiful and origi-neous. Tasso (whom Shelley regarded as nal. Tasso, for all his prolixity, probably a greater poet than Ariosto) was a poet resembles more and approaches more nearly to Virgil, in his own style, than any poet who has written since the age of Augustus. Virgil is more to Tasso than Homer to Virgil; for Tasso is adapting, not creating, a new form of epic; and doubtless Virgil consulted his own genius more than any rules of composition. As Mr. Symonds says, "It was now impossible to take a step in poetry or art without a theory; and what was worse, that theory had to be exposed for dissertation and discussion."* So Tasso, "by genius the most spontaneous of men," wrote an "Ars Poetica" as a prelude to composing an epic. All this being granted, the "Gerusalemme" deserves the place it holds in literature. It can never vie with the "Orlando Furioso " in style or in matter; it is pitched in a lower and calmer key; but within the limits which its author imposed upon himself it moves with perfect grace and dignity; and we think we are doing honor to it when we say that what Virgil was to Tasso, Tasso, to some extent, was to Milton. The religious epic culminated in Milton, not in Tasso, as the romantic epic culminated in Ariosto, not in Boiardo. The native seriousness of Milton was well fostered and strengthened by his Puritan education. Tasso was an Italian Catholic, not, as Milton, half a Roman stoic, half a Bible-and-sword fanatic,

• Vol. ii., p. 27.

not in virtue of, but in spite of, the rules of composition under which he worked; and though his style was perfected by the limitations which he approved, and to which he willingly submitted himself, he would have been greater if he could have resolved to be himself (as Milton, for all his learning, was always Milton), and not too much contented to be a modern Virgil, taught and tamed by the orthodoxy of the Italian Parnassus and the schools of the Jesuits.

With Tasso closes the great cycle of Italian poets, and no eminent poet arose till Alfieri. But the period of stagnation was not entirely without fruit; the purged and reformed Catholicism, which henceforth ruled, was favorable to that growth of morality which has helped to regenerate Italy. The Italy of Filicaia and Leopardi had been purged by suffering, but also inspired with the spirit of Christianity; and when patriotism awoke a new enthusiasm in the heart of the nation, these who met the oppressor at Novara and at Solferino were more worthy of freedom than the Machiavellian nobles and brutal or cynical commonalty who furnished the subject of the satire of Tassoni and the novels of Folengo and Aretino. To the simple and upright countryfolk whom Virgil and Horace praised, and to whom Mr. Ruskin has lately given their due, the purification

* Symonds, vol. ii., p. 100.

of the Church has been an unmixed gain. | combined with personal sanctity a lively Their religion is childish and supersti- zeal for the purification of the Church. tious, but the clergy of the " Decameron " Their story has often been written: Conhas disappeared for ever, and this result tarini, Sadolet, Philip Neri, Borromeo, is chiefly due to the preaching of the Cat- Caraffa, Loyola, are the true propagators echism of the Council of Trent, and the of Catholic piety. It was their spirit silent working of the seminaries and which informed the acts of the papacy schools which the council instituted. How during the eventful years in which the far that teaching is now out of date, and Council of Trent was sitting. We may what hope there is of a new reformation deplore the divorce of religion and sciof religion, the future will decide. But ence which the council effected; but of the faith and morals of a nation which has their piety and sincerity there can be no used for more than a quarter of a century question. Mr. Symonds passes too lightly with so much gravity and dignity the heri- over this portion of the history; which tage of freedom on which it entered in M. Philippson, in his admirable volume, 1860, may be safely entrusted to its own treats with fuller appreciation of its im keeping. The growth of material pros-portance. The story of the foundation of perity and of local enterprise shows the the Oratory of Divine Love, the Theastrength and seriousness of the Italian tines, the congregation of Somasca, the people, believed fifty years ago to be a nation of brigands, beggars, and musicians; and in spite of the croakings of obscurantists, religion, whatever its-present form may be, cannot be dead or dying in a nation which possesses so much sobriety, vigor, and discipline as marks the national character of the people of Italy.

Capuchins, the reformed Camaldolites, the Brothers of Charity, the Oratorians, the Oblates of St. Charles, is despatched by Mr. Symonds in a couple of pages; and if he dwells at length on the Society of Jesus, it is because he considers it to be a twin devil with the Holy Office, whose sole object was to degrade the human spirit and submit it to slavery. He does not see that wheat and tares grew up together, and that religion was revived by the very Jesuits who corrupted it; and that there were saints and heroes among the persecutors as well as among the persecuted. Honor to those who wakened the spirit of the gospel among the Catholic nations, though much evil was mixed with the good.

In all Christendom there was a cry that the Church must reform itself. The voice of prophets had never been wholly silent. The vices of popes and bishops had been rebuked by visionaries like St. Francis, by bands of soldier monks, by companies of unlearned Albigenses and Waldenses, by English Parliaments, by poets as Dante, by satirists as Boccaccio, by scholars as Grosseteste and Wickliff. Lately the stern cry of Gladius Domini super ter- It was indeed in these societies that the ram cito et velociter, in the mouth of the work of reformation, so far as it was useful inspired Savonarola, had been silenced by to humanity, serviceable to religion, had the worst of popes. The spirit of Savo- its origin; and it may be not irrelevant to narola might be heretical, but his message our subject to take a few instances within was true. The prophets might be un- and without the circle of Catholic ortholicensed, but the spirit of the Lord spoke doxy, in order to point out what it is that by them; and it was time, if not to follow the Church of Rome assimilates, what it their teaching, at least to build their sep-casts out. ulchres. But Rome itself, the Curia, the In every movement of human affairs the heart of the system, was the last to feel the need of reform. The cardinals lived for the most part at Rome, occupied in making and spending money, enriching their relations, intriguing with a view to the next conclave, or merely amusing themselves with worldly pleasure. The worst of them were degraded sensualists, the best cared more for letters and art than for the gospel and their sacred profession.

But religion was waking up. Not only was the Reformation invading the whole domain of the Catholic Church, but within the Church also communities arose which

battle is fought by single-minded men, men who can see but one side of the question. The Falklands, the Erasmuses, the Casaubons, the Pascals, are right in the long run, but for the time Cromwell, Luther, Calvin, lead the world. In the early years of the sixteenth century, a company of friends founded the famous society named the Oratory of Divine Love. Among its members were Sadolet, Gaspar Contarini, Gaetano di Thiene, Reginald Pole, and Caraffa. Others of a similar tone of thought were Juan Valdez (the Valdesso of George Herbert and Nicholas Ferrar), Morone, and Ghiberti

of Verona; and similar societies grew up | light of authority. Sarpi's work on ecin other parts of Italy. The object of clesiastical benefices* was as damaging these societies was purely religious; but to Roman usurpations as Hallam's celefrom them proceeded two schools of brated Chapter VII., and was issued as a thought, the one aiming at comprehension, living polemic, not as a learned disquisithe other leading to persecution. Sadolet, tion into past history. It does away with the friend and correspondent of Erasmus the sanctity of tithes, "a Judaical not a and Melanchthon; Contarini, the would-be Christian observance; of investiture, reconciler of Germany; Valdez, the ab- commendams, reservations, pensions, and jurer of persecution; Ghiberti, the politi- all the temporal expedients hallowed by cian and generous humanist, all fell papal authority to the purpose of amassing more or less under the imputation of un- secular wealth and power. It dealt as orthodoxy, and were passed over or set heavy a blow at the principle of papal aside. Reginald Pole occupied a great autocracy in matters connected with revestation for a time, but died disgraced and nue, as the treatises on the interdict and broken-hearted, a persecutor under suspi- on the rights of sovereigns to papal aucion of heresy. Morone was silenced, im- tocracy in politics. prisoned, and converted. Gaetano di In all his works, and above all in the Thiene founded a religious order. Ca-"History of the Council of Trent," Sarpi raffa introduced the Inquisition into Rome, and was the most merciless of popes. Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos was the fate of new Rome, as it was the glory of ancient Rome. Macaulay's comparison of the treatment of enthusiasts by Rome and by Protestantism is famous. But what are we to say of the humane and large-minded men of whom Italy was now full? Humanists by temper and Christians by conviction they would, if they had been born in England, have walked hand in hand with Colet and More, the forerunners of the school of Hooker, Andrews, and Cosin. But Rome would have none of them. She reserved her honors for the Caraffas and Loyolas, and from her own point of view she acted wisely. Yet among her subjects she numbered Philip Neri and Carlo Borromeo, whose type of sanctity had in it nothing of the Renaissance, but who are the true glories of the Catholic revival, and in whom is seen in its purest form that evangelical character which belongs to all schools of Christianity.

Fra Paolo Sarpi, again, is an instance of the type of character which is incompatible with Romanism. As Rome now casts out Lamennais and Döllinger, so she then rejected Sarpi. His studies were uncongenial to the spirit which then, as now, guided the policy of Rome. His wide and accurate knowledge of ecclesiastical history led him to put forward such facts as threw light on the origin of institutions and pretensions which seemed to him to be abuses, but in the view of the Church were developments. The Roman Church had no dislike for learning; but Bellarmine and Baronius were more to her taste than Sarpi, who saw facts in their connection with the growth of institutions, not in the

exposed the secular arts and priestly craft, by which the events of a thousand years had been turned to the profit of spiritual domination. We are apt, in an age when Churches are in danger of secularist oppression, to forget how pressing was the danger of papal autocracy in the days of the League, the Armada, and the Council. The times of Gregory VII., of Innocent III., and Innocent IV., seemed to be returning in a more dangerous form. Innocent IV. had combated the principle of rebellion embodied in Frederick II. by means of the Crusade and the interdict. The Church had now won the consent of the civil power, and could direct the secular arm at its will over half Europe. The quarrel which Sarpi took up was as real as that which called up Luther a generation earlier; though now, as Mr. Symonds says, it has "lost actuality," whether we regard the claims of Rome or the arguments of her antagonist. "Common sense and freedom have so far conquered in Europe, that Sarpi's opinions, then denounced as heresies, sound now like truisms; and his candid boast, that he was the first to break the neck of papal encroachments upon secular prerogative, may pass for insignificant in an age which has little to fear from ecclesiastical violence."

Fra Paolo's opinions were practical, not dogmatic. Though his correspondence, and the manner in which his contemporaries speak of him, show him to have had much sympathy with the reformed churches in France, England, the Low Countries, and elsewhere, he was no Protestant; that is, he was not committed to any schemes for reforming dogma, nor

Delle Materie Beneficiarie.

did he ever stray beyond the limits of belief and practice imposed upon a Catholic priest. "In all his writings Sarpi sought to prove that men might remain sound Catholics and yet resist Roman aggression" (vol. ii., p. 218). His appearance as an antagonist of Rome was due to the circumstances of the age and of the State in which he lived. Like Milton and Casaubon he was put forward as a champion by others, and did not adopt polemical writing of his own will, which was rather to remain a retired scholar; but in his case the world gained, as it lost by the diversion into unkindly channels of Milton's genius and Casaubon's erudition.

66

and use of each part but also their defects and excellencies. It was said that he saw as through Momus's window the hearts of all men; and yet no one ever saw him angry or heard from his lips an unkind or hasty word. His purity was such that his young friends called him la sposa, and would check free conversation when he was seen coming. His manner of life was as ascetic as a hermit's. He was that rarity, a modest scholar. "A man," as Bishop Sanderson says, "of an invincible bashfulness." "He was," says his friend Sir Henry Wotton, "one of the humblest things that could be seen within the bounds of humanity; the very pattern of that precept, Quanto doctior, tanto submissior;' and enough alone to demonstrate that knowledge, well digested, non inflat."

The fame of Fra Paolo has survived his books. Few now read the "History of the Council of Trent," though Macaulay ranked it next after Thucydides and Tac itus. Gibbon styles him "that incompara- This fine spirit was enclosed in a fragile ble historian," and speaks of his work on body. He suffered all his life from a ecclesiastical benefices as a "golden vol- combination of diseases. "He never reume." Hallam gives him the epithet of membered himself so young as to think great." He was one of the most learned that he could live a year longer." And men of his age, the age of Bacon, Casau- yet he was no recluse; he loved to conbon, Scaliger, Buchanan, De Thou. Like verse with all sorts of wits, foreigners, his most famous contemporary, he "took travellers, and learn all new things. No all knowledge to be his province;" and bodily sufferings, no desire of leisure for there is not wanting evidence to show study, could keep him from that service that in every branch of knowledge he was which he considered all men owe to their no sciolist. His researches into physical country. "Conviene fedelmente servire," science foreshadowed the discoveries of he said: "his business was to serve, not Galileo (whom he knew and esteemed), of to live." And from the time when he beVesalius, and perhaps of Harvey; and as came "theologian" to the Venetian State a mathematician, a natural philosopher, a his life was spent in constant danger from scholar, a statesman, and a saint, he re-assassins and in untiring labor for the peats something of the universal capacity commonwealth, without reward or promoof Pico della Mirandola and Lionardo da tion. The dignified attitude of Venice in Vinci. It is recorded that, like Macaulay the ecclesiastical quarrels of the time is and Johnson, he remembered after one mainly due to the influence of Fra Paolo. reading not only all the contents of a book, But what gives him his chief interest to but the very page and line where each an English observer in relation to the thing was to be found. His accuracy in Italian reformation is the fact that those matters of detail was infallible. When he qualities which would have made him, had once grasped a subject he would say, had he been an Englishman, one of the "Ora l' ho vinto non ci voglio pensare,' "founders of our Church, were those which and many years after he could recall faith- crippled his usefulness as an Italian Chrisfully every circumstance. He was not tian. The combination of learning and only like John Hales of Eton (whom he piety, of sound common sense and revermuch resembled, and whose friend he ence, makes him akin to Locke and Newwould surely have been if his wish of vis- ton and other famous Englishmen. The iting England could have been fulfilled) a wit is Italian, which appears in such say bibliotheca ambulans, but a walking cata-ings as "I recognize the style of the Rologue of the archives of Venice. He could man curia;"" In Italy every one wears lay his hand on any book or document in a mask; "Spaniard without Jesuit is the library of St. Mark's. His knowledge lettuce without oil; ""Take counsel with of the smallest details of chronology ex- the Jesuits and resolve the clear contended to all known history; his sagacity trary;" and his answer to Condé, "Your in scientific matters was such that, when Highness is going to Rome, and may there instruments were brought to him, he im- learn who is the author of the History of mediately divined not only the intention the Council of Trent;'" but his fervent