Among literary critics
are the names of Gravina, whose _Della Ragione Poetica_, full of sound
scholarship and refreshing good sense, appeared in 1716 at Naples; Volpi
of Padua, author of a treatise on Satire, in which the merits of
Lucilius, Horace, Juvenal, and Persius were effectively discussed; and
their followers, Algarotti the Venetian and Vannetti of Roveredo, in
whom Horatian criticism reached its greatest altitude.
If we look outside the field of scholastic endeavor and academic
imitation, and attempt to discern the effect of Horace in actual
literary creation, we are confronted by the difficulty of determining
exactly where imitation and adaptation cease to be artificial, and reach
the degree of individuality and independence which entitles them to the
name of originality. If we are to include here such authors as are
manifestly indebted to suggestion or inspiration from Horace, and yet
are quite as manifestly modern and Italian, we may note at least the
names of Petrarch, already mentioned; the famous Cardinal Bembo, whose
ideal, to write "thoughtfully and little," was a reflection of Horace;
Ariosto, whose satires are in the Horatian spirit, and who, complaining
to his brother Alessandro of the attitude of his patron, Cardinal
Hippolyto d'Este, recites the story of the fox and the weasel, changing
them to donkey and rat; Chiabrera of Savona, who wrote satire
honeycombed with Horatian allusion and permeated by Horatian spirit, and
who, in Leopardi's opinion, had he lived in a different age, would have
been a second Horace; Testi of Ferrara, whom Ariosto's enthusiasm for
Horace so kindled that he gravitated from the modern spirit to the
classical; Parini of Milan, whose poem, _Alla Musa_, is Horatian in
spirit and phrase; Leopardi, who composed a parody on the _Ars Poetica_;
Prati, who transmuted _Epode II_ into the _Song of Hygieia_; and
Carducci, whose use of Horatian meters, somewhat strained, is due to the
conscious desire of making Italy's past greatness serve the present.
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