The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 15, January, 1859

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Ernest Carroll, or Artist-Life in Italy. A Novel, in Three Parts. Boston; Ticknor & Fields. 1858.

This book is not strictly of the kind which the Germans call the Art-Novel, and yet we know not how else to class it. The author has spun a somewhat improbable story as the thread for his reflections on Art and his reminiscences of artists and travel. We confess that we should have liked it better, had he made his book simply a record of experience and reflection. But there are many admirable things in this little volume, which is evidently the work of a person of refined artistic culture and clear intelligence. Of especial value we reckon the reminiscences of Allston and his methods; and it seems a little singular, since the scene is laid chiefly in Florence and in 1847, that we get nothing more satisfactory than a single anecdote about the elder Greenough, whose life and works and thoroughly emancipated style of thought have done more to honor American Art than those of any other man, except Allston.

We rather regret that the author had not made his book more of a journal, and recorded directly his own impressions, because he shows a decided ability in bringing scenes before the eye of the reader. The sketches of Doney's Caffè and the Venetian improvvisatore are especially vivid; so is that of the old picture-dealer; though in all we think some of the phrases might have been softened with advantage. We enter our earnest protest also against the Ruskin chapter. The scenes at Graefenberg are fresh, lively, and interesting. The book is also enlivened by many entertaining anecdotes of living American artists and savans, which are told with the skill of a practised raconteur. We hope to hear from the author again, and in a form which shall enable his knowledge and experience in matters of Art to have freer play than the exigencies of a novel allow them, and in which his abilities in the discussion of aesthetics shall have more scope given them than that of the obiter dicta in a story.

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Hymns of the Ages. Being Selections from the Lyra Catholica, Apostolica, Germanica, and other Sources, with an Introduction by PROF. F.D. HUNTINGTON. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 1859. Square 8vo. pp. 300.

In this exquisitely-printed volume the editors have collected specimens of the devotional poetry of the Christian Church, including translations from the Roman Breviary, as well as from German hymns, with a few from English sources. There has been no attempt, evidently, to conform to the requirements of any creed; the devout Catholic, as well as the Episcopalian Churchman, will find here the favorite aspirations, penitential strains, and ascriptions of praise, which have been consecrated by generations of worshippers. To American readers the collection will be substantially new, since hardly a dozen of the hymns are to be found in the volumes in use in our churches. If it had been the purpose of the editors to gather all the classic religious poetry, to form a sacred anthology, it would have been necessary to print a great number of the hymns in modern collections; and the volume would in that case have lost in novelty what it gained in completeness.

Those who like to go back to the ancient forms of worship for inspiration, who feel the force of association in the lyrics which have come down from almost apostolic times, will find in this book an aid to devotion and religious contemplation. With a little more care in excluding strongly-marked doctrinal stanzas, the "Hymns of the Ages," if less characteristic, would have been more truly catholic, and therefore acceptable to a larger portion of the Church Universal.

notes

1

Vita di Dante. Milan, 1823, pp. 29, 30.

2

Vita di Dante, p. 69.

3

For vita nova in the sense of early life, see Purgatory, xxx. 115, with the comments of Landino and Benvenuto da Imola; and for età novella in a similar sense, see Canzone xviii. st. 6. Fraticelli, who supports this interpretation, gives these with other examples, but none more to the point. Mr. Joseph Carrow, who had a translation into English of the Vita Nuova, printed at Florence in 1840, entitles his book "The Early Life of Dante Allighieri." But as giving probability to the meaning to which we incline, see Canzone x. st. 5.

"Lo giorno che costei nel mondo venne,
Secondo che si trova
Nel libro della mente che vien meno,
La mia persona parvola sostenne
Una passion nova."
That day when she unto the world attained,
As is found written true
Within the book of my now sinking soul,
Then by my childish nature was sustained
A passion new.

In referring to Dante's Minor Poems, we shall refer to them as they stand in the first volume of Fraticelli's edition of the Opere Minore al Dante, Firenze, 1834. There is great need of a careful, critical edition of the Canzoniere of Dante, in which poems falsely ascribed to him should no longer hold place among the genuine. But there is little hope for this from Italy; for the race of Italian commentators on Dante is, as a whole, more frivolous, more impertinent, and duller, than that of English commentators on Shakespeare.]

4

The word in the original (Villani, Book vii. C. 89) is Giocolari, the Italian form of the French jongleur,—the appellation of those whose profession was to sing or recite the verses of the troubadours or the romances of chivalry.

5

See Boccaccio, Decamerone, Giorn. vi, Nov. 9, for an entertaining picture of Florentine festivities.

6

The feeling which moved Florence thus to build herself into beauty was one shared by the other Italian republican cities at this time. Venice, Verona, Pisa, Siena, Orvieto, were building or adding to churches and palaces such as have never since been surpassed.

7

Cicognara, Storia della Scultura, II. 147.

8

Guido Guinicelli will always be less known by his own verses than by Dante's calling him

—–"father
Of me and all those better others
Who sweet chivalric lovelays formed."

    Purg. xxvi. 97-99.
And Guido Cavalcanti, "he who took from this other Guido the praise of speech," (Purg. xi. 97,) is more famous as Dante's friend than as a poet.

9

Purgatory, xxiv. 53-60.

10

Decamerone, Giorn. vi. Nov. 9. Logician is here to be understood in an extended sense, as the student of letters, or arts, as they were then called, in general.

11

The Works of William Shakspeare. Edited, etc., by RICHARD GRANT WHITE. Vols. II., III., IV, and V. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1858.

12

As where Ben Jonson is able to say,—"Men may securely sin, but safely never."

13

"Vulgarem locutionem appellamus eam quâ infantes adsuefiunt ab adsistentibus cum primitus distinguere voces incipiunt: vel, quod brevius dici potest, vulgarem locutionem asserimus quam sine omni regulâ, nutricem imitantes, accepimus." Dante, de Vulg. Eloquio, Lib. I. cap. i.

14

Gray, himself a painful corrector, told Nicholls that "nothing was done so well as at the first concoction,"—adding, as a reason, "We think in words." Ben Jonson said, it was a pity Shakspeare had not blotted more, for that he sometimes wrote nonsense,—and cited in proof of it the verse

"Caesar did never wrong but with just cause."

The last four words do not appear in the passage as it now stands, and Professor Craik suggests that they were stricken out in consequence of Jonson's criticism. This is very probable; but we suspect that the pen that blotted them was in the hand of Master Heminge or his colleague. The moral confusion in the idea was surely admirably characteristic of the general who had just accomplished a successful coup d'état, the condemnation of which he would fancy that he read in the face of every honest man he met, and which he would therefore be forever indirectly palliating.

15