Of JANUARY and MAY, The WIFE of BATH, and TRANSLATIONS of STATIUS and OVID, and the ІміTATIONS of fome ENGLISH POETS. T HE first dawnings of polite literature in Italy, appeared in tale writing and fables. Boccace gave a currency and vogue to this species of composition. He collected many of the common tales of his country, and delivered them in VOL. II. the B the purest stile, enlivened with interesting circumstances. Sacchetti published tales before him, in which are many anecdotes of Dante and his cotemporaries. Boccace was faintly imitated by several Italians, Poggio, Bandello, Cinthio, Firenzuola, Malespini, and others. * Machiavel himself did honour to this species of writing, by his Belphegor. To produce, and carry on with probability and decorum, a series of events, is the most difficult work of invention; and if we were minutely to examine the popular stories of every nation, we should be amazed to find how few circumstances have been ever invented. Facts and events have been indeed varied and modified, but totally new facts have not been created. The writers of the old romances, from whom Ariosto and Spencer have borrowed fo largely, are supposed to have had copious imaginations: but may they not be indebted, for their invulnerable heroes, their monsters, their enchantments, their gardens of pleasure, their winged steeds, and the like, to the Echidna, to the Circe, to the Medea, to the Achilles, to the Syrens, to the Harpies, to the Phryxus, and the Bellerophon of the ancients? The cave of Polypheme might furnish out the ideas of their giants, and Andromeda might give occafion for stories of distressed damsels on the point of being devoured by dragons, and delivered at such a critical season by their favourite knights. Some faint traditions of the ancients might have been kept glimmering and alive during the whole barbarous ages, as they are called; and it is not impoffible, but these have been the parents of the Genii in the eastern, and the * Machiavel, who poffefsed the liveliest wit with the profoundest reflection, wrote also two comedies, Mandgragora and Clytia, the former of which was played before Leo X. with much magnificence; the latter is an imitation of the Caffina of Plautus; " Indigna vero homine Chriftiano (fays Balzac) qui sanctiores Musas colit, et, in ludicris quoque, meminisse debet severitatis." Epist. Select. pag. 202. I have been informed that Machiavel towards the latter part of his life grew religious, and that some pieces of afcetic devotion, composed by him, are preserved in the libraries of Italy. Lord Bacon says remarkably of Machiavel, that he teaches what men usually do, not what they ought to do. been |