eighteen years should yield a dozen carats; and, by successive progression, he may arrive at perfection." The author takes advantage of a visit to his father to describe his agitation on first mounting a horse. This is done in the style of farce, and is as unfortunate as, we think, most of his attempts at wit have proved through these volumes. The meeting took place at Perugia: My father made me remark the citadel built by Paul the Third, at a time when Perugia enjoyed republican liberty, under the pretence of benefiting the Perugians with a hospital for their sick, and for pilgrims. This pious successor to the chair of St. Peter, on finishing the work, introduced cannons into the place in carts covered with straw; and, when the Chi viva was uttered from the battlements, the citizens found it necessary to make answer, "Long live Paul III."' It would be an idle attempt to follow GOLDONI through his examination at the Jesuits' college of this city; and yet more idle to discover the reason of that sudden illumination, which, though he was the dullest in the school, on one happy day gave him the prize over all his competitors: - but so we suppose it was. A play and a play-house were his rage. His father, to gratify this darling desire, fitted up a theatre in a hall of the Hôtel of Antinori; and, as females are not allowed to act in the states of the Pope, the part of a lady and the prologue were conferred on our hero. The style of this prologue was the style of the Italian drama of that day; metaphor, hyperbole, antithesis, inflation, and bombast, had usurped the place of common sense on every stage in Italy: but his father was accustomed to it. The commencement is a fine relic of the art: Most benign heaven,' (this was the name given to the auditory,) to the rays of your most refulgent sun, behold us, like butterflies, expanding the tender wings of our conceits, and raising our flight to your meridian radiance.' This charming prologue brought me a bushel of sugar-plums, with which the theatre was filled, and I was almost blinded. This is the usual applause in the papal territories. The piece in which I played was La Sorellina di Don Pilone; and I was much commended: for in a country in which such spectacles are uncommon, the spectators are not nice." On his way from Perugia to Venice, the author embarked in an expedition with a company of comedians at Rimini, in whose society he performed the journey thence to Chiozza. Their assemblage is thus described: Twelve persons, actors and actresses, a prompter, a machinist, a keeper of the wardrobe, eight servants, four chamber-maids, two nurses, children of all ages, dogs, cats, monkeys, birds, pigeons, and a lamb: it was the ark of Noah. Our readers will perceive in this de scription Hh 3 1 scription nothing beyond the ordinary oddity of a Margate hoy; yet it must be converted into an effort to raise a laugh; - and then a poor attempt at continuing the laugh is made by the description of a quarrel between the conductor of the boat and the première amoureuse, for not having prepared a bouillon, without which the lady could not dine. This sally is succeeded by another, about a cat belonging to the same interesting lady, which was pursued by a sailor. We notice these follies as characteristic of the Memoirs, and without any intention of doing violence to the dramas of GOLDONI. Indeed, the same pen is to be discovered, and nearly the same manner, in all his works: but that which, when " submitted to the eye," is more pleasant, is frequently known to fail in description; more particularly when description professes truth for its canvass. We approve the rule of transferring scenes in real life to the theatre, which should be its shadow: but to reverse the rule would be to offend grossly against all the decencies and probabilities. The ground-work of these memoirs may be true: but the language of the first volume, at least, has always a dash of the theatre, a certain air of insincerity, which proves to us that every scene is not represented exactly as it passed. Thus, when his father returns unexpectedly, and rushes into the apartment of Mad. GOLDONI, complaining of his son, the latter is during the whole time a listener in an adjoining closet; and the stale theatrical practice of dragging the young culprit from his hiding-place is repeated in the history of real life. At Venice, GOLDONI was articled to an attorney; and it will excite no small degree of surprize to hear that the first dramatist, who introduced the better school to the notice of his countrymen, began his literary career in the fortieth year of his age.— It cannot be expected that persons at our advanced time of life are possessed of sufficient agility to accompany this versatile author from Venice to Rome, and thence to Venice again, to Pavia, to Milan, and through all his mazy pilgrimages; neither do the events that occur on the several roads appear worthy of much remark. As he grew older, he became more and more sensible that his country had lost the true comic spirit. During his residence at Pavia, where he received the tonsure, he applied himself with attention to the Greek and Roman drama, and to the modern comedies of France, England, and Spain. To the method, style, and precision of the antient, he wished to add the interest and character which are to be found in many of the modern pieces. In the course of his vacations, some new light was thrown on his darling subject by the Mandragore of Machiavelli: which profligate but humorous piece was inadvertently lent to him by a monk, who was unacquainted with the wit and danger danger of the pages with which he furnished his young friend. At Udina, the author applied himself once more to the study of the law. He also frequented the church; and, as a specimen of his edification, his memory having carried off the divisions and substance of six and thirty sermons, he reduced them into the contracted and grotesque form of as many sonnets, of which the publication procured him the thanks of the orator and the admiration of all the good people of Udina. His residence at this city, however, was (as usual) interrupted by some idle intrigues, unworthy of us to mention, and of his more serious years to have remembered. To our complaint at these levities, we cannot but add another against the shame which he evinces at yielding for a time to a more honourable passion. At Chiozza, he was enamoured of a young and beautiful girl, at a convent-school, who was otherwise engaged; and his regret at parting is thus feelingly described: I no longer saw the Directress, nor her pupil; and, God be thanked, in a very short time I forgot the one and the other!' Another tender and virtuous attachment is laughed out of countenance in the same The death of his father in some degree puts a stop to this biographical harlequinade, and brings back the author This event to rather better feelings and far better taste. fixed him in the profession of an advocate at Venice, whence he was obliged to remove in order to avoid the performance of an inconsiderate promise of marriage. In a short time afterward, we find him secretary to a governor of Milan : but he soon demands his discharge, becomes a wanderer, as before, always happy, generally poor, the associate of strollers, of abbés, and of peasants, until he found it safe to return to Venice. To this place he is peculiarly attached; they sing,' says he, in the squares, in the streets, and on the canals, The shop-keepers sing until they sell their merchandise; workmen sing on leaving their labor; and the gondoliers sing while The basis of the Venetian chathey wait on their masters. racter is gaiety, and the basis of the Venetian language is Hh 4 pleasantry.' manner. 472 pleasantry.' In this lively city, where even the saints are made to lend their names to the theatres, he represented, with universal applause, his Belisario, which was followed by several other pieces, of unequal merit, but of general success. My language,' he says, "was not elegant, and my versification but it was the better never verged towards the sublime: adapted to bring back to reason a public which had been accustomed to hyperboles, antitheses, and the absurdities of the gigantic and romantic style.'- Having experienced infidelity in the principal actress of the theatre, GOLDONI avenged himself by representing the affair in his Don Juan, and complimented the lady and her paramour by assigning to them, in the piece, the exact characters which they had played in actual life. At Genoa, the author gained a prize in the lottery, and another in a wife, who formed the happiness of his existence; and from this time we cannot refuse him the merit of a complete reform in style and character. His first endeavour was to banish from his stage those whimsical personages, who are commonly known in the South by the appellation of the four Italian masks. The history of their families is curious; and from their antiquity they had so completely subjected Italian taste to their empire, that the whole peninsula at different times revolted against the innovator who wished to expel them Let us hear M. GOLDONI: from the comic scene. Before I explain my ideas on this subject, I conceive that my reader will thank me for a short digression on the origin and employment of these four masks. Comedy, which has at all times been the favourite spectacle of civilized nations, had shared the fate of the arts and sciences, and been swallowed up in the ruin of empires and the decline of letters: but the germ of comedy was never quite extinct in the fertile imagination of the Italians. The first who laboured to revive it, being disappointed, during a dark age, in skilful writers, had the boldness to compose plans, to divide them into acts and scenes, and to utter as impromptus, conversations, thoughts, and pleasantries which were previously concerted. Those who could read (and the rich were not of the number) observed that the comedies of Plautus and Terence always contained fathers who were dupes, debauched sons, amorous girls, lying valets, and corrupt maid-servants; and, traversing the_different cantons of Italy, they took their fathers at Venice and at Bologna, their valets at Bergamo, their enamoured youths and maids, and their soubrettes, in the states of Rome and Tuscany. We must not wait for written proofs of this reasoning, because we are speaking of an age in which writing was nearly unknown, The Pantaloon has always but I prove my assertion in this manner. been * been Venetian, the doctor a Bolognese, and the barlequin and clown have ever been from Bergamo; from these places, the actors took those comic characters which are known to us by the name of the four Italian masks.-I advance these remarks not entirely from my own conception: I am in possession of a manuscript of the fif teenth century, in good preservation, bound in parchment, which contains a hundred and twenty subjects or canvasses of Italian pieces, called comedies of the art; and of which the principal basis consists invariably of a pantaloon, a Venetian merchant; the doctor, a lawyer of Bologna; Brighella and Harlequin, valets of Bergamo; the first quick and active, the other heavy. Their antiquity and permanent existence prove their origin. With regard to their employment, the pantaloon and the doctor, whom the Italians call the two old men, represent the part of fathers and other venerable characters, (les rôles à manteau.) The first is a merchant, because Venice was in those antient times the richest and most extensive commercial country in Italy. He has ever preserved the antient Venetian costume. The black robe and woollen bonnet are yet worn at Venice; while the red waistcoat, breeches cut like drawers, and red stockings and slippers, represent exactly the dress of the antient inhabitants of the Adriatic lagoons; and the beard, which was a great ornament in those distant ages, has been carried to a grotesque extreme in these latter days. The second old man, called the doctor, has been selected from the legal profession for the purpose of contrasting the learned with the commercial man; and he is from Bologna, because an university existed in that city, which, with all the ignorance of the time, yet adhered to the charges and emoluments of professors. His dress preserves the antient costume of the bar of Bologna, which is nearly the same to this hour; and the singular mask, which covers the forehead and nose, has been imitated from a wine-mark which deformed the face of a lawyer in those days. This tradition yet exists among the amateurs of the comedy of art. • The Brighella and Harlequin, called in Italy the two Zanis, have been borrowed from Bergamo. The adroitness of the first, and the extreme heaviness of the second, are proofs of this assertion; because in no other country do we find these two extremes in the class of the people. Brighella represents an intriguing, roguish, dishonest valet. His dress is a kind of livery; and his tawny mask is a satire on the complexion of the inhabitants of those lofty mountains, scorched by the heat of the sun. Some actors of these parts have taken the name of fenocchio, fiqueto, and scapino: but, under every name, the character of the valet of Bergamo remains unchanged. The harlequins also have their different names: but they are always natives of Bergamo, heavy and clownish; and their dress re These two personages are exactly reversed in this country. The real and original Italian harlequin is the heavy, and the Brighella the light and active zani. The former is attired in a dress of various colours, to shew his poverty and propensity to stealing. Rev. presents |