braggadocio; Gelsomino, a Roman coxcomb; and Coviello and Giangurgolo, two clowns of Calabria. These personifications give one a glimpse of national manners. Every actor has his established dress and mask. The pieces represented are called Commedied ell' Arte. A plot or rude outline of circumstances is furnished to the actors, and they supply the dialogue.

A regular form and shape were given to the mime at a period when the entertainment ought to have died away; namely, at the revival of regular comedy. Flaminio Scala, master of a celebrated company of itinerant actors, wrote the plan and the details of his pieces. The morals of the theatre received some amendment when the celebrated Charles Borromeo, archbishop of Milan, established the office of dramatic censor. The mime and the pantomime, however, have gradually given place to more rational amusements. The Academy de Rozzi, at Sienna, a society of admirers of poetry, wrote and acted plays in which they employed the popular dialect and wit of their country. This academy was at the height of its celebrity in the pontificate of Leo X., but the Italians consider their performances merely as dramatic essays.

Petrarca says (Epist. Tom. vii. 16.) that he wrote a comedy, and called it Filologia. Other

illustrious men of former times courted the acquaintance of the comic muse, but their works have disappeared, and it cannot be known whether they were genuine comedies. The Italians generally regard the celebrated Matteo Maria Boiardo, as the author of the first perfect comedy. It is called Il Timone. The story is taken from Lucian. The play is written in terza rima, and is divided into five acts. Ercole, Duke of Ferrara, incited Boiardo to the composition of it. The next comic writer was the Cardinal Bibbiena. The Calandro is the name of his comedy. It has often been acted at the court of the duke of Urbino. In the pontificate of Leo it was represented before his Holiness, and the general magnificence can be supposed from the single circumstance already stated by me, that the famous painter, Baldassare Peruzzi, furnished the scenic decorations. The play is written in prose, and in such elegant Italian that the most accurate philologists among the Florentines admire the style. The story consists of the adventures, principally amatory, of a twin brother and sister, of such perfect resemblance when clothed alike, as to be continually mistaken one for the other. The immorality of the piece is shocking. The dialogue is a mixture of elegance and grossness, wit and puns.

It is astonishing that Popes and Cardinals, Kings and Queens, could witness the representation of it. That lively painter of manners, Ariosto, would have been an excellent comic writer, had he consulted his own genius, and not shackled himself by the rules of other authors. He completed four comedies at different parts of his life, and left a fifth imperfect. His first comedy, the Cassaria, disputes with the Calandro of Bibbiena for priority of invention. He was an imitator of the Roman authors, and has, therefore, brought on the stage the parasites, slaves, and nurses of Plautus and Terence. His stories are exceedingly involved, the grave and solid virtues are ridiculed, while licentiousness and fraud are triumphant. He satirizes all those classes of society, upon which calumny generally fastens itself. The dialogue is fluent and full of wit. The author is generally animated, and his warmth is imparted to his auditors; but, as most of his story is recited and not acted, the audience feel very little interest about the matter. The infamous Aretino wrote five comedies, called Il Marescalca, L' Ippocrito, Il Filosofo, La Cortigiana, and La Talanta. They were exactly of that description which might be expected from a man of his humour and profligacy. I could not, without offending delicacy, analize

the plays of Aretino, or any other comedies that appeared before, or during my residence in Italy. Tragedy presents human nature in her grand and general forms. Comedy is generally a picture of contemporary manners; and, as Lodovico Dolce, a poet and writer of plays at the commencement of the present century, says, to paint the manners of his times it is necessary that both words and actions should be licentious, for licentiousness in thought and deed is universal.

The celebrity of the author induces me to mention the Mandragola and the Clizia of Machiavelli. The genius of the Florentine secretary sometimes required repose, and his spirits relief from the disappointments of life. By fixing his attention on slight subjects, he endeavoured to divert his mind from painful retrospection. The story of the Mandragola cannot be detailed. Suffice it to say, that it is the history of an affair of gallantry, in which every thing lively and interesting is arrayed on the side of vice, and every thing dull and ridiculous is on the side of virtue. By means of the cunning of a monk the adventurer gains his object. The dialogue is abominably indecorous, but sparkles with point and elegance. It had often been played at Florence by the academicians and the young

gentlemen of the city, and on the accession to the pontificate of Leo X., his Holiness, who had assisted in these performances in his native city, summoned to Rome the patrician actors of the Mandragola; and this comedy, offensive as it is to religion and morals, was represented in the Vatican. The Clizia of Machiavelli is an imitation of the Casina of Plautus. It is, if possible, a greater insult to purity than the Mandragola. The great excellence of Machiavelli and Aretino, as comic writers, consisted in their showing to the world that comic situations may be found in other places than in ancient Rome, and that modern wit need not be altogether an adumbration of the sayings of Terence and Plautus. Grazzini, or Lasca, the celebrated Florentine, is another original comic author. His plays are admirable satires on the pedants and Petrarchists of his time. He attacks the former for their cold and stiff imitation of antiquity, and the latter for the platonic love and mysticism that render all their lyrical poetry so tedious and mannered. The comedies, like the novels of the Italians, thus were pictures of national manners.