But whatever may be thought of the details of any of the plans which have been offered, we think we may venture to lay down the following propositions:-1st. That the principle of the poor laws, though much abused in practice, is just, and cannot now be abrogated ;--and 2d. that for the correction of abuses and for the renovation of the original principle, the measures taken should be cautious, gradual and slow, in order to prevent the danger, both statistical and political, which great and sudden changes in so extensive and vital an interest would create: for instance; even though all parties were agreed upon any two important amendments of the present practice, we should doubt the expediency of adopting them both at once; we should prefer trying one of them this year and another the next. All the plans hitherto proposed have failed, chiefly, we think, from attempting too much. The errors have crept in gradually, and must be gradually removed and the wisdom of abstaining from making such extensive alterations as may endanger the whole of an old edifice, is at least as certain in politics as in architecture. : ART. V.-The Travels of Theodore Ducas, in various Countries in Europe, at the Revival of Letters and Art. Edited by Charles Mills. Part the First. Italy. 2 vols. 8vo. 1822. THIS is a Voyage Imaginaire, a difficult and most unprofitable class of the belles-lettres;-unprofitable, because what is true in such a work can only be a larceny from more authentic stores; -and difficult, because what is invented is so limited and straitened by the realities to which it is attached, that the liveliest fancy would be paralyzed. The Travels of Anacharsis appear, at first sight, an exception to this general position; but we think we could, if this were a fit occasion, show, that this instance does not overthrow our doctrine, and, as applied to the case immediately before us, it tends rather to confirm it, for we believe that something similar to Mr. Mills's work was projected by the Abbé Barthelemi; but he deserted the idea for his Travels of Anacharsis, probably because he found in the latter the possibility of escaping from the difficulties which he foresaw, and which Mr. Mills has found in the attempt now under our consideration. The composition of imaginary travels, indeed, demands much more learning, and of more various kinds, than any simply historical works, and their machinery requires more discrimination and tact than that of works of absolute fiction. The hero of the piece is a poetical creation; but he must harmonize with substantial flesh and and blood, he is himself a work of fancy; but he mingles with beings of life and reality. In works of pure fiction, the author is under little restriction from the circumstances of time, or place, or action: so long as he does not exhibit glaring inconsistencies, nor demand a prostration of reason and sense from our credulity, we are content to yield him the privileges of a chartered libertine,' and to follow, wheresoever he leads us, in blind obedience. 6 But with the writer who pursues the path of fiction as a way to the region of truth, the case is widely different.—At the slightest anachronism in a 'Voyage Imaginaire,' or the smallest transgression of the unities of place and action, our knowledge is shocked and our taste disgusted. We deny to the imaginary traveller the indulgence which we every day allow the poetical flights of real tourists; yet we require him to be lively and entertaining. If he slumber by the road, and fill up the naked pages of his itinerary with mere didactic lessons or dry literary dissertation, we fly from the languid interest of his compilation to the professed dictionary, of poets and painters which he has plundered; and prefer seeking for knowledge where it may be found stripped of the useless incumbrance of a fiction which neither fascinates nor informs. But besides these general obstacles, there are others which especially affect Mr. Mills's individual undertaking;—he proposes to give us a light and elegant account of the revival of letters and art in modern Europe, and such a work is certainly a desideratum for the general reader; but we are satisfied that an imaginary voyage is its least proper vehicle; for as all the countries of Europe did not throw off their ignorance at the same moment, the object cannot be adequately effected by one traveller, and any supplementary journey would break the unity, and consequently destroy whatever little interest the fiction may have excited. The volumes before us contain only Ducas's account of Italy, and undoubtedly the commencement of the sixteenth century was a favourable period for a literary tour through that country, because a greater number of her most learned and ingenious spirits lived at that time than at any other; but the ardour of religious, not of literary zeal, devoured Germany, and we really are at a loss. to guess what a sentimentalist and virtuoso can have to tell of England in 1550. France had only her Rabelais and Montaigne; and it was not till long past the middle of the sixteenth century, that Lopez de Vega and Cervantes enabled Spain to claim the honours' of national literature. The plan of the present work is therefore faulty, and though the present detached portion of the performance is free from this error, we cannot but fear that in his progress Mr. Mills may find it very embarrassing. Even as to Italy, his ac count 1 count is rather a biographical dictionary than a traveller's description, but the facts are laboriously and often skilfully collected; and it must be admitted, that they represent some very interesting fertures in the intellectual aspect of Italy. When Pope Leo X. projected the foundation of a college at Rome, to invigorate the growing taste for ancient literature, he deputed Marcus Musurus, the celebrated editor of Plato, to select a few Grecian youths of high birth for education at this establishment, with a view to the ultimate communication of the riches of the Greek language to the Italians.-This historical fact serves for the basis of the volumes before us.-Mr. Mills supposes that Theodore Ducas, the younger son of a noble family, which, on the fall of Constantinople, had sought refuge in the isle of Candia, was, from various public and private considerations, placed as one of the pupils at the new college;-that he arrived at Rome in 1514, being then only not a boy, and, in the course of six years, acquired the Latin language, and most of the vernacular idioms of Europe; that he also studied critically the various dialects of ancient Greece, and thus became acquainted with the philosophers and historians of old, the most faithful painters of the opinions and actions of men'; that his acquirements fitted him for the office of classical professor at the Institute; but no visions of delight glittered over the diurnal labours of an academy; he preferred therefore a personal investigation of the state of literature and the arts in Europe; and he solicited the permission of the Pope to travel; that Leo not only granted the request, but accompanied his assent with the assignment of a liberal pension; and, every obstacle to his wishes being at length surmounted, the young traveller, in the year 1522, bade adieu to his collegiate friends with Catullus on his lips: O dulces comitum valete cœtus, Longe quos simul a domo profectos It is imagined that forty years were passed by the inquisitive Greek in visiting most of the countries and cities of western Europe, which then shone with the splendour of intellectual glory, before he returned to Rome. Again a resident amidst the scenes of his boyhood, the sexagenarian, in the calm retirement of lettered ease, amuses the remnant of his days in arranging the works of which the first part is here given to the public. I cannot return to Greece, for there the haughty and intolerant Moslem continues his triumph; and his cruelty has driven to the tomb all those who were dear to my feelings. I purpose, then, to waste the little remainder of my lamp of life in embodying those recollections which are now my only solace. If the account of my travels should ever be obtruded on the candour of the world, I can hope for no readers VOL. XXVIII. NO. LVI. A A -readers among politicians or statists, for I shall not treat of military or civil history. Nor will he, who quits his native land to indulge the vague curiosity of restless indolence, find my volumes substitutes for personal direction to the exterior wonders of cities. The curiosity of every traveller will be directed by the accustomed associations of his mind; and, indeed, among the various subjects of regard, one pursuit is generally sufficient for the attention of an individual. I do not presume to be able to study man and nature too. I have been chiefly interested in viewing the literary aspect of Europe; for I am one of that nation, which, in ages past, obtained the palm of science, and which, even in these days of her servitude, has formed many of the features of the intellectual character of the western nations. Next to the delights of living in the days of the Grecian sages, no man of letters would wish to breathe any other air than that which gives life to the literary heroes of the sixteenth century. I shall recount, then, what I have seen, and heard, and read, relative to the revival of learning and art in Europe. Without confining myself to the details of my journal, and yet adhering generally to the course of my travels, I shall methodise my knowledge, and relate, at particular places, all that I observed or have since collected, of persons and subjects.'-vol. i. pp. 10. 12. The subject of Italian literature has so often occupied our pages that it will not be expected of us to follow Ducas through every stage of his tour. We shall only select a few passages which appear to us to have in some degree that interest of novelty, the want of which (as it necessarily must be of all such works) is the chief defect of Mr. Mills's publication. A letter from Machiavel to his friend Francesco Vettori, dated in December, 1513, affords a view of the private life of this celebrated writer, and unfolds the reasons of the composition of the famous, but now little known, work called the Prince,' which are important to his own history, and new, we believe, to many English readers. The form of communication is of course changed by Mr. Mills from epistolary to oral. "The Florentine secretary often described to me the political storms through which he had passed; but he said that his happiest years had 'been spent at his small patrimonial inheritance near San Casciano, on the road from Florence to Rome. In the mornings, when the season of the year permitted the amusement, he employed himself in catching thrushes with net or line. At other times he walked in the forests, and observed the labours and sports of the wood-cutters. He then went to a fountain, and turned over the pages of Dante or Petrarca, or of the poets of the second order, as he called Ovid and Tibullus. He repaired to the high road near the inn, conversed with the passengers, and marked the different humours and passions of the world. His dinner was plain; and, as soon as it was dispatched, he returned to the inn, and joined the host and his usual company, namely, a butcher, a miller, and a lime-maker. He then passed the remainder of the day in cards or backgammon, or in boisterous and quarrelsome argument, the noise whereof frequently reached S. Casciano.' "This ignoble mode of life," continued Machiavel, "carried off the effervescence of my mind; I yielded to fortune, in hopes that she would one day or other be ashamed of her severity. In the evening I returned home, threw aside my village dress, attired myself like a Florentine gentleman, and entered my study. I there read the philosophers and historians of ancient times. I called upon the warriors and statesmen, whose annals I perused, to declare to me the motives of their actions. I investigated the causes of the different conditions of society; and, during four hours of this description of liberal occupation, I forgot all my pains, and feared neither poverty nor death." —vol. ii. p. 8. But in spite of these vaunts of independence, Machiavel was not above the fear of poverty. In the very same letter he confesses the necessity of writing a book, and of dedicating it to some distinguished character as the only means of avoiding absolute indigence. The circumstances of the times guided his abilities, and he thought that the work most likely to succeed among the great would be a treatise on the mode by which states may be acquired, preserved, and lost. This melancholy reason,' as stated by Machiavel himself, is an ample refutation of all the fine woven hypotheses respecting the origin of The Prince, which have been created by various writers, who, knowing the private virtues of the author, were unwilling to accuse him of political immorality.' The life of Guicciardini is succinctly told, and an interesting account is given of his literary work. There is not much novelty in the following summary of his historical merits, but it is sensible and just. Accuracy of narrative and judicious reflections are the excellencies, then, of Guicciardini's history. On the other hand, every reader is wearied by the prolixity of the style. "As long as the war between Florence and Pisa," alluding to a part of Guicciardini's work, is a proverbial expression for any thing that is insufferably tedious. The language of the book is pedantically pure. In his care to avoid familiar phrases, the author falls into the error of dignifying trifles. The style has none of the majestic rudeness of strong feelings and original thinking: but is often inexpressive of the subject, cold, and artificial. Guicciardini was a severe censor of mankind. The medium through which he regarded the world was as gloomy as the imagination of Machiavelli. Among the motives which Guicciardini assigns to the various actions that he records, virtue, religion, and conscience have no place. Every act of every individual is attributed to avarice, ambition, licentiousness, or selfishness, in some one or other of its most disgusting appearances. This total want of charity for human nature was partly attributable to the natural severity of Guicciardini's character, but principally to the general corruption of the Italian politicians; a corruption so odious, that it could not but excite notions of the universal depravity of mankind.'-vol. ii. p. 29, 30. Mr. Mills has a strong suspicion of the real character of the loves A A 2 |