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The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay
The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay Author:Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1860 Original Publisher: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts Subjects: Fiction / Classics Literary Collections / Essays Literary Criticism / General Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Literary Criticism / European / Italian Poetry / En... more »glish, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: 51 CKITICISMS ON THE PRINCIPAL ITALIAN WRITERS. No. I. DANTE. (january 1824.) " Fairest of stars, last in the train of night, If better thou belong not to the dawn, Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn With thy bright circlet." Milton. In a review of Italian literature, Dante has a double claim to precedency. He was the earliest and the greatest writer of his country. He was the first man who fully descried and exhibited the powers of his native dialect. The Latin tongue, which, under the most favourable circumstances, and in the hands of the greatest masters, had still been poor, feeble, and singularly unpoetical, and which had, in the age of Dante, been debased by the admixture of innumerable barbarous words and idioms, was still cultivated with superstitious veneration, and received, in the last stage of corruption, more honours than it had deserved in the period of its life and vigour. It was the language of the cabinet, of the university, of the church. It was employed by all who aspired to distinction in the higher walks of poetry. In compassion to the ignorance of his mistress, a cavalier might now and then proclaim his passion in Tuscan or Proven9al rhymes. The vulgar might occasionally be edified by a pious allegory in the popular jargon. But no writer had conceived it possibletha...« less