the incomparable force of his style, were neither admired nor
imitated. Arimanes had prevailed. The Divine Comedy was to that
age what St. Paul's Cathedral was to Omai. The poor Otaheitean
stared listlessly for a moment at the huge cupola, and ran into a
toyshop to play with beads. Italy, too, was charmed with
literary trinkets, and played with them for four centuries.

From the time of Petrarch to the appearance of Alfieri's
tragedies, we may trace in almost every page of Italian
literature the influence of those celebrated sonnets which, from
the nature both of their beauties and their faults, were
peculiarly unfit to be models for general imitation. Almost all
the poets of that period, however different in the degree and
quality of their talents, are characterised by great
exaggeration, and as a necessary consequence, great coldness of
sentiment; by a passion for frivolous and tawdry ornament; and,
above all, by an extreme feebleness and diffuseness of style.
Tasso, Marino, Guarini, Metastasio, and a crowd of writers of
inferior merit and celebrity, were spell-bound in the enchanted
gardens of a gaudy and meretricious Alcina, who concealed
debility and deformity beneath the deceitful semblance of
loveliness and health. Ariosto, the great Ariosto himself, like
his own Ruggiero, stooped for a time to linger amidst the magic
flowers and fountains, and to caress the gay and painted
sorceress. But to him, as to his own Ruggiero, had been given
the omnipotent ring and the winged courser, which bore him from
the paradise of deception to the regions of light and nature.

The evil of which I speak was not confined to the graver poets.
It infected satire, comedy, burlesque. No person can admire more