PERSONALITY IN THE RENAISSANCE.

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IV.

Benvenuto Cellini, in his autobiography, presents a graphic picture of the times; and what we know of life in other European countries at that epoch, justifies us in taking that picture as fairly typical. He and the Italians of his century killed their rivals in the streets by day; they girded on their daggers when they went into a court of justice; they sickened to the death with disappointed vengeance or unhappy love; they dragged a faithless mistress by the hair about their rooms; they murdered an adulterous wife with their own hands, and hired assassins to pursue her paramour; lying for months in prison, unaccused or uncondemned, in daily dread of poison, they read the Bible and the sermons of Savonarola, and made their dungeons echo with psalm-singing; they broke their fetters, dropped from castle walls, swam moats and rivers, dreamed that angels had been sent to rescue them; they carved Madonna and Adonis on the self-same shrine, paying indiscriminate devotion to Ganymede and Aphrodite ; they confused the mythology of Olympus with the mysteries of Sinai and Calvary, the oracles of necromancers with the voice of prophets, the authority of pagan poets with the inspiration of Isaiah and S. Paul; they prayed in one breath for vengeance on their enemies, for favour with the women whom they loved, for succour in their homicidal acts, for Paradise in the life to come; they flung defiance at popes, and trembled for absolution before a barefoot friar; they watched salamanders playing in flames, saw aureoles

of light reflected from their heads upon the morning dew, turned dross to gold with alchemists, raised spirits in the ruins of deserted amphitheatres; they passed men dying on the road, and durst not pity them, because a cardinal had left them there to perish; they took the Sacrament from hands of prelates whom they had guarded with drawn swords at doors of infamy and riot. The wildest passions, the grossest superstitions, the most fervent faith, the coldest cynicism, the gravest learning, the darkest lusts, the most delicate sense of beauty, met in the same persons, and were fused into one wayward glittering humanity. Ficino, who revealed Plato to Europe, pondered on the occult virtue of amulets. Cardan, a pioneer of physical science, wrote volumes of predictions gathered from the buzzings of a wasp, and died in order to fulfil his horoscope. Bembo, a prince of the Church, warned hopeful scholars against reading the Bible lest they should contaminate their style. Aretino, the byeword of obscenity and impudence, penned lives of saints, and won the praise of women like Vittoria Colonna. A pope, to please the Sultan, poisoned a Turkish prince, and was rewarded by the present of Christ's seamless coat. A Duke of Urbino poignarded a cardinal in the streets of Bologna. Alexander VI. regaled his daughter in the Vatican with naked ballets, and dragged the young lord of Faenza, before killing him, through outrages for which there is no language. Every student of Renaissance Italy and France can multiply these instances. It is enough to have suggested how, and with what salience of unmasked appetite, the springs of life were opened

ENGLISH CHARACTERISTICS.

33

in that age of splendour; how the most heterogeneous elements of character and the most incongruous motives of action displayed themselves in a carnival medley of intensely vivid life.

V.

What distinguished the English at this epoch from the nations of the South was not refinement of manners, sobriety, or self-control. On the contrary, they retained an unenviable character for more than common savagery. Cellini speaks of them as questi diavoli_ quelle bestie di quegli Inglesi. Inglesi. Erasmus describes the filth of their houses, and the sicknesses engendered in their cities by bad ventilation. What rendered the people superior to Italians and Spaniards was the firmness of their moral fibre, the sweetness of their humanity, a more masculine temper, less vitiated instincts and sophisticated intellects, a law-abiding and religious conscience, contempt for treachery and baseness, intolerance of political or ecclesiastical despotism combined with fervent love of home and country./ They were coarse, but not vicious; pleasure-loving, but not licentious; violent, but not cruel; luxurious, but not effeminate. Machiavelli was a name of loathing to them. Sidney, Essex, Raleigh, More, and Drake were popular heroes; and whatever may be thought of these men, they certainly counted no Marquis of Pescara, no Duke of Valentino, no Malatesta Baglioni, no Cosimo de' Medici among them. The Southern European type betrayed itself but faintly in politicians like Richard Cromwell and Robert Dudley. The English then, as now, were great travellers.

D

Young men, not merely of the noble classes, visited the South and returned with the arts, accomplishments, and follies of Italian capitals. A frequent theme for satire was the incongruity of fashions displayed in the dress of travelled dandies, their language mixed of all the dialects of Europe, their aptitude for foreign dissipations. 'We have robbed Greece of gluttony,' writes Stephen Gosson, Italy of wantonness, Spain of pride, France of deceit, and Dutchland of quaffing.' Nash ascribes the notable increase of drunkenness to habits contracted by the soldiers in their Flemish campaigns. Ascham attributes the new-fangled lewdness of the youth to their sojourn in Venice. But these affectations of foreign vices were only a varnish on the surface of society. The core of the nation remained sound and wholesome. Nor was the culture which the English borrowed from less unsophisticated nations, more than superficial. The incidents of Court gossip show how savage was the life beneath. Queen Elizabeth spat, in the presence of her nobles, at a gentleman who had displeased her; struck Essex on the cheek; drove Burleigh blubbering from her apartment. Laws in merry England were executed with uncompromising severity. Every township had its gallows; every village its stocks, whippingpost, and pillory. Here and there, heretics were burned upon the market-place; and the block upon Tower Hill was seldom dry. Sir Henry Sidney, sent to quell the Irish rebels, 'put man, woman, and child to the sword,' after reading the Queen's proclamation. His officers balanced the amusements of pillage or 'having some killing,' with a preference for the latter sport when they felt themselves in humour for the chase.

Witches and the belief in witches increased; it was a common village pastime to drown old women in the ponds, or to rack and prick them till they made confession of impossible crimes. A coarse freedom prevailed in hock-tide festivals and rustic revels. Lords of Misrule led forth their motley train; girls went a-maying with their lovers to the woods at night; Feasts of Asses and of Fools profaned the sanctuaries Christmas perpetuated rites of Woden and of Freya ; harvest brought back the pagan deities of animal enjoyment. Men and women who read Plato, or discussed the elegancies of Petrarch, suffered brutal practical jokes, relished the obscenities of jesters, used the grossest language of the people. Carrying farms and acres on their backs in the shape of costly silks and laces, they lay upon rushes filthy with the vomit of old banquets. Glittering in suits of gilt and jewelled mail, they jostled with town-porters in the stench of the bear-gardens, or the bloody bull-pit. The church itself was not respected. The nave of old S. Paul's became a rendezvous for thieves and prostitutes. Fine gentlemen paid fees for the privilege of clanking up and down its aisles in service-time. Dancers and masquers, crowding from the streets outside in all their frippery, would take the Sacrament and then run out to recommence their revels. Men were Papists and Protestants according to the time of day; hearing mass in the morning and sermon in the afternoon, and winding up their Sunday with a farce in some inn-yard. It is difficult, even by noting an infinity of such characteristics, to paint the many-coloured incongruities of England at that epoch. Yet in the midst of this