ITALIAN ST UDI ES

TH E I ! P LACE I N MO DE ! N EDU CAT!IO N .

AN INAU GU ! AL ADD! ESS

B!

THO MA S O KE!

P ! O ! ESSO ! O ! I TA LI A N I N THE U NI VE! SI T! O ! CA MB ! I DGE

CA MB! IDGE AT THE U NIVE! SIT! P! ESS I 9 I !

I TA L I A N S T U D I E S

I T w o uld un is impossible , indeed it be seemly , to begin this , the first lecture given from a chair of Italian in our country , without sincerely thanking the — Vice Chancellor and the electors of this ve nerable U n iversity for honouring me with their choice .

e e It is a gr at honour , a great privileg , —a and great responsibility . And I am sure you will believe me when I say that I have not dared to shoulder this charge

! s h ithout many searching of eart , for I com e among you naked of all academic vesture and from a social status rarely

e r presented in your chairs . But I may perhaps take courage from the conviction that I stand before you less as a person than as a symbol—that your choic e is due not so much to my own claims as to the fact of my associa tion for the past thirty years with a small group of friends of Italy and stu dents of her modern history such as Bolton K G ing , and eorge Macaulay Trevelyan —students who have sought to under stand her ideals and her diffi culties ; to chronicle her successes and to interpret them to the English reading public so that the sentimental and artistic attra e tions of her past may be fortified by a

comprehension of her present conditions , and that the bonds between our resp ec tive nations may be knit closer by an

apprehension of her Spiritual , literary ,

political and social aims and achievements .

i o s t r a nde a war e Vag/zkzmi / luflg udio 6 n . I enter on my—duties as an admirer , a friend of Italy but not as a flatterer ; for have I not been reproached in high

places , political and diplomatic , with having been a too ca ndid friend of Italy ! Nor would it be fitting to proceed without grateful acknowledgement of the gene rosit munifi c enc e y , the , the enlightened

public spirit , of the founder of this chair , M r Arthur Serena ; the founder not only

6 ’ b ut of th e of this , a similar chair in sister O of university of xford , and the giver lavish help to a chair of Italian in the m etropolis of industrial England . By these magnificent endowments Mr Serena will have establish e d seats of learning in this country which should bear lasting results in ceme nting the Anglo - Italian Entente and in giving an impulse to modern Latin culture sadly needed among

us . Mr Serena is himself an incarnation of the political and social rapprochement s on of our tw o nations . He is a of that V enetian , exiled among us , who was the confidant and private secretary of one of the noblest figures of the Italian Risorgi — — mento Dani el Manin th e head of the V ’ 8 enetian Republic of 4 , whose glorious . but brief exist ence was quenched in blood and fire by the Austrians in My interpretation of the charge laid upon me is that you desire to give an initial impulse to Italian studies here in a modern direction while derogating nothing from the lofty position always held in Cambridge by the Italian Classics , and especially by Dante . No one who has grasped what Italian literature has meant to English poetry and English cult ure from the time when Chaucer left these shores for Italy and Milton re t urned ; from the day when the poet Gray crossed the Alps , to the days of Byron , K of Leigh Hunt , of eats , of Shelley , of

Swinburne , of the Brownings , and of Meredith—no one I say can desire for a moment to depreciate the study of the

Italian Classics .

Let me repeat that no depreciation , s no ubordination even , of Dante and the classics to modern Italian st udi es i s l n tended . That wo uld be as inept as to neglect or depreciate Shakespeare in a chair of English at an Italian university ! t/ze s tudies a r e com lementa r p y . Now according to Dante it is not law ful for a man to speak of himself, nor do the rhetoricians concede the right of a man so to Speak except under occasions of necessity . And of these , one is that by discoursing of himself instruction may

follow to others . Let me then venture to say that I found my knowledge of modern Italian idiom of no small advan tage in translating Dante for the Templ e I w ell Classics , and remember one of my colleagues in the task remarking that certain readings I had given had brought him up against deficiencies in his own interpretation that arose from a lack of acquaintance with colloquial Italian and

e a too great relianc on classical erudition . But the importance of Dante to the

English student , as compared with that e of our Shakesp are to the Italian , is far greater . No classic in the literature of any modern country po sse sses the same

th e vital relation to its history , same

e sanctity , the sam inspiration , the same

Th e th e e meaning . tale of ditions of the D ining Commedia during the centuries forms a barom eter of Italian l e arning and 1 60 0 1 0 0 patriotism . Between and 7 , the darkest days of Italian political and liter

9 ary decadence ; the days when petty ,

u c o nc e its a eetie p erile criticism , quaint , f ’ novel/e o and , abs rbed men s minds in sterile discussion in the five hundred academies spread all over Italy ; the days — — when as Milton said in 1 63 8 nothing had been written in Italy but flattery and fustian—during this decadent century I say only three editions of the Divine! C annnediez were published in the whole 1 0 0 I 8 0 0 of Italy . Between 7 and thirty one editions were published and those mostly towards the close of the century . But in the nineteenth century and only up 1 8 to the year 94. three hundred and six teen editions issued from the Italian press . And this eighteenth century neglect of Dante had its parallel in our country . The vicissitudes of literary and artistic — taste are astounding astounding and dis concerting . Here is a letter written by 1 0 a famous literary p undit in 7 5 .

M r ! r y dea iend ,

! ou have by this time , I hope and believe , made such progress in t he Italian language that yo u c a n read it with ease ; I mean the eas y books in i t ; a n d t o t indeed in tha , as well as in every her lan a t o t t o guage, the e sies b oks are generally he bes ; f r whateve r auth o r is o bscure and di ffi cul t in his o wn t t language certainly does no hink clearly . O t o t This is, in my pinion , he case f a celebra ed t n t t t t f t a d I alia au hor, o whom he I alians, rom he miration t o f t hey have him , have given the epi het of

£1 divine D . o r n , I mean ante Th ugh I fo merly k ew t x I alian e tremely well , I could never understand him ; o t f for which reas n I had done wi h him , ully convinced t hat he was no t wort h t he pains necessary t ounders ta nd

. o t him two p ets wor h your reading, and , I was o r o going to say, the only two , are Tass and A i sto . The writer of that l e tter was Lord

. h e Chesterfield But a greater than , the a cknowledged literary autocrat of France ,

V h is fDietionna ir e oltaire , in thus turns down Dante

i Vow m ulez conna itr e !e Da nte ! The I talians call B t . u ! ew him divine he is a hidden divinity . folk understand his oracles . There are commentat ors which perhaps is ano t her reason why he is n o t under His sto od . repu tation will con t inue to grow because t r o f he is but little read . There are abou a sco e pas sages which one kn ows by hear t and that su ffi ces to o t x t t spare ne the rouble of e amining he res . Curiously enough it is n o w the fashion in Italy , and has been since the rise of the

I I Nationalists in Florence , for the young ’ literary lions of that party to d ecry Dante s writings as the foetid emanations of a stagnant marsh of medieval sup ersti tions and rancours over which there flashes from time to time a fine verse or two they are a hunting preserve of ob u scure subtleties , a delicio s pasture for the asinine er udition of inn umerable herds of pedants . Such however is not the attitude of the

- mass of Italian democrats to day , as ex emplified in a recent issue of their leading — 1 Seeo/o organ in Italy I .

O ur D o t ante , whom we l ve and venera e (says the o f writer) as the herald the new Italy is the poet , o t o f a f o r o f but o f t n acti n , no an age, he nation ; a mind wherein the most lofty energies o f ou r race t o t seemed cen re , there to be tempered and acquire o D a v ice and potency throughout the centuries . ante is he wh o se v o ice was to sound a warning and p ro h etic t o o o f p no e to all ur pe ple in the days darkness , and his faith was revealed t o us by Ugo ! o scol o and z z Giuseppe Ma ini .

This passag e had hardly been written when the crisis at Paris evoked one of th e most impressive manifestations of Italian solidarity with regard to the — problem of Fiume a sol emn pilgrimage of immense proportions to the tomb of e Dante at Rav nna , over which hangs the silver lamp offered to that shrine of Italian aspirations in 1 8 65 by the

five unredeemed Italian cities , Trieste ,

G z P ! . ori ia , ola , ara , Fiume They are represe nted as weeping and an inscrip

e n l et ovet i e tion runs ! O/ w a e f gn m. But apart from Dante I shall hope to f prove how intimate is the relation , rom ’ P D A nnunz io arini to , between Italian literature and modern Italian history . G e e Ladies and entlemen , ideals pr ced revolutions and books come before battles . You cannot understand the Italian Ri sorgimento without studying its litera

—Alfieri G G ture , Leopardi , iusti , ioberti , ’ D A z e lio z z g and , greatest of all , Ma ini ,

a os . the L g of the movement . Yes In the beginning was the word and the word m e en . sprang up arm d Whenever , as we saw f a 1 1 in the ateful d ys of May 9 5 , the

1 3 Italian people are called to face a tre

! men dous issue and make a supreme de c ision in their fate , it is to the prophetic shade of Dante , it is to the radiant figure z z of Ma ini , with their imperishable idealisms , that they instinctively turn . The way the Dante tradition and

classic literature are woven in with , have inter—penetrated the very fabric of

I talian life , is remarkable . Here is a little ballad sold for a penny in the streets of Florence and Siena reciting the sad i story of P a dei Tolomei . And who was ! u Pia dei Tolomei . She is the s bj ect of one of the most pathetic episodes in ’ P a r a tor io Dante s g . She lived and met

her tragic fate seven centuries ago . The ballad is composed by an unlettered

otta 'va r ima Florentine in . Now this aspect of Italian life is a

sealed book to the modern traveller . When I am j ourneying in Italy so far as

possible I travel third class . It is so much

more interesting . I well remember some years ago when travelling out of Siena the train pulled up at a small st ation about five miles from the city ; a station A r aia fl named . A—line from Dante ashed into mymemory Arbia , the river that ran red with blood when the Sienese inflict e d the crushing defeat on th e Florentine

Guelphs at Montaperti in 1 2 60 . I made some remark to an I talian of the people

t e e who sa opposite . His y s brightened and at once h e repeated the line from the f ’ o / e i r i r os s I ry er n C zef ee l fl r é a calo a ta n o.

If the rhetoricians will allow , I may pe rhaps relate a similar experience that happened to me when riding from P e rato to Florenc on a steam tramcar . The incident will prove how a modern

P r amess i S os i Italian classic , the p , has similarly entwined itself around Italian

popular consciousness . We stopped at a

wayside halt . A parish priest and his old

housekeeper entered . My neighbour , a

e man of the peopl , remarked to me as Gua r di Si nar e ! they passed along the car , , g

Una !ver i o es s i osi E eeo a s eena de P r m Sp .

P er etua eeeo on aéondio ’ p D A . May I plead then for some interest in ! modern Italy and her people Medieval , renaissance and modern Italian history and literature are great subjects ! they will occupy our studies .—But the living , toiling , aspiring people they too are a great subject and there are forty millions of them In another generation there u will be fifty or sixty millions . H xley once characterised the Italian mind as the finest intellectual instrument in f . u o Europe Well , I say that the res lts the application of this instrument to

problems of modern life , to philosophy ,

to letters , to science , is too little known in this country , with the result that grave

misconceptions of Italian ideals , aims , u temperament , mental text re , have arisen among us which the establishment of chairs such as this I now hold is de

signed to remove . The Italian intellect hiloso is essentially logical , synthetic , p

e . phi The orderly , lucid , Latin mind is quick to sei z e the relations of things and

the sequence of facts and events . It is in striking contrast to our empiric , hand

- - - - to mouth , one angel one message mental habit , impatient of general principles .

e f- sa c rifi ce While capabl of sel , Italian idealism is qualified by a firm grasp of practical possibilities . The Italian sees things in a clear , precise , hard , light , hard as the outline of th e Apennines k P e s . under the p llucid Italian y roud , sensitive , recalcitrant under patronage he is determined to f a r e da s e. He has

b e learned to tolerant , even sceptical ; i for his rac e s an ancient one . During its thrice millennial course it has known many disillusions , witnessed many vicis — situdes of mortal things I ta la gente da e ma te ! ite / l v . The Italian is never b e mused by misty sentiment or foggy mentality . He may be moved by rhetoric , — but by sentimentality nev e r . I am

e tempt d to repeat an illustrative story . O n the morrow of th e calamitous earth quake in Sicily in 1 9 0 8 I chanced to be travelling from Naples to Genoa and on entering my hot el I made some remarks to the chambermaid as sh e showed me

I 7 o oo o o t my r —m on the h rrors f the catastrophe the tens of thousands of poor souls plunged in a moment into Si h e . s . Ma ais a na dir e eternity , said ; g 1 c/ze s ia m tr o i in I ta lia E d ei/e la ! t . vi a pp ifi . Now it was not in the least that the

dear creature lacked compassion . It was

that the quick , logical , Italian mind at once grasped the relation of the disaster e to comp tition among chambermaids .

This by the way . I sometimes ponder l and ask myse f, Is this mental antinomy between the English and the Latin due

to race , or is it not partly referable to education ! While in England down to the fourth decade of the nineteenth century universities could be counted -ou two fingers Italy h as for centuries had n early a score . In the last published A nnua r io ( 1 9 1 5 ) there figure seventeen s tate and four independent universities ; three university schools attached to secondary schools fourteen higher uni versity institutes thirteen Special higher

1 t oo o f I m ust say there are many us in Italy . ’ It s hard to get a living . to those of us who know her toiling not people . Italy is naturally a fertile — - land . With one third mountain you are never—out of sight of mountains in Italy and so uth of the Tiber no great rivers , her terraces , her fertile fields have been created by human toil . Pellagra and malaria are ever- present scourges ; untamed torrents ravage her soil , or summer droughts wither her fields ; earthquakes and volcanic eruptions periodically leave ruin and desolation in their train . Yet , in spite of these physical and economic disabilities her sons have made such strides in industrial production as to evoke the envy of older

competitors in the race . I wonder how 60 0 0 H P . many among you know that the . turbines installed at the Falls of Niagara V were manufactured at Milan . olta , G alvani , Marconi , we know ; but how many know that the telephone was 1 invented by an Italian in 1 8 5 1 and that long distance transmission of electric

1 Nuova Antolo ia o r 1 6 1 1 8 See O . the g , ct be , 9

2 0 powe r has b e en rendered possible by an Italian invention ! To me when descend ing the Alps into Northern Italy th e arresting sight is less the landscape than the lon g line of powerful standards bearing the hydro - electric forces from alpine torrents to feed the great of f centres manu acturing Italy . Italian economists foresee a considerable exp an sion of trade and industry after the peace and it will b e less the fault of Italy than of the defect of Italian studies here—I do not mean merely the language—if the com mer cial relations between our respective

e countries do not assume larg proportions . Material obstacles oftransit have now been removed by the working of the Chann el st e am - ferry and the generous reduction of rates on the Fre nch railways .

True , some advance has been made in our conception of modern Italians Since the father of the English novel divided ! e his characters into men , wom n and ! ’ e Italians , Since Dickens Signor Cavall tto in Little D ar r it who live d in Bleeding

2 1 r Heart Ya d . Too long the British traveller h as regarded Italy as an open u K u u air So th ensington , a land of m se ms and pict ure galleries and classical anti quities ; and if he thinks of modern Italy at all associates it with ugly statues of Victor Emanuel on an impossible horse and its history with Garibaldi and a red shirt . Here is George Eliot writing from Florence in 1 8 60 of course Victor Eman uel stares at us at every turn but we care more for the doings of Giotto and Bru ! n elles h i u u c than for those of Co nt Cavo r . I take from the Shelves of yo ur university library a volume of Grant ’ Allen s Historical G uides to Italy . The historical cicerone is guiding us to the Castello in Milan—Milan the city of ! the Five Days . We pass by the porter witho ut entering the National Museum for which he offers us tickets and which lza fuing to do only wit/z tlze r ecent lfe of I ta ly a s a na tion a nd w it/z Ga r ioa ldi a nd ! z i ter es t or us Victor E ma nuel la s no n f . ’ G E X e Why , the Story of aribaldi s p dition of the Thousand is almost a fabulous one . Nothing like it has ever been recorded in history ancient or ff modern . It is of the stu that legends are made of and great ep i cs sung . Had it taken place in ancient Greece or Rome schoolboy of to - day as the defeat of Xerxes or the march of the Ten G X Thousand reeks under enophon . Now it is precisely this utter alienation from living Italy on the part of our travelling countrymen that is responsible for an irritation which is pretty general among patriotic Italians . For it is no i use conceal ng the fact . We are not — — s impa tico an untran slatable word to

. O ur the Italian people native reserve , our mutism , our lack of social expansive ness render us antipathetic . I have even heard this type of traveller ! z speak of la y Italians . Why , the Italian labourer is known to contractors as one who doe s the greatest amount of effective work for the smallest pay of

any labourer in the world . He it is who ,

with blood and sweat , has pierced the mo untain chains and dug the harbours

of Europe . He who will reap the corn sun at home under the fierce Italian , then cross to the southern hemisphere huddled in the storage of an emigrant Ship to garner yet another harvest in the burning

plains of the Argentine . And the Italian woman I have never seen such ' cor fvees of work performed as those by Italian women in the olive grounds of

Southern Italy for a few soldi a day . P We talk , says . L . Courier, of working like a nigger we should rather say work

ing like a freeman . For nearly four years the Italian labourer has fought the common enemy ; he has won the most decisive battle he has inflicted the most crushing military defeat in the whole ff course of the war . I talians have su ered they are even now suffering— privations of which we have no conception with that patient endurance , that admirable

2 4 mansuetud e which is so characteristic o f their race . Let me read to you the army figure s 1 for the year 1 9 7 . Workmen and Labourers called to a rms

Indust ry and Commerce Employees A rtiz an s Agricultural lab ourers Various and unqualified laboure rs Total Labou rers — But to r e turn to Italian studies one word of comfort I am able to give to intending students of Italian . There is no language in Europ e which it is so easy fo r a foreigner to win compliments in from natives as the Italian . And the

Th e e reason is simpl e . Italian languag although Spoken everywhere and by everybody throughout Italy is coloured by native dial e ct and is not generally

e e us d as an intimate , hom ly , domestic

e B onne mother tongu . You cannot tell a

His toir e in Italian . You cannot imagine

2 5 a P ick wick P aper s in Italian ; you can . V perfectly well in enetian , or Milanese , or Neapolitan , or Sicilian or other dialect .

Italian dialects are not patois . They have their literature , their grammar , their dic — tion aries V - enetian Italian , Milanese

- - Italian , Sicilian Italian , Sardinian Italian . You will find them on yo ur library

. so ff so shelves Indeed , widely di erent , characteristic is the conj ugation of the Sardinian verbs that Meyer- Liibk e devotes a separate section to them in his

I ta lienis clze r mm tik u G a a . Many ed cated Italians have confessed to me certain limitations in using Italian in familiar , intimate conversation ; and I well re member how surprised I was at hearing

- V u a well known enetian a thoress , to whom I had been referred for sources of information on social conditions in pre ! I ta l Toda paring y y , say I will give you an introduction to Professor for he Speaks Italian . Herself, She added , could not write poetry in Italian . A

V V . enetian meeting a enetian , or a

2 6

V Lombards , or enetians , or Neapolitans , one in one manner , one in another , lacerated the ears of everybody who was used to the soft and ringing Tuscan

Alfi eri accent . The relations between and the Countess of Albany are of course well known and it may be said that any Speech from a mistress ’ lips is sweet to ’ a lover s ears , but here is the sober P lexicographer , etrocchi , declaring that in ta i s i e I l a i pr onunz a a s s a i ma l . And here let me explain . A Tuscan Speaking Italian is one thing ! a Tuscan Speaking any of the Tuscan dialects is quite another . From the days when Dante wrote the first treatise on philology — the D e Vulga r e E loquentia to the I dioma Gentile of Edmondo de Amicis , Italian scholars have discussed and disputed as to what is the Italian language . In the xv and xv1 centuries Tuscan purists harked back to Boccaccio for th e ir model and Baldassarre Castiglione in his Cor tegia no defends himself at great length from those who reprove him , a Lombard , for not having imitated Boccaccio or even

contemporary Tuscan .

! ! S ! t ince, he writes, he force and rule of speech doth c o nsist more in use than in any thing else it is not meet I should use many words that are in B t occaccio, which in his ime were used and now are N ou t of use among t he Tuscans t hemselves . ei ther would I bind myself t o t he manner of t he Tuscan t ongu e in use now - a- days ; because t he practising among sundry nat ions hat h always been o f force to t o f t o ransp rt rom one o another, as merchandise , s o t als new words, which af erward remain or decay tt according as they are admi ed by custom , or refused . And because in mine opinion the kind of speech o t of t f o her noble cities Italy , where here resort men

of wisdom , understanding and eloquence , which t t t t prac ise grea ma ters of government of s ates, of t t of ff t le ers, of arms and divers a airs, ough not to be t neglec ed, I suppose they may be used well enough r in writing, such as have a g ace and comeliness in ronu n c iatio n ' even the p though they be not Tuscan . And I believe it ough t not to be imputed t o me for an e rro r that I have chosen t o make myself kn own L o f L t rather for a ombard , in speaking ombardy, han t ! o r for no Tuscan in speaking oo much Tuscan . t o I have no knowledge in his their Tuscan t ngue, so hard and secre t ; and I say that I have wri t ten it to in mine own and as I speak ; and , un such as speak o t off o as I speak , and s I rust I have ended n

oo of fo The g d use speech , there re , I believe 2 9 of ariseth men that have witte , and , with learning. o o and practise , have g tten a g od !udgement, and with it consent and agree to receive the wo rds they think t u good , which are known by a cer ain nat ral !udge o r r r ment, and n t by art o by any manne ule ; and because men a re able to give no other reason but t t delite t o f o r t ha they , and to he very sense u ears i ! f t appeareth they bring a lie and a swee ness . Even the greatest of modern Italian

z prose writers , Man oni , habitually used the Milanese dialect w hen speaking with

his family and intimate friends , and when the master did speak Italian his choice of language was like listening to the

r m s s i os t P o e Sp . It may therefore not be amiss if I dwell for a moment on this aspect of I talian Studies and on the contribution its which Dante brought to elucidation . Stripped of its accidental medie val vest ure his treatise is remarkably modern in method and reasoning . True , Dante says the woman Spoke first (which seems plausible) and traces the origin of separate languages to the Tower of Babel ; but the To w er of Babel is only his way of

3 0 working back to a common starting point , much as we used to work back in

Indo - European languag e s to the assu mp of tion a mysterious Aryan race , of which O we knew nothing , in Central Asia . nce howe ver Dante leaves the land of Shinar he works on modern methods . He

e — G e e takes the thr e main divisions r k ,

e Latin , T utonic which he says migra f tory olk brought from Asia to Europe .

h e Dealing with the division knows best , the Latin group , he shows how within living memory language has changed ; that words die out and new ones arise ; and that the operation of natural laws is suffi cient to account for th e diversity of the Latin dialects , and , inferentially , of n language i gen eral . Turning to th e Italian dialects in s i he Shows how they are divided by the chain of th e

Apennines into two main streams . He then deals in turn with each of the four

. e teen chief dialects These he analys s , e illustrat s , criticises , and proves that no one of them can claim to be lord over the others ; most certainly th e u Tuscan cannot , altho gh the infatuated Tuscans in their fren z y arrogate to them

selves the claim . And not only the common people even distinguished men

have embraced this delusion . And since Tuscans exceed all others in their fren z ied intoxication Dante proceeds to submit — the Tuscan dialects Florentine , Aretine , Sienese—to a searching test and con e ludes that , apart from some few Floren G tines , such as uido , Lapo and another , who have recognised what the excellence

of the vernacular consists in , almost all the Tuscans are obtuse as to the degrada tion of their dialect er e omnes in s uo

t r z oot s i G u piloquio s nt u . As for the enoese if they were to lose the letter z they wo uld either go dumb or need to invent

- another tongue . Crossing the leaf clad shoulders of the Apennines Dante enters Romagna ; and there owing to its soft ness a man speaking the effeminate Romagnese dialect would be taken for a woman as soon as he opened his mo uth . O n the whole th e Bolognes e dialect is relatively the b est and is a more beautiful e spe ch than the others ; and that , owing to its enrichment by borrowings from —in Imola , Ferrara and Modena fact by

its being less of a dialect .

What then , he asks , is the Italian tongue ! the illustrious Italian language ! we are hunting for We declare , he concludes , that the illustrious , the cardi

th e nal , courtly , the curial Italian verna c ular language is that which belongs to all the cities of Italy but does not appear to belong to any on e of them ; and that by this I talian language all th e provincial

e dial cts are to be measured , compared and weighed . This then is the true and noble Italian tongue which is found partially in all dialects but wholly in none . This is vul a r e la tinum e the g , the quintessenc , is the sublimation of them all . It the language used with more or less purity by the great poets of Italy irrespectiv e of

e their native provinc .

of e Still , in spite Dant and largely

3 3 due to him literary Italian is pre dominantly Tuscan . And since Florence came to be the centre of the literary , artistic and scientific life of Italy , and ’ suc the great Italian poets , Dante s cessors P , etrarch and Boccaccio , were

Tuscans , the Italian language became

coloured with the Tuscan idiom . Floren G tines and Sienese , says oldoni , are the living texts of the good Italian u language . To st dents of the language and dialects I commend this remarkable ’ little treatise of Dante s and the I dioma ile Gent . of Edmondo de Amicis True , it is the fashion of German philologists ’ f P la uder eie But to sco f at De Amicis n . since the rise of the brilliant school of ’ D O vidio native philologists , such as , P Ascoli and their pupils arodi , Bartoli and G others , erman authorities are no longer

taken in Italy at their own valuation . It will have been obvious to you I hope during the progress of this very unacademic lecture that my aim has been

to interest yo u both in . classic and in plenishment in the storehouse of Latin ; a reinforcement of our humanistic tradi tions ; an exaltation of those liter a e lzuma nior es for which Cambridge has ever been famous . For whatever else may be said of Italian studies and of the —Italian language , this is incontrovertible of all the daughters of the Latin tongue Italian is She who most resembles her

b een as mother . There never has , Carducci us has shown , any break between classical

Roman and classical Italian literature .

O ne last word and I have done . At the decade of life when I take up this exacting task I cannot hope to do more u than , with the aid of my colleag es

in the Modern Languages School , to organise and direct Italian studies along lines that may lead to their winning a

due place in the academic curriculum , and to stimulate the interest of the modern student in a language which by its growing importance in practical

life , its potency as an instrument for u u intellectual and Spiritual c lt re , rightly

3 6 claims to stand on an equality with any e other mod rn language . —And then what shall I say ! Well let me say that I k now tlze s tory of Gil Bla s a nd t/ze a r ck ois/zop of Gr a na da and that after me

! o rse alt ri cante ra c o n migli o r plettro someone will sing you a better song .

C A MB! I DGE ! P ! N I TE D B! . B P E A E M J . C , . A . , A T TH E UN I VE ! S I T! P ! ES S