Italian Studies Their Place in Modern. Educat|Ion
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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 .