Page images
PDF
EPUB

over, he proposed the subject, Il Servitore di Due Padroni,but Goldoni should treat it exactly as he pleased, even to the writing of the whole play, so as to leave nothing to be marred by the comedians. The temptation was not to be resisted. For a little while Goldoni still clung to the law, pleading by day and writing by night; but the arrival of a fresh troop of comedians at Leghorn settled the question for ever in favour of comedy. If Goldoni would only write for them, Médébac, their director, would engage the theatre of San' Angelo at Venice purely for the representation of his plays. Thus the moment had at last arrived for the reform which Goldoni had long desired to effect. The theatre

was opened in 1747, with three commedie di carattere-Tonin della Grazia, L'Uomo Prudente, I Due Gemelli Veneziani. The brilliant success of these three comedies aroused the jealousy of the other comedians in Venice, which vented itself in spiteful criticisms and parodies. Goldoni was equal to the occasion, and wrote a parody of their parody of La Vedova Scaltra, and thus effectually silenced his enemies. But for a time their ill-natured criticisms had emptied the theatre of San' Angelo. Goldoni, to restore its popularity, bound himself by a promise to write sixteen new comedies for the year 1750, which promise he fulfilled. The first of these, Il Teatro Comico, successfully exposed the defects of the commedie dell'arte, and the only one out of all this number which met with a bad reception was Il Giuocatore, because it reproved the gambling at that time common in Venice. Space will not admit of a review of each separately, so we will content ourselves with saying that Il Vero Amico was esteemed by Goldoni as the best of the number. His unceasing labours brought on a severe illness, aggravated by the ingratitude of Médébac, who refused to allow him the copyright of his works. This piece of tyranny decided Goldoni upon breaking with the manager as soon as his engagement expired. Among the last plays that he wrote for the Teatro San' Angelo we must notice La Locandiera,

[ocr errors]

one of his cleverest compositions. Médébac used every effort to retain Goldoni in the service of his theatre, but the author of La Locandiera was already employed by a Venetian nobleman to write for the theatre of San' Lucca, at that time in private hands. This was the period of Goldoni's greatest fame. Among many excellent comedies, we select as the best the inimitable Smanie della Villegiatura, well known to all. It was invaluable at the time in exposing the extravagances of these villegiatura, which seem to have been carried to a height of folly scarcely credible. But with his increasing fame his enemies increased also. There were many who still upheld the old masks, and said that Goldoni had done his best to extinguish an entertainment which had been the boast of Italy from time immemorial. At Rome, where he was summoned to write for another private theatre, the masks still reigned supreme. Goldoni

saw them in their glory during Carnival, and then had the mortification to witness the ruin of one of his best comedies, La Vedova Scaltra, in their unpractised hands. His enemies attacked him also for his Venetian dialect. This he endeavoured to correct by a four years' residence in Florence, submitting the new edition of his works to the corrections of those most learned in the pure Tuscan dialect. He tried to console himself by comparing his fate with that of Tasso, whose works were so mercilessly analysed by the Cruscan Academicians; but we can hardly forgive him for making the misfortunes of that unhappy poet the subject of a comedy. The fame of his plays having reached Paris, he received an offer (1761) from the superintendent of the Royal Theatre of a two years' engagement, remunerated with a much larger salary than any which he had yet received in his own country. He could not afford to throw away so good a prospect, and in a short time his preparations were made for leaving Venice. The comedy which was acted the night before his departure was called Una delle ultime sere d'Carnevale, and had reference to the author's farewell to his country. Goldoni was moved to

tears when the theatre rang with applause, mingled with shouts of "Buon viaggio: ricordatevi di ritornare, non mancate!" But he never did return. At the close of his first engagement he received a royal pension, and for the remainder of his life-thirty years-he resided at Paris.

He saw the last days of the ancien régime in all its splendour under Louis XV., following the Court from palace to palace. Versailles, Fontainebleau, Compiègne, Marly, he visited in turn; the favourite for whom the rigid rules of etiquette were always relaxed, taking affectionate interest in the failing health of the Dauphin, father of Louis XVI. ; deeply attached to Madame la Dauphine, who treated him with never-failing kindness; teaching Italian to the king's daughters, Madame Adelaide

and

[blocks in formation]

Austria. Like Burke, Goldoni saw the Dauphiness "just above the horizon," and unconsciously he employs nearly the same language to describe her"decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendour and joy." But we must refrain from dwelling on his narrative of that interesting time, described with all the truth and liveliness of an eye-witness of the events he recounts. Goldoni continued to write comedies for the Italian theatre at Paris; but there, as in Italy, the comedians insisted upon commedie a soggetto, and Goldoni's old difficulties were renewed. He allowed them their way, but sadly avows that he never went to see their maimed representations of his comedies. He frequented instead the French theatre, where he beheld with a sigh the carefully-learnt parts and finished acting which did full justice to Molière's admirable plays. "One of two things," he exclaimed on leaving the theatre; "either my countrymen must

imitate their method of representing comedy, or I will write plays in French for the French comedians to act." The continued obstinacy of the Italian comedians drove him to the latter course, and, in spite of his foreign origin, his recently acquired French, the sharp contrast with Molière, in whose theatre his plays came to be represented, his Bourru bienfaisant won for him a shower of applause and the high commendation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. Goldoni calls it the lucky comedy which sealed his reputation. It was his tribute to the wedding festivities already alluded to, and was represented in Paris, Nov. 4, 1771, and the following day at Fontainebleau, where the royal approbation made itself manifest in a present of one hundred and fifty louis-d'or. For the first time Goldoni had the satisfaction of seeing full justice done by the actors to his talents. He was called before the curtain, and, in spite of the compliment, he found it a painful and novel situation, for the custom was not known in Italy. It was difficult to make the Parisian world believe that the Bourru bienfaisant was not translated from the Italian, but written; indeed, as the author expresses it,

thought out" in French. Thus encouraged, he wrote another French drama, L'Avare fastueux, which, although well received, had not the same brilliant success as the Bourru bienfaisant. He also despatched from time to time comedies and operettas to Italy. His dramatic labours were varied by his duties at Court; for the instructions in Italian which had once been given to the king's aunts, were now renewed to his sisters, Madame Clothilde, before she became Princess of Piedmont, and Madame Elisabeth, whose docility seems to have won Goldoni's heart. On his retiring from Court in 1787 he received a renewal of the pension granted to him by Louis XV., and with this year his Memoirs close. It would seem as if his life of ceaseless activity had well earned the peace and comparative affluence secured by the royal bounty to his old But he had scarcely begun to

age.

enjoy it when the Revolution broke out. It is needless to say that his pension was rudely withdrawn from Goldoni by the party which came into power, and in his extreme old age he suffered severe privations. He died in his eighty-third year, January 8, 1793, a fortnight previous to the murder of his sovereign and benefactor. Too latethe day of his death-the Convention Nationale restored the pension which they had wrested from him; but they settled on his widow an annual stipend of 1,200 francs. Goldoni has enriched the dramatic literature of his country with one hundred and fifty comedies in prose and verse, all eminently true pictures of domestic life. Like the good oldfashioned novel, he is careful to make unhappiness the inseparable companion of vice, and to crown virtue, after the proper amount of vicissitude, with its due reward. The rigid critics of his country pronounce that, had Goldoni had knowledge equal to his great natural gifts, had he written with more care, had his satire been finer and more delicate, he might very well have stood a comparison with Molière. As it is, only five or six of his comedies, Il Vero Amico, Il Padre di Famiglia, Pamela Maritata, La Famiglia dell'Antiquario, Le Smanie della Villegiatura, La Locandiera, Il Bugiardo, are calculated to amuse a cultivated audience; the others are farces, more adapted for the entertainment of the people. If, on the one hand, this want of knowledge mars the effect of Goldoni's work, it proves, on the other hand, how great must have been his natural gifts to accomplish what he did in the reform of the drama! These gifts are indisputable, and were never at fault. He possessed the keen eye of a critic in discerning the social defects which demanded reform, an inexhaustible genius in finding varieties of character, a lively imagination to paint them in the brightest colours, consummate ingenuity in disentangling

1 Maffei, Storia della Lett. Ital., pp. 649, 650.

difficult situations, and, in addition to all these, a keen sense of humour, manifesting itself in a lively wit, which provokes the merriment of educated and uneducated alike. A born comedian, his life was full of comical adventures, or he made them appear so by his whimsical manner of relating them. If any extraordinary piece of good fortune fell to his lot, it was immediately succeeded by some half ludicrous, half serious calamity. He is made Consul of Genoa, to his immense satisfaction, with all the emoluments of the office; he sets off to take possession of his consulship, and on reaching it after many perils and disasters, discovers that these emoluments are purely nominal. This he relates as an excellent jest. He is cheated out of a large sum of money, and he writes a play called L'Impostore, which brings him in twice as much as he had lost. One of his comedies is rudely criticised; in fourteen days he writes another, which turns these criticisms into a subject for a comedy. And so on through his life; only his end, over which we would wish to draw a veil, was tragical, in keeping with the fearful times in which he died, but not in keeping with the forgiving spirit which never recorded an injury, or the gentle kindliness of disposition which in any other circumstances, at any other time, must have been a sure passport to a corresponding benevolence. As far as his own country is concerned, he filled up the one thing that was lacking to her dramatic literature. Metastasio had shown the grace and delicacy of the Italian language in melodrama. Alfieri and Monti had proved that the same language was capable of all the eloquence and power which are the elements of tragedy, and Goldoni has endowed it with some unrivalled specimens of the true wit and masterly delineations of character which are the life and soul of good comedy.

CATHERINE MARY PHILLIMORE

384

THE COLOURS OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS.

I. THE COLOURS OF ANIMALS.

THERE is probably no one quality of natural objects, from which we derive so much pure and intellectual enjoy ment as from their colours. The "heavenly" blue of the firmament, the glowing tints of sunset, the exquisite purity of the snowy mountains, and the endless shades of green presented by the verdure-clad surface of the earth, are a never-failing source of pleasure to all who enjoy the inestimable gift of sight. Yet these constitute, as it were, but the frame and background of a marvellous and everchanging picture. In contrast with these broad and soothing tints, we have presented to us in the vegetable and animal worlds, an infinite variety of objects adorned with the most beautiful and most varied hues. Flowers, insects, and birds, are the organisms. most generally ornamented in this way; and their symmetry of form, their variety of structure, and the lavish abundance with which they clothe and enliven the earth, cause them to be objects of universal admiration. The relation of this wealth of colour to our mental and moral nature is indisputable. The child and the savage alike admire the gay tints of flower, bird, and insect; while to many of us their contemplation brings a solace and enjoyment which is both intellectually and morally beneficial. It can then hardly excite surprise that this relation was long thought to afford a sufficient explanation of the phenomena of colour in nature; and although the fact that

"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air-' might seem to throw some doubt on the sufficiency of the explanation, the answer was easy,-that in the progress of discovery, man would, sooner or later, find out and enjoy every beauty that

the hidden recesses of the earth have in store for him. This theory received great support, from the difficulty of conceiving any other use or meaning in the colours with which so many natural objects are adorned. Why should the homely gorse be clothed in golden raiment, and the prickly cactus be adorned with crimson bells? Why should our fields be gay with buttercups, and the heather-clad mountains be clad in purple robes? Why should every land produce its own peculiar floral gems, and the alpine rocks glow with beauty, if not for the contemplation and enjoyment of man? What could be the use to the butterfly of its gaily-painted wings, or to the humming bird of its jewelled breast, except to add the final touches to a world-picture, calculated at once to please and to refine mankind? And even now, with all our recently acquired knowledge of this subject, who shall say that these old-world views were not intrinsically and fundamentally sound; and that, although we now know that colour has "uses" in nature that we little dreamt of, yet the relation of those colours to our senses and emotions may be another, and perhaps more important use which they subserve in the great system of the universe?

We now propose to lay before our readers a general account of the more recent discoveries on this interesting subject; and in doing so, it will be necessary first to give an outline of the more important facts as to the colours of organised beings; then to point out the cases in which it has been shown that colour is of use; and lastly, to endeavour to throw some light on its nature, and the general laws of its development.

Among naturalists, colour was long thought to be of little import, and to

be quite untrustworthy as a specific character. The numerous cases of variability of colour led to this view. The occurrence of white blackbirds, white peacocks, and black leopards; of white blue-bells, and of white, blue, or pink milkworts, led to the belief that colour was essentially unstable, that it could therefore be of little or no importance, and belonged to quite a different class of characters from form or structure. But it now begins to be perceived that these cases, though tolerably numerous, are, after all, exceptional; and that colour, as a rule, is a constant character. The great majority of species, both of animals and plants, are each distinguished by peculiar tints which vary very little, while the minutest markings are often constant in thousands or millions of individuals. All our field buttercups are invariably yellow, and our poppies red, while many of our butterflies and birds resemble each other in every spot and streak of colour through thousands of individuals. We also find that colour is constant in whole genera and other groups of species. The Genistas are all yellow, the Erythrinas all red, many genera of Carabidæ are entirely black, whole families of birds-as the Dendrocolaptide-are brown, while among butterflies the numerous species of Lycana are all more or less blue, those of Pontia white, and those of Callidryas yellow. An extensive survey of the organic world thus leads us to the conclusion that colour is by no means so unimportant or inconstant a character as at first sight it appears to be; and the more we examine it the more convinced we shall become that it must serve some purpose in nature, and that besides charming us by its diversity and beauty it must be well worthy of our attentive study, and have many secrets to unfold to us.

In order to group the great variety of facts relating to the colours of the organic world in some intelligible way, it will be best to consider how far the chief theories already proposed will No. 215.-VOL. XXXVI.

[blocks in formation]

obvious and most popular of these theories, and one which is still held, in part at least, by many eminent naturalists, is, that colour is due to some direct action of the heat and light of the sun, thus at once accounting for the great number of brilliant birds, insects, and flowers, which are found between the tropics. But here we must ask whether it is really the fact that colour is more developed in tropical than in temperate climates, in proportion to the whole number of species; and even if we find this to be so, we have to inquire whether there are not so many and such striking exceptions to the rule, as to indicate some other causes at work than the direct influence of solar light and heat. As this is a most important question, we must go into it somewhat fully.

It is undoubtedly the case that there are an immensely greater number of richly-coloured birds and insects in tropical than in temperate and cold countries; but it is by no means so certain that the proportion of coloured to obscure species is much or any greater. Naturalists and collectors well know that the majority of tropical birds are dull-coloured; and there are whole families, comprising hundreds of species, not one of which exhibits a particle of bright colour. Such are the Timaliide of the Eastern and the Dendrocolaptide of the Western hemispheres. Again, many groups of birds, which are universally distributed, are no more adorned with colour in the tropical than in the temperate zone; such are Thrushes, Wrens, Goatsuckers, Hawks, Grouse, Plovers, and Snipe; and if tropical light and heat have any direct colouring effect, it is certainly most extraordinary that in groups so varied in form, structure, and habits as those just mentioned, the tropical should be in no wise distinguished in this respect from the temperate species. The brilliant tropical birds mostly belong to groups which are wholly or almost wholly tropical-as the chatterers, toucans,

C C

« EelmineJätka »