Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/289

Rh information respecting transactions in the kingdom of Apollo. The fiction was greatly admired in its day, translated into most European languages, and probably exerted considerable influence upon Quevedo, Swift, and Addison. Boccalini also distinguished himself as a commentator on Tacitus, a writer much studied at this epoch of general gloom and discouragement, and as the author of an exposure of the weakness of the Spanish monarchy, which is said to have occasioned his assassination.

The one writer, however, whom it is possible to admire without qualification, and who has preserved his freshness to our own day, is a traveller,, who between 1614 and 1626 explored Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Persia, and part of India. Apart from the prejudices inevitable in his age and country, Della Valle is the model of an observant and sagacious voyager, and the letters in which his observations are recorded form most delightful reading. Later in the century excellent letters on scientific subjects were written by Magalotti and Redi. The illustrious naturalists who in some measure redeemed the intellectual barrenness of the epoch, do not fall within the domain of literary history, which, except for some poets, is one of ever-augmenting inanity and insipidity, culminating in absolute sterility. A second Greece had been enslaved, but this time the fierce conqueror refused to be himself led into captivity. Spain and the Papacy and their victim were equally useless to culture, which would have perished from the earth had it still been confined to the fair land