Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/492

 402 NOTES AND QUERIES. [i2S.ix.Nov.i9.mi. les enfants qui ont essaime alentour. . . . Le lendemain de la fete on fait dire des messes pour les a'ieux. Formerly the " Ducasse " extended over five days, from Sunday to Thursday, but it now usually lasts but three, finishing on Tues- day night, and in some small villages it is a one-day fete only. To the casual observer it is just a pleasure fair and nothing more. But the religious origin is not yet wholly for- gotten. Concerning this the Abbe Lemire, Mayor of Hazebrouck and one of the Deputies for the Northern Department, has written : Dans presque toutes les paroisses de Flandre, le mardi, troisieme jour de la Ducasse, il y a une messe solennelle pour les defunts de Fanne'e. Tin nombreux clerge s'y rend. Tous les invites des families y assistent. On met pour elle sa belle robe et le chapeau derniere mode, quoiqu'elle soit une messe pour les morts, car to us vont a 1'offrande. C'est un reste des origines religieuses des ducasses. It is, of course, the other side of the " Ducasse," or " Kermesse," that has been immortalized on canvas by the Flemish painters, but in Flanders no great gulf existed between the sacred and profane, the human and divine. The thought of the dead did not preclude gaiety and good humour. Nor does it to-day, when the "Ducasse" is not infrequently celebrated amidst the ruins and desolation of war and within sight of the graves of its victims. F. H. CHEETHAM. SCIPIONE MAFFEI : A LITERARY JOURNALIST OF THE SETTECENTO. THE Giornale de' Letterati to which Scipone Maffei contributed had many predecessors in the Seicento a Giornale de? Letterati published in Rome from 1668 to 1674, in Parma from 1686 to 1689, in Modena in 1696. The influence of the Arcadia is already evident in the last mentioned, and it may be regarded as a direct precursor of the greater publication which served as an official organ of the Arcadia itself. In 1709 Apostolo Zeno, Maffei and Vallisnieri met to discuss the foundation of a new literary journal * and under the editorship of Zeno the first number of the Giornale de' Letterati appeared in 1710 in Venice and continued in more or less flourishing existence until 1740, when Maffei's Osservazioni letterarie, which Was destined as a continuation and supplement of the original journal, came also to an end. Along with those two jour- 1710, in ' Epistolario Maffeiano inedito,' in Verona. nals mention must be made of the Gran Giornale de' Letterati published in Forli' (1701-1704) in four volumes, and the Giornale di Europa (Venice, 1725-1726), where something like an international review enters for the first time into the world of journalism; while we may consider the Florentine Giornale de' Letterati (1742- 1750) as the historical continuation of the Venetian publication ; of equal importance, the Novelle letterarie (1740-1776), founded by Giovanni Lami * and supported by Maffei and Gori also appeared in Florence. The Novelle della RepubUica delle Lettere (1729-1750) is mentioned by Calepio in the Bodmer-Calepio Correspondence f as of peculiar excellence, while from a letter sent by Jacopo Paitoni to Maffei in 1750 there appears some project of resuscitating the Giornale de' Letterati, which never found realization. J: Those journals may be con- sidered as the most important of the early Settecento, and of them the Zeno publication enjoyed the greatest prestige and perhaps also the greatest circulation we know at least that it was not a commer- cial loss. The Osservazioni letterarie, short- lived as it may have been, enjoyed consider- able distinction through the personality of Maffei, and the Florentine Novelle had almost equal prestige. The ideal envisaged in such journalistic enterprise is summarized by Maffei in the introduction to the Giornale de' Litterati ; there was great need in Italy for a journal which would register the " latest discoveries by which human genius is always strengthened, the latest observations, celes- tial, physical, or anatomical, the questions at issue, the erudite disputes which arise, the opinions which go the round, the errors which are gradually swept away, and all the details regarding the death, writings and chief incidents in the lives of illustrious men." The criticism of such a paper will give a sincere account of the intrinsic value and exact contents of each book handled, and keep in remembrance living works and rescue from oblivion the finest creations of the past. " Why should we leave still in the hands of strangers the trumpets of fame so that our writers, in the in Italia ' (Torino: Loescher, 1894), chap, xxiii. t ' Archivio Calepio,' in the Civic Library, Bergamo. % Cf. ' Studi Maffeiani ' (Torino : Fratelli Bocca, 1909), p. 573.
 * Cf. Letter of Maffei to Vallisnieri, Feb. 5,
 * Cf. L. Piccioni : ' II giornalismo letterario