Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/245

 V. MANZONI

T AS early a date in their literary history as the thirteenth century, the Italians began to evince a propensity for tale-telling, and they have continued to indulge it unremittingly down to our own times. Until the nineteenth century, however, they favored the short story or tale, rather than the longer and more ambitious form of narrative prose fiction called the novel or romance. If in the fourteenth century Boccaccio wrote his "Fiammetta," if about the end of that century or at the beginning of the next Andrea de Barberino compiled the "Reali di Francia," and if the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw the appearance of the pastoral romance (the "Arcadia"), and of novels of adventure as well as others infused with the erotic, or the sentimental, or the moralizing spirit, it must be admitted that all these works are either of poor vein, or, as is the case for the "Fiammetta," the "Reali di Francia," and the "Arcadia" of Sannazaro, they are far more important in other connections than as examples of prose fiction. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries present hardly anything of interest; with the early nineteenth century and the publication of the "Lettere di Jacopo Ortis" of Foscolo (1802) the true novel was inaugurated in Italian, and with the historical romance, "I Promessi Sposi," of Manzoni, first put forth in 1827, its lasting success was achieved.

LIFE OF MANZONI

Alessandro Manzoni (he never used his title of Count) was born of a patrician family at Milan, on March 7, 1785. His maternal grandfather was the noted publicist, the Marquis Cesare Beccaria. In his early studies, pursued mainly at Milan, he inclined naturally towards belles lettres, and, reading assiduously by himself, he developed the seeds of genius within him. Toward the literary career his steps were guided also by his relations with the kindly Italian 235