Page:The National Idea in Italian Literature.djvu/25

 Brescia for the Venetians, speaks constantly of the liberty of Italy, declaring that he has striven to fulfil his duty patriae sed potius Italiae. Pius II exclaims in his Commentaries: "I will help thee, Italy, to the utmost of my power, that thou mayst not endure any masters." Giovanni Pontano, the great Latin poet who was chief minister of the Aragonese kings of Naples, foretells that Italy will in future ages be united under one single government and resume the majesty of the Empire, and claims everlasting fame after death, not merely as a poet, but as the statesman who for years had sought the peace and tranquillity of Italy (5).

More particularly, as the fatal year 1494 approached, when Lodovico Sforza was preparing to ally with the French against king Ferrante of Naples, and men saw that disaster could not long be averted, the name of Italy—with impassioned intonation—is on the lips of poets and statesmen alike. Selfish as the foreign policy of the Italian states usually was, the cynical reply of Lodovico Sforza to the Florentine ambassador is nevertheless an eloquent testimony to the reality of this national feeling: "But you keep talking to me of this Italy, and I never saw her in the face" (Ma voi mi parlate pure di questa Italia, et io non la vidi mai in viso). In the dispatches which Pontano wrote for the old king Ferrante, in his despairing efforts to avert the national calamity, such phrases as la pace italica, lo comune reposo d'Italia, Italia unita, fall constantly from his pen. And, when Ferrante dies, this is Pontano's advice to the new 13