Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Isabnormal Lines" to "Italic" / Volume 14, Slice 8
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Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Isabnormal Lines" to "Italic"

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THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME XIV SLICE VIII

Isabnormal Lines to Italic

Articles in This Slice

ISABNORMAL LINES | ISMAIL HADJI MAULVI-MOHAMMED
ISAEUS | ISMAILIA
ISAIAH | ISMAY, THOMAS HENRY
ISAIAH, ASCENSION OF | ISMID, or ISNIKMID
ISANDHLWANA | ISNARD, MAXIMIN
ISAR | ISOBAR
ISATIN | ISOCLINIC LINES
ISAURIA | ISOCRATES
ISCHIA | ISODYNAMIC LINES
ISCHL | ISOGONIC LINES
ISEO, LAKE OF | ISOLA DEL LIRI
ISÈRE (river in France) | ISOMERISM
ISÈRE (department of France) | ISOTHERM
ISERLOHN | ISOXAZOLES
ISFAHĀN | ISRAEL
ISHIM | ISRAELI, ISAAC BEN SOLOMON
ISHMAEL | ISRAËLS, JOSEF
ISHPEMING | ISSACHAR
ISHTAR | ISSEDONES
ISHTIB | ISSERLEIN, ISRAEL
ISIDORE OF ALEXANDRIA | ISSERLES, MOSES BEN ISRAEL
ISIDORE OF SEVILLE | ISSOIRE
ISINGLASS | ISSOUDUN
ISIS | ISSYK-KUL
ISKELIB | ISTAHBANÁT
ISLA, JOSÉ FRANCISCO DE | ISTHMUS
ISLAM | ISTRIA
ISLAMABAD | ISYLLUS
ISLAND | ITACOLUMITE
ISLAY | ITAGAKI, TAISUKE
ISLES OF THE BLEST | ITALIAN LANGUAGE
ISLINGTON | ITALIAN LITERATURE
ISLIP | ITALIAN WARS
ISLY | ITALIC
ISMAIL |

ISABNORMAL (or Isanomalous) LINES, in physical geography, lines upon a map or chart connecting places having an abnormal temperature. Each place has, theoretically, a proper temperature due to its latitude, and modified by its configuration. Its mean temperature for a particular period is decided by observation and called its normal temperature. Isabnormal lines may be used to denote the variations due to warm winds or currents, great altitudes or depressions, or great land masses as compared with sea. Or they may be used to indicate the abnormal result of weather observations made in an area such as the British Isles for a particular period.

ISAEUS (c. 420 B.C.-c. 350 B.C.), Attic orator, the chronological limits of whose extant work fall between the years 390 and 353 B.C., is described in the Plutarchic life as a Chalcidian; by Suidas, whom Dionysius follows, as an Athenian. The accounts have been reconciled by supposing that his family sprang from the settlement (κληρουχία) of Athenian citizens among whom the lands of the Chalcidian hippobotae (knights) had been divided about 509 B.C. In 411 B.C. Euboea (except Oreos) revolted from Athens; and it would not have been strange if residents of Athenian origin had then migrated from the hostile island to Attica. Such a connexion with Euboea would explain the non-Athenian name Diagoras which is borne by the father of Isaeus, while the latter is said to have been “an Athenian by descent” (Ἀθηναῖος τὸ γένος). So far as we know, Isaeus took no part in the public affairs of Athens. “I cannot tell,” says Dionysius, “what were the politics of Isaeus—or whether he had any politics at all.” Those words strikingly attest the profound change which was passing over the life of the Greek cities. It would have been scarcely possible, fifty years earlier, that an eminent Athenian with the powers of Isaeus should have failed to leave on record some proof of his interest in the political concerns of Athens or of Greece. But now, with the decline of personal devotion to the state, the life of an active citizen had ceased to have any necessary contact with political affairs. Already we are at the beginning of that transition which is to lead from the old life of Hellenic citizenship to that Hellenism whose children are citizens of the world.

Isaeus (who was born probably about 420 B.C.) is believed to have been an early pupil of Isocrates, and he certainly was a student of Lysias. A passage of Photius has been understood as meaning that personal relations had existed between Isaeus and Plato, but this view appears erroneous.1 The profession of Isaeus was that of which Antiphon had been the first representative at Athens—that of a λογογράφος, who composed speeches which his clients were to deliver in the law-courts. But, while Antiphon had written such speeches chiefly (as Lysias frequently) for public causes, it was with private causes that Isaeus was almost exclusively concerned. The fact marks the progressive subdivision of labour in his calling, and the extent to which the smaller interests of private life now absorbed the attention of the citizen.

The most interesting recorded event in the career of Isaeus is one which belongs to its middle period—his connexion with Demosthenes. Born in 384 B.C., Demosthenes attained his civic majority in 366. At this time he had already resolved to prosecute the fraudulent guardians who had stripped him of his patrimony. In prospect of such a legal contest, he could have found no better ally than Isaeus. That the young Demosthenes actually resorted to his aid is beyond reasonable doubt. But the pseudo-Plutarch embellishes the story after his fashion. He says that Demosthenes, on coming of age, took Isaeus into his house, and studied with him for four years—paying him the sum of 10,000 drachmas (about £400), on condition that Isaeus should withdraw from a school of rhetoric which he had opened, and devote himself wholly to his new pupil. The real Plutarch gives us a more sober and a more probable version. He simply states that Demosthenes “employed Isaeus as his master in rhetoric, though Isocrates was then teaching, either (as some say) because he could not pay Isocrates the prescribed fee of ten minae, or because he preferred the style of Isaeus for his purpose, as being vigorous and astute” (δραστήριον καὶ πανοῦργον). It may be observed that, except by the pseudo-Plutarch, a school of Isaeus is not mentioned,—for a notice in Plutarch need mean no more than that he had written a textbook, or that his speeches were read in schools;2 nor is any other pupil named. As to Demosthenes, his own speeches against Aphobus and Onetor (363-362 B.C.) afford the best possible gauge of the sense and the measure in which he was the disciple of Isaeus; the intercourse between them can scarcely have been either very close or very long. The date at which Isaeus died can only be conjectured from his work; it may be placed about 350 B.C.

Isaeus has a double claim on the student of Greek literature. He is the first Greek writer who comes before us as a consummate master of strict forensic controversy. He also holds a most important place in the general development of practical oratory, and therefore in the history of Attic prose. Antiphon marks the beginning of that development, Demosthenes its consummation. Between them stand Lysias and Isaeus. The open, even ostentatious, art of Antiphon had been austere and rigid. The concealed art of Lysias had charmed and persuaded by a versatile semblance of natural grace and simplicity. Isaeus brings us to a final stage of transition, in which the gifts distinctive of Lysias were to be fused into a perfect harmony with that masterly art which receives its most powerful expression in Demosthenes. Here, then, are the two cardinal points by which the place of Isaeus must be determined. We must consider, first, his relation to Lysias; secondly, his relation to Demosthenes.

A comparison of Isaeus and Lysias must set out from the distinction between choice of words (λέξις) and mode of putting words together (σύνθεσις). In choice of words, diction, Lysias and Isaeus are closely alike. Both are clear, pure, simple, concise; both have the stamp of persuasive plainness (ἀφέλεια), and both combine it with graphic power (ἐνάργεια). In mode of putting words together, composition, there is, however a striking difference. Lysias threw off the stiff restraints of the earlier periodic style, with its wooden monotony; he is too fond indeed of antithesis always to avoid a rigid effect; but, on the whole, his style is easy, flexible and various; above all, its subtle art usually succeeds in appearing natural. Now this is just what the art of Isaeus does not achieve. With less love of antithesis than Lysias, and with a diction almost equally pure and plain, he yet habitually conveys the impression of conscious and confident art. Hence he is least effective in adapting his style to those characters in which Lysias peculiarly excelled—the ingenuous youth, the homely and peace-loving citizen. On the other hand, his more open and vigorous art does not interfere with his moral persuasiveness where there is scope for reasoned remonstrance, for keen argument or for powerful denunciation. Passing from the formal to the real side of his work, from diction and composition to the treatment of subject-matter, we find the divergence wider still. Lysias usually adheres to a simple four-fold division—proem, narrative, proof, epilogue. Isaeus frequently interweaves the narrative with the proof.3 He shows the most dexterous ingenuity in adapting his manifold tactics to the case in hand, and often “out-generals” (καταστρατηγεῖ) his adversary by some novel and daring disposition of his forces. Lysias, again, usually contents himself with a merely rhetorical or sketchy proof; Isaeus aims at strict logical demonstration, worked out through all its steps. As Sir William Jones well remarks, Isaeus lays close siege to the understandings of the jury.4

Such is the general relation of Isaeus to Lysias. What, we must next ask, is the relation of Isaeus to Demosthenes? The Greek critic who had so carefully studied both authors states his own view in broad terms when he declares that “the power of Demosthenes took its seeds and its beginnings from Isaeus” (Dion. Halic. Isaeus, 20). A closer examination will show that within certain limits the statement may be allowed. Attic prose expression had been continuously developed as an art; the true link between Isaeus and Demosthenes is technical, depending on their continuity. Isaeus had made some original contributions to the resources of the art; and Demosthenes had not failed to profit by these. The composition of Demosthenes resembles that of Isaeus in blending terse and vigorous periods with passages of more lax and fluent ease, as well as in that dramatic vivacity which is given by rhetorical question and similar devices. In the versatile disposition of subject-matter, the divisions of “narrative” and “proof” being shifted and interwoven according to circumstances, Demosthenes has clearly been instructed by the example of Isaeus. Still more plainly and strikingly is this so in regard to the elaboration of systematic, proof; here Demosthenes invites direct and close comparison with Isaeus by his method of drawing out a chain of arguments, or enforcing a proposition by strict legal argument. And, more generally, Demosthenes is the pupil of Isaeus, though here the pupil became even greater than the master, in that faculty of grappling with an adversary’s case point by point, in that aptitude for close and strenuous conflict which is expressed by the words ἀγών, ἐναγώνιος.5

The pseudo-Plutarch, in his life of Isaeus, mentions an Art of Rhetoric and sixty-four speeches, of which fifty were accounted genuine. From a passage of Photius it appears that at least6 the fifty speeches of recognized authenticity were extant as late as A.D. 850. Only eleven, with a large part of a twelfth, have come down to us; but the titles of forty-two7 others are known.8

The titles of the lost speeches confirm the statement of Dionysius that the speeches of Isaeus were exclusively forensic; and only three titles indicate speeches made in public causes. The remainder, concerned with private causes, may be classed under six heads:—(1) κληρικοί—cases of claim to an inheritance; (2) ἐπικληρικοί—cases of claim to the hand of an heiress; (3) διαδικασίαι—cases of claim of property; (4) ἀποστασίου—cases of claim to the ownership of a slave; (5) ἐγγύης—action brought against a surety whose principal had made default; (6) ἀντωμοσία (as = παραγραφή)—a special plea; (7) ἔφεσις—appeal from one jurisdiction to another.

Eleven of the twelve extant speeches belong to class (1), the κληρικοί, or claims to an inheritance. This was probably the branch of practice in which Isaeus had done his most important and most characteristic work. And, according to the ancient custom, this class of speeches would therefore stand first in the manuscript collections of his writings. The case of Antiphon is parallel: his speeches in cases of homicide (φονικοί) were those on which his reputation mainly depended, and stood first in the manuscripts. Their exclusive preservation, like that of the speeches made by Isaeus in will-cases, is thus primarily an accident of manuscript tradition, but partly also the result of the writer’s special prestige.

Six of the twelve extant speeches are directly concerned with claims to an estate; five others are connected with legal proceedings arising out of such a claim. They may be classified thus (the name given in each case being that of the person whose estate is in dispute):

I. Trials of Claim to an Inheritance (διαδικασίαι).

1. Or. i., Cleonymus. Date between 360 and 353 B.C.

2. Or. iv., Nicostratus. Date uncertain.

3. Or. vii., Apollodorus. 353 B.C.

4. Or. viii., Ciron. 375 B.C.

5. Or. ix., Astyphilus. 369 B.C. (c. 390, Schömann).

6. Or. x., Aristarchus. 377-371 B.C. (386-384, Schömann).

II. Actions for False Witness (δίκαι ψευδομαρτυριῶν).

1. Or. ii., Menecles. 354 B.C.

2. Or. iii., Pyrrhus. Date uncertain, but comparatively late.

3. Or. vi., Philoctemon. 364-363 B.C.

III. Action to Compel the Discharge of a Suretyship (ἐγγύης δίκη).

Or. v., Dicaeogenes. 390 B.C.

IV. Indictment of a Guardian for Maltreatment of a Ward (εἰσαγγελία κακώσεως ὀρφανοῦ).

Or. xi., Hagnias. 359 B.C.

V. Appeal from Arbitration to a Dicastery (ἔφεσις).

Or. xii., For Euphiletus. (Incomplete.) Date uncertain.

The speeches of Isaeus supply valuable illustrations to the early history of testamentary law. They show us the faculty of adoption, still, indeed, associated with the religious motive in which it originated, as a mode of securing that the sacred rites of the family shall continue to be discharged by one who can call himself the son of the deceased. But practically the civil aspect of adoption is, for the Athenian citizen, predominant over the religious; he adopts a son in order to bestow property on a person to whom he wishes to bequeath it. The Athenian system, as interpreted by Isaeus, is thus intermediate, at least in spirit, between the purely religious standpoint of the Hindu and the maturer form which Roman testamentary law had reached before the time of Cicero.9 As to the form of the speeches, it is remarkable for its variety. There are three which, taken together, may be considered as best representing the diversity and range of their author’s power. The fifth, with its simple but lively diction, its graceful and persuasive narrative, recalls the qualities of Lysias. The eleventh, with its sustained and impetuous power, has no slight resemblance to the manner of Demosthenes. The eighth is, of all, the most characteristic, alike in narrative and in argument. Isaeus is here seen at his best. No reader who is interested in the social life of ancient Greece need find Isaeus dull. If the glimpses of Greek society which he gives us are seldom so gay and picturesque as those which enliven the pages of Lysias, they are certainly not less suggestive. Here, where the innermost relations and central interests of the family are in question, we touch the springs of social life; we are not merely presented with scenic details of dress and furniture, but are enabled in no small degree to conceive the feelings of the actors.

The best manuscript of Isaeus is in the British Museum,—Crippsianus A (= Burneianus 95, 13th century), which contains also Antiphon, Andocides, Lycurgus and Dinarchus. The next best is Bekker’s Laurentianus B (Florence), of the 15th century. Besides these, he used Marcianus L (Venice), saec. 14, Vratislaviensis Z saec. 1410 and two very inferior MSS. Ambrosianus A. 99, P (which he dismissed after Or. i.), and Ambrosianus D. 42, Q (which contains only Or. i., ii.). Schömann, in his edition of 1831, generally followed Bekker’s text; he had no fresh apparatus beyond a collation of a Paris MS. R in part of Or. i.; but he had sifted the Aldine more carefully. Baiter and Sauppe (1850) had a new collation of A, and also used a collation of Burneianus 96, M, given by Dobson in vol. iv. of his edition (1828). C. Scheibe (Teubner, 1860) made it his especial aim to complete the work of his predecessors by restoring the correct Attic forms of words; thus (e.g.) he gives ἠγγύα for ἐνεγύα, δέδιμεν for δεδίαμεν, and the like,—following the consent of the MSS., however, in such forms as the accusative of proper names in -ην rather than -η, or (e.g.) the future φανήσομαι rather than φανοῦμαι, &c., and on such doubtful points as φράτερες instead of φράτορες, or Εἰληθυίας instead of Εἰλειθυίας.

Editions.—Editio princeps (Aldus, Venice, 1513); in Oratores Attici, by I. Bekker (1823-1828); W. S. Dobson (1828); J. G. Baiter and Hermann Sauppe (1850); separately, by G. F. Schömann, with commentary (1831); C. Scheibe (1860) (Teubner series, new ed. by T. Thalheim, 1903); H. Buermann (1883); W. Wyse (1904). English translation by Sir William Jones, 1779.

On Isaeus generally see Wyse’s edition; R. C. Jebb, Attic Orators; F. Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit (2nd ed., 1887-1893); and L. Moy, Étude sur les plaidoyers d’Isée (1876).

(R. C. J.)

1 See further Jebb’s Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeus, (ii. 264).

2 Plut. De glor. Athen. p. 350 c, where he mentions τοὺς Ἰσοκράτεις καὶ Ἀντιφῶντας καὶ Ἰσαίους among τοὺς ἐν ταῖς σχολαῖς τὰ μειράκια προδιδάσκοντας.

3 Here he was probably influenced by the teaching of Isocrates. The forensic speech of Isocrates known as the Aegineticus (Or. xix.), which belongs to the peculiar province of Isaeus, as dealing with a claim to property (ἐπιδικασία), affords perhaps the earliest example of narrative and proof thus interwoven. Earlier forensic writers had kept the διήγησις and πίστεις distinct, as Lysias does.

4 This is what Dionysius means when he says (Isaeus, 61) that Isaeus differs from Lysias—τῷ μὴ κατ᾿ ἐνθύμημα τι λέγειν ἀλλὰ κατ᾿ ἐπιχείρημα. Here the “enthymeme” means a rhetorical syllogism with one premiss suppressed (curtum, Juv. vi. 449); “epicheireme,” such a syllogism stated in full. Cf. R. Volkmann, Rhetorik der Griechen und Römer, 1872, pp. 153 f.

5 Cleon’s speech in Thuc. iii. 37, 38, works out this image with remarkable force; within a short space we have ξυνἐσεως ἀγών—τῶν τοιῶνδε ἀγώνων—ἀγωνιστής—ἀγωνίζεσθαι—ἀνταγωνίζεσθαι—ἀγωνοθετεῖν. See Attic Orators, vol. i. 39; ii. 304.

6 For the words of Photius (cod. 263), τούτων δὲ οἱ τὸ γνήσιον μαρτυρηθέντες ν΄ καταλείπονται μόνον, might be so rendered as to imply that, besides these fifty, others also were extant. See Att. Orat. ii. 311, note 2.

7 Forty-four are given in Thalheim’s ed.

8 The second of our speeches (the Meneclean) was discovered in the Laurentian Library in 1785, and was edited in that year by Tyrwhitt. In editions previous to that date, Oration i. is made to conclude with a few lines which really belong to the end of Orat. ii. (§ 47, ἀλλ᾿ ἐπειδὴ τὸ πρᾶγμα ... ψηφίσασθε), and this arrangement is followed in the translation of Isaeus by Sir William Jones, to whom our second oration, was, of course, then (1779) unknown. In Oration i. all that follows the words μὴ ποιήσαντες in § 22 was first published in 1815 by Mai, from a MS. in the Ambrosian Library at Milan.

9 Cf. Maine’s Ancient Law, ch. vi., and the Tagore Law Lectures (1870) by Herbert Cowell, lect. ix., “On the Rite of Adoption,” pp. 208 f.

10 The date of L and Z is given as the end of the 15th century in the introduction to Wyse’s edition.

ISAIAH. I. Life and Period.—Isaiah is the name of the greatest, and both in life and in death the most influential of the Old Testament prophets. We do not forget Jeremiah, but Jeremiah’s literary and religious influence is secondary compared with that of Isaiah. Unfortunately we are reduced to inference and conjecture with regard both to his life and to the extent of his literary activity. In the heading (i. 1) of what we may call the occasional prophecies of Isaiah (i.e. those which were called forth by passing events), the author is called “the son of Amoz” and Rabbinical legend identifies this Amoz with a brother of Amaziah, king of Judah; but this is evidently based on a mere etymological fancy. We know from his works that (unlike Jeremiah) he was married (viii. 3), and that he had at least two sons, whose names he regarded as, together with his own, symbolic by divine appointment of certain decisive events or religious truths—Isaiah (Yesha’-yāhū), meaning “Salvation—Yahweh”; Shear-Yāshūb, “a remnant shall return”; and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, “swift (swiftly cometh) spoil, speedy (speedily cometh) prey” (vii. 3, viii. 3, 4, 18). He lived at Jerusalem, perhaps in the “middle” or “lower city” (2 Kings xx. 4), exercised at one time great influence at court (chap. xxxvii.), and could venture to address a king unbidden (vii. 4), and utter the most unpleasant truths, unassailed, in the plainest fashion. Presumably therefore his social rank was far above that of Amos and Micah; certainly the high degree of rhetorical skill displayed in his discourses implies a long course of literary discipline, not improbably in the school of some older prophet (Amos vii. 14 suggests that “schools” or companies “of the prophets” existed in the southern kingdom). We know but little of Isaiah’s predecessors and models in the prophetic art (it were fanaticism to exclude the element of human preparation); but certainly even the acknowledged prophecies of Isaiah (and much more the disputed ones) could no more have come into existence suddenly and without warning than the masterpieces of Shakespeare. In the more recent commentaries (e.g. Cheyne’s Prophecies of Isaiah, ii. 218) lists are generally given of the points of contact both in phraseology and in ideas between Isaiah and the prophets nearly contemporary with him. For Isaiah cannot be studied by himself.

The same heading already referred to gives us our only traditional information as to the period during which Isaiah prophesied; it refers to Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah as the contemporary kings. It is, however, to say the least, doubtful whether any of the extant prophecies are as early as the reign of Uzziah. Exegesis, the only safe basis of criticism for the prophetic literature, is unfavourable to the view that even chap. i. belongs to the reign of this king, and we must therefore regard it as most probable that the heading in i. 1 is (like those of the Psalms) the work of one or more of the Sōpherīm (or students and editors of Scripture) in post-exilic times, apparently the same writer (or company of writers) who prefixed the headings of Hosea and Micah, and perhaps of some of the other books. Chronological study had already begun in his time. But he would be a bold man who would profess to give trustworthy dates either for the kings of Israel or for the prophetic writers. (See Bible, Old Testament, Chronology; the article “Chronology” in the Encyclopaedia Bíblica; and cf. H. P. Smith, Old Testament History, Edin., 1903, p. 202, note 2.)

II. Chronological Arrangement, how far possible.—Let us now briefly sketch the progress of Isaiah’s prophesying on the basis of philological exegesis, and a comparison of the sound results of the study of the inscriptions. If our results are imperfect and liable to correction, that is only to be expected in the present position of the historical study of the Bible. Chap. vi., which describes a vision of Isaiah “in the death-year of King Uzziah” (740 or 734 B.C.?) may possibly have arisen out of notes put down in the reign of Jotham; but for several reasons it is not an acceptable view that, in its present form, this striking chapter is earlier than the reign of Ahaz. It seems, in short, to have originally formed the preface to the small group of prophecies which now follows it, viz. vii. i.-ix. 7. The portions which may represent discourses of Jotham’s reign are chap. ii. and chap. ix. 8-x. 4—stern denunciations which remind us somewhat of Amos. But the allusions in the greater part of chaps. ii.-v. correspond to no period so closely as the reign of Ahaz, and the same remark applies still more self-evidently to vii. 1-ix. 7.1 Chap. xvii. 1-11 ought undoubtedly to be read in immediate connexion with chap. vii.; it presupposes the alliance of Syria and northern Israel, whose destruction it predicts, though opening a door of hope for a remnant of Israel. The fatal siege of Samaria (724-722 B.C.) seems to have given occasion to chap. xxviii.; but the following prophecies (chaps. xxix.-xxxiii.) point in the main to Sennacherib’s invasion, 701 B.C., which evidently stirred Isaiah’s deepest feelings and was the occasion of some of his greatest prophecies. It is, however, the vengeance taken by Sargon upon Ashdod (711) which seems to be preserved in chap. xx., and the striking little prophecy in xxi. 1-10, sometimes referred of late to a supposed invasion of Judah by Sargon, rather belongs to some one of the many prophetic personages who wrote, but did not speak like the greater prophets, during and after the Exile. It is also an opinion largely held that the prophetic epilogue in xvi. 13, 14, was attached by Isaiah to an oracle on archaic style by another prophet (Isaiah’s hand has, however, been traced by some in xvi. 4b, 5). In fact no progress can be expected in the accurate study of the prophets until the editorial activity both of the great prophets themselves and of their more reflective and studious successors is fully recognized.

Thus there were two great political events (the Syro-Israelitish invasion under Ahaz, and the great Assyrian invasion of Sennacherib) which called forth the spiritual and oratorical faculties of our prophet, and quickened his faculty of insight into the future. The Sennacherib prophecies must be taken in connexion with the historical appendix, chaps, xxxvi.-xxxix. The beauty and incisiveness of the poetic prophecy in xxxvii. 21-32 have, by some critics, been regarded as evidence for its authenticity. This, however, is, on critical grounds, most questionable.

A special reference seems needed at this point to the oracle on Egypt, chap. xix. The comparative feebleness of the style has led to the conjecture that, even if the basis of the prophecy be Isaianic, yet in its present form it must have undergone the manipulation of a scribe. More probably, however, it belongs to the early Persian period. It should be added that the Isaianic origin of the appendix in xix. 18-24 is, if possible, even more doubtful, because of the precise, circumstantial details of the prophecy which are not like Isaiah’s work. It is plausible to regard v. 18 as a fictitious prophecy in the interests of Onias, the founder of the rival Egyptian temple to Yahweh at Leontopolis in the name of Heliopolis (Josephus, Ant. xii. 9, 7).

III. Disintegration Theories.—We must now enter more fully into the question whether the whole of the so-called Book of Isaiah was really written by that prophet. The question relates, at any rate, to xiii.-xiv. 23, xxi. 1-10, xxiv.-xxvii., xxxiv., xxxv. and xl.-lxvi. The father of the controversy may be said to be the Jewish rabbi, Aben Ezra, who died A.D. 1167. We need not, however, spend much time on the well-worn but inconclusive arguments of the older critics. The existence of a tradition in the last three centuries before Christ as to the authorship of any book is (to those acquainted with the habits of thought of that age) of but little critical moment; the Sōpherīm, i.e. students of Scripture, in those times were simply anxious for the authority of the Scriptures, not for the ascertainment of their precise historical origin. It was of the utmost importance to declare that (especially) Isaiah xl.-lxvi. was a prophetic work of the highest order; this was reason sufficient (apart from any presumed phraseological affinities in xl.-lxvi.) for ascribing them to the royal prophet Isaiah. When the view had once obtained currency, it would naturally become a tradition. The question of the Isaianic or non-Isaianic origin of the disputed prophecies (especially xl.-lxvi.) must be decided on grounds of exegesis alone. It matters little, therefore, when the older critics appeal to Ezra i. 2 (interpreted by Josephus, Ant. xi. 1, 1-2), to the Septuagint version of the book (produced between 260 and 130 B.C.), in which the disputed prophecies are already found, and to the Greek translation of the Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach, which distinctly refers to Isaiah as the comforter of those that mourned in Zion (Eccles. xlviii. 24, 25).

The fault of the controversialists on both sides has been that each party has only seen “one side of the shield.” It will be admitted by philological students that the exegetical data supplied by (at any rate) Isa. xl.-lxvi. are conflicting, and therefore susceptible of no simple solution. This remark applies, it is true, chiefly to the portion which begins at lii. 13. The earlier part of Isa. xl.-lxvi. admits of a perfectly consistent interpretation from first to last. There is nothing in it to indicate that the author’s standing-point is earlier than the Babylonian captivity. His object is (as most scholars, probably, believe) to warn, stimulate or console the captive Jews, some full believers, some semi-believers, some unbelievers or idolaters. The development of the prophet’s message is full of contrasts and surprises: the vanity of the idol-gods and the omnipotence of Israel’s helper, the sinfulness and infirmity of Israel and her high spiritual destiny, and the selection (so offensive to patriotic Jews, xlv. 9, 10) of the heathen Cyrus as the instrument of Yahweh’s purposes, as in fact his Messiah or Anointed One (xlv. 1), are brought successively before us. Hence the semi-dramatic character of the style. Already in the opening passage mysterious voices are heard crying, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people”; the plural indicates that there were other prophets among the exiles besides the author of Isa. xl.-xlviii. Then the Jews and the Asiatic nations in general are introduced trembling at the imminent downfall of the Babylonian empire. The former are reasoned with and exhorted to believe; the latter are contemptuously silenced by an exhibition of the futility of their religion. Then another mysterious form appears on the scene, bearing the honourable title of “Servant of Yahweh,” through whom God’s gracious purposes for Israel and the world are to be realized. The cycle of poetic passages on the character and work of this “Servant,” or commissioned agent of the Most High, may have formed originally a separate collation which was somewhat later inserted in the Prophecy of Restoration (i.e. chaps. xl.-xlviii., and its appendix chaps. xlix.-lv.).

The new section which begins at chap. xlix. is written in much the same delightfully flowing style. We are still among the exiles at the close of the captivity, or, as others think, amidst a poor community in Jerusalem, whose members have now been dispersed among the Gentiles. The latter view is not so strange as it may at first appear, for the new book has this peculiarity, that Babylon and Cyrus are not mentioned in it at all. [True, there was not so much said about Babylon as we should have expected even in the first book; the paucity of references to the local characteristics of Babylonia is in fact one of the negative arguments urged by older scholars in favour of the Isaianic origin of the prophecy.] Israel himself, with all his inconsistent qualities, becomes the absorbing subject of the prophet’s meditations. The section opens with a soliloquy of the “Servant of Yahweh,” which leads on to a glorious comforting discourse, “Can a woman forget her sucking child,” &c. (xlix. 1, comp. li. 12, 13). Then his tone rises, Jerusalem can and must be redeemed; he even seems to see the great divine act in process of accomplishment. Is it possible, one cannot help asking, that the abrupt description of the strange fortunes of the “Servant”—by this time entirely personalized—was written to follow chap. lii. 1-12?

The whole difficulty seems to arise from the long prevalent assumption that chaps. xl.-lxvi. form a whole in themselves. Natural as the feeling against disintegration may be, the difficulties in the way of admitting the unity of chaps. xl.-lxvi. are insurmountable. Even if, by a bold assumption, we grant the unity of authorship, it is plain upon the face of it that the chapters in question cannot have been composed at the same time or under the same circumstances; literary and artistic unity is wholly wanting. But once admit (as it is only reasonable to do) the extension of Jewish editorial activity to the prophetic books and all becomes clear. The record before us gives no information as to its origin. It is without a heading, and by its abrupt transitions, and honestly preserved variations of style, invites us to such a theory as we are now indicating. It is only the inveterate habit of reading Isa. xlix.-lxvi. as a part of a work relating to the close of the Exile that prevents us from seeing how inconsistent are the tone and details with this presupposition.

The present article in its original form introduced here a survey of the portions of Isa. xl.-lxvi. which were plainly of Palestinian origin. It is needless to reproduce this here, because the information is now readily accessible elsewhere; in 1881 there was an originality in this survey, which gave promise of a still more radical treatment such as that of Bernhard Duhm, a fascinating commentary published in 1892. See also Cheyne, Jewish Quarterly Review, July and October 1891; Introd. to Book of Isaiah (1895), which also point forward, like Stade’s Geschichte in Germany, to a bolder criticism of Isaiah.

IV. Non-Isaianic Elements in Chaps. i.-xxxix.—We have said nothing hitherto, except by way of allusion, of the disputed prophecies scattered up and down the first half of the book of Isaiah. There is only one of these prophecies which may, with any degree of apparent plausibility, be referred to the age of Isaiah, and that is chaps. xxiv.-xxvii. The grounds are (1) that according to xxv. 6 the author dwells on Mount Zion; (2) that Moab is referred to as an enemy (xxv. 10); and (3) that at the close of the prophecy, Assyria and Egypt are apparently mentioned as the principal foes of Israel (xxvii. 12, 13). A careful and thorough exegesis will show the hollowness of this justification. The tone and spirit of the prophecy as a whole point to the same late apocalyptic period to which chap. xxxiv. and the book of Joel; and also the last chapter (especially) of the book of Zechariah, may unhesitatingly be referred.

A word or two may perhaps be expected on Isa. xiii., xiv. and xxxiv., xxxv. These two oracles agree in the elaborateness of their description of the fearful fate of the enemies of Yahweh (Babylon and Edom are merely representatives of a class), and also in their view of the deliverance and restoration of Israel as an epoch for the whole human race. There is also an unrelieved sternness, which pains us by its contrast with Isa. xl.-lxvi. (except those passages of this portion which are probably not homogeneous with the bulk of the prophecy). They have also affinities with Jer. l. li., a prophecy (as most now agree) of post-exilic origin.

There is only one passage which seems in some degree to make up for the aesthetic drawbacks of the greater part of these late compositions. It is the ode on the fall of the king of Babylon in chap. xiv. 4-21, which is as brilliant with the glow of lyric enthusiasm as the stern prophecy which precedes it is, from the same point of view, dull and uninspiring. It is in fact worthy to be put by the side of the finest passages of chaps. xl.-lxvi.—of those passages which irresistibly rise in the memory when we think of “Isaiah.”

V. Prophetic Contrasts in Isaiah.—From a religious point of view there is a wide difference, not only between the acknowledged and the disputed prophecies of the book of Isaiah, but also between those of the latter which occur in chaps. i.-xxxix., on the one hand, and the greater and more striking part of chaps. xl.-lxvi. on the other. We may say, upon the whole, with Duhm, that Isaiah represents a synthesis of Amos and Hosea, though not without important additions of his own. And if we cannot without much hesitation admit that Isaiah was really the first preacher of a personal Messiah whose record has come down to us, yet his editors certainly had good reason for thinking him capable of such a lofty height of prophecy. It is not because Isaiah could not have conceived of a personal Messiah, but because the Messiah-passages are not plainly Isaiah’s either in style or in thought. If Isaiah had had those bright visions, they would have affected him more.

Perhaps the most characteristic religious peculiarities of the various disputed prophecies are—(1) the emphasis laid on the uniqueness, eternity, creatorship and predictive power of Yahweh (xl. 18, 25, xli. 4, xliv. 6, xlviii. 12, xlv. 5, 6, 18, 22, xlvi. 9, xlii. 5, xlv. 18, xli. 26, xliii. 9, xliv. 7, xlv. 21, xlviii. 14); (2) the conception of the “Servant of Yahweh”; (3) the ironical descriptions of idolatry (Isaiah in the acknowledged prophecies only refers incidentally to idolatry) xl. 19, 20, xli. 7, xliv. 9-17, xlvi. 6; (4) the personality of the Spirit of Yahweh (mentioned no less than seven times, see especially xl. 3, xlviii. 16, lxiii. 10, 14); (5) the influence of the angelic powers (xxiv. 21); (6) the resurrection of the body (xxvi. 19); (7) the everlasting punishment of the wicked (lxvi. 24); (8) vicarious atonement (chap. liii.).

We cannot here do more than chronicle the attempts of a Jewish scholar, the late Dr Kohut, in the Z.D.M.G. for 1876 to prove a Zoroastrian influence on chaps. xl.-lxvi. The idea is not in itself inadmissible, at least for post-exilic portions, for Zoroastrian ideas were in the intellectual atmosphere of Jewish writers in the Persian age.

There is an equally striking difference among the disputed prophecies themselves, and one of no small moment as a subsidiary indication of their origin. We have already spoken of the difference of tone between parts of the latter half of the book; and, when we compare the disputed prophecies of the former half with the Prophecy of Israel’s Restoration, how inferior (with all reverence be it said) do they appear! Truly “in many parts and many manners did God speak” in this composite book of Isaiah! To the Prophecy of Restoration we may fitly apply the words, too gracious and too subtly chosen to be translated, of Renan, “ce second Isaïe, dont l’âme lumineuse semble comme imprégnée, six cent ans d’avance, de toutes les rosées, de tous les parfums de l’avenir” (L’Antéchrist, p. 464); though, indeed, the common verdict of sympathetic readers sums up the sentence in a single phrase—“the Evangelical Prophet.” The freedom and the inexhaustibleness of the undeserved grace of God is a subject to which this gifted son constantly returns with “a monotony which is never monotonous.” The defect of the disputed prophecies in the former part of the book (a defect, as long as we regard them in isolation, and not as supplemented by those which come after) is that they emphasize too much for the Christian sentiment the stern, destructive side of the series of divine interpositions in the latter days.

VI. The Cyrus Inscriptions.—Perhaps one of the most important contributions to the study of II. Isaiah has been the discovery of two cuneiform texts relative to the fall of Babylon and the religious policy of Cyrus. The results are not favourable to a mechanical view of prophecy as involving absolute accuracy of statement. Cyrus appears in the unassailably authentic cylinder inscription “as a complete religious indifferentist, willing to go through any amount of ceremonies to soothe the prejudices of a susceptible population.” He preserves a strange and significant silence with regard to Ahura-mazda, the supreme God of Zoroastrianism, and in fact can hardly have been a Zoroastrian believer at all. On the historical and religious bearings of these two inscriptions the reader may be referred to the article “Cyrus” in the Encyclopaedia Biblica and the essay on “II. Isaiah and the Inscriptions” in Cheyne’s Prophecies of Isaiah, vol. ii. It may, with all reverence, be added that our estimate of prophecy must be brought into harmony with facts, not facts with our preconceived theory of inspiration.

Authorities.—Lowth, Isaiah: a new translation, with a preliminary dissertation and notes (1778); Gesenius, Der Proph. Jes. (1821); Hitzig, Der Proph. Jes. (1833); Delitzsch, Der Pr. Jes. (4th ed., 1889); Dillmann-Kittel, Isaiah (1898); Duhm (1892; 2nd ed., 1902); Marti (1900); Cheyne, The Prophecies of Isaiah (2 vols., 1880-1881); Introd. to Book of Isaiah (1898); “The Book of the Prophet Isaiah,” in Paul Haupt’s Polychrome Bible (1898); S. R. Driver, Isaiah, his life and times (1888); J. Skinner, “The Book of Isaiah,” in Cambridge Bible (2 vols., 1896, 1898); G. A. Smith, in Expositor’s Bible (2 vols., 1888, 1890); Condamin (Rom. Cath.) (1905); G. H. Box (1908); Article on Isaiah in Ency. Bib. by Cheyne; in Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible by Prof. G. A. Smith. R. H. Kennett’s Schweich Lecture (1909), The Composition of the Book of Isaiah in the Light of Archaeology and History, an interesting attempt at a synthesis of results, is a brightly written but scholarly sketch of the growth of the book of Isaiah, which went on till the great success of the Jews under Judas Maccabaeus. The outbursts of triumph (e.g. Isa. ix. 2-7) are assigned to this period. The most original statement is perhaps the view that the words of Isaiah were preserved orally by his disciples, and did not see the light (in a revised form) till a considerable time after the crystallization of the reforms of Josiah into laws.

(T. K. C.)

1 On the question of the Isaianic origin of the prophecy, ix. 1-6, and the companion passage, xi. 1-8, see Cheyne Introd. to the Book of Isaiah, 1895, pp. 44, 45 and 62-66. Cf., however, J. Skinner “Isaiah i.-xxxix.” in Cambridge Bible.

ISAIAH, ASCENSION OF, an apocryphal book of the Old Testament. The Ascension of Isaiah is a composite work of very great interest. In its present form it is probably not older than the latter half of the 2nd century of our era. Its various constituents, however, and of these there were three—the Martyrdom of Isaiah, the Testament of Hezekiah and the Vision of Isaiah—circulated independently as early as the 1st century. The first of these was of Jewish origin, and is of less interest than the other two, which were the work of Christian writers. The Vision of Isaiah is important for the knowledge it affords us of 1st-century beliefs in certain circles as to the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Seven Heavens, &c. The long lost Testament of Hezekiah, which is, in the opinion of R. H. Charles, to be identified with iii. 13b-iv. 18, of our present work, is unquestionably of great value owing to the insight it gives us into the history of the Christian Church at the close of the 1st century. Its descriptions of the worldliness and lawlessness which prevailed among the elders and pastors, i.e. the bishops and priests, of the wide-spread covetousness and vainglory as well as the growing heresies among Christians generally, agree with similar accounts in 2 Peter, 2 Timothy and Clement of Rome.

Various Titles.—Origen in his commentary on Matt. xiii. 57 (Lommatzsch iii. 4, 9) calls it Apocryph of Isaiah—Ἀπόκρυφον Ἡσαίου, Epiphanius (Haer. xl. 2) terms it the Ascension of Isaiah—τὸ ἀναβατικὸν Ἡσαίου, and similarly Jerome—Ascensio Isaiae. It was also known as the Vision of Isaiah and finally as the Testament of Hezekiah (see Charles, The Ascension of Isaiah, pp. xii.-xv.).

The Greek Original and the Versions.—The book was written in Greek, though not improbably the middle portion, the Testament of Hezekiah, was originally composed in Semitic. The Greek in its original form, which we may denote by G, is lost. It has, however, been in part preserved to us in two of its recensions, G¹ and G². From G¹ the Ethiopic Version and the first Latin Version (consisting of ii. 14-iii. 13, vii. 1-19) were translated, and of this recension the actual Greek has survived in a multitude of phrases in the Greek Legend. G² denotes the Greek text from which the Slavonic and the second Latin Version (consisting of vi.-xi.) were translated. Of this recension ii. 4-iv. 2 have been discovered by Grenfell and Hunt.1 For complete details see Charles, op. cit. pp. xviii.-xxxiii.; also Flemming in Hennecke’s NTliche Apok.

Latin Version.—The first Latin Version (L¹) is fragmentary (=ii. 14-iii. 13, vii. 1-19). It was discovered and edited by Mai in 1828 (Script. vet. nova collectio III. ii. 238), and reprinted by Dillmann in his edition of 1877, and subsequently in a more correct form by Charles in his edition of 1900. The second version (L²), which consists of vi.-xi., was first printed at Venice in 1522, by Gieseler in 1832, Dillmann in 1877 and Charles in 1900.

Ethiopic Version.—There are three MSS. This version is on the whole a faithful reproduction of G¹. These were used by Dillmann and subsequently by Charles in their editions.

Different Elements in the Book.—The compositeness of this work is universally recognized. Dillmann’s analysis is as follows, (i.) Martyrdom of Isaiah, of Jewish origin; ii. 1-iii. 12, v. 2-14. (ii.) The Vision of Isaiah, of Christian origin, vi. 1-xi. 1, 23-40. (iii.) The above two constituents were put together by a Christian writer, who prefixed i. 1, 2, 4b-13 and appended xi. 42, 43. (iv.) Finally a later Christian editor incorporated the two sections iii. 13-v. 1 and xi. 2-22, and added i. 3, 4a, v. 15, 16, xi. 41.

This analysis has on the whole been accepted by Harnack, Schürer, Deane and Beer. These scholars have been influenced by Gebhardt’s statement that in the Greek Legend there is not a trace of iii. 13-v. 1, xi. 2-22, and that accordingly these sections were absent from the text when the Greek Legend was composed. But this statement is wrong, for at least five phrases or clauses in the Greek Legend are derived from the sections in question. Hence R. H. Charles has examined (op. cit. pp. xxxviii.-xlvii.) the problem de novo, and arrived at the following conclusions. The book is highly composite, and arbitrariness and disorder are found in every section. There are three original documents at its base, (i.) The Martyrdom of Isaiah = i. 1, 2a, 6b-13a, ii. 1-8, 10-iii. 12, v. 1b-14. This is but an imperfect survival of the original work. Part of the original work omitted by the final editor of our book is preserved in the Opus imperfectum, which goes back not to our text, but to the original Martyrdom, (ii.) The Testament of Hezekiah = iii. 13b-iv. 18. This work is mutilated and without beginning or end. (iii.) The Vision of Isaiah = vi.-xi. 1-40. The archetype of this section existed independently in Greek; for the second Latin and the Slavonic Versions presuppose an independent circulation of their Greek archetype in western and Slavonic countries. This archetype differs in many respects from the form in which it was republished by the editor of the entire work.

We may, in short, put this complex matter as follows: The conditions of the problem are sufficiently satisfied by supposing a single editor, who had three works at his disposal, the Martyrdom of Isaiah, of Jewish origin, and the Testament of Hezekiah and the Vision of Isaiah, of Christian origin. These he reduced or enlarged as it suited his purpose, and put them together as they stand in our text. Some of the editorial additions are obvious, as i. 2b-6a, 13a, ii. 9, iii. 13a, iv. 1a, 19-v. 1a, 15, 16, xi. 41-43.

Dates of the Various Constituents of the Ascension.—(a) The Martyrdom is quoted by the Opus Imperfectum, Ambrose, Jerome, Origen, Tertullian and by Justin Martyr. It was probably known to the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Thus we are brought back to the 1st century A.D. if the last reference is trustworthy. And this is no doubt the right date, for works written by Jews in the 2nd century would not be likely to become current in the Christian Church. (b) The Testament of Hezekiah was written between A.D. 88-100. The grounds for this date will be found in Charles, op. cit. pp. lxxi.-lxxii. and 30-31. (c) The Vision of Isaiah. The later recension of this Vision was used by Jerome, and a more primitive form of the text by the Archontici according to Epiphanius. It is still earlier attested by the Actus Petri Vercellenses. Since the Protevangel of James was apparently acquainted with it, and likewise Ignatius (ad. Ephes. xix.), the composition of the primitive form of the Vision goes back to the close of the 1st century.

The work of combining and editing these three independent writings may go back to early in the 3rd or even to the 2nd century.

Literature.—Editions of the Ethiopic Text: Laurence, Ascensio Isaiae vatis (1819); Dillmann, Ascensio Isaiae Aethiopice et Latine, cum prolegomenis, adnotationibus criticis et exegeticis, additis versionum Latinarum reliquiis edita (1877); Charles, Ascension of Isaiah, translated from the Ethiopic Version, which, together with the new Greek Fragment, the Latin Versions and the Latin translation of the Slavonic, is here published in full, edited with Introduction, Notes and Indices (1900); Flemming, in Hennecke’s NTliche Apok. 292-305; NTliche Apok.-Handbuch, 323-331. This translation is made from Charles’s text, and his analysis of the text is in the main accepted by this scholar. Translations: In addition to the translations given in the preceding editions, Basset, Les Apocryphes éthiopiens, iii. “L’Ascension d’Isaïe” (1894); Beer, Apok. und Pseud. (1900) ii. 124-127. The latter is a German rendering of ii.-iii. 1-12, v. 2-14, of Dillmann’s text. Critical Inquiries: Stokes, art. “Isaiah, Ascension of,” in Smith’s Dict. of Christian Biography (1882), iii. 298-301; Robinson, “The Ascension of Isaiah” in Hastings’ Bible Dict. ii. 499-501. For complete bibliography see Schürer,3 Gesch. des jüd. Volks, iii. 280-285; Charles, op. cit.

(R. H. C.)

1 Published by them in the Amherst Papyri, an account of the Greek papyri in the collection of Lord Amherst (1900), and by Charles in his edition.

ISANDHLWANA, an isolated hill in Zululand, 8 m. S.E. of Rorke’s Drift across the Tugela river, and 105 m. N. by W. of Durban. On the 22nd of January 1879 a British force encamped at the foot of the hill was attacked by about 10,000 Zulus, the flower of Cetewayo’s army, and destroyed. Of eight hundred Europeans engaged about forty escaped (see Zululand: History).

ISAR (identical with Isère, in Celtic “the rapid”), a river of Bavaria. It rises in the Tirolese Alps N.E. from Innsbruck, at an altitude of 5840 ft. It first winds in deep, narrow glens and gorges through the Alps, and at Tölz (2100 ft.), due north from its source, enters the Bavarian plain, which it traverses in a generally north and north-east direction, and pours its waters into the Danube immediately below Deggendorf after a course of 219 m. The area of its drainage basin is 38,200 sq. m. Below Munich the stream is 140 to 350 yards wide, and is studded with islands. It is not navigable, except for rafts. The total fall of the river is 4816 ft. The Isar is essentially the national stream of the Bavarians. It has belonged from the earliest times to the Bavarian people and traverses the finest corn land in the kingdom. On its banks lie the cities of Munich and Landshut, and the venerable episcopal see of Freising, and the inhabitants of the district it waters are reckoned the core of the Bavarian race.

See C. Gruber, Die Isar nach ihrer Entwickelung und ihren hydrologischen Verhältnissen (Munich, 1889); and Die Bedeutung der Isar als Verkehrsstrasse (Munich, 1890).

ISATIN, C8H5NO2, in chemistry, a derivative of indol, interesting on account of its relation to indigo; it may be regarded as the anhydride of ortho-aminobenzoylformic or isatinic acid. It crystallizes in orange red prisms which melt at 200-201° C. It may be prepared by oxidizing indigo with nitric or chromic acid (O. L. Erdmann, Jour. prak. Chem., 1841, 24, p. 11); by boiling ortho-nitrophenylpropiolic acid with alkalis (A. Baeyer, Ber., 1880, 13, p. 2259), or by oxidizing carbostyril with alkaline potassium permanganate (P. Friedlander and H. Ostermaier, Ber., 1881, 14, p. 1921). P. J. Meyer (German Patent 26736 (1883)) obtains substituted isatins by condensing para-toluidine with dichloracetic acid, oxidizing the product with air and then hydrolysing the oxidized product with hydrochloric acid. T. Sandmeyer (German Patents 113981 and 119831 (1899)) obtained isatin-α-anilide by condensing aniline with chloral hydrate and hydroxylamine, an intermediate product isonitrosodiphenylacetamidine being obtained, which is converted into isatin-α-anilide by sulphuric acid. This can be converted into indigo by reduction with ammonium sulphide. Isatin dissolved in concentrated sulphuric acid gives a blue coloration with thiophene, due to the formation of indophenin (see Abst. J.C.S., 1907). Concentrated nitric acid oxidizes it to oxalic acid, and alkali fusion yields aniline. It dissolves in soda forming a violet solution, which soon becomes yellow, a change due to the transformation of sodium N-isatin into sodium isatate, the aci-isatin salt being probably formed intermediately (Heller, Abst. J.C.S., 1907, i. p. 442). Most metallic salts are N-derivatives yielding N-methyl ethers; the silver salt is, however, an O-derivative, yielding an O-methyl ether (A. v. Baeyer, 1883; W. Peters, Abst. J.C.S., 1907, i. p. 239).

ISAURIA, in ancient geography, a district in the interior of Asia Minor, of very different extent at different periods. The permanent nucleus of it was that section of the Taurus which lies directly to south of Iconium and Lystra. Lycaonia had all the Iconian plain; but Isauria began as soon as the foothills were reached. Its two original towns, Isaura Nea and Isaura Palaea, lay, one among these foothills (Dorla) and the other on the watershed (Zengibar Kalé). When the Romans first encountered the Isaurians (early in the 1st century B.C.), they regarded Cilicia Trachea as part of Isauria, which thus extended to the sea; and this extension of the name continued to be in common use for two centuries. The whole basin of the Calycadnus was reckoned Isaurian, and the cities in the valley of its southern branch formed what was known as the Isaurian Decapolis. Towards the end of the 3rd century A.D., however, all Cilicia was detached for administrative purposes from the northern slope of Taurus, and we find a province called at first Isauria-Lycaonia, and later Isauria alone, extending up to the limits of Galatia, but not passing Taurus on the south. Pisidia, part of which had hitherto been included in one province with Isauria, was also detached, and made to include Iconium. In compensation Isauria received the eastern part of Pamphylia. Restricted again in the 4th century, Isauria ended as it began by being just the wild district about Isaura Palaea and the heads of the Calycadnus. Isaura Palaea was besieged by Perdiccas, the Macedonian regent after Alexander’s death; and to avoid capture its citizens set the place alight and perished in the flames. During the war of the Cilician and other pirates against Rome, the Isaurians took so active a part that the proconsul P. Servilius deemed it necessary to follow them into their fastnesses, and compel the whole people to submission, an exploit for which he received the title of Isauricus (75 B.C.). The Isaurians were afterwards placed for a time under the rule of Amyntas, king of Galatia; but it is evident that they continued to retain their predatory habits and virtual independence. In the 3rd century they sheltered the rebel emperor, Trebellianus. In the 4th century they are still described by Ammianus Marcellinus as the scourge of the neighbouring provinces of Asia Minor; but they are said to have been effectually subdued in the reign of Justinian. In common with all the eastern Taurus, Isauria passed into the hands of Turcomans and Yuruks with the Seljuk conquest. Many of these have now coalesced with the aboriginal population and form a settled element: but the district is still lawless.

This comparatively obscure people had the honour of producing two Byzantine emperors, Zeno, whose native name was Traskalisseus Rousoumbladeotes, and Leo III., who ascended the throne of Constantinople in 718, reigned till 741, and became the founder of a dynasty of three generations. The ruins of Isaura Palaea are mainly remarkable for their fine situation and their fortifications and tombs. Those of Isaura Nea have disappeared, but numerous inscriptions and many sculptured stelae, built into the houses of Dorla, prove the site. It was the latter, and not the former town, that Servilius reduced by cutting off the water supply. The site was identified by W. M. Ramsay in 1901. The only modern exploration of highland Isauria was that made by J. S. Sterrett in 1885; but it was not exhaustive.

Bibliography.—W. M. Ramsay, Historical Geography of Asia Minor (1890), and article “Nova Isaura” in Journ. Hell. Studies (1905); A. M. Ramsay, ibid. (1904); J. R. S. Sterrett, “Wolfe Expedition to Asia Minor,” Papers Amer. Inst. of Arch. iii. (1888); C. Ritter, Erdkunde, xix. (1859); E. J. Davis, Life in As. Turkey (1879).

(D. G. H.)

ISCHIA (Gr. Πιθηκοῦσα, Lat. Aenaria, in poetry Inarime), an island off the coast of Campania, Italy, 16 m. S.W. of Naples, to the province of which it belongs, and 7 m. S.W. of the Capo Miseno, the nearest point of the mainland. Pop. about 20,000. It is situated at the W. extremity of the Gulf of Naples, and is the largest island near Naples, measuring about 19 m. in circumference and 26 sq. m. in area. It belongs to the same volcanic system as the mainland near it, and the Monte Epomeo (anc. Ἐπωπεύς, viewpoint), the highest point of the island (2588 ft.), lies on the N. edge of the principal crater, which is surrounded by twelve smaller cones. The island was perhaps occupied by Greek settlers even before Cumae; its Eretrian and Chalcidian inhabitants abandoned it about 500 B.C. owing to an eruption, and it is said to have been deserted almost at once by the greater part of the garrison which Hiero I. of Syracuse had placed there about 470 B.C., owing to the same cause. Later on it came into the possession of Naples, but passed into Roman hands in 326, when Naples herself lost her independence. The ancient town, traces of the fortifications of which still exist, was situated near Lacco, at the N.W. corner of the island. Augustus gave it back to Naples in exchange for Capri. After the fall of Rome it suffered attacks and devastations from the successive masters of Italy, until it was finally taken by the Neapolitans in 1299.

Several eruptions are recorded in Roman times. The last of which we have any knowledge occurred in 1301, but the island was visited by earthquakes in 1881 and 1883, 1700 lives being lost in the latter year, when the town of Casamicciola on the north side of the island was almost entirely destroyed. The hot springs here, which still survive from the period of volcanic activity, rise at a temperature of 147° Fahr. and are alkaline and saline; they are much visited by bathers, especially in summer. They were known in Roman times, and many votive altars dedicated to Apollo and the nymphs have been found. The whole island is mountainous, and is remarkable for its beautiful scenery and its fertility. Wine, corn, oil and fruit are produced, especially the former, while the mountain slopes are clothed with woods. Tiles and pottery are made in the island. Straw-plaiting is a considerable industry at Lacco; and a certain amount of fishing is also done. The potter’s clay of Ischia served for the potteries of Cumae and Puteoli in ancient times, and was indeed in considerable demand until the catastrophe at Casamicciola in 1883.

The chief towns are Ischia on the E. coast, the capital and the seat of a bishop (pop. in 1901, town, 2756; commune, 7012), with a 15th-century castle, to which Vittoria Colonna retired after the death of her husband in 1525; Casamicciola (pop. in 1901, town, 1085; commune, 3731) on the north, and Forīo on the west coast (pop. in 1901, town, 3640; commune, 7197). There is regular communication with Naples, both by steamer direct, and also by steamer to Torregaveta, 2 m. W.S.W. of Baiae and 12½ m. W.S.W. of Naples, and thence by rail.

See J. Beloch, Campanien (Breslau, 1890), 202 sqq.

(T. As.)

ISCHL, a market-town and watering-place of Austria, in Upper Austria, 55 m. S.S.W. of Linz by rail. Pop. (1900) 9646. It is beautifully situated on the peninsula formed by the junction of the rivers Ischl and Traun and is surrounded by high mountains, presenting scenery of the finest description. To the S. is the Siriuskogl or Hundskogl (1960 ft.), and to the W. the Schafberg (5837 ft.), which is ascended from St Wolfgang by a rack-and-pinion railway, built in 1893. It possesses a fine parish church, built by Maria Theresa and renovated in 1877-1880, and the Imperial Villa is surrounded by a magnificent park. Ischl is one of the most fashionable spas of Europe, being the favourite summer residence of the Austrian Imperial family and of the Austrian nobility since 1822. It has saline and sulphureous drinking springs and numerous brine and brine-vapour baths. The brine used at Ischl contains about 25% of salt and there are also mud, sulphur and pine-cone baths. Ischl is situated at an altitude of 1533 ft. above sea-level and has a very mild climate. Its mean annual temperature is 49.4° F. and its mean summer temperature is 63.5° F. Ischl is an important centre of the salt industry and 4 m. to its W. is a celebrated salt mine, which has been worked as early as the 12th century.

ISEO, LAKE OF (the Lacus Sebinus of the Romans), a lake in Lombardy, N. Italy, situated at the southern foot of the Alps, and between the provinces of Bergamo and Brescia. It is formed by the Oglio river, which enters the northern extremity of the lake of Lovere, and issues from the southern end at Sarnico, on its way to join the Po. The area of the lake is about 24 sq. m., it is 17½ m. in length, and 3 m. wide in the broadest portion, while the greatest depth is said to be about 984 ft. and the height of its surface above sea-level 607 ft. It contains one large island, that of Siviano, which culminates in the Monte Isola (1965 ft.) that is crowned by a chapel, while to the south is the islet of San Paolo, occupied by the buildings of a small Franciscan convent now abandoned, and to the north the equally tiny island of Loreto, with a ruined chapel containing frescoes. At the southern end of the lake are the small towns of Iseo (15 m. by rail N.W. of Brescia) and of Sarnico. From Paratico, opposite Sarnico, on the other or left bank of the Oglio, a railway runs in 6¼ m. to Palazzolo, on the main Brescia-Bergamo line. Towards the head of the lake, the deep wide valley of the Oglio is seen, dominated by the glittering snows of the Adamello (11,661 ft.), a glorious prospect. Along the east shore (the west shore is far more rugged) a fine carriage road rims from Iseo to the considerable town of Pisogne (13½ m.), situated at the northern end of the lake, and nearly opposite that of Lovere, on the right bank of the Oglio. The portion of this road some way S. of Pisogne is cleverly engineered, and is carried through several tunnels. The lake’s charms were celebrated by Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu, who spent ten summers (1747-1757) in a villa at Lovere, then much frequented by reason of an iron spring. The lake has several sardine and eel fisheries.

(W. A. B. C.)

ISÈRE [anc. Isara], one of the chief rivers in France as well as of those flowing down on the French side of the Alpine chain. Its total length from its source to its junction with the Rhône is about 180 m., during which it descends a height of about 7550 ft. Its drainage area is about 4725 sq. m. It flows through the departments of Savoie, Isère and Drôme. This river rises in the Galise glaciers in the French Graian Alps and flows, as a mountain torrent, through a narrow valley past Tignes in a north-westerly direction to Bourg St Maurice, at the western foot of the Little St Bernard Pass. It now bends S.W., as far as Moutiers, the chief town of the Tarentaise, as the upper course of the Isère is named. Here it again turns N.W. as far as Albertville, where after receiving the Arly (right) it once more takes a south-westerly direction, and near St Pierre d’Albigny receives its first important tributary, the Arc (left), a wild mountain stream flowing through the Maurienne and past the foot of the Mont Cenis Pass. A little way below, at Montmélian, it becomes officially navigable (for about half of its course), though it is but little used for that purpose owing to the irregular depth of its bed and the rapidity of its current. Very probably, in ancient days, it flowed from Montmélian N.W. and, after passing through or forming the Lac du Bourget, joined the Rhône. But at present it continues from Montmélian in a south-westerly direction, flowing through the broad and fertile valley of the Graisivaudan, though receiving but a single affluent of any importance, the Bréda (left). At Grenoble, the most important town on its banks, it bends for a short distance again N.W. But just below that town it receives by far its most important affluent (left) the Drac, which itself drains the entire S. slope of the lofty snow-clad Dauphiné Alps, and which, 11 m. above Grenoble, had received the Romanche (right), a mountain stream which drains the entire central and N. portion of the same Alps. Hence the Drac is, at its junction with the Isère, a stream of nearly the same volume, while these two rivers, with the Durance, drain practically the entire French slope of the Alpine chain, the basins of the Arve and of the Var forming the sole exceptions. A short distance below Moirans the Isère changes its direction for the last time and now flows S.W. past Romans before joining the Rhône on the left, as its principal affluent after the Saône and the Durance, between Tournon and Valence. The Isère is remarkable for the way in which it changes its direction, forming three great loops of which the apex is respectively at Bourg St Maurice, Albertville and Moirans. For some way after its junction with the Rhône the grey troubled current of the Isère can be distinguished in the broad and peaceful stream of the Rhône.

(W. A. B. C )

ISÈRE, a department of S.E. France, formed in 1790 out of the northern part of the old province of Dauphiné. Pop. (1906) 562,315. It is bounded N. by the department of the Ain, E. by that of Savoie, S. by those of the Hautes Alpes and the Drôme and W. by those of the Loire and the Rhône. Its area is 3179 sq. m. (surpassed only by 7 other departments), while its greatest length is 93 m. and its greatest breadth 53 m. The river Isère runs for nearly half its course through this department, to which it gives its name. The southern portion of the department is very mountainous, the loftiest summit being the Pic Lory (13,396 ft.) in the extensive snow-clad Oisans group (drained by the Drac and Romanche, two mighty mountain torrents), while minor groups are those of Belledonne, of Allevard, of the Grandes Rousses, of the Dévoluy, of the Trièves, of the Royannais, of the Vercors and, slightly to the north of the rest, that of the Grande Chartreuse. The northern portion of the department is composed of plateaux, low hills and plains, while on every side but the south it is bounded by the course of the Rhône. It forms the bishopric of Grenoble (dating from the 4th century), till 1790 in the ecclesiastical province of Vienne, and now in that of Lyons. The department is divided into four arrondissements (Grenoble, St Marcellin, La Tour du Pin and Vienne), 45 cantons and 563 communes. Its capital is Grenoble, while other important towns in it are the towns of Vienne, St Marcellin and La Tour du Pin. It is well supplied with railways (total length 342 m.), which give access to Gap, to Chambéry, to Lyons, to St Rambert and to Valence, while it also possesses many tramways (total length over 200 m.). It contains silver, lead, coal and iron mines, as well as extensive slate, stone and marble quarries, besides several mineral springs (Allevard, Uriage and La Motte). The forests cover much ground, while among the most flourishing industries are those of glove making, cement, silk weaving and paper making. The area devoted to agriculture (largely in the fertile valley of the Graisivaudan, or Isère, N.E. of Grenoble) is about 1211 sq. m.

(W. A. B. C.)

ISERLOHN, a town in the Prussian province of Westphalia, on the Baar, in a bleak and hilly region, 17 m. W. of Arnsberg, and 30 m. E.N.E. from Barmen by rail. Pop. (1900) 27,265. Iserlohn is one of the most important manufacturing towns in Westphalia. Both in the town and neighbourhood there are numerous foundries and works for iron, brass, steel and bronze goods, while other manufactures include wire, needles and pins, fish-hooks, machinery, umbrella-frames, thimbles, bits, furniture, chemicals, coffee-mills, and pinchbeck and britannia-metal goods. Iserlohn is a very old town, its gild of armourers being referred to as “ancient” in 1443.

ISFAHĀN (older form Ispahān), the name of a Persian province and town. The province is situated in the centre of the country, and bounded S. by Fars, E. by Yezd, N. by Kashān, Natanz and Irāk, and W. by the Bakhtiāri district and Arabistān. It pays a yearly revenue of about £100,000, and its population exceeds 500,000. It is divided into twenty-five districts, its capital, the town of Isfahān, forming one of them. These twenty-five districts, some very small and consisting of only a little township and a few hamlets, are Isfahān, Jai, Barkhār, Kahāb, Kararaj, Baraān, Rūdasht, Marbin, Lenjān, Kerven, Rār, Kiar, Mizdej, Ganduman, Somairam, Jarkūyeh, Ardistan, Kūhpāyeh, Najafabad, Komisheh, Chadugan, Varzek, Tokhmaklu, Gurji, Chinarūd. Most of these districts are very fertile, and produce great quantities of wheat, barley, rice, cotton, tobacco and opium. Lenjān, west of the city of Isfahān, is the greatest rice-producing district; the finest cotton comes from Jarkūyeh; the best opium and tobacco from the villages in the vicinity of the city.

The town of Isfahān or Ispahān, formerly the capital of Persia, now the capital of the province, is situated on the Zāyendeh river in 32° 39′ N. and 51° 40′ E.1 at an elevation of 5370 ft. Its population, excluding that of the Armenian colony of Julfa on the right or south bank of the river (about 4000), is estimated at 100,000 (73,654, including 5883 Jews, in 1882). The town is divided into thirty-seven mahallehs (parishes) and has 210 mosques and colleges (many half ruined), 84 caravanserais, 150 public baths and 68 flour mills. The water supply is principally from open canals led off from the river and from several streams and canals which come down from the hills in the north-west. The name of the Isfahān river was originally Zendeh (Pahlavi zendek) rūd, “the great river”; it was then modernized into Zindeh-rūd, “the living river,” and is now called Zayendeh rūd, “the life-giving river.” Its principal source is the Janāneh rūd which rises on the eastern slope of the Zardeh Kuh about 90 to 100 m. W. of Isfahān. After receiving the Khursang river from Feridan on the north and the Zarīn rūd from Chaharmahal on the south it is called Zendeh rūd. It then waters the Lenjan and Marbin districts, passes Isfahān as Zayendeh-rūd and 70 m. farther E. ends in the Gavkhani depression. From its entrance into Lenjan to its end 105 canals are led off from it for purposes of irrigation and 14 bridges cross it (5 at Isfahān). Its volume of water at Isfahān during the spring season has been estimated at 60,000 cub. ft. per second; in autumn the quantity is reduced to one-third, but nearly all of it being then used for feeding the irrigation canals very little is left for the river bed. The town covers about 20 sq. m., but many parts of it are in ruins. The old city walls—a ruined mud curtain—are about 5 m. in circumference.

Of the many fine public buildings constructed by the Sefavis and during the reign of the present dynasty very little remains. There are still standing in fairly good repair the two palaces named respectively Chehel Sitūn, “the forty pillars,” and Hasht Behesht, “the eight paradises,” the former constructed by Shah Abbas I. (1587-1629), the latter by Shah Soliman in 1670, and restored and renovated by Fath Ali Shah (1797-1834). They are ornamented with gilding and mirrors in every possible variety of Arabesque decoration, and large and brilliant pictures, representing scenes of Persian history, cover the walls of their principal apartments and have been ascribed in many instances to Italian and Dutch artists who are known to have been in the service of the Sefavis. Attached to these palaces were many other buildings such as the Imaretino built by Amīn ed-Dowleh (or Addaula) for Fath Ali Shah, the Imaret i Ashref built by Ashref Khan, the Afghan usurper, the Talār Tavīleh, Guldasteh, Sarpushīdeh, &c., erected in the early part of the 19th century by wealthy courtiers for the convenience of the sovereign and often occupied as residences of European ministers travelling between Bushire and Teheran and by other distinguished travellers. Perhaps the most agreeable residence of all was the Haft Dast, “the seven courts,” in the beautiful garden of Saādetabad on the southern bank of the river, and 2 or 3 m. from the centre of the city. This palace was built by Shah Abbas II. (1642-1667), and Fath Ali Shad Kajār died there in 1834. Close to it was the Aineh Khaneh, “hall of mirrors” and other elegant buildings in the Hazar jerib (1000 acre) garden. All these palaces and buildings on both sides of the river were surrounded by extensive gardens, traversed by avenues of tall trees, principally planes, and intersected by paved canals of running water with tanks and fountains. Since Fath Ali Shah’s death, palaces and gardens have been neglected. In 1902 an official was sent from Teheran to inspect the crown buildings, to report on their condition, and repair and renovate some, &c. The result was that all the above-mentioned buildings, excepting the Chehel Sitūn and Hasht Behesht, were demolished and their timber, bricks, stone, &c., sold to local builders. The gardens are wildernesses. The garden of the Chehel Sitūn palace opens out through the Alā Kapū (“highest gate, sublime porte”) to the Maidān-i-Shah, which is one of the most imposing piazzas in the world, a parallelogram of 560 yds. (N.-S.) by 174 yds. (E.-W.) surrounded by brick buildings divided into two storeys of recessed arches, or arcades, one above the other. In front of these arcades grow a few stunted planes and poplars. On the south side of the maidan is the famous Masjed i Shah (the shah’s mosque) erected by Shah Abbas I. in 1612-1613. It is covered with glazed tiles of great brilliancy and richly decorated with gold and silver ornaments and cost over £175,000. It is in good repair, and plans of it were published by C. Texier (L’Arménie, la Perse, &c., vol. i. pls. 70-72) and P. Coste (Monuments de la Perse). On the eastern side of the maidan stands the Masjed i Lutf Ullah with beautiful enamelled tiles and in good repair. Opposite to it on the western side of the maidan is the Alā Kapū, a lofty building in the form of an archway overlooking the maidan and crowned in the fore part by an immense open throne-room supported by wooden columns, while the hinder part is elevated three storeys higher. On the north side of the maidan is the entrance gate to the main bazaar surmounted by the Nekkāreh-Khaneh, or drumhouse, where is blared forth the appalling music saluting the rising and setting sun, said to have been instituted by Jamshīd many thousand years ago. West of the Chehel Sitūn palace and conducting N.-S. from the centre of the city to the great bridge of Allah Verdi Khan is the great avenue nearly a mile in length called Chahār Bagh, “the four gardens,” recalling the fact that it was originally occupied by four vineyards which Shah Abbas I. rented at £360 a year and converted into a splendid approach to his capital.

It was thus described by Lord Curzon of Kedleston in 1880: “Of all the sights of Isfahān, this in its present state is the most pathetic in the utter and pitiless decay of its beauty. Let me indicate what it was and what it is. At the upper extremity a two-storeyed pavilion,2 connected by a corridor with the Seraglio of the palace, so as to enable the ladies of the harem to gaze unobserved upon the merry scene below, looked out upon the centre of the avenue. Water, conducted in stone channels, ran down the centre, falling in miniature cascades from terrace to terrace, and was occasionally collected in great square or octagonal basins where cross roads cut the avenue. On either side of the central channel was a row of oriental planes and a paved pathway for pedestrians. Then occurred a succession of open parterres, usually planted or sown. Next on either side was a second row of planes, between which and the flanking walls was a raised causeway for horsemen. The total breadth is now fifty-two yards. At intervals corresponding with the successive terraces and basins, arched doorways with recessed open chambers overhead conducted through these walls into the various royal or noble gardens that stretched on either side, and were known as the Gardens of the Throne, of the Nightingale, of Vines, of Mulberries, Dervishes, &c. Some of these pavilions were places of public resort and were used as coffee-houses, where when the business of the day was over, the good burghers of Isfahān assembled to sip that beverage and inhale their kalians the while; as Fryer puts it: ’Night drawing on, all the pride of Spahaun was met in the Chaurbaug and the Grandees were Airing themselves, prancing about with their numerous Trains, striving to outvie each other in Pomp and Generosity.’ At the bottom, quays lined the banks of the river, and were bordered with the mansions of the nobility.”

Such was the Chahar Bagh in the plenitude of its fame. But now what a tragical contrast! The channels are empty, their stone borders crumbled and shattered, the terraces are broken down, the parterres are unsightly bare patches, the trees, all lopped and pollarded, have been chipped and hollowed out or cut down for fuel by the soldiery of the Zil, the side pavilions are abandoned and tumbling to pieces and the gardens are wildernesses. Two centuries of decay could never make the Champs Élysées in Paris, the Unter den Linden in Berlin, or Rotten Row in London, look one half as miserable as does the ruined avenue of Shah Abbas. It is in itself an epitome of modern Iran.”

Towards the upper end of the avenue on its eastern side stands the medresseh (college) which Shah Hosain built in 1710. It still has a few students, but is very much out of repair; Lord Curzon spoke of it in 1888 as “one of the stateliest ruins that he saw in Persia.” South of this college the avenue is altogether without trees, and the gardens on both sides have been turned into barley fields. Among the other notable buildings of Isfahān must be reckoned its five bridges, all fine structures, and one of them, the bridge of Allah Verdi Kahn, 388 yds. in length with a paved roadway of 30 ft. in breadth, is one of the stateliest bridges in the world, and has suffered little by the march of decay.

Another striking feature of Isfahān is the line of covered bazaars, which extends for nearly 3 m. and divides the city from south to north. The confluence of people in these bazaars is certainly very great, and gives an exaggerated idea of the populousness of the city, the truth being that while the inhabitants congregate for business in the bazaars, the rest of the city is comparatively deserted. When surveyed from a commanding height within the city, or in the immediate environs, the enormous extent of mingled garden and building, about 30 m. in circuit, gives an impression of populousness and busy life, but a closer scrutiny reveals that the whole scene is nothing more than a gigantic sham. With the exception of the bazaars and a few parishes there is really no continuous inhabited area. Whole streets, whole quarters of the city have fallen into utter ruin and are absolutely deserted, and the traveller who is bent on visiting some of the remarkable sites in the northern part of the city or in the western suburbs, such as the minarets dating from the 12th century, the remains of the famous castle of Tabarrak built by the Buyid Rukn addaula (d. 976), the ruins of the old fire temple, the shaking minarets of Guladān, &c., has to pass through miles of crumbling mud walls and roofless houses. It is believed indeed that not a twentieth part of the area of the old city is at present peopled, and the million or 600,000 inhabitants of Chardin’s time (middle of the 17th century) have now dwindled to about 85,000. The Armenian suburb of Julfa, at any rate, which contained a population of 30,000 souls in the 17th century, has now only 4000, and the Christian churches, which numbered thirteen and were maintained with splendour, are now reduced to half a dozen edifices with bare walls and empty benches. Much improvement has recently taken place in the education of the young and also in their religious teaching, the wealthy Armenians of India and Java having liberally contributed to the national schools, and the Church Missionary Society of London having a church, schools and hospitals there since 1869.

The people of Isfahān have a very poor reputation in Persia either for courage or morals. They are regarded as a clever but at the same time dissolute and disorderly community, whose government requires a strong hand. The lutis (hooligans) of Isfahān are proverbial as the most turbulent and rowdy set of vagabonds in Persia. The priesthood of Isfahān are much respected for their learning and high character, and the merchants are a very respectable class. The commerce of Isfahān has greatly fallen off from its former flourishing condition, and it is doubtful whether the trade of former days can ever be restored.

(A. H.-S.)

History.—The natural advantages of Isfahān—a genial climate, a fertile soil and abundance of water for irrigation—must have always made it a place of importance. In the most ancient cuneiform documents, referring to a period between 3000 and 2000 B.C., the province of Anshan, which certainly included Isfahān, was the limit of the geographical knowledge of the Babylonians, typifying the extreme east, as Syria (or Martu-ki) typified the west. The two provinces of Anshan and Subarta, by which we must understand the country from Isfahān to Shuster, were ruled in those remote ages by the same king, who undoubtedly belonged to the great Turanian family; and from this first notice of Anshan down to the 7th century B.C. the region seems to have remained, more or less, dependent on the paramount power of Susa. With regard to the eastern frontier of Anshan, however, ethnic changes were probably in extensive operation during this interval of twenty centuries. The western Iranians, for instance, after separating from their eastern brethren on the Oxus, as early perhaps as 3000 B.C., must have followed the line of the Elburz mountains, and then bifurcating into two branches must have scattered, westward into Media and southward towards Persia. The first substantial settlement of the southern branch would seem then to have been at Isfahān, where Jem, the eponym of the Persian race, is said to have founded a famous castle, the remains of which were visible as late as the 10th century A.D. This castle is known in the Zoroastrian writings as Jem-gird, but its proper name was Sarū or Sarūk (given in the Bundahish as Sruwa or Srobak), and it was especially famous in early Mahommedan history as the building where the ancient records and tables of the Persians were discovered which proved of so much use to Albumazar and his contemporaries. A valuable tradition, proceeding from quite a different source, has also been preserved to the effect that Jem, who invented the original Persian character, “dwelt in Assan, a district of Shuster” (see Flügel’s Fihrist, p. 12, l. 21), which exactly accords with the Assyrian notices of Assan or Anshan classed as a dependency of Elymais. Now, it is well known that native legend represented the Persian race to have been held in bondage for a thousand years, after the reign of Jem, by the foreign usurper Zohāk or Bīverasp, a period which may well represent the duration of Elymaean supremacy over the Aryans of Anshan. At the commencement of the 7th century B.C. Persia and Ansan are still found in the annals of Sennacherib amongst the tributaries of Elymais, confederated against Assyria; but shortly afterwards the great Susian monarchy, which had lasted for full 2000 years, crumbled away under continued pressure from the west, and the Aryans of Anshan recovered their independence, founding for the first time a national dynasty, and establishing their seat of government at Gabae on the site of the modern city of Isfahān.

The royal city of Gabae was known as a foundation of the Achaemenidae as late as the time of Strabo, and the inscriptions show that Achaemenes and his successors did actually rule at Anshan until the great Cyrus set out on his career of western victory. Whether the Kābi or Kāvi of tradition, the blacksmith of Isfahān, who is said to have headed the revolt against Zohāk, took his name from the town of Gabae may be open to question; but it is at any rate remarkable that the national standard of the Persian race, named after the blacksmith, and supposed to have been first unfurled at this epoch, retained the title of Darafsh-a Kavāni (the banner of Kāvi) to the time of the Arab conquest, and that the men of Isfahān were, moreover, throughout this long period, always especially charged with its protection. The provincial name of Anshan or Assan seems to have been disused in the country after the age of Cyrus, and to have been replaced by that of Gabene or Gabiane, which alone appears in the Greek accounts of the wars of Alexander and his successors, and in the geographical descriptions of Strabo. Gabae or Gāvi became gradually corrupted to Jaī during the Sassanian period, and it was thus by the latter name that the old city of Isfahān was generally known at the time of the Arab invasion. Subsequently the title of Jaī became replaced by Sheheristān or Medīneh, “the city” par excellence, while a suburb which had been founded in the immediate vicinity, and which took the name of Yahudīeh, or the “Jews’ town,” from its original Jewish inhabitants, gradually rose into notice and superseded the old capital.3

Sheheristān and Yahudīeh are thus in the early ages of Islam described as independent cities, the former being the eastern and the latter the western division of the capital, each surrounded by a separate wall; but about the middle of the 10th century the famous Buyid king, known as the Rukn-addaula (al-Dowleh), united the two suburbs and many of the adjoining villages in one general enclosure which was about 10 m. in circumference. The city, which had now resumed its old name of Isfahān, continued to flourish till the time of Timur (A.D. 1387), when in common with so many other cities of the empire it suffered grievously at the hands of the Tatar invaders. Timur indeed is said to have erected a Kelleh Minār or “skull tower” of 70,000 heads at the gate of the city, as a warning to deter other communities from resisting his arms. The place, however, owing to its natural advantages, gradually recovered from the effects of this terrible visitation, and when the Safavid dynasty, who succeeded to power in the 16th century, transferred their place of residence to it from Kazvin, it rose rapidly in populousness and wealth. It was under Shah Abbas the first, the most illustrious sovereign of this house, that Isfahān attained its greatest prosperity. This monarch adopted every possible expedient, by stimulating commerce, encouraging arts and manufactures, and introducing luxurious habits, to attract visitors to his favourite capital. He built several magnificent palaces in the richest style of Oriental decoration, planted gardens and avenues, and distributed amongst them the waters of the Zendeh-rūd in an endless series of reservoirs, fountains and cascades. The baths, the mosques, the colleges, the bazaars and the caravanserais of the city received an equal share of his attention, and European artificers and merchants were largely encouraged to settle in his capital. Ambassadors visited his court from many of the first states of Europe, and factories were permanently established for the merchants of England, France, Holland, the Hanseatic towns, Spain, Portugal and Moscow. The celebrated traveller Chardin, who passed a great portion of his life at Isfahān in the latter half of the 17th century, has left a detailed and most interesting account of the statistics of the city at that period. He himself estimated the population at 600,000, though in popular belief the number exceeded a million. There were 1500 flourishing villages in the immediate neighbourhood; the enceinte of the city and suburbs was reckoned at 24 m., while the mud walls surrounding the city itself, probably nearly following the lines of the Buyid enclosure, measured 20,000 paces. In the interior were counted 162 mosques, 48 public colleges, 1802 caravanserais, 273 baths and 12 cemeteries. The adjoining suburb of Julfa was also a most flourishing place. Originally founded by Shah Abbas the Great, who transported to this locality 3400 Armenian families from the town of Julfa on the Arras, the colony increased rapidly under his fostering care, both in wealth and in numbers, the Christian population being estimated in 1685 at 30,000 souls. The first blow to the prosperity of modern Isfahān was given by the Afghan invasion at the beginning of the 18th century, since which date, although continuing for some time to be the nominal head of the empire, the city has gradually dwindled in importance, and now only ranks as a second or third rate provincial capital. When the Kajar dynasty indeed mounted the throne of Persia at the end of the 18th century the seat of government was at once transferred to Teherān, with a view to the support of the royal tribe, whose chief seat was in the neighbouring province of Mazenderān; and, although it has often been proposed, from considerations of state policy in reference to Russia, to re-establish the court at Isfahān, which is the true centre of Persia, the scheme has never commanded much attention. At the same time the government of Isfahān, owing to the wealth of the surrounding districts, has always been much sought after. Early in the 19th century the post was often conferred upon some powerful minister of the court, but in later times it has been usually the apanage of a favourite son or brother of the reigning sovereign.4 Fath Ali Shāh, who had a particular affection for Isfahān, died here in 1834, and it became a time-honoured custom for the monarch on the throne to seek relief from the heat of Teherān by forming a summer camp at the rich pastures of Gandumān, on the skirts of Zardeh-Kuh, to the west of Isfahān, for the exercise of his troops and the health and amusement of his courtiers, but in recent years the practice has been discontinued.

(H. C. R.)

1 These figures are approximate for the centre of the town north of the river. The result of astronomical observations taken by the German expedition for observing the transit of Venus in 1874 and by Sir O. St John in 1870 on the south bank of the river near, and in Julfa respectively was 51° 40′ 3.45″ E., 32° 37′ 30″ N. The stone slab commemorating the work of the expedition and placed on the spot where the observations were taken has been carried off and now serves as a door plinth of an Armenian house.

2 This pavilion was the Persian telegraph office of Isfahān for nearly forty years and was demolished in 1903.

3 The name of Yahudīeh or “Jews’ town” is derived by the early Arab geographers from a colony of Jews who are said to have migrated from Babylonia to Isfahān shortly after Nebuchadrezzar’s conquest of Jerusalem, but this is pure fable. The Jewish settlement really dates from the 3rd century A.D. as is shown by a notice in the Armenian history of Moses of Chorene, lib. iii. cap. 35. The name Isfahān has been generally compared with the Aspadana of Ptolemy in the extreme north of Persis, and the identification is probably correct. At any rate the title is of great antiquity being found in the Bundahish, and being derived in all likelihood from the family name of the race of Feridūn, the Athviyān of romance, who were entitled Aspiyān in Pahlavi, according to the phonetic rules of that language.

4 Zill es Sultan, elder brother of Muzafar ed d-n Shah, became governor-general of the Isfahān province in 1869.

ISHIM, a town of West Siberia, in the government of Tobolsk, 180 m. N.W. of Omsk, on a river of the same name, tributary, on the left, of the Irtysh. Pop. (1897) 7161. The town, which was founded in 1630, has tallow-melting and carries on a large trade in rye and rye flour. The fair is one of the most important in Siberia, its returns being estimated at £500,000 annually.

ISHMAEL (a Hebrew name meaning “God hears”), in the Bible, the son of Abraham by his Egyptian concubine Hagar, and the eponym of a number of (probably) nomadic tribes living outside Palestine. Hagar in turn personifies a people found to the east of Gilead (1 Chron. v. 10) and Petra (Strabo).1 Through the jealousy of Sarah, Abraham’s wife, mother and son were driven away, and they wandered in the district south of Beersheba and Kadesh (Gen. xvi. J, xxi. E); see Abraham. It had been foretold to his mother before his birth that he should be “a wild ass among men,” and that he should dwell “before the face of” (that is, to the eastward of) his brethren. It is subsequently stated that after leaving his father’s roof he “became an archer,2 and dwelt in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt.” But the genealogical relations were rather with the Edomites, Midianites and other peoples of North Arabia and the eastern desert than with Egypt proper, and this is indicated by the expressions that “they dwelt from Havilah unto Shur that is east of Egypt, and he settled to the eastward of his brethren” (see Mizraim). Like Jacob, the ancestor of the Israelites, he had twelve sons (xxv. 12-18, P), of which only a few have historical associations apart from the biblical records. Nebaioth and Kedar suggest the Nabataei and Cedrei of Pliny (v. 12). the first-mentioned of whom were an important Arab people after the time of Alexander (see Nabataeans). The names correspond to the Nabaitu and Kidru of the Assyrian inscriptions occupying the desert east of the Jordan and Dead Sea, whilst the Massa and Tema lay probably farther south. Dumah may perhaps be the same as the Domata of Pliny (vi. 32) and the Δούμεθα or Δουμαίθα of Ptolemy (v. 19, 7, viii. 22, 3)—Sennacherib conquered a fortress of “Aribi” named Adumu,—and Jetur is obviously the Ituraea of classical geographers.3

“Ishmael,” therefore, is used in a wide sense of the wilder, roving peoples encircling Canaan from the north-east to the south, related to but on a lower rank than the “sons” of Isaac. It is practically identical with the term “Arabia” as used by the Assyrians. Nothing certain is known of the history of these mixed populations. They arc represented as warlike nomads and with a certain reputation for wisdom (Baruch iii. 23). Not improbably they spoke a dialect (or dialects) akin to Arabic or Aramaic.4 According to the Mahommedans, Ishmael, who is recognized as their ancestor, lies buried with his mother in the Kaaba in Mecca. See further, T. Nöldeke, Ency. Bib., s.v., and the articles Edom, Midian.

(S. A. C.)

1 On Paul’s use of the story of Hagar (Gal. iv. 24-26), see Ency. Bib. col. 1934; and H. St J. Thackeray, Relation of St Paul to contemporary Jewish Thought (London, 1900), pp. 196 sqq.; Hagar typifies the old Sinaitic covenant, and Sarah represents the new covenant of freedom from bondage. The treatment of the concubine and her son in Gen. xvi. compared with ch. xxi. illustrates old Hebrew customs, on which see further S. A. Cook, Laws of Moses, &c. (London, 1903), pp. 116 sqq., 140 sq.

2 The Ituraean archers were of Jetur, one of the “sons” of Ishmael (Gen. xxv. 15), and were Roman mercenaries, perhaps even in Great Britain (Pal. Expl. Fund, Q.S., 1909, p. 283).

3 With Adbeel (Gen. xxv. 13) may be identified Idibi’il (-ba’il) a tribe employed by Tiglath-Pileser IV. (733 B.C.) to watch the frontier of Musri (Sinaitic peninsula or N. Arabia?).

4 This is suggested by the fact that Ashurbanipal (7th century) mentions as the name of their deity Atar-Samain (i.e. “Ishtar of the heavens”).

ISHPEMING, a city of Marquette county, Michigan, U.S.A., about 15 m. W. by S. of Marquette, in the N. part of the upper peninsula. Pop. (1890) 11,197; (1900) 13,255, of whom 5970 were foreign-born; (1904) 11,623; (1910) 12,448. It is served by the Chicago & North Western, the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic, and the Lake Superior and Ishpeming railways. The city is 1400 ft. above sea-level (whence its name, from an Ojibway Indian word, said to mean “high up”), in the centre of the Marquette Range iron district, and has seven mines within its limits; the mining of iron ore is its principal industry. Ishpeming was settled about 1854, and was incorporated as a city in 1873.

ISHTAR, or Ištar, the name of the chief goddess of Babylonia and Assyria, the counterpart of the Phoenician Astarte (q.v.). The meaning of the name is not known, though it is possible that the underlying stem is the same as that of Assur (q.v.), which would thus make her the “leading one” or “chief.” At all events it is now generally recognized that the name is Semitic in its origin. Where the name originated is likewise uncertain, but the indications point to Erech where we find the worship of a great mother-goddess independent of any association with a male counterpart flourishing in the oldest period of Babylonian history. She appears under various names, among which are Nanā, Innanna, Ninā and Anunit. As early as the days of Khammurabi we find these various names which represented originally different goddesses, though all manifest as the chief trait the life-giving power united in Ishtar. Even when the older names are employed it is always the great mother-goddess who is meant. Ishtar is the one goddess in the pantheon who retains her independent position despite and throughout all changes that the Babylonian-Assyrian religion undergoes. In a certain sense she is the only real goddess in the pantheon, the rest being mere reflections of the gods with whom they are associated as consorts. Even when Ishtar is viewed as the consort of some chief—of Marduk occasionally in the south, of Assur more frequently in the north—the consciousness that she has a personality of her own apart from this association is never lost sight of.

We may reasonably assume that the analogy drawn from the process of reproduction among men and animals led to the conception of a female deity presiding over the life of the universe. The extension of the scope of this goddess to life in general—to the growth of plants and trees from the fructifying seed—was a natural outcome of a fundamental idea; and so, whether we turn to incantations or hymns, in myths and in epics, in votive inscriptions and in historical annals, Ishtar is celebrated and invoked as the great mother, as the mistress of lands, as clothed in splendour and power—one might almost say as the personification of life itself.

But there are two aspects to this goddess of life. She brings forth, she fertilizes the fields, she clothes nature in joy and gladness, but she also withdraws her favours and when she does so the fields wither, and men and animals cease to reproduce. In place of life, barrenness and death ensue. She is thus also a grim goddess, at once cruel and destructive. We can, therefore, understand that she was also invoked as a goddess of war and battles and of the chase; and more particularly among the warlike Assyrians she assumes this aspect. Before the battle she appears to the army, clad in battle array and armed with bow and arrow. In myths symbolizing the change of seasons she is portrayed in this double character, as the life-giving and the life-depriving power. The most noteworthy of these myths describes her as passing through seven gates into the nether world. At each gate some of her clothing and her ornaments are removed until at the last gate she is entirely naked. While she remains in the nether world as a prisoner—whether voluntary or involuntary it is hard to say—all fertility ceases on earth, but the time comes when she again returns to earth, and as she passes each gate the watchman restores to her what she had left there until she is again clad in her full splendour, to the joy of mankind and of all nature. Closely allied with this myth and personifying another view of the change of seasons is the story of Ishtar’s love for Tammuz—symbolizing the spring time—but as midsummer approaches her husband is slain and, according to one version, it is for the purpose of saving Tammuz from the clutches of the goddess of the nether world that she enters upon her journey to that region.

In all the great centres Ishtar had her temples, bearing such names as E-anna, “heavenly house,” in Erech; E-makh, “great house,” in Babylon; E-mash-mash, “house of offerings,” in Nineveh. Of the details of her cult we as yet know little, but there is no evidence that there were obscene rites connected with it, though there may have been certain mysteries introduced at certain centres which might easily impress the uninitiated as having obscene aspects. She was served by priestesses as well as by priests, and it would appear that the votaries of Ishtar were in all cases virgins who, as long as they remained in the service of Ishtar, were not permitted to marry.

In the astral-theological system, Ishtar becomes the planet Venus, and the double aspect of the goddess is made to correspond to the strikingly different phases of Venus in the summer and winter seasons. On monuments and seal-cylinders she appears frequently with bow and arrow, though also simply clad in long robes with a crown on her head and an eight-rayed star as her symbol. Statuettes have been found in large numbers representing her as naked with her arms folded across her breast or holding a child. The art thus reflects the popular conceptions formed of the goddess. Together with Sin, the moon-god, and Shamash, the sun-god, she is the third figure in a triad personifying the three great forces of nature—moon, sun and earth, as the life-force. The doctrine involved illustrates the tendency of the Babylonian priests to centralize the manifestations of divine power in the universe, just as the triad Anu, Bel and Ea (q.v.)—the heavens, the earth and the watery deep—form another illustration of this same tendency.

Naturally, as a member of a triad, Ishtar is dissociated from any local limitations, and similarly as the planet Venus—a conception which is essentially a product of theological speculation—no thought of any particular locality for her cult is present. It is because her cult, like that of Sin (q.v.) and Shamash (q.v.), is spread over all Babylonia and Assyria, that she becomes available for purposes of theological speculation.

Cf. Astarte, Atargatis, Great Mother of the Gods, and specially Babylonian and Assyrian Religion.

(M. Ja.)

ISHTIB, or Istib (anc. Astibon, Slav. Shtipliye or Shtip), a town of Macedonia, European Turkey, in the vilayet of Kossovo; 45 m. E.S.E. of Uskub. Pop. (1905) about 10,000. Ishtib is built on a hill at the confluence of the small river Ishtib with the Bregalnitza, a tributary of the Vardar. It has a thriving agricultural trade, and possesses several fine mosques, a number of fountains and a large bazaar. A hill on the north-west is crowned by the ruins of an old castle.

ISIDORE OF ALEXANDRIA,1 Greek philosopher and one of the last of the Neoplatonists, lived in Athens and Alexandria towards the end of the 5th century A.D. He became head of the school in Athens in succession to Marinus who followed Proclus. His views alienated the chief members of the school and he was compelled to resign his position to Hegias. He is known principally as the preceptor of Damascius whose testimony to him in the Life of Isidorus presents him in a very favourable light as a man and a thinker. It is generally admitted, however, that he was rather an enthusiast than a thinker; reasoning with him was subsidiary to inspiration, and he preferred the theories of Pythagoras and Plato to the unimaginative logic and the practical ethics of the Stoics and the Aristotelians. He seems to have given loose rein to a sort of theosophical speculation and attached great importance to dreams and waking visions on which he used to expatiate in his public discourses.

Damascius’ Life is preserved by Photius in the Bibliotheca, and the fragments are printed in the Didot edition of Diogenes Laërtius. See Agathias, Hist. ii. 30; Photius, Bibliotheca, 181; and histories of Neoplatonism.

1 With Isidore of Alexandria has been confused an Isidore of Gaza, mentioned by Photius. Little is known of him except that he was one of those who accompanied Damascius to the Persian court when Justinian closed the schools in Athens in 529. Suidas, in speaking of Isidore of Alexandria, says that Hypatia was his wife, but there is no means of approximating the dates (see Hypatia). Suetonius, in his Life of Nero, refers to a Cynic philosopher named Isidore, who is said to have jested publicly at the expense of Nero.

ISIDORE OF SEVILLE, or Isidorus Hispalensis (c. 560-636), Spanish encyclopaedist and historian, was the son of Severianus, a distinguished native of Cartagena, who came to Seville about the time of the birth of Isidore. Leander, bishop of Seville, was his elder brother. Left an orphan while still young, Isidore was educated in a monastery, and soon distinguished himself in controversies with the Arians. In 599, on the death of his brother, he was chosen archbishop of Seville, and acquired high renown by his successful administration of the episcopal office, as well as by his numerous theological, historical and scientific works. He founded a school at Seville, and taught in it himself. In the provincial and national councils he played an important part, notably at Toledo in 610, at Seville in 619 and in 633 at Toledo, which profoundly modified the organization of the church in Spain. His great work, however, was in another line. Profoundly versed in the Latin as well as in the Christian literature, his indefatigable intellectual curiosity led him to condense and reproduce in encyclopaedic form the fruit of his wide reading. His works, which include all topics—science, canon law, history or theology—are unsystematic and largely uncritical, merely reproducing at second hand the substance of such sources as were available. Yet in their inadequate way they served to keep alive throughout the dark ages some little knowledge of the antique culture and learning. The most elaborate of his writings is the Originum sive etymologiarum libri XX. It was the last of his works, written between 622 and 633, and was corrected by his friend and disciple Braulion. It is an encyclopaedia of all the sciences, under the form of an explanation of the terms proper to each of them. It was one of the capital books of the middle ages.

On the Libri differentiarum sive de proprietate sermonum—of which the first book is a collection of synonyms, and the second of explanations of metaphysical and religious ideas—see A. Macé’s doctoral dissertation, Rennes, 1900. Mommsen has edited the Chronica majora or Chronicon de sex aetatibus (from the creation to A.D. 615) and the “Historia Gothorum, Wandalorum, Sueborum,” in the Monumenta Germaniae historica, auctores antiqitissimi: Chronica minora II. The history of the Goths is a historical source of the first order. The De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis or better De viris illustribus, was a continuation of the work of St Jerome and of Gennadius (cf. G. von Dzialowski in Kirchengeschichtliche Studien, iv. (1899). Especially interesting is the De natura rerum ad Sisebutum regem, a treatise on astronomy and meteorology, which contained the sum of physical philosophy during the early middle ages. The Regula monachorum of Isidore was adopted by many of the monasteries in Spain during the 7th and 8th centuries. The collection of canons known as the Isidoriana or Hispalensis is not by him, and the following, attributed to him, are of doubtful authenticity: De ortu ac obitu patrum qui in Scriptura laudibus efferuntur; Allegoriae scripturae sacrae et liber numerorum; De ordine creaturarum.

The edition of all of Isidore’s works by F. Orevalo (Rome, 1797-1803, 7 vols.), reproduced in Migne, Patrologia Latina, 81-84, is carefully edited. See also C. Canal, San Isidoro, exposicion de sus obras e indicaciones a cerca de la influencia que han ejercido en la civilizacion española (Seville, 1897). A list of monographs is in the Bibliographie of Ulysse Chevalier.

ISINGLASS (probably a corruption of the Dutch huisenblas, Ger. Hausenblase, literally “sturgeon’s bladder”), a pure form of commercial gelatin obtained from the swimming bladder or sound of several species of fish. The sturgeon is the most valuable, various species of which, especially Acipenser stellatus (the seuruga), A. ruthenus (the sterlet) and A. güldenstädtii (the ossétr), flourish in the Volga and other Russian rivers, in the Caspian and Black Seas, and in the Arctic Ocean, and yield the “Russian isinglass”; a large fish, Silurus parkerii, and probably some other fish, yield the “Brazilian isinglass”; other less definitely characterized fish yield the “Penang” product; while the common cod, the hake and other Gadidae also yield a variety of isinglass. The sounds, having been removed from the fish and cleansed, undergo no other preparation than desiccation or drying, an operation needing much care; but in this process the sounds are subjected to several different treatments. If the sound be unopened the product appears in commerce as “pipe,” “purse” or “lump isinglass”; if opened and unfolded, as “leaf” or “honeycomb”; if folded and dried, as “book,” and if rolled out, as “ribbon isinglass.” Russian isinglass generally appears in commerce as leaf, book, and long and short staple; Brazilian isinglass, from Para and Maranham, as pipe, lump and honeycomb; the latter product, and also the isinglass of Hudson’s Bay, Penang, Manila, &c., is darker in colour and less soluble than the Russian product.

The finest isinglass, which comes from the Russian ports of Astrakhan and Taganrog, is prepared by steeping the sounds in hot water in order to remove mucus, &c.; they are then cut open and the inner membrane exposed to the air; after drying, the outer membrane is removed by rubbing and beating. As imported, isinglass is usually too tough and hard to be directly used. To increase its availability, the raw material is sorted, soaked in water till it becomes flexible and then trimmed; the trimmings are sold as a lower grade. The trimmed sheets are sometimes passed between steel rollers, which reduce them to the thickness of paper; it then appears as a transparent ribbon, “shot” like watered silk. The ribbon is dried, and, if necessary, cut into strips.

The principal use of isinglass is for clarifying wines, beers and other liquids. This property is the more remarkable since it is not possessed by ordinary gelatin; it has been ascribed to its fibrous structure, which forms, as it were, a fine network in the liquid in which it is disseminated, and thereby mechanically carries down all the minute particles which occasion the turbidity. The cheaper varieties are more commonly used; many brewers prefer the Penang product; Russian leaf, however, is used by some Scottish brewers; and Russian long staple is used in the Worcestershire cider industry. Of secondary importance is its use for culinary and confectionery purposes, for example, in making jellies, stiffening jams, &c. Here it is often replaced by the so-called “patent isinglass,” which is a very pure gelatin, and differs from natural isinglass by being useless for clarifying liquids. It has few other applications in the arts. Mixed with gum, it is employed to give a lustre to ribbons and silk; incorporated with water, Spanish liquorice and lamp black it forms an Indian ink; a solution, mixed with a little tincture of benzoin, brushed over sarsenet and allowed to dry, forms the well-known “court plaster.” Another plaster is obtained by adding acetic acid and a little otto of roses to a solution of fine glue. It also has valuable agglutinating properties; by dissolving in two parts of pure alcohol it forms a diamond cement, the solution cooling to a white, opaque, hard solid; it also dissolves in strong acetic acid to form a powerful cement, which is especially useful for repairing glass, pottery and like substances.

ISIS (Egyptian Ēse), the most famous of the Egyptian goddesses. She was of human form, in early times distinguished only by the hieroglyph of her name upon her head. Later she commonly wore the horns of a cow, and the cow was sacred to her; it is doubtful, however, whether she had any animal representation in early times, nor had she possession of any considerable locality until a late period, when Philae, Behbēt and other large temples were dedicated to her worship. Yet she was of great importance in mythology, religion and magic, appearing constantly in the very ancient Pyramid texts as the devoted sister-wife of Osiris and mother of Horus. In the divine genealogies she is daughter of Keb and Nut (earth and sky). She was supreme in magical power, cunning and knowledge. A legend of the New Kingdom tells how she contrived to learn the all-powerful hidden name of Rē’ which he had confided to no one. A snake which she had fashioned for the purpose stung the god, who sent for her as a last resort in his unendurable agony; whereupon she represented to him that nothing but his own mysterious name could overcome the venom of the snake. Much Egyptian magic turns on the healing or protection of Horus by Isis, and it is chiefly from magical texts that the myth of Isis and Osiris as given by Plutarch can be illustrated. The Metternich stela (XXXth Dynasty), the finest example of a class of prophylactic stelae generally known by the name of “Horus on the crocodiles,” is inscribed with a long text relating the adventures of Isis and Horus in the marshes of the Delta. With her sister Nephthys, Isis is frequently represented as watching the body of Osiris or mourning his death.

Isis was identified with Demeter by Herodotus, and described as the goddess who was held to be the greatest by the Egyptians; he states that she and Osiris, unlike other deities, were worshipped throughout the land. The importance of Isis had increased greatly since the end of the New Kingdom. The great temple of Philae was begun under the XXXth Dynasty; that of Behbēt seems to have been built by Ptolemy II. The cult of Isis spread into Greece with that of Serapis early in the 3rd century B.C. In Egypt itself Isea, or shrines of Isis, swarmed. At Coptos Isis became a leading divinity on a par with the early god Min. About 80 B.C. Sulla founded an Isiac college in Rome, but their altars within the city were overthrown by the consuls no less than four times in the decade from 58 to 48 B.C., and the worship of Isis at Rome continued to be limited or suppressed by a succession of enactments which were enforced until the reign of Caligula. The Isiac mysteries were a representation of the chief events in the myth of Isis and Osiris—the murder of Osiris, the lamentations of Isis and her wanderings, followed by the triumph of Horus over Seth and the resurrection of the slain god—accompanied by music and an exposition of the inner meaning of the spectacle. These were traditional in ancient Egypt, and in their later development were no doubt affected by the Eleusinian mysteries of Demeter. They appealed powerfully to the imagination and the religious sense. The initiated went through rites of purification, and practised a degree of asceticism; but for many the festival was believed to be an occasion for dark orgies. Isis nursing the child Horus (Harpokhrates) was a very common figure in the Deltaic period, and in these later days was still a favourite representation. The Isis temples discovered at Pompeii and in Rome show that ancient monuments as well as objects of small size were brought from Egypt to Italy for dedication to her worship, but the goddess absorbed the attributes of all female divinities; she was goddess of the earth and its fruits, of the Nile, of the sea, of the underworld, of love, healing and magic. From the time of Vespasian onwards the worship of Isis, always popular with some sections, had a great vogue throughout the western world, and is not without traces in Britain. It proved the most successful of the pagan cults in maintaining itself against Christianity, with which it had not a little in common, both in doctrine and in emblems. But the destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria in A.D. 397 was a fatal blow to the prestige of the Graeco-Egyptian divinities. The worship of Isis, however, survived in Italy into the 5th century. At Philae her temple was frequented by the barbarous Nobatae and Blemmyes until the middle of the 6th century, when the last remaining shrine of Isis was finally closed.

See G. Lafaye, art. “Isis” in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités (1900); id. Hist. du culte des divinités d’Alexandrie hors de l’Égypte (1883); Meyer and Drexler, art. “Isis” in Röscher’s Lexicon der griech. und röm. Mythologie (1891-1892) (very elaborate); E. A. W. Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, vol. ii. ch. xiii.; Ad. Rusch, De Serapide et Iside in Graecia cultis (dissertation) (Berlin, 1906). (The author especially collects the evidence from Greek inscriptions earlier than the Roman conquest; he contends that the mysteries of Isis were not equated with the Eleusinian mysteries.)

(F. Ll. G.)

ISKELIB, the chief town of a Caza (governed by a kaimakam) in the vilayet of Angora in Asia Minor, altitude 2460 ft., near the left bank of the Kizil Irmak (anc. Halys), 100 m. in an air-line N.E. of Angora and 60 S.E. of Kastamūni (to which vilayet it belonged till 1894). Pop. 10,600 (Cuinet, La Turquie d’Asie, 1894). It lies several miles off the road, now abandoned by wheeled traffic, between Changra and Amasia in a picturesque cul de sac amongst wooded hills, at the foot of a limestone rock crowned by the ruins of an ancient fortress now filled with houses (photograph in Anderson, Studia Pontica, p. 4). Its ancient name is uncertain. Near the town (on S.) are saline springs, whence salt is extracted.

ISLA, JOSÉ FRANCISCO DE (1703-1781), Spanish satirist, was born at Villavidanes (León) on the 24th of March 1703. He joined the Jesuits in 1719, was banished from Spain with his brethren in 1767, and settled at Bologna, where he died on the 2nd of November 1781. His earliest publication, a Carta de un residente en Roma (1725), is a panegyric of trifling interest, and La Juventud triunfante (1727) was written in collaboration with Luis de Lovada. Isla’s gifts were first shown in his Triunfo del amor y de la lealtad: Dia Grande de Navarra, a satirical description of the ceremonies at Pamplona in honour of Ferdinand VI.’s accession; its sly humour so far escaped the victims that they thanked the writer for his appreciation of their local efforts, but the true significance of the work was discovered shortly afterwards, and the protests were so violent that Isla was transferred by his superiors to another district. He gained a great reputation as an effective preacher, and his posthumous Sermones morales (1792-1793) justify his fame in this respect. But his position in the history of Spanish literature is due to his Historia del famoso predicador fray Gerundio de Campazas, alias Zotes (1758), a novel which wittily caricatures the bombastic eloquence of pulpit orators in Spain. Owing to the protests of the Dominicans and other regulars, the book was prohibited in 1760, but the second part was issued surreptitiously in 1768. He translated Gil Blas, adopting more or less seriously Voltaire’s unfounded suggestion that Le Sage plagiarized from Espinel’s Marcos de Obregón, and other Spanish books; the text appeared in 1783, and in 1828 was greatly modified by Evaristo Peña y Martín, whose arrangement is still widely read.

See Policarpo Mingote y Tarrazona, Varones ilustres de la provincia de León (León, 1880), pp. 185-215; Bernard Gaudeau, Les Prêcheurs burlesques en Espagne au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1891); V. Cian, L’ Immigrazione dei Gesuiti spagnuoli letterati in Italia (Torino, 1895).

(J. F.-K.)

ISLAM, an Arabic word meaning “pious submission to the will of God,” the name of the religion of the orthodox Mahommedans, and hence used, generically, for the whole body of Mahommedan peoples. Salama, from which the word is derived appears in salaam, “peace be with you,” the greeting of the East, and in Moslem, and means to be “free” or “secure.” (See Mahommedan Religion, &c.)

ISLAMABAD, a town of India in the state of Kashmir, on the north bank of the Jhelum. Pop. (1901) 9390. The town crowns the summit of a long low ridge, extending from the mountains eastward. It is the second town in Kashmir, and was originally the capital of the valley, but is now decaying. It contains an old summer palace, overshadowed by plane trees, with numerous springs, and a fine mosque and shrine. Below the town is a reservoir containing a spring of clear water called the Anant Nag, slightly sulphurous, from which volumes of gas continually arise; the water swarms with sacred fish. There are manufactures of Kashmir shawls, also of chintzes, cotton and woollen goods.

ISLAND (O.E. ieg = isle, + land1), in physical geography, a term generally definable as a piece of land surrounded by water. Islands may be divided into two main classes, continental and oceanic. The former are such as would result from the submergence of a coastal range, or a coastal highland, until the mountain bases were cut off from the mainland while their summits remained above water. The island may have been formed by the sea cutting through the landward end of a peninsula, or by the eating back of a bay or estuary until a portion of the mainland is detached and becomes surrounded by water. In all cases where the continental islands occur, they are connected with the mainland by a continental shelf, and their structure is essentially that of the mainland. The islands off the west coast of Scotland and the Isles of Man and Wight have this relation to Britain, while Britain and Ireland have a similar relation to the continent of Europe. The north-east coast of Australia furnishes similar examples, but in addition to these in that locality there are true oceanic islands near the mainland, formed by the growth of the Great Barrier coral reef. Oceanic islands are due to various causes. It is a question whether the numberless islands of the Malay Archipelago should be regarded as continental or oceanic, but there is no doubt that the South Sea islands scattered over a portion of the Pacific belong to the oceanic group. The ocean floor is by no means a level plain, but rises and falls in mounds, eminences and basins towards the surface. When this configuration is emphasized in any particular oceanic area, so that a peak rises above the surface, an oceanic island is produced. Submarine volcanic activity may also raise material above sea-level, or the buckling of the ocean-bed by earth movements may have a similar result. Coral islands (see Atoll) are oceanic islands, and are frequently clustered upon plateaux where the sea is of no great depth, or appear singly as the crown of some isolated peak that rises from deep water.

Island life contains many features of peculiar interest. The sea forms a barrier to some forms of life but acts as a carrier to other colonizing forms that frequently develop new features in their isolated surroundings where the struggle for existence is greater or less than before. When a sea barrier has existed for a very long time there is a marked difference between the fauna and flora even of adjacent islands. In Bali and Borneo, for example, the flora and fauna are Asiatic, while in Lombok and Celebes they are Australian, though the Bali Straits are very narrow. In Java and Sumatra, though belonging to the same group, there are marked developments of bird life, the peacock being found in Java and the Argus pheasant in Sumatra, having become too specialized to migrate. The Cocos, Keeling Islands and Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean have been colonized by few animal forms, chiefly sea-birds and insects, while they are clothed with abundant vegetation, the seeds of which have been carried by currents and by other means, but the variety of plants is by no means so great as on the mainland. Island life, therefore, is a sure indication of the origin of the island, which may be one of the remnants of a shattered or dissected continent, or may have arisen independently from the sea and become afterwards colonized by drift.

The word “island” is sometimes used for a piece of land cut off by the tide or surrounded by marsh (e.g. Hayling Island).

1 The O.E. ieg, ig, still appearing in local names, e.g. Anglesey, Battersea, is cognate with Norw. öy, Icel. ey, and the first part of Ger. Eiland, &c.; it is referred to the original Teut. ahwia, a place in water, ahwa, water, cf. Lat. aqua; the same word is seen in English “eyot,” “ait,” an islet in a river. The spelling “island,” accepted before 1700, is due to a false connexion with “isle,” Fr. île, Lat. insula.

ISLAY, the southernmost island of the Inner Hebrides, Argyllshire, Scotland, 16 m. W. of Kintyre and ¾ m. S.W. of Jura, from which it is separated by the Sound of Islay. Pop. (1901) 6857; area, 150,400 acres; maximum breadth 19 m. and maximum length 25 m. The sea-lochs Gruinart and Indaal cut into it so deeply as almost to convert the western portion into a separate island. It is rich and productive, and has been called the “Queen of the Hebrides.” The surface generally is regular, the highest summits being Ben Bheigeir (1609 ft.) and Sgorr nam Faoileann (1407 ft.). There are several freshwater lakes and streams, which provide good fishing. Islay was the ancient seat of the “lord of the Isles,” the first to adopt that title being John Macdonald of Isle of Islay, who died about 1386; but the Macdonalds were ultimately ousted by their rivals, the Campbells, about 1616. Islay House, the ancient seat of the Campbells of Islay, stands at the head of Loch Indaal. The island was formerly occupied by small crofters and tacksmen, but since 1831 it has been gradually developed into large sheep and arable farms and considerable business is done in stock-raising. Dairy-farming is largely followed, and oats, barley and various green crops are raised. The chief difficulty in the way of reclamation is the great area of peat (60 sq. m.), which, at its present rate of consumption, is calculated to last 1500 years. The island contains several whisky distilleries, producing about 400,000 gallons annually. Slate and marble are quarried, and there is a little mining of iron, lead and silver. At Bowmore, the chief town, there is a considerable shipping trade. Port Ellen, the principal village, has a quay with lighthouse, a fishery and a golf-course. Port Askaig is the ferry station for Faolin on Jura. Regular communication with the Clyde is maintained by steamers, and a cable was laid between Lagavulin and Kintyre in 1871.

ISLES OF THE BLEST, or Fortunate Islands (Gr. αἱ τῶν μακάρων νῆσοι: Lat., Fortunatae Insulae), in Greek mythology a group of islands near the edge of the Western Ocean, peopled not by the dead, but by mortals upon whom the gods had conferred immortality. Like the islands of the Phaeacians in Homer (Od. viii.) or the Celtic Avalon and St Brendan’s island, the Isles of the Blest are represented as a land of perpetual summer and abundance of all good things. No reference is made to them by Homer, who speaks instead of the Elysian Plain (Od. iv. and ix.), but they are mentioned by Hesiod (Works and Days, 168) and Pindar (Ol. ii.). A very old tradition suggests that the idea of such an earthly paradise was a reminiscence of some unrecorded voyage to Madeira and the Canaries, which are sometimes named Fortunatae Insulae by medieval map-makers. (See Atlantis.)

ISLINGTON (in Domesday and later documents Iseldon, Isendon and in the 16th century Hisselton), a northern metropolitan borough of London, England, bounded E. by Stoke Newington and Hackney, S. by Shoreditch and Finsbury, and W. by St Pancras, and extending N. to the boundary of the county of London. Pop. (1901) 334,991. The name is commonly applied to the southern part of the borough, which, however, includes the districts of Holloway in the north, Highbury in the east, part of Kingsland in the south-east, and Barnsbury and Canonbury in the south-central portion. The districts included preserve the names of ancient manors, and in Canonbury, which belonged as early as the 13th century to the priory of St Bartholomew, Smithfield, traces of the old manor house remain. The fields and places of entertainment in Islington were favourite places of resort for the citizens of London in the 17th century and later; the modern Ball’s Pond Road recalls the sport of duck-hunting practised here and on other ponds in the parish, and the popularity of the place was increased by the discovery of chalybeate wells. At Copenhagen Fields, now covered by the great cattle market (1855) adjoining Caledonian Road, a great meeting of labourers was held in 1834. They were suspected of intending to impose their views on parliament by violence, but a display of military force held them in check. The most noteworthy modern institutions in Islington are the Agricultural Hall, Liverpool Road, erected in 1862, and used for cattle and horse shows and other exhibitions; Pentonville Prison, Caledonian Road (1842), a vast pile of buildings radiating from a centre, and Holloway Prison. The borough has only some 40 acres of public grounds, the principal of which is Highbury Fields. Among its institutions are the Great Northern Central Hospital, Holloway, the London Fever Hospital, the Northern Polytechnic, and the London School of Divinity, St John’s Hall Highbury. Islington is a suffragan bishopric in the diocese of London. The parliamentary borough of Islington has north, south, east and west divisions, each returning one member. The borough council consists of a mayor, 10 aldermen and 60 councillors. Area, 3091.5 acres.

ISLIP, a township of Suffolk county, New York, U.S.A., in the central part of the S. side of Long Island. Pop. (1905, state census) 13,721; (1910) 18,346. The township is 16 m. long from E. to W., and 8 m. wide in its widest part. It is bounded on the S. by the Atlantic Ocean; between the ocean and the Great South Bay, here 5-7 m. wide, is a long narrow strip of beach, called Fire Island, at the W. end of which is Fire Island Inlet. The “Island” beach and the Inlet, both very dangerous for shipping, are protected by the Fire Island Lighthouse, the Fire Island Lightship, and a Life Saving Station near the Lighthouse and another at Point o’ Woods. Near the Lighthouse there are a United States Wireless Telegraph Station and a station of the Western Union Telegraph Company, which announces to New York incoming steamships; and a little farther E., on the site formerly occupied by the Surf House, a well-known resort for hay-fever patients, is a state park. Along the “Island” beach there is excellent surf-bathing. The township is served by two parallel branches of the Long Island railroad about 4 m. apart. On the main (northern) division are the villages of Brentwood (first settled as Modern Times, a quasi free-love community), which now has the Convent and School of St Joseph and a large private sanitarium; Central Islip, the seat of the Central Islip State Hospital for the Insane; and Ronkonkoma, on the edge of a lake of the same name (with no visible outlet or inlet and suffering remarkable changes in area). On the S. division of the Long Island railroad are the villages of Bay Shore (to the W. of which is West Islip); Oakdale; West Sayville, originally a Dutch settlement; Sayville and Bayport. The “South Country Road” of crushed clam or oyster shells runs through these villages, which are famous for oyster and clam fisheries. About one-half of the present township was patented in 1684, 1686, 1688 and 1697 by William Nicolls (1657-1723), the son of Matthias Nicolls, who came from Islip in Oxfordshire, England; this large estate (on either side of the Connetquot or Great river) was kept intact until 1786; the W. part of Islip was mostly included in the Moubray patent of 1708; and the township was incorporated in 1710.

ISLY, the name of a small river on the Moroccan-Algerian frontier, a sub-tributary of the Tafna, famous as the scene of the greatest victory of the French army in the Algerian wars. The intervention of Morocco on the side of Abd-el-Kader led at once to the bombardment of Tangier by the French fleet under the prince de Joinville, and the advance of the French army of General Bugeaud (1844). The enemy, 45,000 strong, was found to be encamped on the Isly river near Kudiat-el-Khodra. Bugeaud disposed of some 6500 infantry and 1500 cavalry, with a few pieces of artillery. In his own words, the formation adopted was “a boar’s head.” With the army were Lamoricière, Pélissier and other officers destined to achieve distinction. On the 14th of August the “boar’s head” crossed the river about 9 m. to the N.W. of Kudiat and advanced upon the Moorish camp; it was immediately attacked on all sides by great masses of cavalry; but the volleys of the steady French infantry broke the force of every charge, and at the right moment the French cavalry in two bodies, each of the strength of a brigade, broke out and charged. One brigade stormed the Moorish camp (near Kudiat) in the face of artillery fire, the other sustained a desperate conflict on the right wing with a large body of Moorish horse which had not charged; and only the arrival of infantry put an end to the resistance in this quarter. A general rally of the Moorish forces was followed by another action in which they endeavoured to retake the camp. Bugeaud’s forces, which had originally faced S. when crossing the river, had now changed direction until they faced almost W. Near Kudiat-el-Khodra the Moors had rallied in considerable force, and prepared to retake their camp. The French, however, continued to attack in perfect combination, and after a stubborn resistance the Moors once more gave way. For this great victory, which was quickly followed by proposals of peace, Bugeaud was made duc d’Isly.

ISMAIL (1830-1895), khedive of Egypt, was born at Cairo on the 31st of December 1830, being the second of the three sons of Ibrahim and grandson of Mehemet Ali. After receiving a European education at Paris, where he attended the École d’État-Major, he returned home, and on the death of his elder brother became heir to his uncle, Said Mohammed, the Vali of Egypt. Said, who apparently conceived his own safety to lie in ridding himself as much as possible of the presence of his nephew, employed him in the next few years on missions abroad, notably to the pope, the emperor Napoleon III. and the sultan of Turkey. In 1861 he was despatched at the head of an army of 14,000 to quell an insurrection in the Sudan, and this he successfully accomplished. On the death of Said, on 18th January 1863, Ismail was proclaimed viceroy without opposition. Being of an Orientally extravagant disposition, he found with considerable gratification that the Egyptian revenue was vastly increased by the rise in the value of cotton which resulted from the American Civil War, the Egyptian crop being worth about £25,000,000 instead of £5,000,000. Besides acquiring luxurious tastes in his sojourns abroad, Ismail had discovered that the civilized nations of Europe made a free use of their credit for raising loans. He proceeded at once to apply this idea to his own country by transferring his private debts to the state and launching out on a grand scale of expenditure. Egypt was in his eyes the ruler’s estate which was to be exploited for his benefit and his renown. His own position had to be strengthened, and the country provided with institutions after European models. To these objects Ismail applied himself with energy and cleverness, but without any stint of expense. During the ’sixties and ’seventies Egypt became the happy hunting-ground of self-seeking financiers, to whose schemes Ismail fell an easy and a willing prey. In 1866-1867 he obtained from the sultan of Turkey, in exchange for an increase in the tribute, firmans giving him the title of khedive, and changing the law of succession to direct descent from father to son; and in 1873 he obtained a new firman making him to a large extent independent. He projected vast schemes of internal reform, remodelling the customs system and the post office, stimulating commercial progress, creating a sugar industry, introducing European improvements into Cairo and Alexandria, building palaces, entertaining lavishly and maintaining an opera and a theatre. It has been calculated that, of the total amount of debt incurred by Ismail for his projects, about 10% may have been sunk in works of permanent utility—always excluding the Suez Canal. Meanwhile the opening of the Canal had given him opportunities for asserting himself in foreign courts. On his accession he refused to ratify the concessions to the Canal company made by Said, and the question was referred in 1864 to the arbitration of Napoleon III., who awarded £3,800,000 to the company as compensation for the losses they would incur by the changes which Ismail insisted upon in the original grant. Ismail then used every available means, by his own undoubted powers of fascination and by judicious expenditure, to bring his personality before the foreign sovereigns and public, and he had no little success. He was made G.C.B. in 1867, and in the same year visited Paris and London, where he was received by Queen Victoria and welcomed by the lord mayor; and in 1869 he again paid a visit to England. The result was that the opening of the Canal in November 1869 enabled him to claim to rank among European sovereigns, and to give and receive royal honours: this excited the jealousy of the sultan, but Ismail was clever enough to pacify his overlord. In 1876 the old system of consular jurisdiction for foreigners was modified, and the system of mixed courts introduced, by which European and native judges sat together to try all civil cases without respect of nationality. In all these years Ismail had governed with éclat and profusion, spending, borrowing, raising the taxes on the fellahin and combining his policy of independence with dazzling visions of Egyptian aggrandizement. In 1874 he annexed Darfur, and was only prevented from extending his dominion into Abyssinia by the superior fighting power of the Abyssinians. But at length the inevitable financial crisis came. A national debt of over one hundred millions sterling (as opposed to three millions when he became viceroy) had been incurred by the khedive, whose fundamental idea of liquidating his borrowings was to borrow at increased interest. The bond-holders became restive. Judgments were given against the khedive in the international tribunals. When he could raise no more loans he sold his Suez Canal shares (in 1875) to Great Britain for £3,976,582; and this was immediately followed by the beginning of foreign intervention. In December 1875 Mr Stephen Cave was sent out by the British government to inquire into the finances of Egypt, and in April 1876 his report was published, advising that in view of the waste and extravagance it was necessary for foreign Powers to interfere in order to restore credit. The result was the establishment of the Caisse de la Dette. In October Mr (afterwards Lord) Goschen and M. Joubert made a further investigation, which resulted in the establishment of Anglo-French control. A further commission of inquiry by Major Baring (afterwards Lord Cromer) and others in 1878 culminated in Ismail making over his estates to the nation and accepting the position of a constitutional sovereign, with Nubar as premier, Mr (afterwards Sir Charles) Rivers Wilson as finance minister, and M. de Blignières as minister of public works. Ismail professed to be quite pleased. “Egypt,” he said, “is no longer in Africa; it is part of Europe.” The new régime, however, only lasted six months, and then Ismail dismissed his ministers, an occasion being deliberately prepared by his getting Arabi (q.v.) to foment a military pronunciamiento. England and France took the matter seriously, and insisted (May 1879) on the reinstatement of the British and French ministers; but the situation was no longer a possible one; the tribunals were still giving judgments for debt against the government, and when Germany and Austria showed signs of intending to enforce execution, the governments of Great Britain and France perceived that the only chance of setting matters straight was to get rid of Ismail altogether. He was first advised to abdicate, and a few days afterwards (26th June), as he did not take the hint, he received a telegram from the sultan (who had not forgotten the earlier history of Mehemet Ali’s dynasty), addressed to him as ex-khedive, and informing him that his son Tewfik was his successor. He at once left Egypt for Naples, but eventually was permitted by the sultan to retire to his palace of Emirghian on the Bosporus. There he remained, more or less a state prisoner, till his death on the 2nd of March 1895. Ismail was a man of undoubted ability and remarkable powers. But beneath a veneer of French manners and education he remained throughout a thorough Oriental, though without any of the moral earnestness which characterizes the better side of Mahommedanism. Some of his ambitions were not unworthy, and though his attitude towards western civilization was essentially cynical, he undoubtedly helped to make the Egyptian upper classes realize the value of European education. Moreover, spendthrift as he was, it needed—as is pointed out in Milner’s England in Egypt—a series of unfortunate conditions to render his personality as pernicious to his country as it actually became. “It needed a nation of submissive slaves, not only bereft of any vestige of liberal institutions, but devoid of the slightest spark of the spirit of liberty. It needed a bureaucracy which it would have been hard to equal for its combination of cowardice and corruption. It needed the whole gang of swindlers—mostly European—by whom Ismail was surrounded.” It was his early encouragement of Arabi, and his introduction of swarms of foreign concession-hunters, which precipitated the “national movement” that led to British occupation. His greatest title to remembrance in history must be that he made European intervention in Egypt compulsory.

(H. Ch.)

ISMAIL HADJI MAULVI-MOHAMMED (1781-1831), Mussulman reformer, was born at Pholah near Delhi. In co-operation with Syed Ahmed he attempted to free Indian Mahommedanism from the influence of the native early Indian faiths. The two men travelled extensively for many years and visited Mecca. In the Wahhabite movement they found much that was akin to their own views, and on returning to India preached the new doctrine of a pure Islam, and gathered many adherents. The official Mahommedan leaders, however, regarded their propaganda with disfavour, and the dispute led to the reformers being interdicted by the British government in 1827. The little company then moved to Punjab where, aided by an Afghan chief, they declared war on the Sikhs and made Peshawar the capital of the theocratic community which they wished to establish (1829). Deserted by the Afghans they had to leave Peshawar, and Ismail Hadji fell in battle against the Sikhs amid the Pakhli mountains (1831). The movement survived him, and some adherents are still found in the mountains of the north-west frontier.

Ismail’s book Taqouaīyat el Imān was published in Hindustani and translated in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xiii. 1852.

ISMAILIA, a town of Lower Egypt, the central station on the Suez Canal, on the N.W. shore of Lake Timsa, about 50 m. from the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and 93 m. N.E. of Cairo by rail. Pop. (1907) 10,373. It was laid out in 1863, in connexion with the construction of the canal, and is named after the khedive Ismail. It is divided into two quarters by the road leading from the landing-place to the railway station, and has numerous public offices, warehouses and other buildings, including a palace of the khedive, used as a hospital during the British military operations in 1882, but subsequently allowed to fall into a dilapidated condition. The broad macadamized streets and regular squares bordered with trees give the town an attractive appearance; and it has the advantage, a rare one in Egypt, of being surrounded on three sides by flourishing gardens. The Quai Mehemet Ali, which lies along the canal for upwards of a mile, contains the châlet occupied by Ferdinand de Lesseps during the building of the canal. At the end of the quay are the works for supplying Port Said with water. On the other side of the lake are the so-called Quarries of the Hyenas, from which the building material for the town was obtained.

ISMAY, THOMAS HENRY (1837-1899), British shipowner, was born at Maryport, Cumberland, on the 7th of January 1837. He received his education at Croft House School, Carlisle, and at the age of sixteen was apprenticed to Messrs Imrie & Tomlinson, shipowners and brokers, of Liverpool. He then travelled for a time, visiting the ports of South America, and on returning to Liverpool started in business for himself. In 1867 he took over the White Star line of Australian clippers, and in 1868, perceiving the great future which was open to steam navigation, established, in conjunction with William Imrie, the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, which has since become famous as the White Star Line. While continuing the Australian service, the firm determined to engage in the American trade, and to that end ordered from Messrs Harland & Wolff, of Belfast, the first Oceanic (3807 tons), which was launched in 1870. This vessel may fairly be said to have marked an era in North Atlantic travel. The same is true of the successive types of steamer which Ismay, with the co-operation of the Belfast shipbuilding firm, subsequently provided for the American trade. To Ismay is mainly due the credit of the arrangement by which some of the fastest ships of the British mercantile marine are held at the disposal of the government in case of war. The origin of this plan dates from the Russo-Turkish war, when there seemed a likelihood of England being involved in hostilities with Russia, and when, therefore, Ismay offered the admiralty the use of the White Star fleet. In 1892 he retired from partnership in the firm of Ismay, Imrie and Co., though he retained the chairmanship of the White Star Company. He served on several important committees and was a member of the royal commission in 1888 on army and navy administration. He was always most generous in his contributions to charities for the relief of sailors, and in 1887 he contributed £20,000 towards a pension fund for Liverpool sailors. He died at Birkenhead on the 23rd of November 1899.

ISMID, or ISNIKMID (anc. Nicomedia), the chief town of the Khoja Ili sanjak of Constantinople, in Asia Minor, situated on rising ground near the head of the gulf of Ismid. The sanjak has an area of 4650 sq. m. and a population of 225,000 (Moslems 131,000). It is an agricultural district, producing cocoons and tobacco, and there are large forests of oak, beech and fir. Near Yalova there are hot mineral springs, much frequented in summer. The town is connected by the lines of the Anatolian railway company with Haidar Pasha, the western terminus, and with Angora, Konia and Smyrna. It contains a fine 16th-century mosque, built by the celebrated architect Sinan. Pop. 20,000 (Moslems 9500, Christians 8000, Jews, 2500). As the seat of a mutessarif, a Greek metropolitan and an Armenian archbishop, Ismid retains somewhat of its ancient dignity, but the material condition of the town is little in keeping with its rank. The head of the gulf of Ismid is gradually silting up. The dockyard was closed in 1879, and the port of Ismid is now at Darinje, 3¾ m. distant, where the Anatolian Railway Company have established their workshops and have built docks and a quay.

ISNARD, MAXIMIN (1758-1825), French revolutionist, was a dealer in perfumery at Draguignan when he was elected deputy for the department of the Var to the Legislative Assembly, where he joined the Girondists. Attacking the court, and the “Austrian committee” in the Tuileries, he demanded the disbandment of the king’s bodyguard, and reproached Louis XVI. for infidelity to the constitution. But on the 20th of June 1792, when the crowd invaded the palace, he was one of the deputies who went to place themselves beside the king to protect him. After the 10th of August 1792 he was sent to the army of the North to justify the insurrection. Re-elected to the Convention, he voted the death of Louis XVI. and was a member of the Committee of General Defence when it was organized on the 4th of January 1793. The committee, consisting of 25 members, proved unwieldy, and on the 4th of April Isnard presented, on behalf of the Girondist majority, the report recommending a smaller committee of nine, which two days later was established as the Committee of Public Safety. On the 25th of May, Isnard was presiding at the Convention when a deputation of the commune of Paris came to demand that J. R. Hébert should be set at liberty, and he made the famous reply: “If by these insurrections, continually renewed, it should happen that the principle of national representation should suffer, I declare to you in the name of France that soon people will search the banks of the Seine to see if Paris has ever existed.” On the 2nd of June 1793 he offered his resignation as representative of the people, but was not comprised in the decree by which the Convention determined upon the arrest of twenty-nine Girondists. On the 3rd of October, however, his arrest was decreed along with that of several other Girondist deputies who had left the Convention and were fomenting civil war in the departments. He escaped, and on the 8th of March 1795 was recalled to the Convention, where he supported all the measures of reaction. He was elected deputy for the Var to the Council of Five Hundred, where he played a very insignificant rôle. In 1797 he retired to Draguignan. In 1800 he published a pamphlet De l’immortalité de l’âme, in which he praised Catholicism; in 1804 Réflexions relatives au senatus-consulte du 28 floréal an XII., which is an enthusiastic apology for the Empire. Upon the restoration he professed such royalist sentiments that he was not disturbed, in spite of the law of 1816 proscribing regicide ex-members of the Convention.

See F. A. Aulard, Les Orateurs de la Législative et de la Convention (Paris, 2nd ed., 1906).

ISOBAR (from Gr. ἴσος, equal, and βάρος, weight), a line upon a meteorological map or pressure chart connecting points where the atmospheric pressure is the same at sea-level, or upon the earth’s surface. A general pressure map will indicate, by these lines, the average pressure for any month or season over large areas. The daily weather charts for more confined regions indicate the presence of a cyclonic or anticyclonic system by means of lines, which connect all places having the same barometric pressure at the same time. It is to be noted that isobaric lines are the intersections of inclined isobaric surfaces with the surface of the earth.

ISOCLINIC LINES (Gr. ἴσος, equal, and κλίνειν, to bend), lines connecting those parts of the earth’s surface where the magnetic inclination is the same in amount. (See Magnetism, Terrestrial.)

ISOCRATES (436-338 B.C.), Attic orator, was the son of Theodorus, an Athenian citizen of the deme of Erchia—the same in which, about 431 B.C., Xenophon was born—who was sufficiently wealthy to have served the state as choregus. The fact that he possessed slaves skilled in the trade of flute-making perhaps lends point to a passage in which his son is mentioned by the comic poet Strattis.1 Several popular “sophists” are named as teachers of the young Isocrates. Like other sons of prosperous parents, he may have been trained in such grammatical subtleties as were taught by Protagoras or Prodicus, and initiated by Theramenes into the florid rhetoric of Gorgias, with whom at a later time (about 390 B.C.) he was in personal intercourse. He tells us that his father had been careful to provide for him the best education which Athens could afford. A fact of greater interest is disclosed by Plato’s Phaedrus (278 E). “Isocrates is still young, Phaedrus,” says the Socrates of that dialogue, “but I do not mind telling you what I prophesy of him.... It would not surprise me if, as years go on, he should make all his predecessors seem like children in the kind of oratory to which he is now addressing himself, or if—supposing this should not content him—some divine impulse should lead him to greater things. My dear Phaedrus, a certain philosophy is inborn in him.” This conversation is dramatically supposed to take place about 410 B.C. It is unnecessary to discuss here the date at which the Phaedrus was actually composed. From the passage just cited it is at least clear that there had been a time—while Isocrates could still be called “young”—at which Plato had formed a high estimate of his powers.

Isocrates took no active part in the public life of Athens; he was not fitted, as he tells us, for the contests of the popular assembly or of the law-courts. He lacked strength of voice—a fatal defect in the ecclesia, when an audience of many thousands was to be addressed in the open air; he was also deficient in “boldness.” He was, in short, the physical opposite of the successful Athenian demagogue in the generation after that of Pericles; by temperament as well as taste he was more in sympathy with the sedate decorum of an older school. Two ancient biographers have, however, preserved a story which, if true, would show that this lack of voice and nerve did not involve any want of moral courage. During the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, Critias denounced Theramenes, who sprang for safety to the sacred hearth of the council chamber. Isocrates alone, it is said, dared at that moment to plead for the life of his friend.2 Whatever may be the worth of the story, it would scarcely have connected itself with the name of a man to whose traditional character it was repugnant. While the Thirty were still in power, Isocrates withdrew from Athens to Chios.3 He has mentioned that, in the course of the Peloponnesian War—doubtless in the troubles which attended on its close—he lost the whole of that private fortune which had enabled his father to serve the state, and that he then adopted the profession of a teacher. The proscription of the “art of words” by the Thirty would thus have given him a special motive for withdrawing from Athens. He returned thither, apparently, either soon before or soon after the restoration of the democracy in 403 B.C.

For ten years from this date he was occupied—at least occasionally—as a writer of speeches for the Athenian law-courts. Six of these speeches are extant. The earliest (Or. xxi.) may be referred to 403 B.C.; the latest (Or. xix.) to 394-393 B.C. This was a department of his own work which Isocrates afterwards preferred to ignore. Nowhere, indeed, does he say that he had not written forensic speeches. But he frequently uses a tone from which that inference might be drawn. He loves to contrast such petty concerns as engage the forensic writer with those larger and nobler themes which are treated by the politician. This helps to explain how it could be asserted—by his adopted son, Aphareus—that he had written nothing for the law-courts. Whether the assertion was due to false shame or merely to ignorance, Dionysius of Halicarnassus decisively disposes of it. Aristotle had, indeed, he says, exaggerated the number of forensic speeches written by Isocrates; but some of those which bore his name were unquestionably genuine, as was attested by one of the orator’s own pupils, Cephisodorus. The real vocation of Isocrates was discovered from the moment that he devoted himself to the work of teaching and writing. The instruction which Isocrates undertook to impart was based on rhetorical composition, but it was by no means merely rhetorical. That “inborn philosophy,” of which Plato recognized the germ, still shows itself. In many of his works—notably in the Panegyricus—we see a really remarkable power of grasping a complex subject, of articulating it distinctly, of treating it, not merely with effect but luminously, at once in its widest bearings and in its most intricate details. Young men could learn more from Isocrates than the graces of style; nor would his success have been what it was if his skill had been confined to the art of expression.

It was about 392 B.C.—when he was forty-four—that he opened his school at Athens near the Lyceum. In 339 B.C. he describes himself as revising the Panathenaicus with some of his pupils; he was then ninety-seven. The celebrity enjoyed by the school of Isocrates is strikingly attested by ancient writers. Cicero describes it as that school in which the eloquence of all Greece was trained and perfected: its disciples were “brilliant in pageant or in battle,”4 foremost among the accomplished writers or powerful debaters of their time. The phrase of Cicero is neither vague nor exaggerated. Among the literary pupils of Isocrates might be named the historians Ephorus and Theopompus, the Attic archaelogist Androtion, and Isocrates of Apollonia, who succeeded his master in the school. Among the practical orators we have, in the forensic kind, Isaeus; in the political, Leodamas of Acharnae, Lycurgus and Hypereides. Hermippus of Smyrna (mentioned by Athenaeus) wrote a monograph on the “Disciples of Isocrates.” And scanty as are now the sources for such a catalogue, a modern scholar5 has still been able to recover forty-one names. At the time when the school of Isocrates was in the zenith of its fame it drew disciples, not only from the shores and islands of the Aegean, but from the cities of Sicily and the distant colonies of the Euxine. As became the image of its master’s spirit, it was truly Panhellenic. When Mausolus, prince of Caria, died in 351 B.C., his widow Artemisia instituted a contest of panegyrical eloquence in honour of his memory. Among all the competitors there was not one—if tradition may be trusted—who had not been the pupil of Isocrates.

Meanwhile the teacher who had won this great reputation had also been active as a public writer. The most interesting and most characteristic works of Isocrates are those in which he deals with the public questions of his own day. The influence which he thus exercised throughout Hellas might be compared to that of an earnest political essayist gifted with a popular and attractive style. And Isocrates had a dominant idea which gained strength with his years, until its realization had become, we might say, the main purpose of his life. This idea was the invasion of Asia by the united forces of Greece. The Greek cities were at feud with each other, and were severally torn by intestine faction. Political morality was become a rare and a somewhat despised distinction. Men who were notoriously ready to sell their cities for their private gain were, as Demosthenes says, rather admired than otherwise.6 The social condition of Greece was becoming very unhappy. The wealth of the country had ceased to grow; the gulf between rich and poor was becoming wider; party strife was constantly adding to the number of homeless paupers; and Greece was full of men who were ready to take service with any captain of mercenaries, or, failing that, with any leader of desperadoes. Isocrates draws a vivid and terrible picture of these evils. The cure for them, he firmly believed, was to unite the Greeks in a cause which would excite a generous enthusiasm. Now was the time, he thought, for that enterprise in which Xenophon’s comrades had virtually succeeded, when the headlong rashness of young Cyrus threw away their reward with his own life.7 The Persian empire was unsound to the core—witness the retreat of the Ten Thousand: let united Greece attack it and it must go down at the first onset. Then new wealth would flow into Greece; and the hungry pariahs of Greek society would be drafted into fertile homes beyond the Aegean.

A bright vision; but where was the power whose spell was first to unite discordant Greece, and, having united it, to direct its strength against Asia? That was the problem. The first attempt of Isocrates to solve it is set forth in his splendid Panegyricus (380 B.C.). Let Athens and Sparta lay aside their jealousies. Let them assume, jointly, a leadership which might be difficult for either, but which would be assured to both. That eloquent pleading failed. The next hope was to find some one man equal to the task. Jason of Pherae, Dionysius I. of Syracuse, Archidamus III., son of Agesilaus—each in turn rose as a possible leader of Greece before the imagination of the old man who was still young in his enthusiastic hope, and one after another they failed him. But now a greater than any of these was appearing on the Hellenic horizon, and to this new luminary the eyes of Isocrates were turned with eager anticipation. Who could lead united Greece against Asia so fitly as the veritable representative of the Heracleidae, the royal descendant of the Argive line—a king of half-barbarians it is true, but by race, as in spirit, a pure Hellene—Philip of Macedon? We can still read the words in which this fond faith clothed itself; the ardent appeal of Isocrates to Philip is extant; and another letter shows that the belief of Isocrates in Philip lasted at any rate down to the eve of Chaeronea.8 Whether it survived that event is a doubtful point. The popular account of the orator’s death ascribed it to the mental shock which he received from the news of Philip’s victory. He was at Athens, in the palaestra of Hippocrates, when the tidings came. He repeated three verses in which Euripides names three foreign Conquerors of Greece—Danaus, Pelops, Cadmus—and four days later he died of voluntary starvation. Milton (perhaps thinking of Eli) seems to conceive the death of Isocrates as instantaneous:—

“As that dishonest victory

At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty,

Killed with report that old man eloquent.”

Now the third of the letters which bears the name of Isocrates is addressed to Philip, and appears to congratulate him on his victory at Chaeronea, as being an event which will enable him to assume the leadership of Greece in a war against Persia. Is the letter genuine? There is no evidence, external or internal, against its authenticity, except its supposed inconsistency with the views of Isocrates and with the tradition of his suicide. As to his views, those who have studied them in his own writings will be disposed to question whether he would have regarded Philip’s victory at Chaeronea as an irreparable disaster for Greece. Undoubtedly he would have deplored the conflict between Philip and Athens; but he would have divided the blame between the combatants. And, with his old belief in Philip, he would probably have hoped, even after Chaeronea, that the new position won by Philip would eventually prove compatible with the independence of the Greek cities, while it would certainly promote the project on which, as he was profoundly convinced, the ultimate welfare of Greece depended,—a Panhellenic expedition against Persia. As to the tradition of his suicide, the only rational mode of reconciling it with that letter is to suppose that Isocrates destroyed himself, not because Philip had conquered, but because, after that event, he saw Athens still resolved to resist. We should be rather disposed to ask how much weight is to be given to the tradition. The earliest authority for it—Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the age of Augustus—may have had older sources; granting, however, that these may have remounted even to the end of the 4th century B.C., that would not prove much. Suppose that Isocrates—being then ninety-eight and an invalid—had happened to die from natural causes a few days after the battle of Chaeronea. Nothing could have originated more easily than a story that he killed himself from intense chagrin. Every one knew that Isocrates had believed in Philip; and most people would have thought that Chaeronea was a crushing refutation of that belief. Once started, the legend would have been sure to live, not merely because it was picturesque, but also because it served to accentuate the contrast between the false prophet and the true—between Isocrates and Demosthenes; and Demosthenes was very justly the national idol of the age which followed the loss of Greek independence.9

Isocrates is said to have taught his Athenian pupils gratuitously, and to have taken money only from aliens; but, as might have been expected, the fame of his school exposed him to attacks on the ground of his gains, which his enemies studiously exaggerated. After the financial reform of 378 B.C. he was one of those 1200 richest citizens who constituted the twenty unions (συμμορίαι) for the assessment of the war-tax (εἰσφορά). He had discharged several public services (λειτουργίαι); in particular, he had thrice served as trierarch. He married Plathane, the widow of the “sophist” Hippias of Elis, and then adopted her son Aphareus, afterwards eminent as a rhetorician and a tragic poet. In 355 B.C. he had his first and only lawsuit. A certain Megaclides (introduced into the speech under the fictitious name of Lysimachus) challenged him to undertake the trierarchy or exchange properties. This was the lawsuit which suggested the form of the discourse which he calls the Antidosis (“exchange of properties”—353 B.C.)—his defence of his professional life.

He was buried on a rising ground near the Cynosarges—a temenos of Heracles, with a gymnasion, on the east side of Athens, outside the Diomeian gate. His tomb was surmounted by a column some 45 ft. high, crowned with the figure of a siren, the symbol of persuasion and of death. A tablet of stone, near the column, represented a group of which Gorgias was the centre; his pupil Isocrates stood at his side. Aphareus erected a statue to his adopted father near the Olympieum. Timotheus, the illustrious son of Conon, dedicated another in the temple of Eleusis.

It was a wonderful century which the life of one man had thus all but spanned. Isocrates had reached early manhood when the long struggle of the Peloponnesian War—begun in his childhood—ended with the overthrow of Athens. The middle period of his career was passed under the supremacy of Sparta. His more advanced age saw that brief ascendancy which the genius of Epameinondas secured to Thebes. And he lived to urge on Philip of Macedon a greater enterprise than any which the Hellenic world could offer. His early promise had won a glowing tribute from Plato, and the rhetoric of his maturity furnished matter to the analysis of Aristotle; he had composed his imaginary picture of that Hellenic host which should move through Asia in a pageant of sacred triumph, just as Xenophon was publishing his plain narrative of the retreat of the Ten Thousand; and, in the next generation, his literary eloquence was still demonstrating the weakness of Persia when Demosthenes was striving to make men feel the deadly peril of Greece. This long life has an element of pathos not unlike that of Greek tragedy; a power above man was compelling events in a direction which Isocrates could not see; but his own agency was the ally of that power, though in a sense which he knew not; his vision was of Greece triumphant over Asia, while he was the unconscious prophet of an age in which Asia should be transformed by the diffusion of Hellenism.10

His character should be viewed in both its main aspects—the political and the literary.

With regard to the first, two questions have to be asked: (1) How far were the political views of Isocrates peculiar to himself, and different from those of the clearest minds contemporary with him? (2) How far were those views falsified by the event?

1. The whole tone of Greek thought in that age had taken a bent towards monarchy in some form. This tendency may be traced alike in the practical common sense of Xenophon and in the lofty idealism of Plato. There could be no better instance of it than a well-known passage in the Politics of Aristotle. He is speaking of the gifts which meet in the Greek race—a race warlike, like the Europeans, but more subtle—keen, like the Asiatics, but braver. Here, he says, is a race which “might rule all men, if it were brought under a single government.”11 It is unnecessary to suppose a special allusion to Alexander; but it is probable that Aristotle had in his mind a possible union of the Greek cities under a strong constitutional monarchy. His advice to Alexander (as reported by Plutarch) was to treat the Greeks in the spirit of a leader (ἡγεμονικῶς) and the barbarians in the spirit of a master (δεσποτικῶς).12 Aristotle conceived the central power as political and permanent; Isocrates conceived it as, in the first place, military, having for its immediate aim the conduct of an expedition against Asia. The general views of Isocrates as to the largest good possible for the Greek race were thus in accord with the prevailing tendency of the best Greek thought in that age.

2. The vision of the Greek race “brought under one polity” was not, indeed, fulfilled in the sense of Aristotle or of Isocrates. But the invasion of Asia by Alexander, as captain-general of Greece, became the event which actually opened new and larger destinies to the Greek race. The old political life of the Greek cities was worn out; in the new fields which were now opened, the empire of Greek civilization entered on a career of world-wide conquest, until Greece became to East and West more than all that Athens had been to Greece. Athens, Sparta, Thebes, ceased indeed to be the chief centres of Greek life; but the mission of the Greek mind could scarcely have been accomplished with such expansive and penetrating power if its influence had not radiated over the East from Pergamum, Antioch and Alexandria.

Panhellenic politics had the foremost interest for Isocrates. But in two of his works—the oration On the Peace and the Areopagiticus (both of 355 B.C.)—he deals specially with the politics of Athens. The speech On the Peace relates chiefly to foreign affairs. It is an eloquent appeal to his fellow-citizens to abandon the dream of supremacy, and to treat their allies as equals, not as subjects. The fervid orator personifies that empire, that false mistress which has lured Athens, then Sparta, then Athens once more, to the verge of destruction. “Is she not worthy of detestation?” Leadership passes into empire; empire begets insolence; insolence brings ruin. The Areopagiticus breathes a kindred spirit in regard to home policy. Athenian life had lost its old tone. Apathy to public interests, dissolute frivolity, tawdry display and real poverty—these are the features on which Isocrates dwells. With this picture he contrasts the elder democracy of Solon and Cleisthenes, and, as a first step towards reform, would restore to the Areopagus its general censorship of morals. It is here, and here alone—in his comments on Athenian affairs at home and abroad—that we can distinctly recognize the man to whom the Athens of Pericles was something more than a tradition. We are carried back to the age in which his long life began. We find it difficult to realize that the voice to which we listen is the same which we hear in the letter to Philip.

Turning from the political to the literary aspect of his work, we are at once upon ground where the question of his merits will now provoke comparatively little controversy. Perhaps the most serious prejudice with which his reputation has had to contend in modern times has been due to an accident of verbal usage. He repeatedly describes that art which he professed to teach as his φιλοσοφία. His use of this word—joined to the fact that in a few passages he appears to allude slightingly to Plato or to the Socratics—has exposed him to a groundless imputation. It cannot be too distinctly understood that, when Isocrates speaks of his φιλοσοφία, he means simply his theory or method of “culture”—to use the only modern term which is really equivalent in latitude to the Greek word as then current.13

The φιλοσοφία, or practical culture, of Isocrates was not in conflict, because it had nothing in common, with the Socratic or Platonic philosophy. The personal influence of Socrates may, indeed, be traced in his work. He constantly desires to make his teaching bear on the practical life. His maxims of homely moral wisdom frequently recall Xenophon’s Memorabilia. But there the relation ends. Plato alludes to Isocrates in perhaps three places. The glowing prophecy in the Phaedrus has been quoted; in the Gorgias a phrase of Isocrates is wittily parodied; and in the Euthydemus Isocrates is probably meant by the person who dwells “on the borderland between philosophy and statesmanship.”14 The writings of Isocrates contain a few more or less distinct allusions to Plato’s doctrines or works, to the general effect that they are barren of practical result.15 But Isocrates nowhere assails Plato’s philosophy as such. When he declares “knowledge” (ἐπιστήμη) to be unattainable, he means an exact “knowledge” of the contingencies which may arise in practical life. “Since it is impossible for human nature to acquire any science (ἐπιστήμην) by which we should know what to do or to say, in the next resort I deem those wise who, as a rule, can hit what is best by their opinions” (δόξας).16

Isocrates should be compared with the practical teachers of his day. In his essay Against the Sophists, and in his speech on the Antidosis, which belong respectively to the beginning and the close of his professional career, he has clearly marked the points which distinguish him from “the sophists of the herd” (ἀγελαῖοι σοφισταί). First, then, he claims, and justly, greater breadth of view. The ordinary teacher confined himself to the narrow scope of local interests—training the young citizen to plead in the Athenian law courts, or to speak on Athenian affairs in the ecclesia. Isocrates sought to enlarge the mental horizon of his disciples by accustoming them to deal with subjects which were not merely Athenian, but, in his own phrase, Hellenic. Secondly, though he did not claim to have found a philosophical basis for morals, it has been well said of him that “he reflects the human spirit always on its nobler side,”17 and that, in an age of corrupt and impudent selfishness, he always strove to raise the minds of his hearers into a higher and purer air. Thirdly, his method of teaching was thorough. Technical exposition came first. The learner was then required to apply the rules in actual composition, which the master revised. The ordinary teachers of rhetoric (as Aristotle says) employed their pupils in committing model pieces to memory, but neglected to train the learner’s own faculty through his own efforts. Lastly, Isocrates stands apart from most writers of that day in his steady effort to produce results of permanent value. While rhetorical skill was largely engaged in the intermittent journalism of political pamphlets, Isocrates set a higher ambition before his school. His own essays on contemporary questions received that finished form which has preserved them to this day. The impulse to solid and lasting work, communicated by the example of the master, was seen in such monuments as the Atthis of Androtion, the Hellenics of Theopompus and the Philippica of Ephorus.

In one of his letters to Atticus, Cicero says that he has used “all the fragrant essences of Isocrates, and all the little stores of his disciples.”18 The phrase has a point of which the writer himself was perhaps scarcely conscious: the style of Isocrates had come to Cicero through the school of Rhodes; and the Rhodian imitators had more of Asiatic splendour than of Attic elegance. But, with this allowance made, the passage may serve to indicate the real place of Isocrates in the history of literary style. The old Greek critics consider him as representing what they call the “smooth” or “florid” mode of composition (γλαφυρά, ἀνθηρὰ ἀρμονία) as distinguished from the “harsh” (αὐστηρά) style of Antiphon and the perfect “mean” (μέση) of Demosthenes. Tried by a modern standard, the language of Isocrates is certainly not “florid.” The only sense in which he merits the epithet is that (especially in his earlier work) he delights in elaborate antitheses. Isocrates is an “orator” in the larger sense of the Greek word rhetor; but his real distinction consists in the fact that he was the first Greek who gave an artistic finish to literary rhetoric. The practical oratory of the day had already two clearly separated branches—the forensic, represented by Isaeus, and the deliberative, in which Callistratus was the forerunner of Demosthenes. Meanwhile Isocrates was giving form and rhythm to a standard literary prose. Through the influence of his school, this normal prose style was transmitted—with the addition of some florid embellishments—to the first generation of Romans who studied rhetoric in the Greek schools. The distinctive feature in the composition of Isocrates is his structure of the periodic sentence. This, with him, is no longer rigid or monotonous, as with Antiphon—no longer terse and compact, as with Lysias—but ample, luxuriant, unfolding itself (to use a Greek critic’s image) like the soft beauties of a winding river. Isocrates was the first Greek who worked out the idea of a prose rhythm. He saw clearly both its powers and its limits; poetry has its strict rhythms and precise metres; prose has its metres and rhythms, not bound by a rigid framework, yet capable of being brought under certain general laws which a good ear can recognize, and which a speaker or writer may apply in the most various combinations. This fundamental idea of prose rhythm, or number, is that which the style of Isocrates has imparted to the style of Cicero. When Quintilian (x. 1. 108) says, somewhat hyperbolically, that Cicero has artistically reproduced (effinxisse) “the force of Demosthenes, the wealth of Plato, the charm of Isocrates,” he means principally this smooth and harmonious rhythm. Cicero himself expressly recognizes this original and distinctive merit of Isocrates.19 Thus, through Rome, and especially through Cicero, the influence of Isocrates, as the founder of a literary prose, has passed into the literatures of modern Europe. It is to the eloquence of the preacher that we may perhaps look for the nearest modern analogue of that kind in which Isocrates excelled—especially, perhaps, to that of the great French preachers. Isocrates was one of the three Greek authors, Demosthenes and Plato being the others, who contributed most to form the style of Bossuet.

Works.—The extant works of Isocrates consist of twenty-one speeches or discourses and nine letters.20 Among these, the six forensic speeches represent the first period of his literary life—belonging to the years 403-393 B.C. All six concern private causes. They may be classed as follows: 1. Action for Assault (δίκη αἰκίας), Or. xx., Against Lochites, 394 B.C. 2. Claim to an Inheritance (ἐπιδικασία), Or. xix., Aegineticus, end of 394 or early in 393 B.C. 3. Actions to Recover a Deposit: (1) Or. xxi., Against Euthynus, 403 B.C.; (2) Or. xvii., Trapeziticus, end of 394 or early in 393 B.C. 4. Action for Damage (δίκη βλάβης), Or. xvi., Concerning the Team of Horses, 397 B.C. 5. Special Plea (παραγραφή), Or. xviii., Against Callimachus, 402 B.C. Two of these have been regarded as spurious by G. E. Benseler, viz. Or. xxi., on account of the frequent hiatus and the short compact periods, and Or. xvii., on the first of these grounds. But we are not warranted in applying to the early work of Isocrates those canons which his mature style observed. The genuineness of the speech against Euthynus is recognized by Philostratus; while the Trapeziticus—thrice named without suspicion by Harpocration—is treated by Dionysius, not only as authentic, but as the typical forensic work of its author. The speech against Lochites—where “a man of the people” (τοῦ πλήθους εἶς) is the speaker—exhibits much rhetorical skill. The speech Περὶ τοῦ ζεύγους (“concerning the team of horses”) has a curious interest. An Athenian citizen had complained that Alcibiades had robbed him of a team of four horses, and sues the statesman’s son and namesake (who is the speaker) for their value. This is not the only place in which Isocrates has marked his admiration for the genius of Alcibiades; it appears also in the Philippus and in the Busiris. But, among the forensic speeches, we must, on the whole, give the palm to the Aegineticus—a graphic picture of ordinary Greek life in the islands of the Aegean. Here—especially in the narrative—Isocrates makes a near approach to the best manner of Lysias.

The remaining fifteen orations or discourses do not easily lend themselves to the ordinary classification under the heads of “deliberative” and “epideictic.” Both terms must be strained; and neither is strictly applicable to all the pieces which it is required to cover. The work of Isocrates travelled out of the grooves in which the rhetorical industry of the age had hitherto moved. His position among contemporary writers was determined by ideas peculiar to himself; and his compositions, besides having a style of their own, are in several instances of a new kind. The only adequate principle of classification is one which considers them in respect to their subject-matter. Thus viewed, they form two clearly separated groups—the scholastic and the political.

Scholastic Writings.—Under this head we have, first, three letters or essays of a hortatory character. (1) The letter to the young Demonicus21—once a favourite subject in the schools—contains a series of precepts neither below nor much above the average practical morality of Greece. (2) The letter to Nicocles—the young king of the Cyprian Salamis—sets forth the duty of a monarch to his subjects. (3) In the third piece, it is Nicocles who speaks, and impresses on the Salaminians their duty to their king—a piece remarkable as containing a popular plea for monarchy, composed by a citizen of Athens. These three letters may be referred to the years 374-372 B.C.

Next may be placed four pieces which are “displays” (ἐπιδείξεις) in the proper Greek sense. The Busiris (Or. xi., 390-391 B.C.) is an attempt to show how the ill-famed king of Egypt might be praised. The Encomium on Helen (Or. x., 370 B.C.), a piece greatly superior to the last, contains the celebrated passage on the power of beauty. These two compositions serve to illustrate their author’s view that “encomia” of the hackneyed type might be elevated by combining the mythical matter with some topic of practical interest—as, in the case of Busiris, with the institutions of Egypt, or, in that of Helen, with the reforms of Theseus. The Evagoras (Or. ix., 365 B.C.?), the earliest known biography, is a laudatory epitaph on a really able man—the Greek king of the Cyprian Salamis. A passage of singular interest describes how, under his rule, the influences of Hellenic civilization had prevailed over the surrounding barbarism. The Panathenaicus (Or. xii.), intended for the great Panathenaea of 342 B.C., but not completed till 339 B.C., contains a recital of the services rendered by Athens to Greece, but digresses into personal defence against critics; his last work, written in extreme old age, it bears the plainest marks of failing powers.

The third subdivision of the scholastic writings is formed by two most interesting essays on education—that entitled Against the Sophists (Or. xiii., 391-390 B.C.), and the Antidosis (Or. xv., 353 B.C.). The first of these is a manifesto put forth by Isocrates at the outset of his professional career of teaching, in which he seeks to distinguish his aims from those of other “sophists.” These “sophists” are (1) the “eristics” (οἱ περὶ τὰς ἔριδας), by whom he seems to intend the minor Socratics, especially Euclides; (2) the teachers of practical rhetoric, who had made exaggerated claims for the efficacy of mere instruction, independently of natural faculty or experience; (3) the writers of “arts” of rhetoric, who virtually devoted themselves (as Aristotle also complains) to the lowest, or forensic, branch of their subject (see also E. Holzner, Platos Phaedrus und die Sophistenrede des Isokrates, Prague, 1894). As this piece is the prelude to his career, its epilogue is the speech on the “Antidosis”—so called because it has the form of a speech made in court in answer to a challenge to undertake the burden of the trierarchy, or else exchange properties with the challenger. The discourse “Against the Sophists” had stated what his art was not; this speech defines what it is. His own account of his φιλοσοφία—“the discipline of discourse” (ἡ τῶν λόγων παιδεία)—has been embodied in the sketch of it given above.

Political Writings.—These, again, fall into two classes—those which concern (1) the relations of Greece with Persia, (2) the internal affairs of Greece. The first class consist of the Panegyricus (Or. iv., 380 B.C.) and the Philippus (Or. v., 346 B.C.). The Panegyricus takes its name from the fact that it was given to the Greek public at the time of the Olympic festivals—probably by means of copies circulated there. The orator urges that Athens and Sparta should unite in leading the Greeks against Persia. The feeling of antiquity that this noble discourse is a masterpiece of careful work finds expression in the tradition that it had occupied its author for more than ten years. Its excellence is not merely that of language, but also—and perhaps even more conspicuously—that of lucid arrangement. The Philippus is an appeal to the king of Macedon to assume that initiative in the war on Persia which Isocrates had ceased to expect from any Greek city. In the view of Demosthenes, Philip was the representative barbarian; in that of Isocrates, he is the first of Hellenes, and the natural champion of their cause.

Of those discourses which concern the internal affairs of Greece, two have already been noticed,—that On the Peace (Or. viii.), and the Areopagiticus (Or. vii.)—both of 355 B.C.—as dealing respectively with the foreign and the home affairs of Athens. The Plataicus (Or. xiv.) is supposed to be spoken by a Plataean before the Athenian ecclesia in 373 B.C. In that year Plataea had for the second time in its history been destroyed by Thebes. The oration—an appeal to Athens to restore the unhappy town—is remarkable both for the power with which Theban cruelty is denounced, and for the genuine pathos of the peroration. The Archidamus (Or. vi.) is a speech purporting to be delivered by Archidamus III., son of Agesilaus, in a debate at Sparta on conditions of peace offered by Thebes in 366 B.C. It was demanded that Sparta should recognize the independence of Messene, which had lately been restored by Epameinondas (370 B.C.). The oration gives brilliant expression to the feeling which such a demand was calculated to excite in Spartans who knew the history of their own city. Xenophon witnesses that the attitude of Sparta on this occasion was actually such as the Archidamus assumes (Hellen. vii. 4. 8-11).

Letters.—The first letter—to Dionysius I.—is fragmentary; but a passage in the Philippus leaves no doubt as to its object. Isocrates was anxious that the ruler of Syracuse should undertake the command of Greece against Persia. The date is probably 368 B.C. Next in chronological order stands the letter “To the Children of Jason” (vi.). Jason, tyrant of Pherae, had been assassinated in 370 B.C.; and no fewer than three of his successors had shared the same fate. Isocrates now urges Thebe, the daughter of Jason, and her half-brothers to set up a popular government. The date is 359 B.C.22 The letter to Archidamus III. (ix.)—the same person who is the imaginary speaker of Oration vi.—urges him to execute the writer’s favourite idea,—“to deliver the Greeks from their feuds, and to crush barbarian insolence.” It is remarkable for a vivid picture of the state of Greece; the date is about 356 B.C. The letter to Timotheus (vii., 345 B.C.), ruler of Heraclea on the Euxine, introduces an Athenian friend who is going thither, and at the same time offers some good counsels to the benevolent despot. The letter “to the government of Mytilene” (viii., 350 B.C.) is a petition to a newly established oligarchy, begging them to permit the return of a democratic exile, a distinguished musician named Agenor. The first of the two letters to Philip of Macedon (ii.) remonstrates with him on the personal danger to which he had recklessly exposed himself, and alludes to his beneficent intervention in the affairs of Thessaly; the date is probably the end of 342 B.C. The letter to Alexander (v.), then a boy of fourteen, is a brief greeting sent along with the last, and congratulates him on preferring “practical” to “eristic” studies—a distinction which is explained by the sketch of the author’s φιλοσοφία, and of his essay “Against the Sophists,” given above. It was just at this time, probably, that Alexander was beginning to receive the lessons of Aristotle (342 B.C.). The letter to Antipater (iv.) introduces a friend who wished to enter the military service of Philip. Antipater was then acting as regent in Macedonia during Philip’s absence in Thrace (340-339 B.C.). The later of the two letters to Philip (iii.) appears to be written shortly after the battle of Chaeronea in 338 B.C. The questions raised by it have already been discussed.

No lost work of Isocrates is known from a definite quotation, except an “Art of Rhetoric,” from which some scattered precepts are cited. Quintilian, indeed, and Photius, who had seen this “Art,” felt a doubt as to whether it was genuine. Only twenty-five discourses—out of an ascriptive total of some sixty—were admitted as authentic by Dionysius; Photius (circ. A.D. 850) knew only the number now extant—twenty-one.

With the exception of defects at the end of Or. xiii., at the beginning of Or. xvi., and probably at the end of Letters i., vi., ix., the existing text is free from serious mutilations. It is also unusually pure. The smooth and clear style of Isocrates gave few opportunities for the mistakes of copyists. On the other hand, he was a favourite author of the schools. Numerous glosses crept into his text through the comments or conjectures of rhetoricians. This was already the case before the 6th century, as is attested by the citations of Priscian and Stobaeus. Jerome Wolf and Koraes successively accomplished much for the text. But a more decided advance was made by Immanuel Bekker. He used five MSS., viz. (1) Codex Urbinas III., Γ (this, the best, was his principal guide); (2) Vaticanus 936, Δ; (3) Laurentianus 87, 14, Θ (13th century); (4) Vaticanus 65, Λ; and (5) Marcianus 415, Ξ. The first three, of the same family, have Or. xv. entire; the last two are from the same original, and have Or. xv. incomplete.

J. G. Baiter and H. Sauppe in their edition (1850) follow Γ “even more constantly than Bekker.” Their apparatus is enriched, however, by a MS. to which he had not access—Ambrosianus O. 144, Ε, which in some cases, as they recognize, has alone preserved the true reading. The readings of this MS. were given in full by G. E. Benseler in his second edition (1854-1855). The distinctive characteristic of Benseler’s textual criticism was a tendency to correct the text against even the best MS., where the MS. conflicted with the usage of Isocrates as inferred from his recorded precepts or from the statements of ancient writers. Thus, on the strength of the rule ascribed to Isocrates—φωνήεντα μὴ συμπίπτειν—Benseler would remove from the text every example of hiatus (on the MSS. of Isocrates, see H. Bürmann, Die handschriftliche Überlieferung des Isocrates, Berlin, 1885-1886, and E. Drerup, in Leipziger Studien, xvii., 1895).

(R. C. J.)

Editions.—In Oratores Attici, ed. Imm. Bekker (1823, 1828); W. S. Dobson (1828); J. G. Baiter and Hermann Sauppe (1850). Separately Ausgewählte Reden, Panegyrikos und Areopagitikos, by Rudolf Rauchenstein, 6th ed., Karl Münscher (1908); in Teubner’s series, by G. E. Benseler (new ed., by F. Blass, 1886-1895) and by E. Drerup (1906-  ); Ad Demonicum et Panegyricus, ed. J. E. Sandys (1868); Evagoras, ed. H. Clarke (1885). Extracts from Orations iii., iv., vi., vii., viii., ix., xiii., xiv., xv., xix., and Letters iii., v., edited with revised text and commentary, in Selections from the Attic Orators, by R. C. Jebb (1880); vol. i. of an English prose translation, with introduction and notes by J. H. Freese, has been published in Bohn’s Classical Library (1894). See generally Jebb’s Attic Orators (where a list of authorities is given) and F. Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit (2nd ed., 1887-1898), and the latter’s Die Rhythmen der attischen Kunstprosa (1901). There is a special lexicon by S. Preuss (1904). On the philosophy of Isocrates and his relation to the Socratic schools, see Thompson’s ed. of Plato’s Phaedrus, Appendix 2.

1 Ἀταλάντη, fr. 1, Meineke, Poëtarum comicorum Graecorum frag. (1855), p. 292.

2 [Plut.] Vita Isocr., and the anonymous biographer. Dionysius does not mention the story, though he makes Isocrates a pupil of Theramenes.

3 Some would refer the sojourn of Isocrates at Chios to the years 398-395 B.C., others to 393-388 B.C. The reasons which support the view given in the text will be found in Jebb’s Attic Orators, vol. ii. (1893), p. 6, note 2.

4 Partim in pompa, partim in acie illustres (De orat. ii. 24).

5 P. Sanneg, De schola Isocratea (Halle, 1867).

6 De falsa legat. p. 426 οὐχ ὅπως ὠργίζοντο ἢ κολάζειν τοὺς ταῦτα ποιοῦντας, ἀλλ᾽ ἀπέβλεπον, ἐζήλουν, ἐτίμων, ἅνδρας ἡγοῦντο.

7 ἐκείνους γὰρ ὁμολογεῖται ... ἤδη ἐγκρατεῖς δοκοῦντας εἶναι τῶν πραγμάτων διὰ τὴν Κύρου προπέτειαν ἀτυχῆσαι (Philippus, 90; cp. Panegyr. 149).

8 Philippus, 346 B.C.; Epist. ii. end of 342 B.C. (?).

9 The views of several modern critics on the tradition of the suicide are brought together in the Attic Orators, ii. (1893) p. 31, note 1.

10 Isocrates, a loyal and genuine Hellene, can yet conceive of Hellenic culture as shared by men not of Hellenic blood (Panegyr. 50). He is thus, as Ernst Curtius has ably shown, a forerunner of Hellenism—analogous, in the literary province, to Epameinondas and Timotheus in the political (History of Greece, v. 116, 204, tr. Ward).

11 τὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων γένος ... δυνάμενον ἄρχειν, μιᾶς τυγχάνον πολιτείας (Polit. iv. [vii.] 6, 7).

12 De Alex. virt. i. 6.

13 The word φιλοσοφία seems to have come into Athenian use not much before the time of Socrates; and, till long after the time of Isocrates, it was commonly used, not in the sense of “philosophy,” but in that of “literary taste and study—culture generally” (see Thompson on Phaedrus, 278 D). Aristeides, ii. 407 φιλοκαλία τις καὶ διατριβὴ περὶ λόγους, καὶ οὐχ ὁ νῦν τρόπος οὗτος, ἀλλὰ παιδεία κοινῶς. And so writers of the 4th century B.C. use φιλοσοφεῖν as simply = “to study”; as e.g. an invalid “studies” the means of relief from pain, Lys. Or. xxiv. 10; cf. Isocr. Or. iv. 6, &c.

14 Plato, Gorg. p. 463; Euthyd. 304-306.

15 These allusions are discussed in the Attic Orators, vol. ii. ch. 13.

16 Isocr. Or. xv. 271.

17 A. Cartelier, Le Discours d’Isocrate sur lui-même, p. lxii. (1862).

18 Totum Isocratis μυροθήκιον atque omnes ejus discipulorum arculas (Ad Att. ii. 1).

19 Idque princeps Isocrates instituisse fertur, ... ut inconditam antiquorum dicendi consuetudinem ... numeris astringeret (De or. iii. 44, 173).

20 The dates here given differ to some extent from those in F. Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit (2nd ed., 1887-1898).

21 Some authorities consider the Ad Demonicum spurious.

22 This was shown by R. C. Jebb in a paper on “The Sixth Letter of Isocrates,” Journal of Philology, v. 266 (1874). The fact that Thebe, widow of Alexander of Pherae, was the daughter of Jason is incidentally noticed by Plutarch in his life of Pelopidas, c. 28. It is this fact which gives the clue to the occasion of the letter; cf. Diod. Sic. xvi. 14.

ISODYNAMIC LINES (Gr. ἰσοδύναμος, equal in power), lines connecting those parts of the earth’s surface where the magnetic force has the same intensity (see Magnetism, Terrestrial).

ISOGONIC LINES (Gr. ἰσογώνιος, equiangular), lines connecting those parts of the earth’s surface where the magnetic declination is the same in amount (see Magnetism, Terrestrial).

ISOLA DEL LIRI, a town of Campania, in the province of Caserta, Italy, 15 m. by rail N.N.W. of Roccasecca, which is on the main line from Rome to Naples, 10 m. N.W. of Cassino. Pop. (1901), town, 2384; commune, 8244. The town consists of two parts, Isola Superiore and Isola Inferiore; as its name implies it is situated between two arms of the Liri. The many waterfalls of this river and of the Fibreno afford motive power for several important paper-mills. Two of the falls, 80 ft. in height, are especially fine. About 1 m. to the N. is the church of San Domenico, erected in the 12th century, which probably marks the site of the villa of Cicero (see Arpino).

ISOMERISM, in chemistry. When Wöhler, in 1825, analysed his cyanic acid, and Liebig his quite different fulminic acid in 1824, the composition of both compounds proved to be absolutely the same, containing each in round numbers 28% of carbon, 33% of nitrogen, 37% of oxygen and 2% of hydrogen. This fact, inconsistent with the then dominating conception that difference in qualities was due to difference in chemical composition, was soon corroborated by others of analogous nature, and so Berzelius introduced the term isomerism (Gr. ἰσομερής, composed of equal parts) to denominate the existence of the property of substances having different qualities, in chemical behaviour as well as physical, notwithstanding identity in chemical composition. These phenomena were quite in accordance with the atomic conception of matter, since a compound containing the same number of atoms of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen as another in the same weight might differ in internal structure by different arrangements of those atoms. Even in the time of Berzelius the newly introduced conception proved to include two different groups of facts. The one group included those isomers where the identity in composition was accompanied by identity in molecular weight, i.e. the vapour densities of the isomers were the same, as in butylene and isobutylene, to take the most simple case; here the molecular conception admits that the isolated groups in which the atoms are united, i.e. the molecules, are identical, and so the molecule of both butylene and isobutylene is indicated by the same chemical symbol C4H8, expressing that each molecule contains, in both cases, four atoms of carbon (C) and eight of hydrogen (H). This group of isomers was denominated metamers by Berzelius, and now often “isomers” (in the restricted sense), whereas the term polymerism (Gr. πολύς, many) was chosen for compounds like butylene, C4H8, and ethylene, C2H4, corresponding to the same composition in weight but differing in molecular formula, and having different densities in gas or vapour, a litre of butylene and isobutylene weighing, for instance, under ordinary temperature and pressure, about 2.5 gr., ethylene only one-half as much, since density is proportional to molecular weight.

A further distinction is necessary to a survey of the subdivisions of isomerism regarded in its widest sense. There are subtle and more subtle differences causing isomerism. In the case of metamerism we can imagine that the atoms are differently linked, say in the case of butylene that the atoms of carbon are joined together as a continuous chain, expressed by —C—C—C—C—, normally as it is called, whereas in isobutylene the fourth atom of carbon is not attached to the third but to the second carbon atom, i.e. Now there are cases in which analogy of internal structure goes so far as to exclude even that difference in linking, the only remaining possibility then being the difference in relative position. This kind of isomerism has been denominated stereoisomerism (q.v.) often stereomerism. But there is a last group belonging here in which identity of structure goes farthest. There are substances such as sulphur, showing difference of modification in crystalline state—the ordinary rhombic form in which sulphur occurs as a mineral, while, after melting and cooling, long needles appear which belong to the monosymmetric system. These differences, which go hand in hand with those in other properties, e.g. specific heat and specific gravity, are absolutely confined to the crystalline state, disappearing with it when both modifications of sulphur are melted, or dissolved in carbon disulphide or evaporated. So it is natural to admit that here we have to deal with identical molecules, but that only the internal arrangement differs from case to case as identical balls may be grouped in different ways. This case of difference in properties combined with identical composition is therefore called polymorphism.

To summarize, we have to deal with polymerism, metamerism, stereoisomerism, polymorphism; whereas phenomena denominated tautomerism, pseudomerism and desmotropism form different particular features of metamerism, as well as the phenomena of allotropy, which is merely the difference of properties which an element may show, and can be due to polymerism, as in oxygen, where by the side of the ordinary form with molecules O2 we have the more active ozone with O3. Polymorphism in the case of an element is illustrated in the case of sulphur, whereas metamerism in the case of elements has so far as yet not been observed; and is hardly probable, as most elements are built up, like the metals, from molecules containing only one atom per molecule; here metamerism is absolutely excluded, and a considerable number of the rest, having diatomic molecules, are about in the same condition. It is only in cases like sulphur with octatomic molecules, where a difference of internal structure might play a part.

Before entering into detail it may be useful to consider the nature of isomerism from a general standpoint. It is probable that the whole phenomenon of isomerism is due to the possibility that compounds or systems which in reality are unstable yet persist, or so slowly change that practically one can speak of their stability; for instance, such systems as explosives and a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, where the stable form is water, and in which, according to some, a slow but until now undetected change takes place even at ordinary temperatures. Consequently, of each pair of isomers we may establish beforehand which is the more stable; either in particular circumstances, a direct change taking place, as, for instance, with maleic acid, which when exposed to sunlight in presence of a trace of bromine, yields the isomeric fumaric acid almost at once, or, indirectly, one may conclude that the isomer which forms under greater heat-development is the more stable, at least at lower temperatures. Now, whether a real, though undetected, change occurs is a question to be determined from case to case; it is certain, however, that a substance like aragonite (a mineral form of calcium carbonate) has sensibly persisted in geological periods, though the polymorphous calcite is the more stable form. Nevertheless, the theoretical possibility, and its realization in many cases, has brought considerations to the front which have recently become of predominant interest; consequently the possible transformations of isomers and polymers will be considered later under the denomination of reversible or dynamical isomerisms.

Especially prominent is the fact that polymerism and metamerism are mainly reserved to the domain of organic chemistry, or the chemistry of carbon, both being discovered there; and, more especially, the phenomenon of metamerism in organic chemistry has largely developed our notions concerning the structure of matter. That this particular feature belongs to carbon compounds is due to a property of carbon which characterizes the whole of organic chemistry, i.e. that atoms attached to carbon, to express it in the atomic style, cling more intensely to it than, for instance, when combined with oxygen. This explains a good deal of the possible instability; and, from a practical point of view, it coincides with the fact that such a large amount of energy can be stored in our most intense explosives such as dynamite, the explanation being that hydrogen is attached to carbon distant from oxygen in the same molecule, and that only the characteristic resistance of the carbon linkage prevents the hydrogen from burning, which is the main occurrence in the explosion of dynamite. The possession of this peculiar property by carbon seems to be related to its high valency, amounting to four; and, generally, when we consider the most primitive expression of isomerism, viz. the allotropy of elements, we meet this increasing resistance with increasing valency. The monovalent iodine, for instance, is transformed by heating into an allotropic form, corresponding to the formula I, whereas ordinary iodine answers to I2. Now these modifications show hardly any tendency to persist, the one stable at high temperatures being formed at elevated temperatures, but changing in the reverse sense on cooling. In the divalent oxygen we meet with the modification called ozone, which, although unstable, changes but slowly into oxygen. Similarly the trivalent phosphorus in the ordinary white form shows such resistance as if it were practically stable; on the other hand the red modification is in reality also stable, being formed, for instance, under the influence of light. In the case of the quadrivalent carbon, diamond seems to be the stable form at ordinary temperatures, but one may wait long before it is formed from graphite.

This connexion of isomerism with resistant linking, and of this with high valency, explains, in considerable measure, why inorganic compounds afforded, as a rule, no phenomena of this kind until the systematic investigation of metallic compounds by Werner brought to light many instances of isomerism in inorganic compounds. Whereas carbon renders isomerism possible in organic compounds, cobalt and platinum are the determining elements in inorganic chemistry, the phenomena being exhibited especially by complex ammoniacal derivatives. The constitution of these inorganic isomers is still somewhat questionable; and in addition it seems that polymerism, metamerism and stereoisomerism play a part here, but the general feature is that cobalt and platinum act in them with high valency, probably exceeding four. The most simple case is presented by the two platinum compounds PtCl2(NH3)2, the platosemidiammine chloride of Peyrone, and the platosammine chloride of Jules Reiset, the first formed according to the equation PtCl4K2 + 2NH3 = PtCl2(NH3)2 + 2KCl, the second according to Pt(NH3)4Cl2 = PtCl2(NH3)2 + 2NH3, these compounds differing in solubility, the one dissolving in 33, the other in 160 parts of boiling water. With cobalt the most simple case was discovered in 1892 by S. Jörgensen in the second dinitrotetramminecobalt chloride, [Co(NO2)2(NH3)4]Cl, designated as flavo—whereas the older isomer of Gibbs was distinguished as croceo-salt. An interesting lecture on the subject was delivered by A. Werner before the German chemical society (Ber., 1907, 40, p. 15). (See Cobalt; Platinum.)

Dealing with organic compounds, it is metamerism that deserves chief attention, as it has largely developed our notions as to molecular structure. Polymerism required no particular explanation, since this was given by the difference in molecular magnitude. One general remark, however, may be made here. There are polymers which have hardly any inter-relations other than identity in composition; on the other hand, there are others which are related by the possibility of mutual transformation; examples of this kind are cyanic acid (CNOH) and cyanuric acid (CNOH)3, the latter being a solid which readily transforms into the former on heating as an easily condensable vapour; the reverse transformation may also be realized; and the polymers methylene oxide (CH2O) and trioxymethylene (CH2O)3. In the first group we may mention the homologous series of hydrocarbons derived from ethylene, given by the general formula CnH2n, and the two compounds methylene-oxide and honey-sugar C6H12O6. The cases of mutual transformation are generally characterized by the fact that in the compound of higher molecular weight no new links of carbon with carbon are introduced, the trioxymethylene being probably whereas honey-sugar corresponds to CH2OH·CHOH·CHOH·CHOH·CHOH·CHO, each point representing a linking of the carbon atom to the next. This observation is closely related to the above-mentioned resistivity of the carbon-link, and corroborates it in a special case. As carbon tends to hold the atom attached to it, one may presume that this property expresses itself in a predominant way where the other element is carbon also, and so the linkage represented by —C—C— is one of the most difficult to loosen.

The conception of metamerism, or isomerism in restricted sense, has been of the highest value for the development of our notions concerning molecular structure, i.e. the conception as to the order in which the atoms composing a molecule are linked together. In this article we shall confine ourselves to the fatty compounds, from which the fundamental notions were first obtained; reference may be made to the article Chemistry: Organic, for the general structural relations of organic compounds, both fatty and aromatic.

A general philosophical interest is attached to the phenomena of isomerism. By Wilhelm Ostwald especially, attempts have been made to substitute the notion of atoms and molecular structure by less hypothetical conceptions; these ideas may some day receive thorough confirmation, and when this occurs science will receive a striking impetus. The phenomenon of isomerism will probably supply the crucial test, at least for the chemist, and the question will be whether the Ostwaldian conception, while substituting the Daltonian hypothesis, will also explain isomerism. An early step accomplished by Ostwald in this direction is to define ozone in its relation to oxygen, considering the former as differing from the latter by an excess of energy, measurable as heat of transformation, instead of defining the difference as diatomic molecules in oxygen, and triatomic in ozone. Now, in this case, the first definition expresses much better the whole chemical behaviour of ozone, which is that of “energetic” oxygen, while the second only includes the fact of higher vapour-density; but in applying the first definition to organic compounds and calling isobutylene “butylene with somewhat more energy” hardly anything is indicated, and all the advantages of the atomic conception—the possibility of exactly predicting how many isomers a given formula includes and how you may get them—are lost.

To Kekulé is due the credit of taking the decisive step in introducing the notion of tetravalent carbon in a clear way, i.e. in the property of carbon to combine with four different monatomic elements at once, whereas nitrogen can only hold three (or in some cases five), oxygen two (in some cases four), hydrogen one. This conception has rendered possible a clear idea of the linking or internal structure of the molecule, for example, in the most simple case, methane, CH4, is expressed by

It is by this conception that possible and impossible compounds are at once fixed. Considering the hydrocarbons given by the general formula CxHy, the internal linkages of the carbon atoms need at least x − 1 bonds, using up 2(x − 1) valencies of the 4x to be accounted for, and thus leaving no more than 2(x + 1) for binding hydrogen: a compound C3H9 is therefore impossible, and indeed has never been met. The second prediction is the possibility of metamerism, and the number of metamers, in a given case among compounds, which are realizable. Considering the predicted series of compounds CnH2n+2, which is the well-known homologous series of methane, the first member, the possible of isomerism lies in that of a different linking of the carbon atoms. This first presents itself when four are present, i.e. in the difference between C—C—C—C and With this compound C4H10, named butane, isomerism is actually observed, being limited to a pair, whereas the former members ethane, C2H6, and propane, C3H8, showed no isomerism. Similarly, pentane, C5H12, and hexane, C6H14, may exist in three and five theoretically isomeric forms respectively; confirmation of this theory is supplied by the fact that all these compounds have been obtained, but no more. The third most valuable indication which molecular structure gives about these isomers is how to prepare them, for instance, that normal hexane, represented by CH3·CH2·CH2·CH2·CH2·CH3, may be obtained by action of sodium on propyl iodide, CH3·CH2·CH2I, the atoms of iodine being removed from two molecules of propyl iodide, with the resulting fusion of the two systems of three carbon atoms into a chain of six carbon atoms. But it is not only the formation of different isomers which is included in their constitution, but also the different ways in which they will decompose or give other products. As an example another series of organic compounds may be taken, viz. that of the alcohols, which only differ from the hydrocarbons by having a group OH, called hydroxyl, instead of H, hydrogen; these compounds, when derived from the above methane series of hydrocarbons, are expressed by the general formula CnH2n+1OH. In this case it is readily seen that isomerism introduces itself in the three carbon atom derivative: the propyl alcohols, expressed by the formulae CH3·CH2·CH2OH and CH3·CHOH·CH3, are known as propyl and isopropyl alcohol respectively. Now in oxidizing, or introducing more oxygen, for instance, by means of a mixture of sulphuric acid and potassium bichromate, and admitting that oxygen acts on both compounds in analogous ways, the two alcohols may give (as they lose two atoms of hydrogen) CH3·CH2·COH and CH3CO·CH3. The first compound, containing a group COH, or more explicitly O = C—H, is an aldehyde, having a pronounced reducing power, producing silver from the oxide, and is therefore called propylaldehyde; the second compound containing the group —C·CO·C— behaves differently but just as characteristically, and is a ketone, it is therefore denominated propylketone (also acetone or dimethyl ketone). And so, as a rule, from isomeric alcohols, those containing a group —CH2·OH, yield by oxidation aldehydes and are distinguished by the name primary; whereas those containing CH·OH, called secondary, produce ketones. (Compare Chemistry: Organic.)

The above examples may illustrate how, in a general way, chemical properties of isomers, their formation as well as transformation, may be read in the structure formula. It is different, however, with physical properties, density, &c.; at present we have no fixed rules which enable us to predict quantitatively the differences in physical properties corresponding to a given difference in structure, the only general rule being that those differences are not large.

Perhaps a satisfactory point of view may be here obtained by applying the van der Waals’ equation A(P + a/V²)(V − b) = 2T, which connects volume V, pressure P and temperature T (see Condensation of Gases). In this equation a relates to molecular attraction; and it is not improbable that in isomeric molecules, containing in sum the same amount of the same atoms, those mutual attractions are approximately the same, whereas the chief difference lies in the value of b, that is, the volume occupied by the molecule itself. For what reason this volume may differ from case to case lies close at hand; in connexion with the notion of negative and positive atoms, like chlorine and hydrogen, experience tends to show that the former, as well as the latter, have a mutual repulsive power, but the former acts on the latter in the opposite sense; the necessary consequence is that, when those negative and positive groups are distributed in the molecule, its volume will be smaller than if the negative elements are heaped together. An example may prove this, but before quoting it, the question of determining b must be decided; this results immediately from the above quotation, b being the volume V at the absolute zero (T = 0); so the volume of isomers ought to be compared at the absolute zero. Since this has not been done we must adopt the approximate rule that the volume at absolute zero is proportional to that at the boiling-point. Now taking the isomers H3C·CCl3(Mv = 108) and ClH2·CHCl2(Mv = 103), we see the negative chlorine atoms heaped up in the left hand formula, but distributed in the second; the former therefore may be presumed to occupy a larger space, the molecular volume, that is, the volume in cubic centimetres occupied by the molecular weight in grams, actually being 108 in the former, and 103 in the latter case (compare Chemistry: Physical). An analogous remark applies to the boiling-point of isomers. According to the above formula the critical temperature is given by 8aA/54b, and as the critical temperature is approximately proportional to the boiling-point, both being estimated on the absolute scale of temperature, we may conclude that the larger value of b corresponds to the lower boiling-point, and indeed the isomer corresponding to the left-hand formula boils at 74°, the other at 114°. Other physical properties might be considered; as a general rule they depend upon the distribution of negative and positive elements in the molecule.

Reversible (dynamical) Isomerism.—Certain investigations on isomerism which have become especially prominent in recent times bear on the possibility of the mutual transformation of isomers. As soon as this reversibility is introduced, general laws related to thermodynamics are applicable (see Chemical Action; Energetics). These laws have the advantage of being applicable to the mutual transformations of isomers, whatever be the nature of the deeper origin, and so bring polymerism, metamerism and polymorphism together. As they are pursued furthest in the last case, this may be used as an example. The study of polymorphism has been especially pursued by Otto Lehmann, who proved that it is an almost general property; the variety of forms which a given substance may show is often great, ammonium nitrate, for instance, showing at least four of them before melting. The general rule which correlates this polymorphic change is that its direction changes at a given temperature. For example, sulphur is stable in the rhombic form till 95.4°, from then upwards it tends to change over into the prismatic form. The phenomenon absolutely corresponds to that of fusion and solidification, only that it generally takes place less quickly; consequently we may have prismatic sulphur at ordinary temperature for some time, as well as rhombic sulphur at 100°. This may be expressed in the chosen case by a symbol; “rhombic sulphur 95.4° ⇄ prismatic sulphur,” indicating that there is equilibrium at the so-called “transition-point,” 95.4°, and opposite change below and above.

This comparison with fusion introduces a second notion, that of the “triple-point,” this being in the melting-phenomenon the only temperature at which solid, liquid and vapour are in equilibrium, in other words, where three phases of one substance are co-existent. This temperature is somewhat different from the ordinary melting-point, the latter corresponding to atmospheric pressure, the former to the maximum vapour-pressure; and so we come to a third relation for polymorphism. Just as the melting-point changes with pressure, the transition-point also changes; even the same quantitative relation holds for both, as L. J. Reicher proved with sulphur: aT/aP = AvT/q, v being the change in volume which accompanies the change from rhombic to prismatic sulphur, and q the heat absorbed. Both formula and experiment proved that an increase of pressure of one atmosphere elevated the transition point for about 0.04°. The same laws apply to cases of more complicated nature, and one of them, which deserves to be pursued further, is the mutual transformation of cyanuric acid, C3H3N3O3, cyanic acid, CHNO, and cyamelide (CHNO)x; the first corresponding to prismatic sulphur, stable at higher temperatures, the last to rhombic, the equilibrium-symbol being: cyamelide 150° ⇄ cyanuric acid; the cyanic acid corresponds to sulphur vapour, being in equilibrium with either cyamelide or cyanuric acid at a maximum pressure, definite for each temperature.

A second law for these mutual transformations is that when they take place without loss of homogeneity, for example, in the liquid state, the definite transition point disappears and the change is gradual. This seems to be the case with molten sulphur, which, when heated, becomes dark-coloured and plastic; and also in the case of metals, which obtain or lose magnetic properties without loss of continuous structure. At the same time, however, the transition point sometimes reappears even in the liquid state; in such cases two layers are formed, as has been recently observed with sulphur, and by F. M. Jäger in complicated organic compounds. Thus the introduction of heterogeneity, or the appearance of a new phase, demands the existence of a fixed temperature of transformation.

On the basis of the relation between physical phenomena and thermodynamical laws, properties of the polymorphous compounds may be predicted. The chief consideration here is that the stable form must have the lower vapour pressure, otherwise, by distillation, it would transform in opposite sense. From this it follows that the stable form must have the higher melting-point, since at the melting-point the vapour of the solid and of the liquid have the same pressure. Thus prismatic sulphur has a higher melting-point (120°) than the rhombic form (116°), and it is even possible to calculate the difference theoretically from the thermodynamic relations. A third consequence is that the stable form must have the smaller solubility: J. Meyer and J. N. Brönstedt found that at 25°, 10 c.c. of benzene dissolved 0.25 and 0.18 gr. of prismatic and rhombic sulphur respectively. It can be easily seen that this ratio, according to Henry’s law, must correspond to that of vapour-pressures, and so be independent of the solvent; in fact, in alcohol the figures are 0.0066 and 0.0052. Recently Hermann Walther Nernst has been able to deduce the transition-point in the case of sulphur from the specific heat and the heat developed in the transition only. This best studied case shows that a number of mutual relations are to be found between the properties of two modifications when once the phenomenon of mutual transformation is accessible.

In ordinary isomers indications of mutual transformation often occur; and among these the predominant fact is that denoted as tautomerism or pseudomerism. It exhibits itself in the peculiar behaviour of some organic compounds containing the group —C·CO·C—, e.g. CH3CO·CHX·CO2C2H5, derivatives of acetoacetic ester. These compounds generally behave as ketones; but at the same time they may act as alcohols, i.e. as if containing the OH group; this leads to the formula H3C·C(OH):CX·CO2C2H5. In reality such tautomeric compounds are apparently a mixture of two isomers in equilibrium, and indeed in some cases both forms have been isolated; then one speaks of desmotropy (Gr. δεσμός, a bond or link, and τροπή, a turn or change). Nevertheless, the relations obtained in reversible cases such as sulphur have not yet found application in the highly interesting cases of ordinary irreversible isomerism.

A further step in this direction has been effected by the introduction of reversibility into a non-reversible case by means of a catalytic agent. The substance investigated was acetaldehyde, C2H4O, in its relation to paraldehyde, a polymeric modification. The phenomena were first observed without mutual transformation, aldehyde melting at −118°, paraldehyde at 13°, the only mutual influence being a lowering of melting-point, with a minimum at -120° in the eutectic point. When a catalytic agent, such as sulphurous acid, is added, which produces a mutual change, the whole behaviour is different; only one melting-point, viz. 7°, is observed for all mixtures; this has been called the “natural melting-point.” It corresponds to one of the melting-points in the series without catalytic agents, viz. in that mixture which contains 88% of paraldehyde and 12% of acetaldehyde, which the catalytic agent leaves unaffected. Such an introduction of reversibility is also possible by allowing sufficient time to permit the transformation to be produced by itself. By R. Rothe and Alexander Smith’s interesting observations on sulphur, results have been obtained which tend to prove that the melting-point, as well as the appearance of two layers in the liquid state, correspond to unstable conditions.

(J. H. van’t H.)

ISOTHERM (Gr. ἴσος, equal, and θέρμη, heat), a line upon a map connecting places where the temperature is the same at sea-level on the earth’s surface. These isothermal lines will be found to vary from month to month over the two hemispheres, or over local areas, during summer and winter, and their position is modified by continental or oceanic conditions.

ISOXAZOLES, monazole chemical compounds corresponding to furfurane, in which the ≡CH group adjacent to the oxygen atom is replaced by a nitrogen atom, and therefore they contain the ring system They may be prepared by the elimination of water from the monoximes of β-diketones, β-ketone aldehydes or oxymethylene ketones (L. Claisen, Ber., 1891, 24, p. 3906), the general reaction proceeding according to the equation

W. Dunstan and T. S. Dymond (Jour. Chem. Soc., 1891, 49, p. 410) have also prepared isoxazoles by the action of alkalis on nitroparaffins, but have not been able to obtain the parent substance. Those isoxazoles in which the carbon atom adjacent to nitrogen is substituted are stable compounds, but if this is not the case, rearrangement of the molecule takes place and nitriles are formed. The isoxazoles are feebly basic.

The isoxazolones are the keto derivatives of the as yet unknown dihydroisoxazole, and are compounds of strongly acid nature, decomposing the carbonates of the alkaline earth metals and forming salts with metals and with ammonia. Their constitution is not yet definitely fixed and they may be regarded as derived from one of the three types

By the action of nitrous acid on the oxime of o-aminobenzophenone as α-phenyl indoxazene, is obtained; this is a derivative of benzisoxazole.

ISRAEL (Hebrew for “God strives” or “rules”; see Gen. xxxii. 28; and the allusion in Hosea xii. 4), the national designation of the Jews. Israel was a name borne by their ancestor Jacob the father of the twelve tribes. For some centuries the term was applied to the northern kingdom, as distinct from Judah, although the feeling of national unity extended it so as to include both. It emphasizes more particularly the position of the Hebrews as a religious community, bound together by common aims and by their covenant-relation with the national God, Yahweh.

See further Jacob, Hebrew Language, Hebrew Religion, Jews: History and Palestine.

ISRAELI, ISAAC BEN SOLOMON (9th-10th centuries), Jewish physician and philosopher. A contemporary of Seadiah (q.v.), he was born and passed his life in North Africa. He died c. 950. At Kairawan, Israeli was court physician; he wrote several medical works in Arabic, and these were afterwards translated into Latin. Similarly his philosophical writings were translated, but his chief renown was in the circle of Moslem authors.

ISRAËLS, JOSEF (1824-  ), Dutch painter, was born at Groningen, of Hebrew parents, on the 27th of January 1824. His father intended him to be a man of business, and it was only after a determined struggle that he was allowed to enter on an artistic career. However, the attempts he made under the guidance of two second-rate painters in his native town—Buÿs and van Wicheren—while still working under his father as a stockbroker’s clerk, led to his being sent to Amsterdam, where he became a pupil of Jan Kruseman and attended the drawing class at the academy. He then spent two years in Paris, working in Picot’s studio, and returned to Amsterdam. There he remained till 1870, when he moved to The Hague for good. Israëls is justly regarded as one of the greatest of Dutch painters. He has often been compared to J. F. Millet. As artists, even more than as painters in the strict sense of the word, they both, in fact, saw in the life of the poor and humble a motive for expressing with peculiar intensity their wide human sympathy; but Millet was the poet of placid rural life, while in almost all Israëls’ pictures we find some piercing note of woe. Duranty said of them that “they were painted with gloom and suffering.” He began with historical and dramatic subjects in the romantic style of the day. By chance, after an illness, he went to recruit his strength at the fishing-town of Zandvoort near Haarlem, and there he was struck by the daily tragedy of life. Thenceforth he was possessed by a new vein of artistic expression, sincerely realistic, full of emotion and pity. Among his more important subsequent works are “The Zandvoort Fisherman” (in the Amsterdam gallery), “The Silent House” (which gained a gold medal at the Brussels Salon, 1858) and “Village Poor” (a prize at Manchester). In 1862 he achieved great success in London with his “Shipwrecked,” purchased by Mr Young, and “The Cradle,” two pictures of which the Athenaeum spoke as “the most touching pictures of the exhibition.” We may also mention among his maturer works “The Widower” (in the Mesdag collection), “When we grow Old” and “Alone in the World” (Amsterdam gallery), “An Interior” (Dordrecht gallery), “A Frugal Meal” (Glasgow museum), “Toilers of the Sea,” “A Speechless Dialogue,” “Between the Fields and the Seashore,” “The Bric-à-brac Seller” (which gained medals of honour at the great Paris Exhibition of 1900). “David Singing before Saul,” one of his latest works, seems to hint at a return on the part of the venerable artist to the Rembrandtesque note of his youth. As a water-colour painter and etcher he produced a vast number of works, which, like his oil paintings, are full of deep feeling. They are generally treated in broad masses of light and shade, which give prominence to the principal subject without any neglect of detail.

See Jan Veth, Mannen of Beteckenis: Jozef Israëls; Chesneau, Peintres français et étrangers; Ph. Zilcken, Peintres hollandais modernes (1893); Dumas, Illustrated Biographies of Modern Artists (1882-1884); J. de Meester, in Max Rooses’ Dutch Painters of the Nineteenth Century (1898); Jozef Israëls, Spain: the Story of a Journey (1900).

ISSACHAR (a Hebrew name meaning apparently “there is a hire,” or “reward”), Jacob’s ninth “son,” his fifth by Leah; also the name of a tribe of Israel. Slightly differing explanations of the reference in the name are given in Gen. xxx. 16 (J) and v. 18 (E).1 The territory of the tribe (Joshua xix. 17-23) lay to the south of that allotted to Zebulun, Naphtali, Asher and Dan, and included the whole of the great plain of Esdraelon, and the hills to the east of it, the boundary in that direction extending from Tabor to the Jordan, apparently along the deep gorge of Wadi el Bīreh. In the rich territory of Issachar, traversed by the great commercial highway from the Mediterranean and Egypt to Bethshean and the Jordan, were several important towns which remained in the hands of the Canaanites for some time (Judges i. 27), separating the tribe from Manasseh. Although Issachar is mentioned as having taken some part in the war of freedom under Deborah (Judges v. 15), it is impossible to misunderstand the reference to its tributary condition in the blessing of Jacob (Gen. xlix. 14 seq.), or the fact that the name of this tribe is omitted from the list given in Judges i. of those who bestirred themselves against the earlier inhabitants of the country. In the “blessing upon Zebulun and Issachar” in Deut. xxxiii. 18 seq., reference is made to its agricultural life in terms suggesting that along with its younger, but more successful “brother,” it was the guardian of a sacred mountain (Carmel, Tabor?) visited periodically for sacrificial feasts.

1 On the origin of the name, see the article by H. W. Hogg, Ency. Bib. col. 2290; E. Meyer, Israeliten, p. 536 seq.

ISSEDONES, an ancient people of Central Asia at the end of the trade route leading north-east from Scythia (q.v.), described by Herodotus (iv. 26). The position of their country is fixed as the Tarym basin by the more precise indications of Ptolemy, who tells how a Syrian merchant penetrated as far as Issedon. They had their wives in common and were accustomed to slay the old people, eat their flesh and make cups of their skulls. Such usages survived among Tibetan tribes and make it likely that the Issedones were of Tibetan race. Some of the Issedones seem to have invaded the country of the Massagetae to the west, and similar customs are assigned to a section of these.

(E. H. M.)

ISSERLEIN, ISRAEL (d. 1460), German Talmudist. His fame attracted many students to Neustadt, and his profound learning did much to revive the study of the original Rabbinic authorities. After the publication of the Code of Joseph Qaro (q.v.) the decisions of Isserlein in legal matters were added in notes to that code by Moses Isserles. His chief works were Terumath ha-Deshēn (354 decisions) and Peasqim u-kethaḥim (267 decisions) largely on points of the marriage law.

ISSERLES, MOSES BEN ISRAEL (c. 1520-1572), known as Remā, was born at Cracow and died there in 1572. He wrote commentaries on the Zohar, the “Bible of the Kabbalists,” but is best known as the critic and expander of the Shulḥan Aruch of Joseph Qaro (Caro)(q.v.). His chief halakhic (legal) works were Darke Moshē and Mappāh. Qaro, a Sephardic (Spanish) Jew, in his Code neglected Ashkenazic (German) customs. These deficiencies Isserles supplied, and the notes of Remā are now included in all editions of Qaro’s Code.

ISSOIRE, a town of central France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Puy-de-Dôme, on the Couze, near its junction with the Allier, 22 m. S.S.E. of Clermont-Ferrand on the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway to Nîmes. Pop. (1906) 5274. Issoire is situated in the fertile plain of Limagne. The streets in the older part of the town are narrow and crooked, but in the newer part there are several fine tree-shaded promenades, while a handsome boulevard encircles the town. The church of St Paul or St Austremoine built on the site of an older chapel raised over the tomb of St Austremoine (Stremonius) affords an excellent specimen of the Romanesque architecture of Auvergne. Issoire is the seat of a sub-prefect; its public institutions include tribunals of first instance and commerce and a communal college. Brewing, wool-carding and the manufacture of passementerie, candles, straw hats and woollen goods are carried on. There is trade in lentils and other agricultural products, in fruit and in wine.

Issoire (Iciodurum) is said to have been founded by the Arverni, and in Roman times rose to some reputation for its schools. In the 5th century the Christian community established there by Stremonius in the 3rd century was overthrown by the fury of the Vandals. During the religious wars of the Reformation, Issoire suffered very severely. Merle, the leader of the Protestants, captured the town in 1574, and treated the inhabitants with great cruelty. The Roman Catholics retook it in 1577, and the ferocity of their retaliation may be inferred from the inscription “Ici fut Issoire” carved on a pillar which was raised on the site of the town. In the contest between the Leaguers and Henry IV., Issoire sustained further sieges, and never wholly regained its early prosperity.

ISSOUDUN, a town of central France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Indre, on the right bank of the Théols, 17 m. N.E. of Châteauroux by rail. Pop. (1906) 10,566. Among the interesting buildings are the church of St Cyr, combining various architectural styles, with a fine porch and window, and the chapel of the Hôtel Dieu of the early 16th century. Of the fortifications with which the town was formerly surrounded, a town-gate of the 16th century and the White Tower, a lofty cylindrical building of the reign of Philip Augustus, survive. Issoudun is the seat of a sub-prefecture, and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of arts and manufactures and a communal college. The industries, of which the most important is leather-dressing, also include malting and brewing and the manufacture of bristles for brushes and parchment. Trade is in grain, live-stock, leather and wine.

Issoudun, in Latin Exoldunum or Uxellodunum, existed in and before Roman times. In 1195 it was stoutly and successfully defended by the partizans of Richard Cœur-de-Lion against Philip Augustus, king of France. It has suffered severely from fires. A very destructive one in 1651 was the result of an attack on the town in the war of Fronde; Louis XIV. rewarded its fidelity to him during that struggle by the grant of several privileges.

ISSYK-KUL, also called Tuz-Kul, and by the Mongols Temurtu-nor, a lake of Central Asia, lying in a deep basin (5400 ft. above sea-level), between the Kunghei Ala-tau and the Terskei Ala-tau, westward continuations of the Tian-shan mountains, and extending from 76° 10′ to 78° 20′ E. The length from W.S.W. to E.N.E. is 115 m. and the breadth 38 m., the area being estimated at 2230 sq. m. The name is Kirghiz for “warm lake,” and, like the Chinese synonym She-hai, has reference to the fact that the lake is never entirely frozen over. On the south the Terskei Ala-tau do not come down so close to the shore as the mountains on the north, but leave a strip 5 to 13 m. broad. The margins of the lake are overgrown with reeds. The water is brackish. Fish are remarkably abundant, the principal species being carp.

It was by the route beside this lake that the tribes (e.g. Yue-chi) driven from China by the Huns found their way into the Aralo-Caspian basin in the end of the 2nd century. The Ussuns or Uzuns settled on the lake and built the town of Chi-gu, which still existed in the 5th century. It is to Hsüan-tsang, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, that we are indebted for the first account of Issyk-kul based on personal observation. In the beginning of the 14th century Nestorian Christians reached the lake and founded a monastery on the northern shore, indicated on the Catalan map of 1374. It was not till 1856 that the Russians made acquaintance with the district.

ISTAHBANÁT, a town and district of Persia in the province of Fars. The district, which is very fertile, extends for nearly 50 m. east and west along the southern shore of the Bakhtegán lake and produces much grain, cotton, good tobacco and excellent fruit, particularly pomegranates and grapes, walnuts and figs. The town is situated in the midst of a plain 12 m. from the eastern corner of the lake and about 100 m. S.E. of Shiraz, and has a population of about 10,000. It occupies the site of the ancient city of Ij, the capital of the old province of Shabánkáreh, which was captured and partly destroyed by Mubariz ed-din, the founder of the Muzaffarid dynasty, in 1355. When rebuilt it became known by its present name. Of the old period a ruined mosque and two colleges remain; other mosques and colleges are of recent construction. At the entrance of the town stands a noble chinar (oriental plane), measuring 45 ft. in circumference at 2 ft. from the ground.

ISTHMUS (Gr. ἰσθμός, neck), a narrow neck of land connecting two larger portions of land that are otherwise separated by the sea.

ISTRIA (Ger. Istrien), a margraviate and crownland of Austria, bounded N. by the Triestine territory, Görz and Gradisca, and Carniola, E. by Croatia and S. and W. by the Adriatic; area 1908 sq. m. It comprises the peninsula of the same name (area 1545 sq. m.), which stretches into the Adriatic Sea between the Gulf of Trieste and the Gulf of Quarnero, and the islands of Veglia, Cherso, Lussino and others. The coast line of Istria extends for 267 m., including Trieste, and presents many good bays and harbours. Besides the great Gulf of Trieste, the coast is indented on the W. by the bays of Muggia, Capodistria, Pirano, Porto Quieto and Pola, and on the E. by those of Medolino, Arsa, Fianona and Volosca. A great portion of Istria belongs to the Karst region, and is occupied by the so-called Istrian plateau, flanked on the north and east by high mountains, which attain in the Monte Maggiore an altitude of 4573 ft. In the south and west the surface gradually slopes down in undulating terraces towards the Adriatic. The Quieto in the west and the Arsa in the east, neither navigable, are the principal streams. The climate of Istria, although it varies with the varieties of surface, is on the whole warm and dry. The coasts are exposed to the prevailing winds, namely the Sirocco from the south-south-east, and the Bora from the north-east. Of the total area 33.21% is occupied by forests, 32.09% by pastures, 11.2% by arable land, 9.5% by vineyards, 7.21% by meadows and 3.26% by gardens. The principal agricultural products are wheat, maize, rye, oats and fruit, namely olives, figs and melons. Viticulture is well developed, and the best sorts of wine are produced near Capodistria, Muggia, Isola, Parenzo and Dignano, while well-known red wines are made near Refosco and Terrano. The oil of Istria was already famous in Roman times. Cattle-breeding is another great source of revenue, and the exploitation of the forests gives beech and oak timber (good for shipbuilding), gall-nuts, oak-bark and cork. Fishing, the recovery of salt from the sea-water, and shipbuilding constitute the other principal occupations of the population. Istria had in 1900 a population of 344,173, equivalent to 180 inhabitants per square mile. Two-thirds of the population were Slavs and the remainder Italians, while nearly the whole of the inhabitants (99.6%) were Roman Catholics, under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of three bishops. The local Diet, which meets at Parenzo, and of which the three bishops are members ex-officio, is composed of 33 members, and Istria sends 5 deputies to the Reichsrat at Vienna. For administrative purposes the province is divided into 6 districts and an autonomous municipality, Rovigno (pop. 10,205). Other important places are Pola (45,052), Capodistria (10,711), Pinguente (15,827), Albona (10,968), Isola (7500), Parenzo (9962), Dignano (9684), Castua (17,988), Pirano (13,339) and Mitterburg (16,056).

The modern Istria occupies the same position as the ancient Istria or Histria, known to the Romans as the abode of a fierce tribe of Illyrian pirates. It owed its name to an old belief that the Danube (Ister, in Greek) discharged some of its water by an arm entering the Adriatic in that region. The Istrians, protected by the difficult navigation of their rocky coasts, were only subdued by the Romans in 177 B.C. after two wars. Under Augustus the greater part of the peninsula was added to Italy, and, when the seat of empire was removed to Ravenna, Istria reaped many benefits from the proximity of the capital. After the fall of the Western empire it was pillaged by the Longobardi and the Goths; it was annexed to the Frankish kingdom by Pippin in 789; and about the middle of the 10th century it fell into the hands of the dukes of Carinthia. Fortune after that, however, led it successively through the hands of the dukes of Meran, the duke of Bavaria and the patriarch of Aquileia, to the republic of Venice. Under this rule it remained till the peace of Campo Formio in 1797, when Austria acquired it, and added it to the north-eastern part which had fallen to her share so early as 1374. By the peace of Pressburg, Austria was in 1805 compelled to cede Istria to France, and the department of Istria was formed; but in 1813 Austria again seized it, and has retained it ever since.

See T. G. Jackson, Dalmatia, the Quarnero and Istria (Oxford, 1887).

ISYLLUS, a Greek poet, whose name was rediscovered in the course of excavations on the site of the temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus. An inscription was found engraved on stone, consisting of 72 lines of verse (trochaic tetrameters, hexameters, ionics), mainly in the Doric dialect. It is preceded by two lines of prose stating that the author was Isyllus, an Epidaurian, and that it was dedicated to Asclepius and Apollo of Malea. It contains a few political remarks, showing general sympathy with an aristocratic form of government; a self-congratulatory notice of the resolution, passed at the poet’s instigation, to arrange a solemn procession in honour of the two gods; a paean (no doubt for use in the procession), chiefly occupied with the genealogical relations of Apollo and Asclepius; a poem of thanks for the assistance rendered to Sparta by Asclepius against Philip, when he led an army against Sparta to put down the monarchy. The offer of assistance was made by the god himself to the youthful poet, who had entered the Asclepieum to pray for recovery from illness, and communicated the good news to the Spartans. The Philip referred to is identified with (a) Philip II. of Macedon, who invaded Peloponnesus after the battle of Chaeronea in 338, or (b) with Philip III., who undertook a similar campaign in 218.

Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, who characterizes Isyllus as a “poetaster without talent and a farcical politician,” has written an elaborate treatise on him (Kiessling and Möllendorff, Philosophische Untersuchungen, Heft 9, 1886), containing the text with notes, and essays on the political condition of Peloponnesus and the cult of Asclepius. The inscription was first edited by P. Kavvadias (1885), and by J. F. Baunack in Studien auf dem Gebiete der griechischen und der arischen Sprachen (1886).

ITACOLUMITE, the name given to a variety of porous yellow sandstone or quartzose schist, which occurs at Itacolumi, in the southern portion of Minas Geraes, Brazil. This rock is of interest for two reasons; it is believed to be the source of the diamonds which are found in great numbers in the district, and it is the best and most widely known example of a flexible sandstone. Itacolumite is yellow or pale-brown, and splits readily into thin flat slabs. It is a member of a metamorphic series, being accompanied by clay-slate, mica schist, hornblende schist and various types of ferriferous schists. In many places itacolumite is really a coarse grit or fine conglomerate. Other quartzites occur in the district, and there is some doubt whether the diamantiferous sandstones are always itacolumites and also as to the exact manner in which the presence of diamond in these rocks is to be accounted for. Some authorities hold that the diamond has been formed in certain quartz veins which traverse the itacolumite. It is clear, however, that the diamonds are found only in those streams which contain the detritus of this rock.

On the split faces of the slabs, scales of greenish mica are visible, but in other respects the rock seems to be remarkably pure. If a piece which is a foot or two long and half an inch thick be supported at its ends it will gradually bend by its own weight. If it then be turned over it will straighten and bend in the opposite direction. Flakes a millimetre or two thick can be bent between the fingers and are said to give out a creaking sound. It should be noted that specimens showing this property form only a small part of the whole mass of the rock. Flexible rocks have also been reported and described from North and South Carolina, Georgia, Delhi, and from the north of England (Durham). They are mostly sandstones or quartzites, but the Durham rock is a variety of the magnesian limestone of that district.

Some discussion has taken place regarding the cause of the flexibility. At one time it was ascribed to the presence of thin scales of mica which were believed to permit a certain amount of motion between adjacent grains of quartz. More probably, however it is due to the porous character of the rock together with the interlocking junctions between the sand grains. The porosity allows interstitial movement, while the hinge-like joints by which the particles are connected hold them together in spite of the displacement. These features are dependent to some extent on weathering, as the rocks contain perishable constituents which are removed and leave open cavities in their place, while at the same time additional silica may have been deposited on the quartz grains fitting their irregular surfaces more perfectly together. Most of the known flexible rocks are also fine-grained; in some cases they are said to lose their flexibility after being dried for some time, probably because of the hardening of some interstitial substance, but many specimens kept in a dry atmosphere for years retain this property in a high degree.

(J. S. F.)

ITAGAKI, TAISUKE, Count (1837-  ), Japanese statesman, was born in Tosa in 1837. He distinguished himself originally as one of the soldier politicians who contributed so much to the overthrow of feudalism and the restoration of the administrative power to the throne. After taking a prominent part in subduing the resistance offered by a section of the shogun’s feudatories to those changes, he received cabinet rank in the newly organized system. But in 1873 he resigned his portfolio as a protest against the ministry’s resolve to refrain from warlike action against Korea. This incident inspired Itagaki with an apprehension that the country was about to pass under the yoke of a bureaucratic government. He became thenceforth a warm advocate of constitutional systems, though at the outset he does not seem to have contemplated anything like a popular assembly in the English sense of the term, his ideas being limited to the enfranchisement of the samurai class. Failing to obtain currency for his radical propaganda, he retired to his native province, and there established a school (the Risshi-sha) for teaching the principles of government by the people, thus earning for himself the epithet of “the Rousseau of Japan.” His example found imitators. Not only did pupils flock to Tosa from many quarters, attracted alike by the novelty of Itagaki’s doctrines, by his eloquence and by his transparent sincerity, but also similar schools sprang up among the former vassals of other fiefs, who saw themselves excluded from the government. In 1875 no less than seven of these schools sent deputies to hold a convention in Osaka, and for a moment an appeal to force seemed possible. But the statesmen in power were not less favourable to constitutional institutions than the members of the Aikoku Kō-tō (public party of patriots), as Itagaki and his followers called themselves. A conference attended by Kido, Okubo, Inouye, Ito, Itagaki and others entered into an agreement by which they pledged themselves to the principle of a constitutional monarchy and a legislative assembly. Itagaki now accepted office once more. Finding, however, that his colleagues in the administration favoured a much more leisurely rate of progress than he himself advocated, he once more retired into private life (1876) and renewed his liberal propagandism. It is in the nature of such movements to develop violent phases, and the leaders of the Aikoku-sha (patriotic association), as the agitators now called themselves, not infrequently showed disregard for the preservation of peace and order. Itagaki made the mistake of memorializing the government at the moment when its very existence was imperilled by the Satsuma rebellion (1877), and this evident disposition to take advantage of a great public peril went far to alienate the sympathies of the cabinet. Recourse was had to legislation in restraint of free speech and public meeting. But repression served only to provoke opposition. Throughout 1879 and 1880 Itagaki’s followers evinced no little skill in employing the weapons of local association, public meetings and platform tours, and in November 1881 the first genuine political party was formed in Japan under the name of Jiyū-tō, with Itagaki for declared leader. A year later the emperor announced that a parliamentary system should be inaugurated in 1891, and Itagaki’s task might be said to have been accomplished. Thenceforth he devoted himself to consolidating his party. In the spring of 1882, he was stabbed by a fanatic during the reception given in the public park at Gifu. The words he addressed to his would-be assassin were: “Itagaki may perish, but liberty will survive.” Once afterwards (1898) he held office as minister of home affairs, and in 1900 he stepped down from the leadership of the Jiyū-tō in order that the latter might form the nucleus of the Seiyū-kai organized by Count Ito. Itagaki was raised to the nobility with the title of “count” in 1887. From the year 1900 he retired into private life, devoting himself to the solution of socialistic problems. His countrymen justly ascribe to him the fame of having been the first to organize and lead a political party in Japan.

ITALIAN LANGUAGE.1 The Italian language is the language of culture in the whole of the present kingdom of Italy, in some parts of Switzerland (the canton of Ticino and part of the Grisons), in some parts of the Austrian territory (the districts of Trent and Görz, Istria along with Trieste, and the Dalmatian coast), and in the islands of Corsica2 and Malta. In the Ionian Islands, likewise, in the maritime cities of the Levant, in Egypt, and more particularly in Tunis, this literary language is extensively maintained through the numerous Italian colonies and the ancient traditions of trade.

The Italian language has its native seat and living source in Middle Italy, or more precisely Tuscany and indeed Florence. For real linguistic unity is far from existing in Italy; in some respects the variety is less, in others more observable than in other countries which equally boast a political and literary unity. Thus, for example, Italy affords no linguistic contrast so violent as that presented by Great Britain with its English dialects alongside of the Celtic dialects of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, or by France with the French dialects alongside of the Celtic dialects of Brittany, not to speak of the Basque of the Pyrenees and other heterogeneous elements. The presence of not a few Slavs stretching into the district of Udine (Friuli), of Albanian, Greek and Slav settlers in the southern provinces, with the Catalans of Alghero (Sardinia, v. Arch. glott. ix. 261 et seq.), a few Germans at Monte Rosa and in some corners of Venetia, and a remnant or two of other comparatively modern immigrations is not sufficient to produce any such strong contrast in the conditions of the national speech. But, on the other hand, the Neo-Latin dialects which live on side by side in Italy differ from each other much more markedly than, for example, the English dialects or the Spanish; and it must be added that, in Upper Italy especially, the familiar use of the dialects is tenaciously retained even by the most cultivated classes of the population.

In the present rapid sketch of the forms of speech which occur in modern Italy, before considering the Tuscan or Italian par excellence, the language which has come to be the noble organ of modern national culture, it will be convenient to discuss (A) dialects connected in a greater or less degree with Neo-Latin systems that are not peculiar to Italy;3 (B) dialects which are detached from the true and proper Italian system, but form no integral part of any foreign Neo-Latin system; and (C) dialects which diverge more or less from the true Italian and Tuscan type, but which at the same time can be conjoined with the Tuscan as forming part of a special system of Neo-Latin dialects.

A. Dialects which depend in a greater or less degree on Neo-Latin systems not peculiar to Italy.

1. Franco-Provençal and Provençal Dialects.—(a) Franco-Provençal (see Ascoli, Arch. glott. iii. 61-120; Suchier, in Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, 2nd ed., i. 755, &c.; Nigra, Arch. glott. iii. 1 sqq.; Salvioni, Rendic. istit. lomb., s. ii. vol. xxxvii. 1043 sqq.; Cerlogne, Dictionnaire du patois valdôtain (Aosta, 1907). These occupy at the present time very limited areas at the extreme north-west of the kingdom of Italy. The system stretches from the borders of Savoy and Valais into the upper basin of the Dora Baltea and into the head-valleys of the Orco, of the northern Stura, and of the Dora Riparia. As this portion is cut off by the Alps from the rest of the system, the type is badly preserved; in the valleys of the Stura and the Dora Riparia, indeed, it is passing away and everywhere yielding to the Piedmontese. The most salient characteristic of the Franco-Provençal is the phonetic phenomenon by which the Latin a, whether as an accented or as an unaccented final, is reduced to a thin vowel (ḛ, i) when it follows a sound which is or has been palatal, but on the contrary is kept intact when it follows a sound of another sort. The following are examples from the Italian side of these Alps: Aosta: travaljí, Fr. travailler; zarźí, Fr. charger; enteruźí, Fr. interroger; zḛvra, Fr. chèvre; zir, Fr. cher; gljáçḛ, Fr. glace; vázze, Fr. vache; alongside of sa, Fr. sel; maṅ, Fr. main; epóusa, Fr. épouse; erba, Fr. herbe. Val. Soana: taljér, Fr. tailler; coćí-sse, Fr. se coucher; ćiṅ, Fr. chien; ćívra, Fr. chèvre; vaćći, Fr. vache; mánģi, Fr. manche; alongside of alár, Fr. aller; porta, Fr. porté; amára, Fr. amère; néva, Fr. neuve. Chiamorio (Val di Lanzo): la spranssi dla vendeta, sperantia de illa vindicta. Viù: pansci, pancia. Usseglio: la müragli, muraille. A morphological characteristic is the preservation of that paradigm which is legitimately traced back to the Latin pluperfect indicative, although possibly it may arise from a fusion of this pluperfect with the imperfect subjunctive (amaram, amarem, alongside of habueram, haberem), having in Franco-Provençal as well as in Provençal and in the continental Italian dialects in which it will be met with further on (C. 3, b; cf. B. 2) the function of the conditional. Val Soana: portáro, portáre, portáret; portáront; Aosta: ávre = Prov. agra, haberet (see Arch. iii. 31 n). The final t in the third persons of this paradigm in the Val Soana dialect is, or was, constant in the whole conjugation, and becomes in its turn a particular characteristic in this section of the Franco-Provençal. Val Soana: éret, Lat. erat; sejt, sit; pórtet, portávet; portǫnt, portávǫnt; Chiamorio: jéret, erat; ant dit, habent dictum; èjssount fêt, habuissent factum; Viu: che s’mínget, Ital. che si mangi: Gravere (Val di Susa): at pensá, ha pensato; avát, habebat; Giaglione (sources of the Dora Riparia); maciávont, mangiavano.—From the valleys, where, as has just been said, the type is disappearing, a few examples of what is still genuine Franco-Provençal may be subjoined: Ćivreri (the name of a mountain between the Stura and the Dora Riparia), which, according to the regular course of evolution, presupposes a Latin Capraria (cf. maneri, maniera, even in the Chiamorio dialect); ćarastí (ciarastì), carestia, in the Viu dialect; and ćintá, cantare, in that of Usseglio. From Chiamorio, li téns, i tempi, and chejches birbes, alcune (qualche) birbe, are worthy of mention on account of the final s. [In this connexion should also be mentioned the Franco-Provençal colonies of Transalpine origin, Faeto and Celle, in Apulia (v. Morosi, Archivio glottologico, xii. 33-75), the linguistic relations of which are clearly shown by such examples as talíj, Ital. tagliare; bañíj, Ital. bagnare; side by side with ćantǡ, Ital. cantare; luǡ, Ital. levare.]

(b) Provençal (see La Lettura i. 716-717, Romanische Forschungen xxiii. 525-539).—Farther south, but still in the same western extremity of Piedmont, phenomena continuous with those of the Maritime Alps supply the means of passing from the Franco-Provençal to the Provençal proper, precisely as the same transition takes place beyond the Cottian Alps in Dauphiné almost in the same latitude. On the Italian side of the Cottian and the Maritime Alps the Franco-Provençal and the Provençal are connected with each other by the continuity of the phenomenon ć (a pure explosive) from the Latin c before a. At Oulx (sources of the Dora Riparia), which seems, however, to have a rather mixed dialect, there also occurs the important Franco-Provençal phenomenon of the surd interdental (English th in thief) instead of the surd sibilant (for example ithí = Fr. ici). At the same time agü = avuto, takes us to the Provençal. [If, in addition to the Provençal characteristic of which agǘ is an example, we consider those characteristics also Provençal, such as the o for a final unaccented, the preservation of the Latin diphthong au, p between vowels preserved as b, we shall find that they occur, together or separately, in all the Alpine varieties of Piedmont, from the upper valleys of the Dora Riparia and Clusone to the Colle di Tenda. Thus at Fenestrelle (upper valley of the Clusone): agü, vengü, Ital. venuto; pauc, Lat. paucu, Ital. poco; aribá (Lat. rīpa), Ital. arrivare; trubá, Ital. trovare; ciabrin, Ital. capretto; at Oulx (source of the Dora Riparia): agü, vengü; üno gran famino è venüo, Ital. una gran fame è venuta; at Giaglione: auvou, Ital. odo (Lat. audio); arribá, resebü, Ital. ricevuto (Lat. recipere); at Oncino (source of the Po): agü, vengü; ero en campagno, Ital. “era in campagna”; donavo, Ital. dava; paure, Lat. pauper, Ital. povero; trubá, ciabrí; at Sanpeyre (valley of the Varaita): agü, volgü, Ital. voluto; pressioso, Ital. preziosa; fasio, Ital. faceva; trobar; at Acceglio (valley of the Macra): venghess, Ital. venisse; virro, Ital. ghiera; chesto allegrio, Ital. questa allegria; ero, Ital. era; trobá; at Castelmagno (valley of the Grana): gü, vengü; rabbio, Ital. rabbia; trubar; at Vinadio (valley of the southern Stura); agü, beigü, Ital. bevuto; cadëno, Ital. catena; mangģo, Ital. manica; ćanto, Ital. canta; pau, auvì, Ital. udito; šabe, Ital. sapete; trobar; at Valdieri and Roaschia (valley of the Gesso): purgü, Ital. potuto; pjagü, Ital. piaciuto; corrogǘ, Ital. corso; pau; arribá, ciabri; at Limone (Colle di Tenda): agü, vengü; saber, Ital. sapere; arübá, trubava. Provençal also, though of a character rather Transalpine (like that of Dauphiné) than native, are the dialects of the Vaudois population above Pinerolo (v. Morosi, Arch. glott. xi. 309-416), and their colonies of Guardia in Calabria (ib. xi. 381-393) and of Neu-Hengstett and Pinache-Serres in Württemberg (ib. xi. 393-398). The Vaudois literary language, in which is written the Nobla Leyczon, has, however, no direct connexion with any of the spoken dialects; it is a literary language, and is connected with literary Provençal, the language of the troubadours; see W. Foerster, Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen (1888) Nos. 20-21.]

2. Ladin Dialects (Ascoli, Arch. glott. i., iv. 342 sqq., vii. 406 sqq.; Gartner, Rätoromanische Grammatik (Heilbronn, 1883), and in Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, 2nd ed., i. 608 sqq.; Salvioni, Arch. glott. xvi. 219 sqq.).—The purest of the Ladin dialects occur on the northern versant of the Alps in the Grisons (Switzerland), and they form the western section of the system. To this section also belongs both politically and in the matter of dialect the valley of Münster (Monastero); it sends its waters to the Adige, and might indeed consequently be geographically considered Italian, but it slopes towards the north. In the central section of the Ladin zone there are two other valleys which likewise drain into tributaries of the Adige, but are also turned towards the north,—the valleys of the Gardena and Gadera, in which occurs the purest Ladin now extant in the central section. The valleys of Münster, the Gardena and the Gadera may thus be regarded as inter-Alpine, and the question may be left open whether or not they should be included even geographically in Italy. There remain, however, within what are strictly Italian limits, the valleys of the Noce, the Avisio, the Cordevole, and the Boite, and the upper basin of the Piave (Comelico), in which are preserved Ladin dialects, more or less pure, belonging to the central section of the Ladin zone or belt. To Italy belongs, further, the whole eastern section of the zone composed of the Friulian territories. It is by far the most populous, containing about 500,000 inhabitants. The Friulian region is bounded on the north by the Carnic Alps, south by the Adriatic, and west by the eastern rim of the upper basin of the Piave and the Livenza; while on the east it stretches into the eastern versant of the basin of the Isonzo, and, further the ancient dialect of Trieste was itself Ladin (Arch. glott. x. 447 et seq.). The Ladin element is further found in greater or less degree throughout an altogether Cis-Alpine “amphizone,” which begins at the western slopes of Monte Rosa, and is to be noticed more particularly in the upper valley of the Ticino and the upper valley of the Liro and of the Mera on the Lombardy versant, and in the Val Fiorentina and central Cadore on the Venetian versant. The Ladin element is clearly observable in the most ancient examples of the dialects of the Venetian estuary (Arch. i. 448-473). The main characteristics by which the Ladin type is determined may be summarized as follows: (1) the guttural of the formulae c + a and g + a passes into a palatal; (2) the l of the formulae pl, cl, &c., is preserved; (3) the s of the ancient terminations is preserved; (4) the accented e in position breaks into a diphthong; (5) the accented o in position breaks into a diphthong; (6) the form of the diphthong which comes from short accented o or from the o of position is ue (whence üe, ö); (7) long accented e and short accented i break into a diphthong, the purest form of which is sounded ei; (8) the accented a tends, within certain limits, to change into e, especially if preceded by a palatal sound; (9) the long accented u is represented by ü. These characteristics are all foreign to true and genuine Italian. Ćárn, carne; spelunća, spelunca; clefs, claves; fuormas, formae; infiern, infernu; ördi, hordeu; möd, modu; plain, plenu; pail, pilu; quael, quale; pür, puru—may be taken as examples from the Upper Engadine (western section of the zone). The following are examples from the central and eastern sections on the Italian versant:—
a. Central Section.—Basin of the Noce: examples of the dialect of Fondo: ćavél, capillu; pesćadór, piscatore; pluévia, pluvia (plovia); pluma (dial. of Val de Rumo: plövia, plümo); vécla, vetula; ćántes, cantas. The dialects of this basin are disappearing.—Basin of the Avisio: examples of the dialect of the Val di Fassa: ćarn, carne; ćéžer, cadere (cad-jere); váća, vacca; fórća, furca; gléžia (géžia), ecclesia; oeglje (oeje), oculi; ćans, canes; rámes, rami; teila, tela; néif, nive; coessa, coxa. The dialects of this basin which are farther west than Fassa are gradually being merged in the Veneto-Tridentine dialects.—Basin of the Cordevole: here the district of Livinal-Lungo (Buchenstein) is Austrian politically, and that of Rocca d’ Agordo and Laste is Italian. Examples of the dialect of Livinal-Lungo: ćarié, Ital. caricare; ćanté, cantatus; ógle, oculu; ćans, canes; ćavéis, capilli; viérm, verme; fŭóc, focu; avéĭ, habere; néi, nive.—Basin of the Boite: here the district of Ampezzo (Heiden) is politically Austrian, that of Oltrechiusa Italian. Examples of the dialect of Ampezzo are ćasa, casa; ćandéra, candela; fórćes, furcae, pl.; séntes, sentis. It is a decadent form.—Upper Basin of the Piave: dialect of the Comelico: ćésa, casa; ćen (can), cane; ćaljé, caligariu; bos, boves; noevo, novu; loego, locu.

b. Eastern Section or Friulian Region.—Here there still exists a flourishing “Ladinity,” but at the same time it tends towards Italian, particularly in the want both of the e from á and of the ü (and consequently of the ö). Examples of the Udine variety: ćarr, carro; ćavál, caballu; ćastiél, castellu; fórće, furca; clar, claru; glaç, glacie; plan, planu; colors, colores; lungs, longi, pl.; dévis, debes; vidiél, vitello; fiéste, festa; puéss, possum; cuétt, coctu; uárdi, hordeu.—The most ancient specimens of the Friulian dialect belong to the 14th century (see Arch. iv. 188 sqq.).

B. Dialects which are detached from the true and proper Italian system, but form no integral part of any foreign Neo-Latin system.

1. Here first of all is the extensive system of the dialects usually called Gallo-Italian, although that designation cannot be considered sufficiently distinctive, since it would be equally applicable to the Franco-Provençal (A. 1) and the Ladin (A. 2). The system is subdivided into four great groups—(a) the Ligurian, (b) the Piedmontese, (c) the Lombard and (d) the Emilian—the name furnishing on the whole sufficient indication of the localization and limits.—These groups, considered more particularly in their more pronounced varieties, differ greatly from each other; and, in regard to the Ligurian, it was even denied that it belongs to this system at all (see Arch. ii. III sqq.).—Characteristic of the Piedmontese, the Lombard and the Emilian is the continual elision of the unaccented final vowels except a (e.g. Turinese öj, oculu; Milanese vǫç, voce; Bolognese vîd, Ital. vite), but the Ligurian does not keep them company (e.g. Genoese öģģu, oculu; vǫže, voce). In the Piedmontese and Emilian there is further a tendency to eliminate the protonic vowels—a tendency much more pronounced in the second of these groups than in the first (e.g. Pied, dné, danaro; vśin, vicino; fnôć, finocchio; Bolognese ćprà, disperato). This phenomenon involves in large measure that of the prothesis of a; as, e.g. in Piedmontese and Emilian armor, rumore; Emilian alvär, levare, &c. U for the long accented Latin u and ö for the short accented Latin o (and even within certain limits the short Latin ó of position) are common to the Piedmontese, the Ligurian, the Lombard and the northernmost section of the Emilian: e.g., Turinese, Milanese and Piacentine dür, and Genoese düu, duro; Turinese and Genoese möve, Parmigiane möver, and Milanese möf, muovere; Piedmontese dörm, dorme; Milanese völta, volta. Ei for the long accented Latin e and for the short accented Latin i is common to the Piedmontese and the Ligurian, and even extends over a large part of Emilia: e.g. Turinese and Genoese avéi, habere, Bolognese avéir; Turinese and Genoese beive, bibere, Bolognese neiv, neve. In Emilia and part of Piedmont ei occurs also in the formulae ĕn, ent, emp; e.g. Bolognese and Modenese beiṅ, solaméint. In connexion with these examples, there is also the Bolognese feiṅ, Ital. fine, representing the series in which e is derived from an í followed by n, a phenomenon which occurs, to a greater or less extent throughout the Emilian dialects; in them also is found, parallel with the ḛi from ḛ, the ou from ǫ: Bolognese udóur, Ital. odore; famóus, Ital. famoso; lóuv, lŭpu. The system shows a repugnance throughout to ie for the short accented Latin e (as it occurs in Italian piede, &c.); in other words, this diphthong has died out, but in various fashions; Piedmontese and Lombard deç, dieci; Genoese dēže (in some corners of Liguria, however, occurs dieže); Bolognese diç, old Bolognese, diese. The greater part of the phenomena indicated above have “Gallic” counterparts too evident to require to be specially pointed out. One of the most important traces of Gallic or Celtic reaction is the reduction of the Latin accented a into e (ä, &c.), of which phenomenon, however, no certain indications have as yet been found in the Ligurian group. On the other hand it remains, in the case of very many of the Piedmontese dialects, in the é of the infinitives of the first conjugation: porté, portare, &c.; and numerous vestiges of it are still found in Lombardy (e.g. in Bassa Brianza: andae, andato; guardae, guardato; sae, sale; see Arch. i. 296-298, 536). Emilia also preserves it in very extensive use: Modenese andér, andare; arivéda, arrivata; peç, pace; Faenzan parlé, parlare and parlato; parléda, parlata; ches, caso; &c. The phenomenon, in company with other Gallo-Italian and more specially Emilian characteristics extends to the valley of the Metauro, and even passes to the opposite side of the Apennines, spreading on both banks of the head stream of the Tiber and through the valley of the Chiane: hence the types artrovér, ritrovare, portéto, portato, &c., of the Perugian and Aretine dialects (see infra C. 3, b). In the phenomenon of á passing into e (as indeed, the Gallo-Italic evolution of other Latin vowels) special distinctions would require to be drawn between bases in which a (not standing in position) precedes a non-nasal consonant (e.g. amáto), and those which have a before a nasal: and in the latter case there would be a non-positional subdivision (e.g. fáme, páne) and a positional one (e.g. quánto, amándo, cámpo); see Arch. i. 293 sqq. This leads us to the nasals, a category of sounds comprising other Gallo-Italic characteristics. There occurs more or less widely, throughout all the sections of the system, and in different gradations, that “velar” nasal in the end of a syllable (paṅ, maṅ; ćáṅta, moṅt)4 which may be weakened into a simple nasalizing of a vowel (pā, &c.) or even grow completely inaudible (Bergamese pa, pane; padrú, padrone; tep, tempo; met, mente; mut, monte; pût, ponte; púća, punta, i.e. “puncta”), where Celtic and especially Irish analogies and even the frequent use of t for nt, &c., in ancient Umbrian orthography occur to the mind. Then we have the faucal n by which the Ligurian and the Piedmontese (laṅa lüṅa, &c.) are connected with the group which we call Franco-Provençal (A. 1).—We pass on to the “Gallic” resolution of the nexus ct (e.g. facto, fajto, fajtjo. fait, fać; tecto, tejto, tejtjo, teit, teć) which invariably occurs in the Piedmontese, the Ligurian and the Lombard: Pied, fáit, Lig. fajtu, faetu, Lombard fac; Pied. téit, Lig. téitu, Lom. tec; &c. Here it is to be observed that besides the Celtic analogy the Umbrian also helps us (adveitu = ad-vecto; &c.). The Piedmontese and Ligurian come close to each other, more especially by a curious resolution of the secondary hiatus (Gen. réiže, Piedm. réjs = *ra-íce, Ital. radice) by the regular dropping of the d both primary and secondary, a phenomenon common in French (as Piedmontese and Ligurian ríe, ridere; Piedmontese pué, potare; Genoese naeghe = náighe. nátiche, &c.). The Lombard type, or more correctly the type which has become the dominant one in Lombardy (Arch. i. 305-306, 310-311), is more sparing in this respect; and still more so is the Emilian. In the Piedmontese and in the Alpine dialects of Lombardy is also found that other purely Gallic resolution of the guttural between two vowels by which we have the types brája, mánia, over against the Ligurian brága, mánega, braca, manica. Among the phonetic phenomena peculiar to the Ligurian is a continual reduction (as also in Lombardy and part of Piedmont) of l between vowels into r and the subsequent dropping of this r at the end of words in the modern Genoese; just as happens also with the primary r: thus dū = durúr = dolore, &c. Characteristic of the Ligurian, but not without analogies in Upper Italy even (Arch., ii. 157-158, ix. 209, 255), is the resolution of pj, bj, fj into ć, ģ, š: ćü, più, plus; raģģa, rabbia, rabies; šû, fiore. Finally, the sounds š and ž have a very wide range in Ligurian (Arch. ii. 158-159), but are, however, etymologically, of different origin from the sounds š and ž in Lombard. The reduction of s into h occurs in the Bergamo dialects: hira, sera; groh, grosso; cahtél, castello (see also B.2).—A general phenomenon in Gallo-Italic phonetics which also comes to have an inflexional importance is that by which the unaccented final i has an influence on the accented vowel. This enters into a series of phenomena which even extends into southern Italy; but in the Gallo-Italic there are particular resolutions which agree well with the general connexions of this system. [We may briefly recall the following forms in the plural and 2nd person singular: old Piedmontese drayp pl. of drap, Ital. drappo; man, meyn, Ital. mano, -i; long, loyng, Ital. lungo, -ghi; Genoese, káṅ, kḛṅ, Ital. cane, -i; buṅ, buíṅ, Ital. buono, -i; Bolognese, fär, fîr, Ital. ferro, -i; peir, pîr, Ital. pero, -i. zôp, zûp, Ital. zoppo, -i; louv, lûv, Ital. lupo, -i; vedd, vî, Ital. io vedo, tu vedi; vojj, vû, Ital. io voglio, tu vuoi; Milanese quȩst, quist, Ital. questo, -i, and, in the Alps of Lombardy, pal, pȩl, Ital. palo, -i; rȩd, rid, Ital. rete, -i; cor, cör, Ital. cuore, -i; ǫrs, ürs, Ital. orso, -i; law, lȩw, Ital. io lavo, tu lavi; mȩt, mit, Ital. io metto, tu metti; mow möw, Ital. io muovo, tu muovi; cǫr, cür, Ital. io corro, tu corri. [Vicentine pomo, pumi, Ital. pomo, -i; pero, piéri = *píri, Ital. pero, -i; v. Arch. i. 540-541; ix. 235 et seq., xiv. 329-330].—Among morphological peculiarities the first place may be given to the Bolognese sipa (seppa), because, thanks to Dante and others, it has acquired great literary celebrity. It really signifies “sia” (sim, sit), and is an analogical form fashioned on aepa, a legitimate continuation of the corresponding forms of the other auxiliary (habeam, habeat), which is still heard in ch’me aepa purtae, ch’lu aepa purtae, ch’io abbia portato, ch’egli abbia portato. Next may be noted the 3rd person singular in -p of the perfect of esse and of the first conjugation in the Forlì dialect (fop, fu; mandép, mandò; &c.). This also must be analogical, and due to a legitimate ep, ebbe (see Arch. ii. 401; and compare fobbe, fu, in the dialect of Camerino, in the province of Macerata, as well as the Spanish analogy of tuve estuve formed after hube). Characteristic of the Lombard dialect is the ending -i in the 1st person sing. pres. indic. (mi a porti, Ital. io porto); and of Piedmontese, the -éjça, as indicating the subjunctive imperfect (portȩjça, Ital. portassi) the origin of which is to be sought in imperfects of the type staésse, faésse reduced normally to stéjç-, féjç-. Lastly, in the domain of syntax, may be added the tendency to repeat the pronoun (e.g. ti te cántet of the Milanese, which really is tu tu cántas-tu, equivalent merely to “cantas”), a tendency at work in the Emilian and Lombard, but more particularly pronounced in the Piedmontese. With this the corresponding tendency of the Celtic languages has been more than once and with justice compared; here it may be added that the Milanese nün, apparently a single form for “noi,” is really a compound or reduplication in the manner of the ni-ni, its exact counterpart in the Celtic tongues. [From Lombardy, or more precisely, from the Lombardo-Alpine region extending from the western slopes of Monte Rosa to the St Gotthard, are derived the Gallo-Italian dialects, now largely, though not all to the same extent, Sicilianized, from the Sicilian communes of Sanfratello, Piazza-Armerina, Nicosia, Aidone, Novara and Sperlinga (v. Arch. glott. viii. 304-316, 406-422, xiv. 436-452; Romania, xxviii. 409-420; Memorie dell’ Istituto lombardo, xxi. 255 et seq.). The dialects of Gombitelli and Sillano in the Tuscan Apennines are connected with Emilia (Arch. glott. xii. 309-354). And from Liguria come those of Carloforte in Sardinia, as also those of Monaco, and of Mons, Escragnolles and Biot in the French departments of Var and Alpes Maritimes (Revue de linguistique, xiii. 308)]. The literary records for this group go back as far as the 12th century, if we are right in considering as Piedmontese the Gallo-Italian Sermons published and annotated by Foerster (Romanische Studien, iv. 1-92). But the documents published by A. Gaudenzi (Dial. di Bologna, 168-172) are certainly Piedmontese, or more precisely Canavese, and seem to belong to the 13th century. The Chieri texts date from 1321 (Miscellanea di filol. e linguistica, 345-355), and to the 14th century also belongs the Grisostomo (Arch. glott. vii. 1-120), which represents the old Piedmontese dialect of Pavia (Bollett. della Soc. pav. di Storia Patria, ii. 193 et seq.). The oldest Ligurian texts, if we except the “contrasto” in two languages of Rambaud de Vaqueiras (12th century v. Crescini, Manualetto provenzale, 2nd ed., 287-291), belong to the first decades of the 14th century (Arch. glott. xiv. 22 et seq., ii. 161-312, x. 109-140, viii. 1-97). Emilia has manuscripts going back to the first or second half of the 13th century, the Parlamenti of Guido Fava (see Gaudenzi, op. cit. 127-160) and the Regola dei servi published by G. Ferraro (Leghorn, 1875). An important Emilian text, published only in part, is the Mantuan version of the De proprietatibus rerum of Bartol. Anglico, made by Vivaldo Belcalzer in the early years of the 14th century (v. Cian. Giorn. stor. della letteratura italiana, supplement, No. 5, and cf. Rendiconti Istituto Lombardo, series ii. vol. xxxv. p. 957 et seq.). For Modena also there are numerous documents, starting from 1327. For western Lombardy the most ancient texts (13th century, second half) are the poetical compositions of Bonvesin de la Riva and Pietro da Bescapè, which have reached us only in the 14th-century copies. For eastern Lombardy we have, preserved in Venetian or Tuscan versions, and in MSS. of a later date, the works of Gerardo Patecchio, who lived at Cremona in the first half of the 13th century. Bergamasc literature is plentiful, but not before the 14th century (v. Studi medievali, i. 281-292; Giorn. stor. della lett. ital. xlvi. 351 et seq.).2. Sardinian Dialects.5—These are three—the Logudorese or central, the Campidanese or southern and the Gallurese or northern. The third certainly indicates a Sardinian basis, but is strangely disturbed by the intrusion of other elements, among which the Southern Corsican (Sartene) is by far the most copious. The other two are homogeneous, and have great affinity with each other; the Logudorese comes more particularly under consideration here.—The pure Sardinian vocalism has this peculiarity that each accented vowel of the Latin appears to be retained without alteration. Consequently there are no diphthongs representing simple Latin vowels; nor does the rule hold good which is true for so great a proportion of the Romance languages, that the representatives of the ḗ and the í on the one hand and those of the ṓ and the ṹ on the other are normally coincident. Hence plenu (ē); deghe, decem (ĕ); binu, vino (ī); pilu (ĭ); flore (ō); roda, rota (ŏ); duru (ū); nughe, nuce (ŭ). The unaccented vowels keep their ground well, as has already been seen in the case of the finals by the examples adduced.—The s and t of the ancient termination are preserved, though not constantly: tres, onus, passados annos, plantas, faghes, facis, tenemus; mulghet, mulghent.—The formulae ce, ci, ge, gi may be represented by che (ke), &c.; but this appearance of special antiquity is really illusory (see Arch. ii. 143-144). The nexus cl, &c., may be maintained in the beginning of words (claru, plus); but if they are in the body of the word they usually undergo resolutions which, closely related though they be to those of Italian, sometimes bring about very singular results (e.g. ušare, which by the intermediate forms uscare, usjare leads back to usclare = ustlare = ustulare). Nź is the representative of nj (testimónźu, &c.); and lj is reduced to ź alone (e.g. méźus, melius; Campidanese mellus). For ll a frequent substitute is ḍḍ: massīḍḍa, maxilla, &c. Quite characteristic is the continual labialization of the formulae qua, gua, cu, gu, &c.; e.g. ebba, equa; sambene, sanguine (see Arch. ii. 143). The dropping of the primary d (roere, rodere, &c.) but not of the secondary (finidu, sanidade, maduru) is frequent. Characteristic also is the Logudorese prothesis of i before the initial s followed by a consonant (iscamnu, istella, ispada), like the prothesis of e in Spain and in France (see Arch. iii. 447 sqq.).—In the order of the present discussion it is in connexion with this territory that we are for the first time led to consider those phonetic changes in words of which the cause is merely syntactical of transitory, and chiefly those passing accidents which occur to the initial consonant through the historically legitimate or the merely analogical action of the final sound that precedes it. The general explanation of such phenomena reduces itself to this, that, given the intimate syntactic relation of two words, the initial consonant of the second retains or modifies its character as it would retain or modify it if the two words were one. The Celtic languages are especially distinguished by this peculiarity; and among the dialects of Upper Italy the Bergamasc offers a clear example. This dialect is accustomed to drop the v, whether primary or secondary, between vowels in the individual vocables (caá, cavare; fáa, fava, &c.), but to preserve it if it is preceded by a consonant (serva, &c.).—And similarly in syntactic combination we have, for example, de i, di vino; but ol vi, il vino. Insular, southern and central Italy furnish a large number of such phenomena; for Sardinia we shall simply cite a single class, which is at once obvious and easily explained, viz. that represented by su oe, il bove, alongside of sos boes, i. buoi (cf. bíere, bibere; erba).—The article is derived from ipse instead of from ille: su sos, sa sas,—again a geographical anticipation of Spain, which in the Catalan of the Balearic islands still preserves the article from ipse.—A special connexion with Spain exists besides in the nomine type of inflexion, which is constant among the Sardinians (Span. nomne, &c., whence nombre, &c.), nomen, nomene, rámine, aeramine, legumene, &c. (see Arch. ii. 429 sqq.).—Especially noteworthy in the conjugation of the verb is the paradigm cantére, cantéres, &c., timére, timéres, &c., precisely in the sense of the imperfect subjunctive (cf. A. 1; cf. C. 3 b). Next comes the analogical and almost corrupt diffusion of the -si of the ancient strong perfects (such as posi, rosi) by which cantesi, timesi (cantavi, timui), dolfesi, dolui, are reached. Proof of the use and even the abuse of the strong perfects is afforded, however, by the participles and the infinitives of the category to which belong the following examples: ténnidu, tenuto; párfidu, parso; bálfidu, valso; ténnere, bálere, &c. (Arch. ii. 432-433). The future, finally, shows the unagglutinated periphrasis: hapo a mandigare (ho a mangiare = manger-ó); as indeed the unagglutinated forms of the future and the conditional occur in ancient vernacular texts of other Italian districts. [The Campidanese manuscript, in Greek characters, published by Blancard and Wescher (Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, xxxv. 256-257), goes back as far as the last years of the 11th century. Next come the Cagliari MSS. published by Solmi (Le Carte volgari dell’ Archivio arcivescovile di Cagliari, Florence, 1905; cf. Guarnerio in Studi romanzi, fascicolo iv. 189 et seq.), the most ancient of which in its original form dates from 1114-1120. For Logoduro, the Condaghe di S. Pietro di Silchi (§§ xii.-xiii.), published by G. Bonazzi (Sassari-Cagliari, 1900; cf. Meyer-Lübke, Zur Kenntnis des Altlogudoresischen, Vienna, 1902), is of the highest importance.]

[3. Vegliote (Veglioto).—Perhaps we may not be considered to be departing from Ascoli’s original plan if we insert here as a third member of the group B the neo-Latin dialect which found its last refuge in the island of Veglia (Gulf of Quarnero), where it came definitively to an end in 1898. The Vegliote dialect is the last remnant of a language which some long time ago extended from thence along the Dalmatian coast, whence it gained the name of Dalmatico, a language which should be carefully distinguished from the Venetian dialect spoken to this day in the towns of the Dalmatian littoral. Its character reminds us in many ways of Rumanian, and of that type of Romano-Balkan dialect which is represented by the Latin elements of Albanian, but to a certain extent also, and especially with regard to the vowel sounds, of the south-eastern dialects of Italy, while it has also affinities with Friuli, Istria and Venetia. These characteristics taken altogether seem to suggest that Dalmatico differs as much as does Sardinian from the purely Italian type. It rejects the -s, it is true, retaining instead the nominative form in the plural; but here these facts are no longer a criterion, since in this point Italian and Rumanian are in agreement. A tendency which we have already noted, and shall have further cause to note hereafter, and which connects in a striking way the Vegliote and Abruzzo-Apulian dialects, consists in reducing the accented vowels to diphthongs: examples of this are: spuota, Ital. spada; buarka, Ital. barca; fiar, Ital. fȩrro; nuat, Ital. notte; kataina, Ital. catḛna; paira, Ital. pḛro; Lat. pĭru; jaura, Ital. ǫra; nauk, Ital. noce; Lat. nŭce; ortaika, Ital. ortica; joiva, Ital. uova. Other vowel phenomena should also be noted, for example those exemplified in prut, Ital. prato; dik, Ital. dieci, Lat. dĕcem; luk, Ital. luogo, Lat. lŏcu; krask, Ital. crḛscere; cenk, Ital. cinque, Lat. quīnque; buka, Ital. bocca, Lat. bčca. With regard to the consonants, we should first notice the invariable persistence of the explosive surds (as in Rumanian and the southern dialects) for which several of the words just cited will serve as examples, with the addition of kuosa, Ital. casa; praiza, Ital. presa; struota, Ital. strada; rosuota, Ital. rugiada; latri, Ital. ladro; raipa, Ital. riva. The c in the formula ce, whether primary or secondary, is represented by k: kaina, Ital. cena; kanaisa, Ital. cinigia; akait, Ital. aceto; plakár, Ital. piacere; dik, Ital. dieci; mukna, Ital. macina; dotko, Ital. dodici; and similarly the g in the formula ge is represented by the corresponding guttural: ghelút, Ital. gelato; jongár, Ital. giungere; plungre, Ital. piangere, &c. On the contrary, the guttural of the primitive formula cū becomes ć (ćol, Ital. culo); this phenomenon is also noteworthy as seeming to justify the inference that the ū was pronounced ü. Pt is preserved, as in Rumanian (sapto, Lat. septem), and often, again as in Rumanian, ct is also reduced to pt (guapto, Lat. octo). As to morphology, a characteristic point is the preservation of the Lat. cantavero, Ital. avrò cantato, in the function of a simple future. Cantaverum also occurs as a conditional. For Vegliote and Dalmatico in general, see M. G. Bartoli’s fundamental work, Das Dalmatische (2 vols., Vienna, 1906), and Zeitschrift für roman. Philologie, xxxii. 1 sqq.; Merlo, Rivista di filologia e d’istruzione class, xxxv. 472 sqq. A short document written about 1280 in the Dalmatic dialect of Ragusa is to be found in Archeografo Triestino, new series, vol. i. pp. 85-86.]

C. Dialects which diverge more or less from the genuine Italian or Tuscan type, but which at the same time can be conjoined with the Tuscan as forming part of a special system of Neo-Latin dialects.

1. Venetian.—Between “Venetian” and “Venetic” several distinctions must be drawn (Arch. i. 391 sqq.). At the present day the population of the Venetian cities is “Venetian” in language, but the country districts are in various ways Venetic.6 The ancient language of Venice itself and of its estuary was not a little different from that of the present time; and the Ladin vein was particularly evident (see A. 2). A more purely Italian vein—the historical explanation of which presents an attractive problem—has ultimately gained the mastery and determined the “Venetian” type which has since diffused itself so vigorously.—In the Venetian, then, we do not find the most distinctive characteristics of the dialects of Upper Italy comprised under the denomination Gallo-Italic (see B. 1),—neither the ü nor the ö, nor the velar7 and faucal nasals, nor the Gallic resolution of the ct, nor the frequent elision of unaccented vowels, nor the great redundancy of pronouns. On the contrary, the pure Italian diphthong of ṍ (e.g. cuór) is heard, and the diphthong of ế is in full currency (diéśe, dieci, &c.). Nevertheless the Venetian approaches the type of Northern Italy, or diverges notably from that of Central Italy, by the following phonetic phenomena: the ready elision of primary or secondary d (crúo, crudo; séa, seta, &c.); the regular reduction of the surd into the sonant guttural (e.g. cuogo, Ital. cuoco, coquus); the pure ć in the resolution of cl (e.g. ćave, clave; oréća, auricula); the ś for ģ (śóvene, Ital. giovane); ç for š and ć (péçe, Ital. pesce; çiél, Ital. cielo). Lj preceded by any vowel, primary or secondary, except i, gives ģ: faméga, familia. No Italian dialect is more averse than the Venetian to the doubling of consonants.—In the morphology the use of the 3rd singular for the 3rd plural also, the analogical participle in esto (taśesto, Ital. taciuto, &c.; see Arch. iv. 393, sqq.) and śe, Lat. est, are particularly noteworthy. A curious double relic of Ladin influence is the interrogative type represented by the example crédis-tu, credis tu,—where apart from the interrogation ti credi would be used. For other ancient sources relating to Venice, the estuary of Venice, Verona and Padua, see Arch. i. 448, 465, 421-422; iii. 245-247. [Closely akin to Venetian, though differing from it in about the same degree that the various Gallo-Italian dialects differ among one another, is the indigenous dialect of Istria, now almost entirely ousted by Venetian, and found in a few localities only (Rovigno, Dignano). The most salient characteristics of Istrian can be recognized in the treatment of the accented vowels, and are of a character which recalls, to a certain extent at least, the Vegliote dialect. Thus we have in Istrian i for ệ (bivi, Ital. bevi, Lat. bĭbis; tila, Ital. tḛla; viro, Ital. vero and vetro, Lat. vēru, vĭtru; nito, Ital. netto, Lat. nĭtĭdu, &c.) and analogously u for ǫ (fiur, Ital. fiore, Lat. flōre; bus, Ital. voce, Lat. vōce, &c.); ei and ou from the Lat. ī and ū respectively (ameigo, Lat. amicu, feil, Lat. fīlu, &c.; mour, Lat. mūru; noudu, Lat. nūdu; frouto, Ital. frutto, Lat. frūctu, &c.); ie and uo from ĕ and ŏ respectively in position (piel, Lat. pĕlle, mierlo, Ital. merlo, Lat. mĕrula; kuorno, Lat. cŏrnu; puorta, Lat. pŏrta), a phenomenon in which Istrian resembles not only Vegliote but also Friulian. The resemblance with Verona, in the reduction of final unaccented -e to o should also be noted (nuoto, Ital. notte, &c., bivo, Ital. beve; malamȩntro, Ital. malamente, &c.), and that with Belluno and Treviso in the treatment of -óni, -áni (barbói, -oin, Ital. barboni), though it is peculiar to Istrian that -ain should give -ȩṅ (kaṅ, kȩṅ, Ital. cane -i). With regard to consonants, we should point out the n for gn (líno, Ital. legno); and as to morphology, we should note certain survivals of the inflexional type, amita, -ánis (sing. sía, Ital. zia, pl. siaṅne).] The most ancient Venetian documents take us back to the first half of the 13th century (v. E. Bertanza and V. Lazzarini, Il Dialetto veneziano fino alla morte di Dante Alighieri, Venice, 1891), and to the second half of the same century seems to belong the Saibante MS. For Verona we have also documents of the 13th century (v. Cipolla, in Archivio storico italiano, 1881 and 1882); and to the end of the same century perhaps belongs the MS. which has preserved for us the writings of Giacomino da Verona. See also Archivio glottologico, i. 448, 465, 421-422, iii. 245-247.

2. Corsican8—If the “Venetian,” in spite of its peculiar “Italianity,” has naturally special points of contact with the other dialects of Upper Italy (B. 1), the Corsican in like manner, particularly in its southern varieties, has special points of contact with Sardinian proper (B. 2). In general, it is in the southern section of the island, which, geographically even, is farthest removed from Tuscany, that the most characteristic forms of speech are found. The unaccented vowels are undisturbed; but u for the Tuscan o is common to almost all the island,—an insular phenomenon par excellence which connects Corsica with Sardinia and with Sicily, and indeed with Liguria also. So also -i for the Tuscan -e (latti, latte; li cateni, le catene), which prevails chiefly in the southern section, is also found in Northern and Southern Sardinian, and is common to Sicily. It is needless to add that this tendency to u and i manifests itself, more or less decidedly, also within the words. Corsican, too, avoids the diphthongs of ế and ṍ (pe, eri; cori, fora): but, unlike Sardinian, it treats ḯ and ṹ in the Italian fashion: beju, bibo; péveru, piper; pesci; noci, nuces.9—It is one of its characteristics to reduce a to e in the formula ar + a consonant (chérne, bérba, &c.), which should be compared particularly with the Piedmontese examples of the same phenomenon (Arch. ii. 133, 144-150). But the gerund in -endu of the first conjugation (turnendu, lagrimendu, &c.) must on the contrary be considered as a phenomenon of analogy, as it is especially recognized in the Sardinian dialects, to all of which it is common (see Arch. ii. 133). And the same is most probably the case with forms of the present participle like merchente, mercante, in spite of enzi and innenzi (anzi, innanzi), in which latter forms there may probably be traced the effect of the Neo-Latin i which availed to reduce the t of the Latin ante; alongside of them we find also anzi and nantu. But cf. also, grȩndi, Ital. grande. In Southern Corsican dr for ll is conspicuous—a phenomenon which also connects Corsica with Sardinia, Sicily and a good part of Southern Italy (see C. 2; and Arch. ii. 135, &c.), also with the northern coast of Tuscany, since examples such as beḍḍu belong also to Carrara and Montignoso. In the Ultramontane variety occur besides, the phenomena of rn changed to r (= rr) and of nd becoming nn (furu, Ital. forno; koru, Ital. corno; kuannu, Ital. quando; vidennu, Ital. vedendo). The former of these would connect Corsican with Sardinian (corru, cornu; carre, carne, &c.); the latter more especially with Sicily, &c. A particular connexion with the central dialects is given by the change of ld into ll (kallu, Ital. caldo).—As to phonetic phenomena connected with syntax, already noticed in B. 2, space admits the following examples only: Cors, na vella, una bella, e bella (ebbélla, et bella); lu jallu, lo gallo, gran ghiallu; cf. Arch. ii. 136 (135, 150), xiv. 185. As Tommaseo has already noted, -one is for the Corsicans not less than for the Sicilians, Calabrians and the French a termination of diminution: e.g. fratedronu, fratellino.—In the first person of the conditional the b is maintained (e.g. farebe, farei), as even at Rome and elsewhere. Lastly, the series of Corsican verbs of the derivative order which run alongside of the Italian series of the original order, and may be represented by the example dissipeghja, dissipa (Falcucci), is to be compared with the Sicilian series represented by cuadiari, riscaldare, curpiári, colpire (Arch. ii. 151).

3. Dialects of Sicily and of the Neapolitan Provinces.—Here the territories on both sides of the Strait of Messina will first be treated together, chiefly with the view of noting their common linguistic peculiarities.—Characteristic then of these parts, as compared with Upper Italy and even with Sardinia, is, generally speaking, the tenacity of the explosive elements of the Latin bases (cf. Arch. ii. 154, &c.). Not that these consonants are constantly preserved uninjured; their degradations, and especially the Neapolitan degradation of the surd into the sonant, are even more frequent than is shown by the dialect as written, but their disappearance is comparatively rather rare; and even the degradations, whether regard be had to the conjunctures in which they occur or to their specific quality, are very different from those of the dialects of Upper Italy. Thus, the t between vowels ordinarily remains intact in Sicilian and Neapolitan (e.g. Sicil. sita, Neap. seta, seta, where in the dialects of Upper Italy we should have seda, sea); and in the Neapolitan dialects it is reduced to d when it is preceded by n or r (e.g. viendę, vento), which is precisely a collocation in which the t would be maintained intact in Upper Italy. The d, on the other hand, is not resolved by elision, but by its reduction to r (e.g. Sicil. víriri, Neap. dialects veré, vedere), a phenomenon which has been frequently compared, perhaps with too little caution, with the d passing into rs (ḍ) in the Umbrian inscriptions. The Neapolitan reduction of nt into nd has its analogies in the reduction of nc (nk) into ng, and of mp into mb, which is also a feature of the Neapolitan dialects, and in that of ns into nź; and here and there we even find a reduction of nf into mb (nf, nv, nb, mb), both in Sicilian and Neapolitan (e.g. at Casteltermini in Sicily ’mbiernu, inferno, and in the Abruzzi cumbonn’, ’mbonn’, confondere, infondere). Here we find ourselves in a series of phenomena to which it may seem that some special contributions were furnished by Oscan and Umbrian (nt, mp, nc into nd, &c.), but for which more secure and general, and so to say “isothermal,” analogies are found in modern Greek and Albanian. The Sicilian does not appear to fit in here as far as the formulae nt and mp are concerned; and it may even be said to go counter to this tendency by reducing nģ and nź to nć, nz (e.g. púnćiri, pungere; menzu, Ital. meźźo; sponza, Ital. spugna, Ven. sponźa).10 Nay, even in the passing of the sonant into the surd, the Neapolitan dialects would yield special and important contributions (nor is even the Sicilian limited to the case just specified), among which we will only mention the change of d between vowels into t in the last syllable of proparoxytones (e.g. úmmeto, Sicil. úmitu, umido), and in the formula dr (Sicil. and Neap. quatro, Ital. quadro, &c.). From these series of sonants changing into surds comes a peculiar feature of the southern dialects.—A pretty common characteristic is the regular progressive assimilation by which nd is reduced to nn, ṅg to ṅṅ, mb to mm, and even nv also to mm (nv, nb, mb, mm), e.g. Sicil. šínniri, Neap. šénnere, scendere; Sicil. chiummu, Neap. chiummę, piombo; Sicil. and Neap. ’mmidia, invidia; Sicil. sáṅṅu, sangue. As belonging to this class of phenomena the Palaeo-Italic analogy (nd into nn, n), of which the Umbrian furnishes special evidence, readily suggests itself. Another important common characteristic is the reduction of secondary pj fj into kj (chianu -ę, Sicil., Neap., &c., Ital. piano), š (Sicil. šúmi, Neap. šúmmę, fiume), of secondary bj to j (which may be strengthened to ghj) if initial (Sicil. jancu, Neap. janchę, bianco; Sicil. agghianchiari, imbiancare), to l if between vowels (Neap. neglia, nebbia, Sicil. nigliu, nibbio); of primary pj and bj into ć (Sicil. síćća, Neap. séćća, seppia) or ģ respectively (Sicil. raģģa, Neap. arraģģa, rabbia), for which phenomena see also Genoese (B. 1). Further is to be noted the tendency to the sibilation of cj, for which Sicil. jazzu, ghiaccio, may serve as an example (Arch. ii. 149),—a tendency more particularly betrayed in Upper Italy, but Abruzzan departs from it (cf. Abr. jacce, ghiaccio, vracce, braccio, &c.). There is a common inclination also to elide the initial unaccented palatal vowel, and to prefix a, especially before r (this second tendency is found likewise in Southern Sardinian, &c.; see Arch. ii. 138); e.g. Sicil. ’nténniri, Neap. ’ndénnere, intendere; Sicil. arriccamári, Neap. arragamare, ricamare (see Arch. ii. 150). Throughout the whole district, and the adjacent territories in Central Italy, a tendency also prevails towards resolving certain combinations of consonants by the insertion of a vowel; thus combinations in which occur r or l, w or j (Sicil. kiruci, Ital. croce, filágutu, Ital. flauto, salivari, salvare, váriva, Ital. barba; Abr. cálechene, Ital. ganghero, Salevèštre, Silvestro, fęulęmenándę, fulminante, jèreve, Ital. erba, &c.; Avellinese garamegna, gramigna; Neap. ávotro = *áwtro, Ital. áltro, cèvoza = *céwza, Ital. gelso, ajetá side by side with ajtá, Ital. età, ódejo = ódjo, Ital. odio, &c.; Abr. ’nnívęję, indiva, nệbbęję, nebbia, &c.); cattájeve = cattájve, cattivo, goúele = *gowle, gola, &c. &c., are examples from Molfetta, where is also normal the resolution of šk by šek (méšekere, maschera, šekátele, scatola, &c.); cf. seddegno, sdegno, in some dialects of the province of Avellino. In complete contrast to the tendency to get rid of double consonants which has been particularly noted in Venetian (C. 1), we here come to the great division of Italy where the tendency grows strong to gemination (or the doubling of consonants), especially in proparoxytones; and the Neapolitan in this respect goes farther than the Sicilian (e.g. Sicil. sóggiru, suocero, cínniri, cenere, doppu, dopo; ’nsemmula, insieme, in-simul; Neap. dellecato, dilicato; úmmeto, umido; débbole).—As to the phonetic phenomena connected with the syntax (see B. 2), it is sufficient to cite such Sicilian examples as nišuna ronna, nesuna donna, alongside of c’ é donni, c’ è donne; ćincu jorna, cinque giorni, alongside of chiú ghiorna, più giorni; and the Neapolitan la vocca, la bocca, alongside of a bocca, ad buccam, &c.

We now proceed to the special consideration, first, of the Sicilian and, secondly, of the dialects of the mainland.

(a) Sicilian.—The Sicilian vocalism is conspicuously etymological. Though differing in colour from the Tuscan, it is not less noble, and between the two there are remarkable points of contact. The dominant variety, represented in the literary dialect, ignores the diphthongs of ḗ and of ŏ, as it has been seen that they are ignored in Sardinia (B. 2), and here also the ĭ and the ŭ appear intact; but the ḗ and the ṓ are fittingly represented by i and u; and with equal symmetry unaccented e and o are reproduced by i and u. Examples: téni, tiene; nóvu, nuovo; pilu, pelo; miṅnitta, Ital. vendḛtta; jugu, giogo; agustu, Ital. agǫsto; crídiri, credere; vínniri, Ital. vēndere; sira, sera; vina, vena; suli, Ital. sole; ura, ora; furma, Ital. fǫrma. In the evolution of the consonants it is enough to add here the change of lj into ghj (e.g. fígghiu, Ital. figlio) and of ll into ḍḍ (e.g. gaḍḍu, Ital. gallo). As to morphology, we will confine ourselves to pointing out the masculine plurals of neuter form (li pastura, li marinara). For the Sicilian dialect we have a few fragments going back to the 13th century, but the documents are scanty until we come to the 14th century.

(b) Dialects of the Neapolitan Mainland.—The Calabrian (by which is to be understood more particularly the vernacular group of the two Further Calabrias) may be fairly considered as a continuation of the Sicilian type, as is seen from the following examples:—cori, cuore; petra; fímmina, femina; vuce, voce; unure, onore; figghiu, figlio; spadde, spalle; trizza, treccia. Both Sicilian and Calabrian is the reducing of rl to rr (Sicil. parrari, Cal. parrare, parlare, &c.). The final vowel -e is reduced to -i, but is preserved in the more southern part, as is seen from the above examples. Even the ḣ for š = fj, as in ḣuri (Sicil. šuri, fiore), which is characteristic in Calabrian, has its forerunners in the island (see Arch. ii. 456). And, in the same way, though the dominant varieties of Calabria seem to cling to the mb (it sometimes happens that mm takes the form of mb: imbiscare = Sicil. ’mmiscari ’immischiare’, &c.) and nd, as opposed to the mm, nn, of the whole of Southern Italy and Sicily, we must remember, firstly, that certain other varieties have, e.g. granne, Ital. grande, and chiummu, Ital. piombo; and secondly, that even in Sicily (at Milazzo, Barcelona, and as far as Messina) districts are to be found in which nd is used. Along the coast of the extreme south of Italy, when once we have passed the interruptions caused by the Basilisco type (so called from the Basilicata), the Sicilian vocalism again presents itself in the Otrantine, especially in the seaboard of Capo di Leuca. In the Lecce variety of the Otrantine the vocalism which has just been described as Sicilian also keeps its ground in the main (cf. Morosi, Arch. iv.): sira, sera; leítu, oliveto; pilu; ura, ora; dulure. Nay more, the Sicilian phenomenon of lj into ghj (figghiu, figlio, &c.) is well marked in Terra d’ Otranto and also in Terra di Bari, and even extends through the Capitanata and the Basilicata (cf. D’ Ovidio, Arch. iv. 159-160). As strongly marked in the Terra d’Otranto is the insular phenomenon of ll into ḍḍ (ḍr), which is also very widely distributed through the Neapolitan territories on the eastern side of the Apennines, sending outshoots even to the Abruzzo. But in Terra d’Otranto we are already in the midst of the diphthongs of ế and of ṍ, both non-positional and positional, the development or permanence of which is determined by the quality of the unaccented final vowel,—as generally happens in the dialects of the south. The diphthongs of ế and ṍ, determined by final -i and -u, are also characteristic of central and northern Calabria (viecchiu -i, vecchio -a, vecchia -e, vecchia -e; buonu -i, bona -e, &c. &c.). Thus there comes to be a treatment of the vowels, peculiar to the two peninsulas of Calabria and Salent. The diphthongal product of the o is here ue. The following are examples from the Lecce variety of the dialect: core, pl. cueri; metu, mieti, mete, mieto, mieti, miete (Lat. mĕtere); sentu, sienti, sente; olu, uéli, ola, volo, voli, vola; mordu, muerdi, morde. The ue recalls the fundamental reduction which belongs to the Gallic (not to speak of the Spanish) regions, and stretches through the north of the Terra di Bari, where there are other diphthongs curiously suggestive of the Gallic: e.g. at Bitonto alongside of luechę, luogo, suęnnę, sonno, we have the oi and the ai from i or ę of the previous phase (vęćoinę, vicino), and the au from o of the previous phase (anaurę, onore), besides a diphthongal disturbance of the á. Here also occurs the change of á into an e more or less pure (thus, at Cisternino, scunsulête, sconsolata; at Canosa di Puglia, arruête, arrivata; n-ghèpe, “in capa,” that is, in capo); to which may be added the continual weakening or elision of the unaccented vowels not only at the end but in the body of the word (thus, at Bitonto, vęndett, spranz). A similar type meets us as we cross into Capitanata (Cerignola: graitę and grēi-, creta (but also pęitę, piede, &c.), coutę, coda (but also fourę, fuorí, &c.); vǫinę, vino, and similarly pǫilę, pelo (Neap. pilo), &c.; fuękę, fuoco; carętätę, carità, parlä, parlare, &c.); such forms being apparently the outposts of the Abruzzan, which, however, is only reached through the Molise—a district not very populous even now, and still more thinly peopled in bygone days—whose prevailing forms of speech in some measure interrupt the historical continuity of the dialects of the Adriatic versant, presenting, as it were, an irruption from the other side of the Apennines. In the head valley of the Molise, at Agnone, the legitimate precursors of the Abruzzan vernaculars reappear (feáfa, fava, stufeáte and -uote, stufo, annojato, feá, fare; chiezza, piazza, chiegne, piangere, cuene, cane; puole, palo, pruote, prato, cuone, cane; veire and vaire, vero, moile, melo, and similarly voive and veive, vivo; deune, dono, deuva, doga; minaure, minore; cuerpe, corpo, but cuolle). The following are pure Abruzzan examples. (1) From Bucchianico (Abruzzo Citeriore): veivę, vivo; rraję, re; allaure, allora; craune, corona; circhê, cercare; mêlę, male; grênnę, grande; quênnę; but ’nsultate, insultata; strade, strada (where again it is seen that the reduction of the á depends on the quality of the final unaccented vowel, and that it is not produced exclusively by i, which would give rise to a further reduction: scillarite, scellerati; ampire, impári). (2) From Pratola Peligna (Abruzzo Ulteriore II.); maję, mia; ’naure, onore; ’njuriéte, inguriata; desperéte, disperata ( alongside of vennecá, vendicare). It almost appears that a continuity with Emilian11 ought to be established across the Marches (where another irruption of greater “Italianity” has taken place; a third of more dubious origin has been indicated for Venice, C. 1); see Arch. ii., 445. A negative characteristic for Abruzzan is the absence of the change in the third syllable of the combinations pl, bl, fl (into kj, j-, š) and the reason seems evident. Here the pj, bj and fj themselves appear to be modern or of recent reduction—the ancient formulae sometimes occurring intact (as in the Bergamasc for Upper Italy), e.g. plánje and pránje alongside of piánje, piagnere, branghe alongside of bianghe, bianco (Fr. blanc), flume and frume alongside fiume, fiume. To the south of the Abruzzi begins and in the Abruzzi grows prominent that contrast in regard to the formulae alt ald (resolved in the Neapolitan and Sicilian into aut, &c., just as in the Piedmontese, &c.), by which the types aldare, altare, and callę, caldo, are reached.12 For the rest, when the condition and connexions of the vowel system still retained by so large a proportion of the dialects of the eastern versant of the Neapolitan Apennines, and the difference which exists in regard to the preservation of the unaccented vowels between the Ligurian and the Gallo-Italic forms of speech on the other versant of the northern Apennines, are considered, one cannot fail to see how much justice there is in the longitudinal or Apenninian partition of the Italian dialects indicated by Dante.—But, to continue, in the Basilicata, which drains into the Gulf of Taranto, and may be said to lie within the Apennines, not only is the elision of final unaccented vowels a prevailing characteristic; there are also frequent elisions of the unaccented vowels within the word. Thus at Matera: sintenn la femn chessa côs, sentendo la femina questa cosa; disprât, disperata; at Saponara di Grumento: uomnn’ scilrati, uomini scellerati; mnetta, vendetta.—But even if we return to the Mediterranean versant and, leaving the Sicilian type of the Calabrias, retrace our steps till we pass into the Neapolitan pure and simple, we find that even in Naples the unaccented final vowels behave badly, the labial turning to ę (biellę, bello) and even the a (bellă) being greatly weakened. And here occurs a Palaeo-Italic instance which is worth mention: while Latin was accustomed to drop the u of its nominative only in presence of r (gener from *gener-u-s, vir from *vir-u-s; cf. the Tuscan or Italian apocopated forms véner = vénere, venner = vennero, &c.), Oscan and Umbrian go much farther: Oscan, hurz = *hort-u-s, Lat. hortus; Umbr. pihaz, piatus; emps, emptus, &c. In Umbrian inscriptions we find u alternating with the a of the nom. sing. fem. and plur. neut. In complete contrast with the Sicilian vocalism is the Neapolitan e for unaccented and particularly final i of the Latin and Neo-Latin or Italian phases (e.g. viene, vieni; cf. infra), to say nothing further of the regular diphthongization, within certain limits, of accented e or o in position (apiertę, aperto, fem. aperta; muortę, morto, fem. morta, &c.).—In the quasi-morphological domain it is to be noted how the Siculo-Calabrian u for the ancient ṓ and ŭ, and the Siculo-Calabrian i for the ancient ḗ, ḯ, are also still found in the Neapolitan, and, in particular, that they alternate with o and e in a manner that is determined by the difference of termination. Thus cosetore, cucitore, pl. coseture (i.e. coseturi, the -i passing into e in keeping with the Neapolitan characteristic already mentioned); russę, Ital. rosso, -i; rossa -ę, Ital. rossa -e; noće, noce, pl. nuce; credę, io credo; cride (*cridi), tu credi; crede, egli crede; nigrę, but negra.

Passing now to a cursory mention of purely morphological phenomena, we begin with that form which is referred to the Latin pluperfect (see A. 1, B. 2), but which here too performs the functions of the conditional. Examples from the living dialects of (1) Calabria Citeriore are faceru, farei (Castrovillari); tu te la collerre, tu te l’acolleresti (Cosenza); l’aććettéra, l’accetterebbe (Grimaldi); and from those of (2) the Abruzzi, vulér’, vorrei (Castelli); dére, darei (Atessa); candére, canterei. For the dialects of the Abruzzi, we can check our observations by examples from the oldest chronicle of Aquila, as non habéra lassato, non avrebbe lasciato (str. 180) (cf. negara, Ital. negherei, in old MS. of the Marches). There are some interesting remains (more or less corrupted both in form and usage) of ancient consonantal terminations which have not yet been sufficiently studied: s’ incaricaviti, s’ incaricava, -abat (Basilicata, Senise); ebbiti, ebbe (ib.); avíadi, aveva (Calabria, Grimaldi); arrivaudi, arrivò (ib.). The last example also gives the -au of the 3rd pers. sing. perf. of the first conjugation, which still occurs in Sicily and between the horns of the Neapolitan mainland. In the Abruzzi (and in the Ascolan district) the 3rd person of the plural is in process of disappearing (the -no having fallen away and the preceding vowel being obscured), and its function is assumed by the 3rd person singular; cf. C. 1.13 The explanation of the Neapolitan forms songhḛ, io sono, essi sono, donghḛ, io do, stonghḛ, io sto, as also of the enclitic of the 2nd person plural which exists, e.g. in the Sicil. avíssivu, Neap. avístevę, aveste, has been correctly given more than once. It may be remarked in conclusion that this Neo-Latin region keeps company with the Rumanian in maintaining in large use the -ora derived from the ancient neuter plurals of the type tempora; Sicil. jócura, giuochi; Calabr. nídura, Abruzz. nídḛre, nidi, Neap. órtola (= -ra), orti, Capitanata ácurḛ, aghi, Apulian acéddere (Tarantine acéddiri), uccelli, &c. It is in this region, and more particularly in Capua, that we can trace the first appearance of what can definitely be called Italian, as shown in a Latin legal document of the year 960 (sao co kelle terre per kelle fini qui ki contene trenta anni le possette parte Sancti Benedicti, Ital. “so che quelle terre per quei confini che qui contiene trent ’anni le possedette la parte di S. Benedetto”), and belongs more precisely to Capua. The so-called Carta Rossanese (Calabria), written in a mixture of Latin and vulgar tongue, belongs to the first decades of the 12th century; while a document of Fondi (Campania) in the vulgar tongue goes back to the last decades of the same century. Neapolitan documents do not become abundant till the 14th century. The same is true of the Abruzzi and of Apulia; in the case of the latter the date should perhaps be put even later.

4. Dialects of Umbria, the Marches and the Province of Rome.—The phenomena characteristic of the Gallo-Italian dialects can be traced in the northern Marches in the dialects not only of the provinces of Pesaro and Urbino (Arch. glott. ii. 444), where we note also the constant dropping of the final vowels, strong elisions of accented and unaccented vowels, the suffix -ariu becoming -ér, &c., but also as far as Ancona and beyond. As in Ancona, the double consonants are reduced to single ones; there are strong elisions (breta, Ital. berretta; blin, Ital. bellino; figurte, Ital. “figúrati”; vermne, Ital. verme, “vermine,” &c.); the -k- becomes g; the s, š. At Jesi -t- and -k- become d and g, and the g is also found at Fabriano, though here it is modified in the Southern fashion (spia = spiga, Ital. spica). Examples are also found of the dropping of -d- primary between vowels: Pesaran ráica, Ital. radica; Fabr. peo; Ital. piede, which are noteworthy in that they indicate an isolated Gallo-Italian phenomenon, which is further traceable in Umbria (peacchia = ped-, Ital. orma; ráica and raíce, Ital. radice; trúbio, Ital. torbido; frácio, Ital. fracido; at Rieti also the dropping of the -d- is normal: veo, Ital. vedo; fiátu, Ital. fidato, &c.; and here too is found the dropping of initial d for syntactical reasons: ènte, Ital. dente, from lu [d]ènte). According to some scholars of the Marches, the é for a also extends as far as Ancona; and it is certainly continued from the north, though it is precisely in the territory of the Marches that Gallo-Italian and Abruzzan come into contact. The southern part of the Marches (the basin of the Tronto), after all, is Abruzzan in character. But the Abruzzan or Southern phenomena in general are widely diffused throughout the whole of the region comprising the Marches, Umbria, Latium and Aquila (for the territory of Aquila, belonging as it does both geographically and politically to the Abruzzi, is also attached linguistically to this group), which with regard to certain phenomena includes also that part of Tuscany lying to the south of the southern Ombrone. Further, the Tuscan dialect strictly so called sends into the Marches a few of its characteristics, and thus at Arcevia we have the pronunciation of -ć- between vowels as š (fórmesce, Ital. forbici),14 and Ancona has no changes of tonic vowels determined by the final vowel. Again, Umbria and the Sabine territory, and some parts of the Roman territory, are connected with Tuscany by the phenomenon of -ajo for -ariu (molinajo, Ital. mugnaio, &c.). But, to come to the Abruzzan Southern phenomena, we should note that the Abruzzan ll for ld extends into the central region (Norcia: callu, caldo; Rome: ariscalla, riscalda; the phenomenon, however, occurs also in Corsica); and the assimilation of nd into nn, and of mb into mm stretches through Umbria, the Marches and Rome, and even crosses from the Roman province into southern Tuscany (Rieti: quanno, quando; Spoleto: comannava, comandava; Assisi: piagnenno, piangendo; Sanseverino Marches: piagnenne, ’mmece, invece (imbece); Fabriano: vennecasse, vendicarsi; Osimo: monno, mondo; Rome: fronna, fronda; piommo, piombo; Pitigliano (Tuscany): quanno, piagnenno). It is curious to note, side by side with this phenomenon, in the same districts, that of nd for nn, which we still find and which was more common in the past (affando, affanno, &c., see Zeitschrift für roman. Philol. xxii. 510). Even the diphthongs of the e and the o in position are largely represented. Examples are—at Norcia, tiempi, uocchi, stuortu; Assisi and Fabriano: tiempo; Orvieto: tiempo, tierra, le tuorte, li torti, and even duonna. The change of preconsonantal l into r, so frequent throughout this region, and particularly characteristic of Rome, is a phenomenon common to the Aquilan dialect. Similar facts might be adduced in abundance. And it is to be noted that the features common to Umbro-Roman and the Neapolitan dialects must have been more numerous in the past, as this was the region where the Tuscan current met the southern, and by reason of its superior culture gradually gained the ascendancy.15 Typical for the whole district (except the Marches) is the reduction to t (and later to j) of ll and of l initial, when followed by i or u (Velletri, tuna, tuce; Sora, juna, Ital. luna, jima, Ital. lima; melica. Ital. mollica, bétḛ, Ital. belli, bello, in vulgar Latin bellu; but bella, bella, &c.). The phonological connexions between the Northern Umbrian, the Aretine, and the Gallo-Italic type have already been indicated (B. 2). In what relates to morphology, the -orno of the 3rd pers. plur. of the perfect of the first conjugation has been pointed out as an essential peculiarity of the Umbro-Roman territory; but even this it shares with the Aquila vernaculars, which, moreover, extend it to the other conjugations (amórno, timórono, &c.), exactly like the -ó of the 3rd person singular. Further, this termination is found also in the Tuscan dialects.

Throughout almost the whole district should be noted the distinction between the masculine and neuter substantive, expressed by means of the article, the distinction being that the neuter substantive has an abstract and indeterminate signification; e.g. at S. Ginesio, in the Marches, lu pesce, but lo pesce, of fish in general, as food, &c.; at Sora te wétre, the sheet of glass, but lḛ wétrḛ, glass, the material, original substance.16 As to the inflection of verbs, there is in the ancient texts of the region a notable prevalence of perfect form in the formation of the imperfect conjunctive; tolzesse, Ital. togliesse; sostenesse, Ital. sostenesse; conubbessero, Ital. conoscessero, &c. In the northern Marches, we should note the preposition sa, Ital. con (sa lia, Ital. con lei), going back to a type similar to that of the Ital. “con-esso.”

In a large part of Umbria an m or t is prefixed to the sign of the dative: t-a lu, a lui; m-al re, al re;17 which must be the remains of the auxiliary prepositions int(us), a(m)pud, cf. Prov. amb, am (cf. Arch. ii. 444-446). By means of the series of Perugine texts this group of dialects may be traced back with confidence to the 13th century; and to this region should also belong a “Confession,” half Latin half vernacular, dating from about the 11th century, edited and annotated by Flechia (Arch. vii. 121 sqq.). The “chronicle” of Monaldeschi has been already mentioned. The MSS. of the Marches go back to the beginning of the 13th century and perhaps still further back. For Roman (see Monaci, Rendic. dell’ Accad. dei Lincei, xvi. 103 sqq.) there is a short inscription of the 11th century. To the 13th century belongs the Liber historiarum Romanorum (Monaci, Archivio della Società rom. di storia patria, xii.; and also, Rendic. dei Lincei, i. 94 sqq.), and to the first half of the same century the Formole volgari of Raineri da Perugia (Monaci, ib., xiv. 268 sqq.). There are more abundant texts for all parts of this district in the 14th century, to which also belongs the Cronica Aquilana of Buccio di Ranallo, republished by De Bartholomaeis (Rome, 1907).

D. Tuscan, and the Literary Language of the Italians.

We have now only to deal with the Tuscan territory. It is bounded on the W. by the sea. To the north it terminates with the Apennines; for Romagna Toscana, the strip of country on the Adriatic versant which belongs to it administratively, is assigned to Emilia as regards dialect. In the north-west also the Emilian presses on the Tuscan, extending as it does down the Mediterranean slope of the Apennines in Lunigiana and Garfagnana. Intrusions which may be called Emilian have also been noted to the west of the Apennines in the district where the Arno and the Tiber take their rise (Aretine dialects); and it has been seen how thence to the sea the Umbrian and Roman dialects surround the Tuscan. Such are the narrow limits of the “promised land” of the language which has succeeded and was worthy to succeed Latin in the history of Italian culture and civilization,—the land which comprises Florence, Siena, Lucca and Pisa. The Tuscan type may be best described by the negative method. There do not exist in it, on the one hand, any of those phenomena by which the other dialectal types of Italy mainly differ from the Latin base (such as ü = ṹ; frequent elision of unaccented vowels; ba = gua; š = fl; nn = nd, &c.), nor, on the other hand, is there any series of alterations of the Latin base peculiar to the Tuscan. This twofold negative description may further serve for the Tuscan or literary Italian as contrasted with all the other Neo-Latin languages; indeed, even where the Tuscan has a tendency to alterations common to other types of the family, it shows itself more sober and self-denying—as may be seen in the reduction of the t between vowels into d or of c (k) between vowels into g, which in Italian affects only a small part of the lexical series, while in Provençal or Spanish it may be said to pervade the whole (e.g. Prov. and Span. mudar, Ital. mutare; Prov. segur, Span. seguro, Ital. sicuro). It may consequently be affirmed without any partiality that, in respect to historical nobility, the Italian not only holds the first rank among Neo-Latin languages, but almost constitutes an intermediate grade between the ancient or Latin and the modern or Romance. What has just been said about the Tuscan, as compared with the other dialectal types of Italy, does not, however, preclude the fact that in the various Tuscan veins, and especially in the plebeian forms of speech, there occur particular instances of phonetic decay; but these must of necessity be ignored in so brief a sketch as the present. We shall confine ourselves to noting—what has a wide territorial diffusion—the reduction of c (k) between vowels to a mere breathing (e.g. fŭóho, fuoco, but porco), or even its complete elision; the same phenomenon occurs also between word and word (e.g. la hasa, but in casa), thus illustrating anew that syntactic class of phonetic alterations, either qualitative or quantitative, conspicuous in this region, also, which has been already discussed for insular and southern Italy (B. 2; C. 2, 3), and could be exemplified for the Roman region as well (C. 4). As regards one or two individual phenomena, it must also be confessed that the Tuscan or literary Italian is not so well preserved as some other Neo-Latin tongues. Thus, French always keeps in the beginning of words the Latin formulae cl, pl, fl (clef, plaisir, fleur, in contrast with the Italian chiave, piacere, fiore); but the Italian makes up for this by the greater vigour with which it is wont to resolve the same formula within the words, and by the greater symmetry thus produced between the two series (in opposition to the French clef, clave, we have, for example, the French œil, oclo; whereas, in the Italian, chiave and occhio correspond to each other). The Italian as well as the Rumanian has lost the ancient sibilant at the end (-s of the plurals, of the nominative singular, of the 2nd persons, &c.), which throughout the rest of the Romance area has been preserved more or less tenaciously; and consequently it stands lower than old Provençal and old French, as far as true declension or, more precisely, the functional distinction between the forms of the casus rectus and the casus obliquus is concerned. But even in this respect the superiority of French and Provençal has proved merely transitory, and in their modern condition all the Neo-Latin forms of speech are generally surpassed by Italian even as regards the pure grammatical consistency of the noun. In conjugation Tuscan has lost that tense which for the sake of brevity we shall continue to call the pluperfect indicative; though it still survives outside of Italy and in other dialectal types of Italy itself (C. 3b; cf. B. 2). It has also lost the futurum exactum, or perfect subjunctive, which is found in Spanish and Rumanian. But no one would on that account maintain that the Italian conjugation is less truly Latin than the Spanish, the Rumanian, or that of any other Neo-Latin language. It is, on the contrary, by far the most distinctively Latin as regards the tradition both of form and function, although many effects of the principle of analogy are to be observed, sometimes common to Italian with the other Neo-Latin languages and sometimes peculiar to itself.

Those who find it hard to believe in the ethnological explanation of linguistic varieties ought to be convinced by any example so clear as that which Italy presents in the difference between the Tuscan or purely Italian type on the one side and the Gallo-Italic on the other. The names in this instance correspond exactly to the facts of the case. For the Gallo-Italic on either side of the Alps is evidently nothing else than a modification—varying in degree, but always very great—of the vulgar Latin, due to the reaction of the language or rather the oral tendencies of the Celts who succumbed to the Roman civilization. In other words, the case is one of new ethnic individualities arising from the fusion of two national entities, one of which, numerically more or less weak, is so far victorious that its speech is adopted, while the other succeeds in adapting that speech to its own habits of utterance. Genuine Italian, on the other hand, is not the result of the combination or conflict of the vulgar Latin with other tongues, but is the pure development of this alone. In other words, the case is that of an ancient national fusion in which vulgar Latin itself originated. Here that is native which in the other case was intrusive. This greater purity of constitution gives the language a persistency which approaches permanent stability. There is no Old Italian to oppose to Modern Italian in the same sense as we have an Old French to oppose to a Modern French. It is true that in the old French writers, and even in the writers who used the dialects of Upper Italy, there was a tendency to bring back the popular forms to their ancient dignity; and it is true also that the Tuscan or literary Italian has suffered from the changes of centuries; but nevertheless it remains undoubted that in the former cases we have to deal with general transformations between old and new, while in the latter it is evident that the language of Dante continues to be the Italian of modern speech and literature. This character of invariability has thus been in direct proportion to the purity of its Latin origin, while, on the contrary, where popular Latin has been adopted by peoples of foreign speech, the elaboration which it has undergone along the lines of their oral tendencies becomes always the greater the farther we get away from the point at which the Latin reached them,—in proportion, that is, to the time and space through which it has been transmitted in these foreign mouths.18

As for the primitive seat of the literary language of Italy, not only must it be regarded as confined within the limits of that narrower Tuscany already described; strictly speaking, it must be identified with the city of Florence alone. Leaving out of account, therefore, a small number of words borrowed from other Italian dialects, as a certain number have naturally been borrowed from foreign tongues, it may be said that all that was not Tuscan was eliminated from the literary form of speech. If we go back to the time of Dante, we find, throughout almost all the dialects of the mainland with the exception of Tuscan, the change of vowels between singular and plural seen in paese, paisi; quello, quilli; amore, amuri (see B. 1; C. 3b); but the literary language knows nothing at all of such a phenomenon, because it was unknown to the Tuscan region. But in Tuscan itself there were differences between Florentine and non-Florentine; in Florentine, e.g. it was and is usual to say unto, giunto, punto, while the non-Florentine had it onto, gionto, ponto, (Lat. unctu, &c.); at Florence they say piazza, meźźo, while elsewhere (at Lucca, Pisa) they say or used to say, piassa, meśśo. Now, it is precisely the Florentine forms which alone have currency in the literary language.

In the ancient compositions in the vulgar tongue, especially in poetry, non-Tuscan authors on the one hand accommodated their own dialect to the analogy of that which they felt to be the purest representative of the language of ancient Roman culture, while the Tuscan authors in their turn did not refuse to adopt the forms which had received the rights of citizenship from the literary celebrities of other parts of Italy. It was this state of matters which gave rise in past times to the numerous disputes about the true fatherland and origin of the literary language of the Italians. But these have been deprived of all right to exist by the scientific investigation of the history of that language. If the older Italian poetry assumed or maintained forms alien to Tuscan speech, these forms were afterwards gradually eliminated, and the field was left to those which were purely Tuscan and indeed purely Florentine. And thus it remains absolutely true that, so far as phonetics, morphology, rudimental syntax, and in short the whole character and material of words and sentences are concerned, there is no literary language of Europe that is more thoroughly characterized by homogeneity and oneness, as if it had come forth in a single cast from the furnace, than the Italian.

But on the other hand it remains equally true that, so far as concerns a living confidence and uniformity in the use and style of the literary language—that is, of this Tuscan or Florentine material called to nourish the civilization and culture of all the Italians—the case is not a little altered, and the Italian nation appears to enjoy less fortunate conditions than other nations of Europe. Modern Italy had no glowing centre for the life of the whole nation into which and out of which the collective thought and language could be poured in ceaseless current for all and by all. Florence has not been Paris. Territorial contiguity and the little difference of the local dialect facilitated in the modern Rome the elevation of the language of conversation to a level with the literary language that came from Tuscany. A form of speech was thus produced which, though certainly destitute of the grace and the abundant flexibility of the Florentine, gives a good idea of what the dialect of a city becomes when it makes itself the language of a nation that is ripening its civilization in many and dissimilar centres. In such a case the dialect loses its slang and petty localisms, and at the same time also somewhat of its freshness; but it learns to express with more conscious sobriety and with more assured dignity the thought and the feeling of the various peoples which are fused in one national life. But what took place readily in Rome could not with equal ease happen in districts whose dialects were far removed from the Tuscan. In Piedmont, for example, or in Lombardy, the language of conversation did not correspond with the language of books, and the latter accordingly became artificial and laboured. Poetry was least affected by these unfortunate conditions; for poetry may work well with a multiform language, where the need and the stimulus of the author’s individuality assert themselves more strongly. But prose suffered immensely, and the Italians had good cause to envy the spontaneity and confidence of foreign literatures—of the French more particularly. In this reasonable envy lay the justification and the strength of the Manzoni school, which aimed at that absolute naturalness of the literary language, that absolute identity between the language of conversation and that of books, which the bulk of the Italians could reach and maintain only by naturalizing themselves in the living speech of modern Florence. The revolt of Manzoni against artificiality and mannerism in language and style was worthy of his genius, and has been largely fruitful. But the historical difference between the case of France (with the colloquial language of Paris) and that of Italy (with the colloquial language of Florence) implies more than one difficulty of principle; in the latter case there is sought to be produced by deliberate effort of the literati what in the former has been and remains the necessary and spontaneous product of the entire civilization. Manzoni’s theories too easily lent themselves to deplorable exaggerations; men fell into a new artificiality, a manner of writing which might be called vulgar and almost slangy. The remedy for this must lie in the regulating power of the labour of the now regenerate Italian intellect,—a labour ever growing wider in its scope, more assiduous and more thoroughly united.

The most ancient document in the Tuscan dialect is a very short fragment of a jongleur’s song (12th century; see Monaci, Crestomazia, 9-10). After that there is nothing till the 13th century. P. Santini has published the important and fairly numerous fragments of a book of notes of some Florentine bankers, of the year 1211. About the middle of the century, our attention is arrested by the Memoriali of the Sienese Matasala di Spinello. To 1278 belongs the MS. in which is preserved the Pistojan version of the Trattati morali of Albertano, which we owe to Sofredi del Grathia. The Riccardian Tristano, published and annotated by E. G. Parodi, seems to belong to the end of the 13th and beginning of the 14th centuries. For other 13th-century writings see Monaci, op. cit. 31-32, 40, and Parodi, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, x. 178-179. For the question concerning language, see Ascoli, Arch. glott. i. v. et seq.; D’ Ovidio, Le Correzioni ai Promessi Sposi e la questione della lingua, 4th ed. Naples, 1895.

Literature.—K. L. Fernow in the third volume of his Römische Studien (Zurich, 1806-1808) gave a good survey of the dialects of Italy. The dawn of rigorously scientific methods had not then appeared; but Fernow’s view is wide and genial. Similar praise is due to Biondelli’s work Sui dialetti gallo-italici (Milan, 1853), which, however, is still ignorant of Diez. August Fuchs, between Fernow and Biondelli, had made himself so far acquainted with the new methods; but his exploration (Über die sogenannten unregelmässigen Zeitwörter in den romanischen Sprachen, nebst Andeutungen über die wichtigsten romanischen Mundarten, Berlin, 1840), though certainly of utility, was not very successful. Nor can the rapid survey of the Italian dialects given by Friedrich Diez be ranked among the happiest portions of his great masterpiece. Among the followers of Diez who distinguished themselves in this department the first outside of Italy were certainly Mussafia, a cautious and clear continuator of the master, and the singularly acute Hugo Schuchardt. Next came the Archivio glottologico italiano (Turin, 1873 and onwards. Up to 1897 there were published 16 vols.), the lead in which was taken by Ascoli and G. Flechia (d. 1892), who, together with the Dalmatian Adolf Mussafia (d. 1906), may be looked upon as the founders of the study of Italian dialects, and who have applied to their writings a rigidly methodical procedure and a historical and comparative standard, which have borne the best fruit. For historical studies dealing specially with the literary language, Nannucci, with his good judgment and breadth of view, led the way; we need only mention here his Analisi critica dei verbi italiani (Florence, 1844). But the new method was to show how much more it was to and did effect. When this movement on the part of the scholars mentioned above became known, other enthusiasts soon joined them, and the Arch. glottologico developed into a school, which began to produce many prominent works on language [among the first in order of date and merit may be mentioned “Gli Allotropi italiani,” by U. A. Canello (1887), Arch. glott. iii. 285-419; and Le Origini della lingua poetica italiana, by N. Caix (d. 1882), (Florence, 1880)], and studies on the dialects. We shall here enumerate those of them which appear for one reason or another to have been the most notable. But, so far as works of a more general nature are concerned, we should first state that there have been other theories as to the classification of the Italian dialects (see also above the various notes on B. 1, 2 and C. 2) put forward by W. Meyer-Lübke (Einführung in das Studium der romanischen Sprachwissenschaft, Heidelberg, 1901; pp. 21-22), and M. Bartoli (Altitalienische Chrestomathie, von P. Savj-Lopez und M. Bartoli, Strassburg, 1903, pp. 171 et seq. 193 et seq., and the table at the end of the volume). W. Meyer-Lübke afterwards filled in details of the system which he had sketched in Gröber’s Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, i., 2nd ed. (1904), pp. 696 et seq. And from the same author comes that masterly work, the Italienische Grammatik (Leipzig, 1890), where the language and its dialects are set out in one organic whole, just as they are placed together in the concise chapter devoted to Italian in the above-mentioned Grundriss (pp. 637 et seq.). We will now give the list, from which we omit, however, the works quoted incidentally throughout the text: B. 1 a: Parodi, Arch. glott. xiv. 1 sqq., xv. 1 sqq., xvi. 105 sqq. 333 sqq.; Poesie in dial. tabbiese del sec. XVII. illustrate da E. G. Parodi (Spezia, 1904); Schädel, Die Mundart von Ormea (Halle, 1903); Parodi, Studj romanzi, fascic. v.; b: Giacomino, Arch. glott. xv. 403 sqq.; Toppino, ib. xvi. 517 sqq.; Flechia, ib. xiv. 111 sqq.; Nigra, Miscell. Ascoli (Turin, 1901), 247 sqq.; Renier, Il Gelindo (Turin, 1896); Salvioni, Rendiconti Istituto lombardo, s. ii., vol. xxxvii. 522, sqq.; c: Salvioni, Fonetica del dialetto di Milano (Turin, 1884); Studi di filol. romanza, viii. 1 sqq.; Arch. glott. ix. 188 sqq. xiii. 355 sqq.; Rendic. Ist. lomb. s. ii., vol. xxxv. 905 sqq.; xxxix. 477 sqq.; 505 sqq. 569 sqq. 603 sqq., xl. 719 sqq.; Bollettino storico della Svizzera italiana, xvii. and xviii.; Michael, Der Dialekt des Poschiavotals (Halle, 1905); v. Ettmayer, Bergamaskische Alpenmundarten (Leipzig, 1903); Romanische Forschungen, xiii. 321 sqq.; d: Mussafia, Darstellung der romagnolischen Mundart (Vienna, 1871); Gaudenzi, I Suoni ecc. della città di Bologna (Turin, 1889); Ungarelli, Vocab. del dial. bologn. con una introduzione di A. Trauzzi sulla fonetica e sulla morfologia del dialetto (Bologna, 1901); Bertoni, Il Dialetto di Modena (Turin, 1905); Pullé, “Schizzo dei dialetti del Frignano” in L’ Apennino modenese. 673 sqq. (Rocca S. Casciano, 1895); Piagnoli, Fonetica parmigiana (Turin, 1904); Restori, Note fonetiche sui parlari dell’ alta valle di Macra (Leghorn, 1892); Gorra, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, xvi. 372 sqq.; xiv. 133 sqq.; Nicoli, Studi di filologia romanza, viii. 197 sqq. B. 2: Hofmann, Die logudoresische und campidanesische Mundart (Marburg, 1885); Wagner, Lautlehre der südsardischen Mundarten (Malle a. S., 1907); Campus, Fonetica del dialetto logudorese (Turin, 1901); Guarnerio, Arch. glott. xiii. 125 sqq., xiv. 131 sqq., 385 sqq. C. 1: Rossi, Le Lettere di Messer Andrea Calmo (Turin, 1888); Wendriner, Die paduanische Mundart bei Ruzante (Breslau, 1889); Le Rime di Bartolomeo Cavassico notaio bellunese della prima metà del sec. xvi. con illustraz. e note di v. Cian, e con illustrazioni linguistiche e lessico a cura di C. Salvioni (2 vols., Bologna, 1893-1894); Gartner, Zeitschr. für roman. Philol. xvi. 183 sqq., 306 sqq.; Salvioni, Arch. glott. xvi. 245 sqq.; Vidossich, Studi sul dialetto triestino (Triest, 1901); Zeitschr. für rom. Phil. xxvii. 749 sqq.; Ascoli, Arch. glott. xiv. 325 sqq.; Schneller, Die romanischen Volksmundarten in Südtirol, i. (Gera, 1870); von Slop, Die tridentinische Mundart (Klagenfurt, 1888); Ive, I Dialetti ladino-veneti dell’ Istria (Strassburg, 1900). C. 2: Guarnerio, Arch. glott. xiii. 125 sqq., xiv. 131 sqq., 385 sqq. C. 3 a: Wentrup-Pitré, in Pitré, Fiabe, novelle e racconti popolari siciliani, vol. i., pp. cxviii. sqq.; Schneegans, Laute und Lautentwickelung des sicil. Dialektes (Strassburg, 1888); De Gregorio, Saggio di fonetica siciliana (Palermo, 1890); Pirandello, Laute und Lautentwickelung der Mundart von Girgenti (Halle, 1891); Cremona, Fonetica del Caltagironese (Acireale, 1895); Santangelo, Arch. glott. xvi. 479 sqq.; La Rosa, Saggi di morfologia siciliana, i. Sostantivi (Noto, 1901); Salvioni, Rendic. Ist. lomb. s. ii., vol. xl. 1046 sqq., 1106 sqq., 1145 sqq.; b: Scerbo, Sul dialetto calabro (Florence, 1886); Accattati’s, Vocabolario del dial. calabrese (Castrovillari, 1895); Gentili, Fonetica del dialetto cosentino (Milan, 1897); Wentrup, Beiträge zur Kenntniss der neapolitanischen Mundart (Wittenberg, 1855); Subak, Die Konjugation im Neapolitanischen (Vienna, 1897); Morosi, Arch. glott. iv. 117 sqq.; De Noto, Appunti di fonetica sul dial. di Taranto (Trani, 1897); Subak, Das Zeitwort in der Mundart von Tarent (Brünn, 1897); Panareo, Fonetica del dial. di Maglie d’ Otranto (Milan, 1903); Nitti di Vito, Il Dial. di Bari, part 1, “Vocalismo moderno” (Milan, 1896); Abbatescianni, Fonologia del dial. barese (Avellino, 1896); Zingarelli, Arch. glott. xv. 83 sqq., 226 sqq.; Ziccardi, Studi glottologici, iv. 171 sqq.; D’ Ovidio, Arch. glott. iv. 145 sqq., 403 sqq.; Finamore, Vocabolario dell’ uso abruzzese (2nd ed., Città di Castello, 1893); Rollin, Mitteilung XIV. der Gesellschaft zur Förderung deutscher Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur in Böhmen (Prague, 1901); De Lollis, Arch. glott. xii. 1 sqq., 187 sqq.; Miscell. Ascoli, 275 sqq.; Savini, La Grammatica e il lessico del dial. teramano (Turin, 1881). C. 4: Merlo, Zeitschr. f. roman. Phil., xxx. 11 sqq., 438 sqq., xxxi. 157 sqq.; E. Monaci (notes on old Roman), Rendic. dei Lincei, Feb. 21st, 1892, p. 94 sqq.; Rossi-Casè, Bollett. di stor. patria degli Abruzzi, vi.; Crocioni, Miscell. Monaci, pp. 429 sqq.; Ceci, Arch. glott. x. 167 sqq.; Parodi, ib. xiii. 299 sqq.; Campanelli, Fonetica del dial. reatino (Turin, 1896); Verga, Sonetti e altre poesie di R. Torelli in dial. perugino (Milan, 1895); Bianchi, Il Dialetto e la etnografia di Città di Castello (Città di Castello, 1888); Neumann-Spallart, Zeitschrift für roman. Phil. xxviii. 273 sqq., 450 sqq.; Weitere Beiträge zur Charakteristik des Dialektes der Marche (Halle a. S., 1907); Crocioni, Studi di fil. rom., ix. 617 sqq.; Studi romanzi, fasc. 3°, 113 sqq., Il Dial. di Arcevia (Rome, 1906); Lindsstrom, Studi romanzi, fasc. 5°, 237 sqq.; Crocioni, ib. 27 sqq. D.: Parodi, Romania, xviii.; Schwenke, De dialecto quae carminibus popularibus tuscanicis a Tigrio editis continetur (Leipzig, 1872); Pieri, Arch. glott. xii. 107 sqq., 141 sqq., 161 sqq.; Miscell. Caix-Canello, 305 sqq.; Note sul dialetto aretino (Pisa, 1886); Zeitschr. für rom. Philol. xxviii. 161 sqq.; Salvioni, Arch. glott. xvi. 395 sqq.; Hirsch, Zeitschrift f. rom. Philol. ix. 513 sqq., x. 56 sqq., 411 sqq. For researches on the etymology of all the Italian dialects, but chiefly of those of Northern Italy, the Beitrag zur Kunde der norditalienischen Mundarten im XV. Jahrhundert of Ad. Mussafia (Vienna, 1873) and the Postille etimologiche of Giov. Flechia (Arch. glott. ii., iii.) are of the greatest importance. Biondelli’s book is of no small service also for the numerous translations which it contains of the Prodigal Son into Lombard, Piedmontese and Emilian dialects. A dialogue translated into the vernaculars of all parts of Italy will be found in Zuccagni Orlandini’s Raccolta di dialetti italiani con illustrazioni etnologiche (Florence, 1864). And every dialectal division is abundantly represented in a series of versions of a short novel of Boccaccio, which Papanti has published under the title I Parlari italiani in Certaldo, &c. (Leghorn, 1875).

[A very valuable and rich collection of dialectal essays on the most ancient documents for all parts of Italy is to be found in the Crestomazia italiana dei primi secoli of E. Monaci (Città di Castello, 1889-1897); see also in the Altitalienische Chrestomathie of P. Savj-Lopez and M. Bartoli (Strassburg, 1903).]

(G. I. A.; C. S.*)

1 The article by G. I. Ascoli in the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which has been recognized as a classic account of the Italian language, was reproduced by him, with slight modifications, in Arch. glott. viii. 98-128. The author proposed to revise his article for the present edition of the Encyclopaedia, but his death on the 21st of January 1907 prevented his carrying out this work, and the task was undertaken by Professor C. Salvioni. In the circumstances it was considered best to confine the revision to bringing Ascoli’s article up to date, while preserving its form and main ideas, together with the addition of bibliographical notes, and occasional corrections and substitutions, in order that the results of more recent research might be embodied. The new matter is principally in the form of notes or insertions within square brackets.

2 [In Corsica the present position of Italian as a language of culture is as follows. Italian is only used for preaching in the country churches. In all the other relations of public and civil life (schools, law courts, meetings, newspapers, correspondence, &c.), its place is taken by French. As the elementary schools no longer teach Italian but French, an educated Corsican nowadays knows only his own dialect for everyday use, and French for public occasions.]

3 [It may be asked whether we ought not to include under this section the Vegliote dialect (Veglioto), since under this form the Dalmatian dialect (Dalmatico) is spoken in Italy. But it should be remembered that in the present generation the Dalmatian dialect has only been heard as a living language at Veglia.]

4 As a matter of fact the “velar” at the end of a word, when preceded by an accented vowel, is found also in Venetia and Istria. This fact, together with others (v. Kritischer Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der roman. Philol. vii. part i. 130), suggests that we ought to assume an earlier group in which Venetian and Gallo-Italian formed part of one and the same group. In this connexion too should be noted the atonic pronoun ghe (Ital. ci-a lui, a lei, a loro), which is found in Venetian, Lombard, North-Emilian and Ligurian.

5 [The latest authorities for the Sardinian dialects are W. Meyer-Lübke and M. Bartoli, in the passages quoted by Guarnerio in his “Il sardo e il côrso in una nuova classificazione delle lingue romanze” (Arch. glott. xvi. 491-516). These scholars entirely dissociate Sardinian from the Italian system, considering it as forming in itself a Romance language, independent of the others; a view in which they are correct. The chief discriminating criterion is supplied by the treatment of the Latin -s, which is preserved in Sardinian, the Latin accusative form prevailing in the declension of the plural, as opposed to the nominative, which prevails in the Italian system. In this respect the Gallo-Italian dialects adhere to the latter system, rejecting the -s and retaining the nominative form. On the other hand, these facts form an important link between Sardinian and the Western Romance dialects, such as the Iberian, Gallic and Ladin; it is not, however, to be identified with any of them, but is distinguished from them by many strongly-marked characteristics peculiar to itself, chief among which is the treatment of the Latin accented vowels, for which see Ascoli in the text. As to the internal classification of the Sardinian dialects, Guarnerio assumes four types, the Campidanese, Logudorese, Gallurese and Sassarese. The separate individuality of the last of these is indicated chiefly by the treatment of the accented vowels (dḛźi, Ital. dieci; tḛla, Ital. tela; pȩlu, Ital. pelo; nǫbu, Ital. nuovo; fiori, Ital. fiore; noźi, Ital. noce, as compared, e.g. with Gallurese dḛci, tḛla, pilu, nou, fiǫri, nući). Both Gallura and Sassari, however, reject the -s, and adopt the nominative form in the plural, thus proving that they are not entirely distinct from the Italian system.]

6 On this point see the chapter, “La terra ferma veneta considerata in ispecie ne’ suoi rapporti con la sezione centrale della zona ladina,” in Arch. i. 406-447.

7 [There are also examples of Istrian variants, such as laṅna, Ital. lana; kadeṅna, Ital. catena.]

8 [There have been of late years many different opinions concerning the classification of Corsican. Meyer-Lübke dissociates it from Italian, and connects it with Sardinian, making of the languages of the two islands a unit independent of the Romance system. But even he (in Gröber’s Grundriss, 2nd ed., vol. i. p. 698) recognized that there were a number of characteristics, among them the participle in -utu and the article illu, closely connecting Sassari and Corsica with the mainland. The matter has since then been put in its true light by Guarnerio (Arch. glott. xvi. 510 et seq.), who points out that there are two varieties of language in Corsica, the Ultramontane or southern, and the Cismontane, by far the most widely spread, in the rest of the island. The former is, it is true, connected with Sardinian, but with that variety, precisely, which, as we have already seen, ought to be separated from the general Sardinian type. Here we might legitimately assume a North-Sardinian and South-Corsican type, having practically the same relation to Italian as have the Gallo-Italian dialects. As to the Cismontane, it has the Tuscan accented vowel-system, does not alter ll or rn, turns lj into ĩ (Ital. gli), and shares with Tuscan the peculiar pronunciation of ć between vowels, while, together with many of the Tuscan and central dialects, it reduces rr to a single consonant. For these reasons, Guarnerio is right in placing the Cismontane, as Ascoli does for all the Corsican dialects, on the same plane as Umbrian, &c.]

9 The Ultramontane variety has, however, tela, pilu, iḍḍu, boći, gula, furu, corresponding exactly to the Gallurese tela, pilu, Ital. pelo, iḍḍu; Ital. “ello,” Lat. illu; bǫci, Ital. voce; gula, Ital. gole.

10 [Traces are not lacking on the mainland of nģ becoming nć, not only in Calabria, where at Cosenza are found, e.g. chiáncere, Ital. piangere, manciare, but also in Sannio and Apulia: chiance, monce, Ital. mungere, in the province of Avellino, púnci, Ital. (tu) pungi, at Brindisi. In Sicily, on the other hand, can be traced examples of nć nk nt mp becoming nģ ng nd mb.]

11 It should, however, be noticed that there seem to be examples of the é from á in the southern dialects on the Tyrrhenian side; texts of Serrara d’Ischia give: mancete, mangiata, maretete, maritata, manneto, mandato; also tenno = Neap. tanno, allora. As to the diphthongs, we should not omit to mention that some of them are obviously of comparatively recent formation. Thus, examples from Cerignola, such as lęvǫitę, oliveto, come from *olivítu (cf. Lecc. leítu, &c.), that is to say, they are posterior to the phenomenon of vowel change by which the formula ę-u became í-u. And, still in the same dialect, in an example like gréjtę, creta, the ej seems perhaps to be recent, for the reason that another é, derived from an original é (Lat. ĕ), is treated in the same way (péjte, piede, &c.). As to examples from Agṇone like puole, palo, there still exists a plural pjéle which points to the phase *palo.

12 We should here mention that callu is also found in the Vocabolario Siciliano, and further occurs in Capitanata.

13 This is derived in reality from the Latin termination -unt, which is reduced phonetically to -u, a phenomenon not confined to the Abruzzi; cf. facciu, Ital. fanno, Lat. faciunt, at Norcia; crisciu, Ital. crescono, Lat. crescunt, &c., at Rieti. And examples are also to be found in ancient Tuscan.

14 [This resolution of -ć- by š, or by a sound very near to š, is, however, a Roman phenomenon, found in some parts of Apulia (Molfettese lausce, luce, &c.), and also heard in parts of Sicily.]

15 There is therefore nothing surprising in the fact that, for example, the chronicle of Monaldeschi of Orvieto (14th century) should indicate a form of speech of which Muratori remarks: “Romanis tunc familiaris, nimirum quae in nonnullis accedabat ad Neapolitanam seu vocibus seu pronuntiatione.” The alt into ait, &c. (aitro, moito), which occur in the well-known Vita di Cola di Rienzo, examples of which can also be found in some corners of the Marches, and of which there are also a few traces in Latium, also shows Abruzzan affinity. The phenomenon occurs also, however, in Emilian and Tuscan.

16 A distinction between the masculine and the neuter article can also be noticed at Naples and elsewhere in the southern region, where it sometimes occurs that the initial consonant of the substantive is differently determined according as the substantive itself is conceived as masculine or neuter; thus at Naples, neut. lo bero, masc. lo vero, “il vero,” &c.; at Cerignola (Capitanata), u mmȩgghiḛ, “il meglio,” side by side with u mǫisḛ “il mese.” The difference is evidently to be explained by the fact that the neuter article originally ended in a consonant (-d or -c?; see Merlo, Zeitschrift für roman. Philol. xxx. 449), which was then assimilated to the initial letter of the substantive, while the masculine article ended in a vowel.

17 This second prefix is common to the opposite valley of the Metauro, and appears farther south in the form of me,—Camerino: me lu pettu, nel petto, me lu Seppurgru, al Sepolcro.

18 A complete analogy is afforded by the history of the Aryan or Sanskrit language in India, which in space and time shows always more and more strongly the reaction of the oral tendencies of the aboriginal races on whom it has been imposed. Thus the Pali presents the ancient Aryan organism in a condition analogous to that of the oldest French, and the Prakrit of the Dramas, on the other hand, in a condition like that of modern French.

ITALIAN LITERATURE. 1. Origins.—One characteristic fact distinguishes the Italy of the middle ages with regard to its intellectual conditions—the tenacity with which the Latin tradition clung to life (see Latin). At the end of the 5th century the northern conquerors invaded Italy. The Roman world crumbled to pieces. A new kingdom arose at Ravenna under Theodoric, and there learning was not extinguished. The liberal arts flourished, the very Gothic kings surrounded themselves with masters of rhetoric and of grammar. The names of Cassiodorus, of Boetius, of Symmachus, are enough to show how Latin thought maintained its power amidst the political effacement of the Roman empire. And this thought held its ground throughout the subsequent ages and events. Thus, while elsewhere all culture had died out, there still remained in Italy some schools of laymen,1 and some really extraordinary men were educated in them, such as Ennodius, a poet more pagan than Christian, Arator, Fortunatus, Venantius Jovannicius, Felix the grammarian, Peter of Pisa, Paulinus of Aquileia and many others, in all of whom we notice a contrast between the barbarous age they lived in and their aspiration towards a culture that should reunite them to the classical literature of Rome. The Italians never had much love for theological studies, and those who were addicted to them preferred Paris to Italy. It was something more practical, more positive, that had attraction for the Italians, and especially the study of Roman law. This zeal for the study of jurisprudence furthered the establishment of the medieval universities of Bologna, Padua, Vicenza, Naples, Salerno, Modena and Parma; and these, in their turn, helped to spread culture, and to prepare the ground in which the new vernacular literature was afterwards to be developed. The tenacity of classical traditions, the affection for the memories of Rome, the preoccupation with political interests, particularly shown in the wars of the Lombard communes against the empire of the Hohenstaufens, a spirit more naturally inclined to practice than to theory—all this had a powerful influence on the fate of Italian literature. Italy was wanting in that combination of conditions from which the spontaneous life of a people springs. This was chiefly owing to the fact that the history of the Italians never underwent interruption,—no foreign nation having come in to change them and make them young again. That childlike state of mind and heart, which in other Latin races, as well as in the Germanic, was such a deep source of poetic inspiration, was almost utterly wanting in the Italians, who were always much drawn to history and very little to nature; so, while legends, tales, epic poems, satires, were appearing and spreading on all sides, Italy was either quite a stranger to this movement or took a peculiar part in it. We know, for example, what the Trojan traditions were in the middle ages; and we should have thought that in Italy—in the country of Rome, retaining the memory of Aeneas and Virgil—they would have been specially developed, for it was from Virgil that the medieval sympathy for the conquered of Troy was derived. In fact, however, it was not so. A strange book made its appearance in Europe, no one quite knows when, the Historia de excidio Trojae, which purported to have been written by a certain Dares the Phrygian, an eye-witness of the Trojan war. In the middle ages this book was the basis of many literary labours. Benoît de Sainte-More composed an interminable French poem founded on it, which afterwards in its turn became a source for other poets to draw from, such as Herbort of Fritzlar and Conrad of Würzburg. Now for the curious phenomenon displayed by Italy. Whilst Benoît de Sainte-More wrote his poem in French, taking his material from a Latin history, whilst the two German writers, from a French source, made an almost original work in their own language—an Italian, on the other hand, taking Benoît for his model, composed in Latin the Historia destructionis Trojae; and this Italian was Guido delle Colonne of Messina, one of the vernacular poets of the Sicilian school, who must accordingly have known well how to use his own language. Guido was an imitator of the Provençals; he understood French, and yet wrote his own book in Latin, nay, changed the romance of the Troubadour into serious history. Much the same thing occurred with the other great legends. That of Alexander the Great (q.v.) gave rise to many French, German and Spanish poems,—in Italy, only to the Latin distichs of Qualichino of Arezzo. The whole of Europe was full of the legend of Arthur (q.v.). The Italians contented themselves with translating and with abridging the French romances, without adding anything of their own. The Italian writer could neither appropriate the legend nor colour it with his own tints. Even religious legend, so widely spread in the middle ages, and springing up so naturally as it did from the heart of that society, only put out a few roots in Italy. Jacopo di Voragine, while collecting his lives of the saints, remained only an historian, a man of learning, almost a critic who seemed doubtful about the things he related. Italy had none of those books in which the middle age, whether in its ascetic or its chivalrous character, is so strangely depicted. The intellectual life of Italy showed itself in an altogether special, positive, almost scientific, form, in the study of Roman law, in the chronicles of Farfa, of Marsicano and of many others, in translations from Aristotle, in the precepts of the school of Salerno, in the travels of Marco Polo—in short, in a long series of facts which seem to detach themselves from the surroundings of the middle age, and to be united on the one side with classical Rome and on the other with the Renaissance.

The necessary consequence of all this was that the Latin language was most tenacious in Italy, and that the elaboration of the new vulgar tongue was very slow,—being in fact preceded by two periods of Italian literature in foreign Provençal and French preparatory periods. languages. That is to say, there were many Italians who wrote Provençal poems, such as the Marchese Alberto Malaspina (12th century), Maestro Ferrari of Ferrara, Cigala of Genoa, Zorzi of Venice, Sordello of Mantua, Buvarello of Bologna, Nicoletto of Turin and others, who sang of love and of war, who haunted the courts, or lived in the midst of the people, accustoming them to new sounds and new harmonies. At the same time there was other poetry of an epic kind, written in a mixed language, of which French was the basis, but in which forms and words belonging to the Italian dialects were continually mingling. We find in it hybrid words exhibiting a treatment of sounds according to the rules of both languages,—French words with Italian terminations, a system of vocalization within the words approaching the Italo-Latin usage,—in short, something belonging at once to both tongues, as it were an attempt at interpenetration, at fusion. Such were the Chansons de Geste, Macaire, the Entrée en Espagne written by Niccola of Padua, the Prise de Pampelune and some others. All this preceded the appearance of a purely Italian literature.

In the Franco-Italian poems there was, as it were, a clashing, a struggle between the two languages, the French, however, gaining the upper hand. This supremacy became gradually less and less. As the struggle continued Dialect. between French and Italian, the former by degrees lost as much as the latter gained. The hybridism recurred, but it no longer predominated. In the Bovo d’ Antona and the Rainardo e Lesengrino the Venetian dialect makes itself clearly felt, although the language is influenced by French forms. Thus these writings, which G. I. Ascoli has called “miste” (mixed), immediately preceded the appearance of purely Italian works.

It is now an established historical fact that there existed no writing in Italian before the 13th century. It was in the course of that century, and especially from 1250 onwards, that the new literature largely unfolded and developed North Italy. itself. This development was simultaneous in the whole peninsula, only there was a difference in the subject-matter of the art. In the north, the poems of Giacomino of Verona and Bonvecino of Riva were specially religious, and were intended to be recited to the people. They were written in a dialect partaking of the Milanese and the Venetian; and in their style they strongly bore the mark of the influence of French narrative poetry. They may be considered as belonging to the popular kind of poetry, taking the word, however, in a broad sense. Perhaps this sort of composition was encouraged by the old custom in the north of Italy of listening in the piazzas and on the highways to the songs of the jongleurs. To the very same crowds who had been delighted with the stories of romance, and who had listened to the story of the wickedness of Macaire and the misfortunes of Blanciflor, another jongleur would sing of the terrors of the Babilonia Infernale and the blessedness of the Gerusalemme celeste, and the singers of religious poetry vied with those of the Chansons de Geste.

In the south of Italy, on the other hand, the love-song prevailed, of which we have an interesting specimen in the Contrasto attributed to Ciullo d’ Alcamo, about which modern Italian critics have much exercised themselves. This South Italy. “contrasto” (dispute) between a man and a woman in Sicilian dialect certainly must not be considered as the most ancient or as the only southern poem of a popular kind. It belongs without doubt to the time of the emperor Frederick II., and is important as a proof that there existed a popular poetry independent of literary poetry. The Contrasto of Ciullo d’Alcamo is the most remarkable relic of a kind of poetry that has perished or which perhaps was smothered by the ancient Sicilian literature. Its distinguishing point was its possessing all the opposite qualities to the poetry of the rhymers of what we shall call the Sicilian school. Vigorous in the expression of feelings, it seems to come from a real sentiment. The conceits, which are sometimes most bold and very coarse, show that it proceeded from the lowest grades of society. Everything is original in Ciullo’s Contrasto. Conventionality has no place in it. It is marked by the sensuality characteristic of the people of the South.

The reverse of all this happened in the Siculo-Provençal school, at the head of which was Frederick II. Imitation was the fundamental characteristic of this school, to which belonged Enzio, king of Sardinia, Pier delle Vigne, Siculo-Provençal School. Inghilfredi, Guido and Odo delle Colonne, Jacopo d’ Aquino, Rugieri Pugliese, Giacomo da Lentino, Arrigo Testa and others. These rhymers never moved a step beyond the ideas of chivalry; they had no originality; they did not sing of what they felt in their heart; they abhorred the true and the real. They only aimed at copying as closely as they could the poetry of the Provençal troubadours.2 The art of the Siculo-Provençal school was born decrepit, and there were many reasons for this—first, because the chivalrous spirit, from which the poetry of the troubadours was derived, was now old and on its death-bed; next, because the Provençal art itself, which the Sicilians took as their model, was in its decadence. It may seem strange, but it is true, that when the emperor Frederick II., a philosopher, a statesman, a very original legislator, took to writing poetry, he could only copy and amuse himself with absolute puerilities. His art, like that of all the other poets of his court, was wholly conventional, mechanical, affected. It was completely wanting in what constitutes poetry—ideality, feeling, sentiment, inspiration. The Italians have had great disputes among themselves about the original form of the poems of the Sicilian school, that is to say, whether they were written in Sicilian dialect, or in that language which Dante called “volgare, illustre, aulico, cortigiano.” But the critics of most authority hold that the primitive form of these poems was the Sicilian dialect, modified for literary purposes with the help of Provençal and Latin; the theory of the “lingua illustre” has been almost entirely rejected, since we cannot say on what rules it could have been founded, when literature was in its infancy trying its feet, and lisping its first words. The Sicilian certainly, in accordance with a tendency common to all dialects, in passing from the spoken to the written form, must have gained in dignity; but this was not enough to create the so-called “lingua illustre,” which was upheld by Perticari and others on grounds rather political than literary.

In the 13th century a mighty religious movement took place in Italy, of which the rise of the two great orders of Saint Francis and Saint Dominic was at once the cause and the effect. Around Francis of Assisi a legend has grown Religious lyric poetry in Umbria. up in which naturally the imaginative element prevails. Yet from some points in it we seem to be able to infer that its hero had a strong feeling for nature, and a heart open to the most lively impressions. Many poems are attributed to him. The legend relates that in the eighteenth year of his penance, when almost rapt in ecstasy, he dictated the Cantico del Sole. Even if this hymn be really his, it cannot be considered as a poetical work, being written in a kind of prose simply marked by assonances. As for the other poems, which for a long time were believed to be by Saint Francis, their spuriousness is now generally recognized. The true poet who represented in all its strength and breadth the religious feeling that had made special progress in Umbria was Jacopo dei Benedetti of Todi, known as Jacopone. The story is that sorrow at the sudden death of his wife had disordered his mind, and that, having sold all he possessed and given it to the poor, he covered himself with rags, and took pleasure in being laughed at, and followed by a crowd of people who mocked him and called after him “Jacopone, Jacopone.” We do not know whether this be true. What we do know is that a vehement passion must have stirred his heart and maintained a despotic hold over him, the passion of divine love. Under its influence Jacopone went on raving for years and years, subjecting himself to the severest sufferings, and giving vent to his religious intoxication in his poems. There is no art in him, there is not the slightest indication of deliberate effort; there is only feeling, a feeling that absorbed him, fascinated him, penetrated him through and through. His poetry was all inside him, and burst out, not so much in words as in sighs, in groans, in cries that often seem really to come from a monomaniac. But Jacopone was a mystic, who from his hermit’s cell looked out into the world and specially watched the papacy, scourging with his words Celestine V. and Boniface VIII. He was put in prison and laden with chains, but his spirit lifted itself up to God, and that was enough for him. The same feeling that prompted him to pour out in song ecstasies of divine love, and to despise and trample on himself, moved him to reprove those who forsook the heavenly road, whether they were popes, prelates or monks. In Jacopone there was a strong originality, and in the period of the origins of Italian literature he was one of the most characteristic writers.

The religious movement in Umbria was followed by another literary phenomenon, that of the religious drama. In 1258 an old hermit, Raniero Fasani, leaving the cavern in which he had lived for many years, suddenly appeared The religious drama. at Perugia. These were very sad times for Italy. The quarrels in the cities, the factions of the Ghibellines and the Guelphs, the interdicts and excommunications issued by the popes, the reprisals of the imperial party, the cruelty and tyranny of the nobles, the plagues and famines, kept the people in constant agitation, and spread abroad mysterious fears. The commotion was increased in Perugia by Fasani, who represented himself as sent by God to disclose mysterious visions, and to announce to the world terrible visitations. Under the influence of fear there were formed “Compagnie di Disciplinanti,” who, for a penance, scourged themselves till they drew blood, and sang “Laudi” in dialogue in their confraternities. These “Laudi,” closely connected with the liturgy, were the first example of the drama in the vulgar tongue of Italy. They were written in the Umbrian dialect, in verses of eight syllables, and of course they have not any artistic value. Their development, however, was rapid. As early as the end of the same 13th century we have the Devozioni del Giovedì e Venerdì Santo, which have some dramatic elements in them, though they are still connected with the liturgical office. Then we have the representation di un Monaco che andò al servizio di Dio (“of a monk who entered the service of God”), in which there is already an approach to the definite form which this kind of literary work assumed in the following centuries.

In the 13th century Tuscany was peculiarly circumstanced both as regards its literary condition and its political life. The Tuscans spoke a dialect which most closely resembled the mother-tongue, Latin—one which afterwards Tuscan poetry. became almost exclusively the language of literature, and which was already regarded at the end of the 13th century as surpassing the others; “Lingua Tusca magis apta est ad literam sive literaturam”: thus writes Antonio da Tempo of Padua, born about 1275. Being very little or not at all affected by the Germanic invasion, Tuscany was never subjected to the feudal system. It had fierce internal struggles, but they did not weaken its life; on the contrary, they rather gave it fresh vigour and strengthened it, and (especially after the final fall of the Hohenstaufens at the battle of Benevento in 1266) made it the first province of Italy. From 1266 onwards Florence was in a position to begin that movement of political reform which in 1282 resulted in the appointment of the Priori delle Arti, and the establishment of the Arti Minori. This was afterwards copied by Siena with the Magistrato dei Nove, by Lucca, by Pistoia, and by other Guelph cities in Tuscany with similar popular institutions. In this way the gilds had taken the government into their hands, and it was a time of both social and political prosperity. It was no wonder that literature also rose to an unlooked-for height. In Tuscany, too, there was some popular love poetry; there was a school of imitators of the Sicilians, their chief being Dante of Majano; but its literary originality took another line—that of humorous and satirical poetry. The entirely democratic form of government created a style of poetry which stood in the strongest antithesis to the medieval mystic and chivalrous style. Devout invocation of God or of a lady came from the cloister and the castle; in the streets of the cities everything that had gone before was treated with ridicule or biting sarcasm. Folgore of San Gimignano laughs when in his sonnets he tells a party of Sienese youths what are the occupations of every month in the year, or when he teaches a party of Florentine lads the pleasures of every day in the week. Cene della Chitarra laughs when he parodies Folgore’s sonnets. The sonnets of Rustico di Filippo are half fun and half satire; laughing and crying, joking and satire, are all to be found in Cecco Angiolieri of Siena, the oldest “humorist” we know, a far-off precursor of Rabelais, of Montaigne, of Jean Paul Richter, of Sydney Smith. But another kind of poetry also began in Tuscany. Guittone d’ Arezzo made art quit chivalrous for national motives, Provençal forms for Latin. He attempted political poetry, and, although his work is full of the strangest obscurities, he prepared the way for the Bolognese school. In the 13th century Bologna was the city of science, and philosophical poetry appeared there. Guido Guinicelli was the poet after the new fashion of the art. In him the ideas of chivalry are changed and enlarged; he sings of love and, together with it, of the nobility of the mind. The reigning thought in Guinicelli’s Canzoni is nothing external to his own subjectivity. His speculative mind, accustomed to wandering in the field of philosophy, transfuses its lucubrations into his art. Guinicelli’s poetry has some of the faults of the school of Guittone d’Arezzo: he reasons too much; he is wanting in imagination; his poetry is a product of the intellect rather than of the fancy and the heart. Nevertheless he marks a great development in the history of Italian art, especially because of his close connexion with Dante’s lyric poetry.

But before we come to Dante, certain other facts, not, however, unconnected with his history, must be noticed. In the 13th century, there were several poems in the allegorical style. One of these is by Brunetto Latini, who, it Allegorical poetry. is well known, was attached by ties of strong affection to Alighieri. His Tesoretto is a short poem, in seven-syllable verses, rhyming in couplets, in which the author professes to be lost in a wilderness and to meet with a lady, who is Nature, from whom he receives much instruction. We see here the vision, the allegory, the instruction with a moral object—three elements which we shall find again in the Divina Commedia. Francesco da Barberino, a learned lawyer who was secretary to bishops, a judge, a notary, wrote two little allegorical poems—the Documenti d’ amore and Del reggimento e dei costumi delle donne. Like the Tesoretto, these poems are of no value as works of art, but are, on the other hand, of importance in the history of manners. A fourth allegorical work was the Intelligenza, by some attributed to Dino Compagni, but probably not his, and only a version of French poems.

While the production of Italian poetry in the 13th century was abundant and varied, that of prose was scanty. The oldest specimen dates from 1231, and consists of short notices of entries and expenses by Mattasalà di Prose in 13th century. Spinello dei Lambertini of Siena. In 1253 and 1260 there are some commercial letters of other Sienese. But there is no sign of literary prose. Before we come to any, we meet with a phenomenon like that we noticed in regard to poetry. Here again we find a period of Italian literature in French. Halfway on in the century a certain Aldobrando or Aldobrandino (it is not known whether he was of Florence or of Siena) wrote a book for Beatrice of Savoy, countess of Provence, called Le Régime du corps. In 1267 Martino da Canale wrote in the same “langue d’oil” a chronicle of Venice. Rusticiano of Pisa, who was for a long while at the court of Edward I. of England, composed many chivalrous romances, derived from the Arthurian cycle, and subsequently wrote the travels of Marco Polo, which may perhaps have been dictated by the great traveller himself. And finally Brunetto Latini wrote his Tesoro in French.

Next in order to the original compositions in the langue d’oil come the translations or adaptations from the same. There are some moral narratives taken from religious legends; a romance of Julius Caesar; some short histories of ancient knights; the Tavola rotonda; translations of the Viaggi of Marco Polo and of the Tesoro of Latini. At the same time there appeared translations from Latin of moral and ascetic works, of histories and of treatises on rhetoric and oratory. Up to very recent times it was still possible to reckon as the most ancient works in Italian prose the Cronaca of Matteo Spinello da Giovenazzo, and the Cronaca of Ricordano Malespini. But now both of them have been shown to be forgeries of a much later time. Therefore the oldest prose writing is a scientific book—the Composizione del mondo by Ristoro d’ Arezzo, who lived about the middle of the 13th century. This work is a copious treatise on astronomy and geography. Ristoro was superior to the other writers of the time on these subjects, because he seems to have been a careful observer of natural phenomena, and consequently many of the things he relates were the result of his personal investigations. There is also another short treatise, De regimine rectoris, by Fra Paolino, a Minorite friar of Venice, who was probably bishop of Pozzuoli, and who also wrote a Latin chronicle. His treatise stands in close relation to that of Egidio Colonna, De regimine principum. It is written in the Venetian dialect.

The 13th century was very rich in tales. There is a collection called the Cento Novelle antiche, which contains stories drawn from Oriental, Greek and Trojan traditions, from ancient and medieval history, from the legends of Brittany, Provence and Italy, and from the Bible, from the local tradition of Italy as well as from histories of animals and old mythology. This book has a distant resemblance to the Spanish collection known as El Conde Lucanor. The peculiarity of the Italian book is that the stories are very short, and that they seem to be mere outlines to be filled in by the narrator as he goes along. Other prose novels were inserted by Francesco Barberino in his work Del reggimento e dei costumi delle donne, but they are of much less importance than the others. On the whole the Italian novels of the 13th century have little originality, and are only a faint reflection of the very rich legendary literature of France. Some attention should be paid to the Lettere of Fra Guittone d’Arezzo, who wrote many poems and also some letters in prose, the subjects of which are moral and religious. Love of antiquity, of the traditions of Rome and of its language, was so strong in Guittone that he tried to write Italian in a Latin style, and it turned out obscure, involved and altogether barbarous. He took as his special model Seneca, and hence his prose assumed a bombastic style, which, according to his views, was very artistic, but which in fact was alien to the true spirit of art, and resulted in the extravagant and grotesque.

2. The Spontaneous Development of Italian Literature.—In the year 1282, the year in which the new Florentine constitution of the “Arti minori” was completed, a period of literature New Tuscan School of lyric poetry. began that does not belong to the age of first beginnings, but to that of development. With the school of Lapo Gianni, of Guido Cavalcanti, of Cino da Pistoia and Dante Alighieri, lyric poetry became exclusively Tuscan. The whole novelty and poetic power of this school, which really was the beginning of Italian art, consist in what Dante expresses so happily—

“Quando

Amore spira, noto, ed a quel modo

Ch’ ei detta dentro, vo significando”—

that is to say, in a power of expressing the feelings of the soul in the way in which love inspires them, in an appropriate and graceful manner, fitting form to matter, and by art fusing one with the other. The Tuscan lyric poetry, the first true Italian art, is pre-eminent in this artistic fusion, in the spontaneous and at the same time deliberate action of the mind. In Lapo Gianni the new style is not free from some admixture of the old associations of the Siculo-Provençal school. He wavered as it were between two manners. The empty and involved phraseology of the Sicilians is absent, but the poet does not always rid himself of their influence. Sometimes, however, he draws freely from his own heart, and then the subtleties and obscurities disappear, and his verse becomes clear, flowing and elegant.

Guido Cavalcanti was a learned man with a high conception of his art. He felt the value of it, and adapted his learning to it. Cavalcanti was already a good deal out of sympathy with the medieval spirit; he reflected deeply on his Guido Cavalcanti. own work, and from this reflection he derived his poetical conception. His poems may be divided into two classes—those which portray the philosopher, “il sottilissimo dialettico,” as Lorenzo the Magnificent called him, and those which are more directly the product of his poetic nature imbued with mysticism and metaphysics. To the first set belongs the famous poem Sulla natura d’amore, which in fact is a treatise on amorous metaphysics, and was annotated later in a learned way by the most renowned Platonic philosophers of the 15th century, such as Marsilius Ficinus and others. In other poems of Cavalcanti’s besides this we see a tendency to subtilize and to stifle the poetic imagery under a dead weight of philosophy. But there are many of his sonnets in which the truth of the images and the elegance and simplicity of the style are admirable, and make us feel that we are in quite a new period of art. This is particularly felt in Cavalcanti’s Ballate, for in them he pours himself out ingenuously and without affectation, but with an invariable and profound consciousness of his art. Far above all the others for the reality of the sorrow and the love displayed, for the melancholy longing expressed for the distant home, for the calm and solemn yearning of his heart for the lady of his love, for a deep subjectivity which is never troubled by metaphysical subtleties, is the ballata composed by Cavalcanti when he was banished from Florence with the party of the Bianchi in 1300, and took refuge at Sarzana.

The third poet among the followers of the new school was Cino da Pistoia, of the family of the Sinibuldi. His love poems Cino da Pistoia. are so sweet, so mellow and so musical that they are only surpassed by Dante. The pains of love are described by him with vigorous touches; it is easy to see that they are not feigned but real. The psychology of love and of sorrow nearly reaches perfection.

As the author of the Vita nuova, the greatest of all Italian poets, Dante also belongs to the same lyric school. In the lyrics of the Vita nuova (so called by its author to indicate that his first meeting with Beatrice was the beginning Dante (1265-1321). for him of a life entirely different from that he had hitherto led) there is a high idealization of love. It seems as if there were in it nothing earthly or human, and that the poet had his eyes constantly fixed on heaven while singing of his lady. Everything is supersensual, aerial, heavenly, and the real Beatrice is always gradually melting more and more into the symbolical one—passing out of her human nature and into the divine. Several of the lyrics of the Canzoniere deal with the theme of the “new life”; but all the love poems do not refer to Beatrice, while other pieces are philosophical and bridge over to the Convito.

The work which made Dante immortal, and raised him above all other men of genius in Italy, was his Divina Commedia. An allegorical meaning is hidden under the literal one of this great epic. Dante travelling through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, is a symbol of mankind aiming at the double object of temporal and eternal happiness. By the forest in which the poet loses himself is meant the civil and religious confusion of society, deprived of its two guides, the emperor and the pope. The mountain illuminated by the sun is universal monarchy. The three beasts are the three vices and the three powers which offered the greatest obstacles to Dante’s designs: envy is Florence, light, fickle and divided by the Bianchi and Neri; pride is the house of France; avarice is the papal court; Virgil represents reason and the empire. Beatrice is the symbol of the supernatural aid without which man cannot attain the supreme end, which is God.

But the merit of the poem does not lie in the allegory, which still connects it with medieval literature. What is new in it is the individual art of the poet, the classic art transfused for the first time into a Romance form. Dante is above all a great artist. Whether he describes nature, analyzes passions, curses the vices or sings hymns to the virtues, he is always wonderful for the grandeur and delicacy of his art. Out of the rude medieval vision he has made the greatest work of art of modern times. He took the materials for his poem from theology, from philosophy, from history, from mythology—but more especially from his own passions, from hatred and love; and he has breathed the breath of genius into all these materials. Under the pen of the poet, the dead come to life again; they become men again, and speak the language of their time, of their passions. Farinata degli Uberti, Boniface VIII., Count Ugolino, Manfred, Sordello, Hugh Capet, St Thomas Aquinas, Cacciaguida, St Benedict, St Peter, are all so many objective creations; they stand before us in all the life of their characters, their feelings, their habits.

Yet this world of fancy in which the poet moves is not only made living by the power of his genius, but it is changed by his consciousness. The real chastizer of the sins, the rewarder of the virtues, is Dante himself. The personal interest which he brings to bear on the historical representation of the three worlds is what most interests us and stirs us. Dante remakes history after his own passions. Thus the Divina Commedia can fairly be called, not only the most life-like drama of the thoughts and feelings that moved men at that time, but also the most clear and spontaneous reflection of the individual feelings of the poet, from the indignation of the citizen and the exile to the faith of the believer and the ardour of the philosopher. The Divina Commedia fixed and clearly defined the destiny of Italian literature, to give artistic lustre, and hence immortality, to all the forms of literature which the middle ages had produced. Dante begins the great era of the Renaissance.

Two facts characterize the literary life of Petrarch—classical research and the new human feeling introduced into his lyric poetry. Nor are these two facts separate; rather is the one the result of the other. The Petrarch who Petrarch (1304-1374). travelled about unearthing the works of the great Latin writers helps us to understand the Petrarch who, having completely detached himself from the middle ages, loved a real lady with a human love, and celebrated her in her life and after her death in poems full of studied elegance. Petrarch was the first humanist, and he was at the same time the first lyric poet of the modern school. His career was long and tempestuous. He lived for many years at Avignon, cursing the corruption of the papal court; he travelled through nearly the whole of Europe; he corresponded with emperors and popes; he was considered the first man of letters of his time; he had honours and riches; and he always bore about within him discontent, melancholy and incapacity for satisfaction—three characteristics of the modern man.

His Canzoniere is divided into three parts—the first containing the poems written during Laura’s lifetime, the second the poems written after her death, the third the Trionfi. The one and only subject of these poems is love; but the treatment is full of variety in conception, in imagery and in sentiment, derived from the most varied impressions of nature. Petrarch’s love is real and deep, and to this is due the merit of his lyric verse, which is quite different, not only from that of the Provençal troubadours and of the Italian poets before him, but also from the lyrics of Dante. Petrarch is a psychological poet, who dives down into his own soul, examines all his feelings, and knows how to render them with an art of exquisite sweetness. The lyrics of Petrarch are no longer transcendental like Dante’s, but on the contrary keep entirely within human limits. In struggles, in doubts, in fears, in disappointments, in griefs, in joys, in fact in everything, the poet finds material for his poetry. The second part of the Canzoniere is the more passionate. The Trionfi are inferior; it is clear that in them Petrarch tried to imitate the Divina Commedia, but never came near it. The Canzoniere includes also a few political poems—a canzone to Italy, one supposed to be addressed to Cola di Rienzi and several sonnets against the court of Avignon. These are remarkable for their vigour of feeling, and also for showing that Petrarch had formed the idea of Italianità better even than Alighieri. The Italy which he wooed was different from any conceived by the men of the middle ages, and in this also he was a precursor of modern times and of modern aspirations. Petrarch had no decided political idea. He exalted Cola di Rienzi, invoked the emperor Charles IV., praised the Visconti; in fact, his politics were affected more by impressions than by principles; but above all this reigned constantly the love of Italy, his ancient and glorious country, which in his mind is reunited with Rome, the great city of his heroes Cicero and Scipio.

Boccaccio had the same enthusiastic love of antiquity and the same worship for the new Italian literature as Petrarch. He was the first, with the help of a Greek born in Calabria, to put together a Latin translation of the Iliad and Boccaccio (1313-1375). the Odyssey. His vast classical learning was shown specially in the work De genealogia deorum, in which he enumerates the gods according to genealogical trees constructed on the authority of the various authors who wrote about the pagan divinities. This work marked an era in studies preparatory to the revival of classical learning. And at the same time it opened the way for the modern criticism, because Boccaccio in his researches, and in his own judgment was always independent of the authors whom he most esteemed. The Genealogia deorum is, as A. H. Heeren said, an encyclopaedia of mythological knowledge; and it was the precursor of the great humanistic movement which was developed in the 15th century. Boccaccio was also the first historian of women in his De claris mulieribus, and the first to undertake to tell the story of the great unfortunate in his De casibus virorum illustrium. He continued and perfected former geographical investigations in his interesting book De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis, et paludibus, et de nominibus maris, for which he made use of Vibius Sequester, but which contains also many new and valuable observations. Of his Italian works his lyrics do not come anywhere near to the perfection of Petrarch’s. His sonnets, mostly about love, are quite mediocre. His narrative poetry is better. Although now he can no longer claim the distinction long conceded to him of having invented the octave stanza (which afterwards became the metre of the poems of Boiardo, of Ariosto and of Tasso), yet he was certainly the first to use it in a work of some length and written with artistic skill, such as is his Teseide, the oldest Italian romantic poem. The Filostrato relates the loves of Troiolo and Griseida (Troilus and Cressida). It may be that Boccaccio knew the French poem of the Trojan war by Benoît de Sainte-More; but the interest of the Italian work lies in the analysis of the passion of love, which is treated with a masterly hand. The Ninfale fiesolano tells the love story of the nymph Mesola and the shepherd Africo. The Amorosa Visione, a poem in triplets, doubtless owed its origin to the Divina Commedia. The Ameto is a mixture of prose and poetry, and is the first Italian pastoral romance.

The Filocopo takes the earliest place among prose romances. In it Boccaccio tells in a laborious style, and in the most prolix way, the loves of Florio and Biancafiore. Probably for this work he drew materials from a popular source or from a Byzantine romance, which Leonzio Pilato may have mentioned to him. In the Filocopo there is a remarkable exuberance in the mythological part, which damages the romance as an artistic work, but which contributes to the history of Boccaccio’s mind. The Fiammetta is another romance, about the loves of Boccaccio and Maria d’Aquino, a supposed natural daughter of King Robert, whom he always called by this name of Fiammetta.

The Italian work which principally made Boccaccio famous was the Decamerone, a collection of a hundred novels, related by a party of men and women, who had retired to a villa near Florence to escape from the plague in 1348. Novel-writing, so abundant in the preceding centuries, especially in France, now for the first time assumed an artistic shape. The style of Boccaccio tends to the imitation of Latin, but in him prose first took the form of elaborated art. The rudeness of the old fabliaux gives place to the careful and conscientious work of a mind that has a feeling for what is beautiful, that has studied the classic authors, and that strives to imitate them as much as possible. Over and above this, in the Decamerone, Boccaccio is a delineator of character and an observer of passions. In this lies his novelty. Much has been written about the sources of the novels of the Decamerone. Probably Boccaccio made use both of written and of oral sources. Popular tradition must have furnished him with the materials of many stories, as, for example, that of Griselda.

Unlike Petrarch, who was always discontented, preoccupied, wearied with life, disturbed by disappointments, we find Boccaccio calm, serene, satisfied with himself and with his surroundings. Notwithstanding these fundamental differences in their characters, the two great authors were old and warm friends. But their affection for Dante was not equal. Petrarch, who says that he saw him once in his childhood, did not preserve a pleasant recollection of him, and it would be useless to deny that he was jealous of his renown. The Divina Commedia was sent him by Boccaccio, when he was an old man, and he confessed that he never read it. On the other hand, Boccaccio felt for Dante something more than love—enthusiasm. He wrote a biography of him, of which the accuracy is now unfairly depreciated by some critics, and he gave public critical lectures on the poem in Santa Maria del Fiore at Florence.

Fazio degli Uberti and Federigo Frezzi were imitators of the Divina Commedia, but only in its external form. The former wrote the Dittamondo, a long poem, in which the author supposes that he was taken by the geographer Imitators of the Commedia. Solinus into different parts of the world, and that his guide related the history of them. The legends of the rise of the different Italian cities have some importance historically. Frezzi, bishop of his native town Foligno, wrote the Quadriregio, a poem of the four kingdoms—Love, Satan, the Vices and the Virtues. This poem has many points of resemblance with the Divina Commedia. Frezzi pictures the condition of man who rises from a state of vice to one of virtue, and describes hell, the limbo, purgatory and heaven. The poet has Pallas for a companion.

Ser Giovanni Fiorentino wrote, under the title of Pecorone, a collection of tales, which are supposed to have been related by a monk and a nun in the parlour of the monastery of Forlì. He closely imitated Boccaccio, and drew Novelists. on Villani’s chronicle for his historical stories. Franco Sacchetti wrote tales too, for the most part on subjects taken from Florentine history. His book gives a life-like picture of Florentine society at the end of the 14th century. The subjects are almost always improper; but it is evident that Sacchetti collected all these anecdotes in order to draw from them his own conclusions and moral reflections, which are to be found at the end of every story. From this point of view Sacchetti’s work comes near to the Monalisationes of the middle ages. A third novelist was Giovanni Sercambi of Lucca, who after 1374 wrote a book, in imitation of Boccaccio, about a party of people who were supposed to fly from a plague and to go travelling about in different Italian cities, stopping here and there telling stories. Later, but important, names are those of Massuccio Salernitano (Tommaso Guardato), who wrote the Novellino, and Antonio Cornazzano whose Proverbii became extremely popular.

It has already been said that the Chronicles formerly believed to have been of the 13th century are now regarded as forgeries of later times. At the end of the 13th century, however, we find a chronicle by Dino Compagni, which, notwithstanding The chroniclers. the unfavourable opinion of it entertained especially by some German writers, is in all probability authentic. Little is known about the life of Compagni. Noble by birth, he was democratic in feeling, and was a supporter of the new ordinances of Giano della Bella. As prior and gonfalonier of justice he always had the public welfare at heart. When Charles of Valois, the nominee of Boniface VIII., was expected in Florence, Compagni, foreseeing the evils of civil discord, assembled a number of citizens in the church of San Giovanni, and tried to quiet their excited spirits. His chronicle relates the events that came under his own notice from 1280 to 1312. It bears the stamp of a strong subjectivity. The narrative is constantly personal. It often rises to the finest dramatic style. A strong patriotic feeling and an exalted desire for what is right pervade the book. Compagni is more an historian than a chronicler, because he looks for the reasons of events, and makes profound reflections on them. According to our judgment he is one of the most important authorities for that period of Florentine history, notwithstanding the not insignificant mistakes in fact which are to be found in his writings. On the contrary, Giovanni Villani, born in 1300, was more of a chronicler than an historian. He relates the events up to 1347. The journeys that he made in Italy and France, and the information thus acquired, account for the fact that his chronicle, called by him Istorie fiorentine, comprises events that occurred all over Europe. What specially distinguishes the work of Villani is that he speaks at length, not only of events in politics and war, but also of the stipends of public officials, of the sums of money used for paying soldiers and for public festivals, and of many other things of which the knowledge is very valuable. With such an abundance of information it is not to be wondered at that Villani’s narrative is often encumbered with fables and errors, particularly when he speaks of things that happened before his own time. Matteo was the brother of Giovanni Villani, and continued the chronicle up to 1363. It was again continued by Filippo Villani. Gino Capponi, author of the Commentari dell’ acquisto di Pisa and of the narration of the Tumulto dei ciompi, belonged to both the 14th and the 15th centuries.

The Divina Commedia is ascetic in its conception, and in a good many points of its execution. To a large extent similar is the genius of Petrarch; yet neither Petrarch nor Dante could be classified among the pure ascetics of Ascetic writers. their time. But many other writers come under this head. St Catherine of Siena’s mysticism was political. She was a really extraordinary woman, who aspired to bring back the Church of Rome to evangelical virtue, and who has left a collection of letters written in a high and lofty tone to all kinds of people, including popes. She joins hands on the one side with Jacopone of Todi, on the other with Savonarola. Hers is the strongest, clearest, most exalted religious utterance that made itself heard in Italy in the 14th century. It is not to be thought that precise ideas of reformation entered into her head, but the want of a great moral reform was felt in her heart. And she spoke indeed ex abundantia cordis. Anyhow the daughter of Jacopo Benincasa must take her place among those who from afar off prepared the way for the religious movement which took effect, especially in Germany and England, in the 16th century.

Another Sienese, Giovanni Colombini, founder of the order of Jesuati, preached poverty by precept and example, going back to the religious idea of St Francis of Assisi. His letters are among the most remarkable in the category of ascetic works in the 14th century. Passavanti, in his Specchio della vera penitenza, attached instruction to narrative. Cavalca translated from the Latin the Vite dei santi padri. Rivalta left behind him many sermons, and Franco Sacchetti (the famous novelist) many discourses. On the whole, there is no doubt that one of the most important productions of the Italian spirit of the 14th century was the religious literature.

In direct antithesis with this is a kind of literature which has a strong popular element. Humorous poetry, the poetry of laughter and jest, which as we saw was largely developed in the 13th century, was carried on in the 14th by Comic poetry. Bindo Bonichi, Arrigo di Castruccio, Cecco Nuccoli, Andrea Orgagna, Filippo de’ Bardi, Adriano de’ Rossi, Antonio Pucci and other lesser writers. Orgagna was specially comic; Bonichi was comic with a satirical and moral purpose. Antonio Pucci was superior to all of them for the variety of his production. He put into triplets the chronicle of Giovanni Villani (Centiloquio), and wrote many historical poems called Serventesi, many comic poems, and not a few epico-popular compositions on various subjects. A little poem of his in seven cantos treats of the war between the Florentines and the Pisans from 1362 to 1365. Other poems drawn from a legendary source celebrate the Reina d’ Oriente, Apollonio di Tiro, the Bel Gherardino, &c. These poems, meant to be recited to the people, are the remote ancestors of the romantic epic, which was developed in the 16th century, and the first representatives of which were Boiardo and Ariosto.

Many poets of the 14th century have left us political works. Of these Fazio degli Uberti, the author of Dittamondo, who wrote a Serventese to the lords and people of Italy, a poem on Rome, a fierce invective against Charles IV. Political and amatory poetry. of Luxemburg, deserves notice, and Francesco di Vannozzo, Frate Stoppa and Matteo Frescobaldi. It may be said in general that following the example of Petrarch many writers devoted themselves to patriotic poetry. From this period also dates that literary phenomenon known under the name of Petrarchism. The Petrarchists, or those who sang of love, imitating Petrarch’s manner, were found already in the 14th century. But others treated the same subject with more originality, in a manner that might be called semi-popular. Such were the Ballate of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, of Franco Sacchetti, of Niccolò Soldanieri, of Guido and Bindo Donati. Histories in verse. Ballate were poems sung to dancing, and we have very many songs for music of the 14th century. We have already stated that Antonio Pucci versified Villani’s Chronicle. This instance of versified history is not unique, and it is evidently connected with the precisely similar phenomenon offered by the “vulgar Latin” literature. It is enough to notice a chronicle of Arezzo in terza rima by Gorello de’ Sinigardi, and the history, also in terza rima, of the journey of Pope Alexander III. to Venice by Pier de’ Natali. Besides this, every kind of subject, whether history, tragedy or husbandry, was treated in verse. Neri di Landocio wrote a life of St Catherine; Jacopo Gradenigo put the gospels into triplets; Paganino Bonafede in the Tesoro dei rustici gave many precepts in agriculture, beginning that kind of Georgic poetry which was fully developed later by Alamanni in his Coltivazione, by Girolamo Baruffaldi in the Canapajo, by Rucellai in the Api, by Bartolommeo Lorenzi in the Coltivazione dei monti, by Giambattista Spolverini in the Coltivazione del riso, &c.

There cannot have been an entire absence of dramatic literature in Italy in the 14th century, but traces of it are wanting, although we find them again in great abundance in the 15th century. The 14th century had, however, one Drama. drama unique of its kind. In the sixty years (1250 to 1310) which ran from the death of the emperor Frederick II. to the expedition of Henry VII., no emperor had come into Italy. In the north of Italy, Ezzelino da Romano, with the title of imperial vicar, had taken possession of almost the whole of the March of Treviso, and threatened Lombardy. The popes proclaimed a crusade against him, and, crushed by it, the Ezzelini fell. Padua then began to breathe again, and took to extending its dominion. There was living at Padua Albertino Mussato, born in 1261, a year after the catastrophe of the Ezzelini; he grew up among the survivors of a generation that hated the name of the tyrant. After having written in Latin a history of Henry VII. he devoted himself to a dramatic work on Ezzelino, and wrote it also in Latin. The Eccerinus, which was probably never represented on the stage, has been by some critics compared to the great tragic works of Greece. It would probably be nearer the truth to say that it has nothing in common with the works of Aeschylus; but certainly the dramatic strength, the delineation of certain situations, and the narration of certain events are very original. Mussato’s work stands alone in the history of Italian dramatic literature. Perhaps this would not have been the case if he had written it in Italian.

In the last years of the 14th century we find the struggle that was soon to break out between the indigenous literary tradition and the reviving classicism already alive in spirit. As representatives of this struggle, of this antagonism, we may consider Luigi Marsilio and Coluccio Salutati, both learned men who spoke and wrote Latin, who aspired to be humanists, but who meanwhile also loved Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, and felt and celebrated in their writings the beauty of Italian literature.

3. The Renaissance.—A great intellectual movement, which had been gathering for a long time, made itself felt in Italy in the 15th century. A number of men arose, all learned, laborious, indefatigable, and all intent on one great Graeco-Latin learning. work. Such were Niccolò Niccoli, Giannozzo Manetti, Palla Strozzi, Leonardo Bruni, Francesco Filelfo, Poggio Bracciolini, Carlo d’Arezzo, Lorenzo Valla. Manetti buried himself in his books, slept only for a few hours in the night, never went out of doors, and spent his time in translating from Greek, studying Hebrew, and commenting on Aristotle. Palla Strozzi sent into Greece at his own expense to search for ancient books, and had Plutarch and Plato brought for him. Poggio Bracciolini went to the Council of Constance, and found in a monastery in the dust-hole Cicero’s Orations. He copied Quintilian with his own hand, discovered Lucretius, Plautus, Pliny and many other Latin authors. Guarino went through the East in search of codices. Giovanni Aurispa returned to Venice with many hundreds of manuscripts. What was the passion that excited all these men? What did they search after? What did they look to? These Italians were but handing on the solemn tradition which, although partly latent, was the informing principle of Italian medieval history, and now at length came out triumphant. This tradition was that same tenacious and sacred memory of Rome, that same worship of its language and institutions, which at one time had retarded the development of Italian literature, and now grafted the old Latin branch of ancient classicism on the flourishing stock of Italian literature. All this is but the continuation of a phenomenon that has existed for ages. It is the thought of Rome that always dominates Italians, the thought that keeps appearing from Boetius to Dante Alighieri, from Arnold of Brescia to Cola di Rienzi, which gathers strength with Petrarch and Boccaccio, and finally becomes triumphant in literature and life—in life, because the modern spirit is fed on the works of the ancients. Men come to have a more just idea of nature: the world is no longer cursed or despised; truth and beauty join hands; man is born again; and human reason resumes its rights. Everything, the individual and society, are changed under the influence of new facts.

First of all there was formed a human individuality, which was wanting in the middle ages. As J. Burckhardt has said, the man was changed into the individual. He began to feel and assert his own personality, which was constantly New social conditions. attaining a fuller realization. As a consequence of this, the idea of fame and the desire for it arose. A really cultured class was formed, in the modern meaning of the word, and the conception was arrived at (completely unknown in former times) that the worth of a man did not depend at all on his birth but on his personal qualities. Poggio in his dialogue De nobilitate declares that he entirely agreed with his interlocutors Niccolò Niccoli and Lorenzo de’ Medici in the opinion that there is no other nobility but that of personal merit. External life was growing more refined in all particulars; the man of society was created; rules for civilized life were made; there was an increasing desire for sumptuous and artistic entertainments. The medieval idea of existence was turned upside down; men who had hitherto turned their thoughts exclusively to heavenly things, and believed exclusively in the divine right, now began to think of beautifying their earthly existence, of making it happy and gay, and returned to a belief in their human rights. This was a great advance, but one which carried with it the seeds of many dangers. The conception of morality became gradually weaker. The “fay ce que vouldras” of Rabelais became the first principle of life. Religious feeling was blunted, was weakened, was changed, became pagan again. Finally the Italian of the Renaissance, in his qualities and his passions, became the most remarkable representative of the heights and depths, of the virtues and faults, of humanity. Corruption was associated with all that is most ideal in life; a profound scepticism took hold of people’s minds; indifference to good and evil reached its highest point.

Besides this, a great literary danger was hanging over Italy. Humanism threatened to submerge its youthful national literature. There were authors who laboriously tried to Literary dangers of Latinism. give Italian Latin forms, to do again, after Dante’s time, what Guittone d’Arezzo had so unhappily done in the 13th century. Provincial dialects tried to reassert themselves in literature. The great authors of the 14th century, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, were by many people forgotten or despised.

It was Florence that saved literature by reconciling the classical models to modern feeling, Florence that succeeded in assimilating classical forms to the “vulgar” art. Still gathering vigour and elegance from classicism, Influence of Florence. still drawing from the ancient fountains all that they could supply of good and useful, it was able to preserve its real life, to keep its national traditions, and to guide literature along the way that had been opened to it by the writers of the preceding century. At Florence the most celebrated humanists wrote also in the vulgar tongue, and commented on Dante and Petrarch, and defended them from their enemies. Leone Battista Alberti, the learned Greek and Latin scholar, wrote in the vernacular, and Vespasiano da Bisticci, whilst he was constantly absorbed in Greek and Latin manuscripts, wrote the Vite di uomini illustri, valuable for their historical contents, and rivalling the best works of the 14th century in their candour and simplicity. Andrea da Barberino wrote the beautiful prose of the Reali di Francia, giving a colouring of “romanità” to the chivalrous romances. Belcari and Benivieni carry us back to the mystic idealism of earlier times.

But it is in Lorenzo de’ Medici that the influence of Florence on the Renaissance is particularly seen. His mind was formed by the ancients: he attended the class of the Greek Argyropulos, sat at Platonic banquets, took pains to Lorenzo de’ Medici. collect codices, sculptures, vases, pictures, gems and drawings to ornament the gardens of San Marco and to form the library afterwards called by his name. In the saloons of his Florentine palace, in his villas at Careggi, Fiesole and Ambra, stood the wonderful chests painted by Dello with stories from Ovid, the Hercules of Pollajuolo, the Pallas of Botticelli, the works of Filippino and Verrocchio. Lorenzo de’ Medici lived entirely in the classical world; and yet if we read his poems we only see the man of his time, the admirer of Dante and of the old Tuscan poets, who takes inspiration from the popular muse, and who succeeds in giving to his poetry the colours of the most pronounced realism as well as of the loftiest idealism, who passes from the Platonic sonnet to the impassioned triplets of the Amori di Venere, from the grandiosity of the Salve to Nencia and to Beoni, from the Canto carnascialesco to the Lauda. The feeling of nature is strong in him—at one time sweet and melancholy, at another vigorous and deep, as if an echo of the feelings, the sorrows, the ambitions of that deeply agitated life. He liked to look into his own heart with a severe eye, but he was also able to pour himself out with tumultuous fulness. He described with the art of a sculptor; he satirized, laughed, prayed, sighed, always elegant, always a Florentine, but a Florentine who read Anacreon, Ovid and Tibullus, who wished to enjoy life, but also to taste of the refinements of art.

Next to Lorenzo comes Poliziano, who also united, and with greater art, the ancient and the modern, the popular and the classical style. In his Rispetti and in his Ballate the Poliziano. freshness of imagery and the plasticity of form are inimitable. He, a great Greek scholar, wrote Italian verses with dazzling colours; the purest elegance of the Greek sources pervaded his art in all its varieties, in the Orfeo as well as the Stanze per la giostra.

As a consequence of the intellectual movement towards the Renaissance, there arose in Italy in the 15th century three academies, those of Florence, of Naples and of Rome. The Florentine academy was founded by Cosmo I. The Academies. de’ Medici. Having heard the praises of Platonic philosophy sung by Gemistus Pletho, who in 1439 was at the council of Florence, he took such a liking for those opinions that he soon made a plan for a literary congress which was especially to discuss them. Marsilius Ficinus has described the occupations and the entertainments of these academicians. Here, he said, the young men learnt, by way of pastime, precepts of conduct and the practice of eloquence; here grown-up men studied the government of the republic and the family; here the aged consoled themselves with the belief in a future world. The academy was divided into three classes: that of patrons, who were members of the Medici family; that of hearers, among whom sat the most famous men of that age, such as Pico della Mirandola, Angelo Poliziano, Leon Battista Alberti; that of disciples, who were youths anxious to distinguish themselves in philosophical pursuits. It is known that the Platonic academy endeavoured to promote, with regard to art, a second and a more exalted revival of antiquity. The Roman academy was founded by Giulio Pomponio Leto, with the object of promoting the discovery and the investigation of ancient monuments and books. It was a sort of religion of classicism, mixed with learning and philosophy. Platina, the celebrated author of the lives of the first hundred popes, belonged to it. At Naples, the academy known as the Pontaniana was instituted. The founder of it was Antonio Beccadelli, surnamed Il Panormita, and after his death the head was Il Pontano, who gave his name to it, and whose mind animated it.

Romantic poems were the product of the moral scepticism and the artistic taste of the 15th century. Italy never had any true epic poetry in its period of literary birth. Still less could it have any in the Renaissance. It had, Romantic poetry. however, many poems called Cantari, because they contained stories that were sung to the people; and besides there were romantic poems, such as the Buovo d’ Antona, the Regina Ancroja and others. But the first to introduce elegance and a new life into this style was Luigi Pulci, who grew up in the house of the Medici, and who wrote the Morgante Maggiore at the request of Lucrezia Tornabuoni, mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. The material of the Morgante is almost completely taken from an obscure chivalrous poem of the 15th century recently discovered by Professor Pio Rajna. On this foundation Pulci erected a structure of his own, often turning the subject into ridicule, burlesquing the characters, introducing many digressions, now capricious, now scientific, now theological. Pulci’s merit consists in having been the first to raise the romantic epic which had been for two centuries in the hands of story-tellers into a work of art, and in having united the serious and the comic, thus happily depicting the manners and feelings of the time. With a more serious intention Matteo Boiardo, count of Scandiano, wrote his Orlando innamorato, in which he seems to have aspired to embrace the whole range of Carlovingian legends; but he did not complete his task. We find here too a large vein of humour and burlesque. Still the Ferrarese poet is drawn to the world of romance by a profound sympathy for chivalrous manners and feelings—that is to say, for love, courtesy, valour and generosity. A third romantic poem of the 15th century was the Mambriano by Francesco Bello (Cieco of Ferrara). He drew from the Carlovingian cycle, from the romances of the Round Table, from classical antiquity. He was a poet of no common genius, and of ready imagination. He showed the influence of Boiardo, especially in something of the fantastic which he introduced into his work.

The development of the drama in the 15th century was very great. This kind of semi-popular literature was born in Florence, and attached itself to certain popular festivities that were usually held in honour of St John the Baptist, Drama. patron saint of the city. The Sacra Rappresentazione is in substance nothing more than the development of the medieval Mistero (“mystery-play”). Although it belonged to popular poetry, some of its authors were literary men of much renown. It is enough to notice Lorenzo de’ Medici, who wrote San Giovanni e Paolo, and Feo Belcari, author of the San Panunzio, the Abramo ed Isac, &c. From the 15th century, some element of the comic-profane found its way into the Sacra Rappresentazione. From its Biblical and legendary conventionalism Poliziano emancipated himself in his Orfeo, which, although in its exterior form belonging to the sacred representations, yet substantially detaches itself from them in its contents and in the artistic element introduced.

From Petrarch onwards the eclogue was a kind of literature that much pleased the Italians. In it, however, the pastoral element is only apparent, for there is nothing really rural in it. Such is the Arcadia of Jacopo Sannazzaro Pastoral poetry. of Naples, author of a wearisome Latin poem De Partu Virginis, and of some piscatorial eclogues. The Arcadia is divided into ten eclogues, in which the festivities, the games, the sacrifices, the manners of a colony of shepherds are described. They are written in elegant verses, but it would be vain to look in them for the remotest feeling of country life. On the other hand, even in this style, Lorenzo de’ Medici was superior. His Nencia da Barberino, as a modern writer says, is as it were the new and clear reproduction of the popular songs of the environs of Florence, melted into one majestic wave of octave stanzas. Lorenzo threw himself into the spirit of the bare realism of country life. There is a marked contrast between this work and the conventional bucolic of Sannazzaro and other writers. A rival of the Medici in this style, but always inferior to him, was Luigi Pulci in his Beca da Dicomano.

The lyric love poetry of this century was unimportant. In its stead we see a completely new style arise, the Canto carnascialesco. These were a kind of choral songs, which were accompanied with symbolical masquerades, Lyric poetry. common in Florence at the carnival. They were written in a metre like that of the ballate; and for the most part they were put into the mouth of a party of workmen and tradesmen, who, with not very chaste allusions, sang the praises of their art. These triumphs and masquerades were directed by Lorenzo himself. At eventide there set out into the city large companies on horseback, playing and singing these songs. There are some by Lorenzo himself, which surpass all the others in their mastery of art. That entitled Bacco ed Arianna is the most famous.

Girolamo Savonarola, who came to Florence in 1489, arose to fight against the literary and social movement of the Renaissance. Some have tried to make out that Savonarola was an apostle of liberty, others that he was a precursor Religious reaction. Savonarola. of the Reformation. In truth, however, he was neither the one nor the other. In his struggle with Lorenzo de’ Medici, he directed his attack against the promoter of classical studies, the patron of pagan literature, rather than against the political tyrant. Animated by mystic zeal, he took the line of a prophet, preaching against reading voluptuous authors, against the tyranny of the Medici, and calling for popular government. This, however, was not done from a desire for civil liberty, but because Savonarola saw in Lorenzo and his court the greatest obstacle to that return to Catholic doctrine which was his heart’s desire; while he thought this return would be easily accomplished if, on the fall of the Medici, the Florentine republic should come into the hands of his supporters. There may be more justice in looking on Savonarola as the forerunner of the Reformation. If he was so, it was more than he intended. The friar of Ferrara never thought of attacking the papal dogma, and always maintained that he wished to remain within the church of Rome. He had none of the great aspirations of Luther. He only repeated the complaints and the exhortations of St Catherine of Siena; he desired a reform of manners, entirely of manners, not of doctrine. He prepared the ground for the German and English religious movement of the 16th century, but unconsciously. In the history of Italian civilization he represents retrogression, that is to say, the cancelling of the great fact of the Renaissance, and return to medieval ideas. His attempt to put himself in opposition to his time, to arrest the course of events, to bring the people back to the faith of the past, the belief that all the social evils came from a Medici and a Borgia, his not seeing the historical reality, as it was, his aspiring to found a republic with Jesus Christ for its king—all these things show that Savonarola was more of a fanatic than a thinker. Nor has he any great merit as a writer. He wrote Italian sermons, hymns (laudi), ascetic and political treatises, but they are roughly executed, and only important as throwing light on the history of his ideas. The religious poems of Girolamo Benivieni are better than his, and are drawn from the same inspirations. In these lyrics, sometimes sweet, always warm with religious feeling, Benivieni and with him Feo Belcari carry us back to the literature of the 14th century.

History had neither many nor very good students in the 15th century. Its revival belonged to the following age. It was mostly written in Latin. Leonardo Bruni of Histories, &c. Arezzo wrote the history of Florence, Gioviano Pontano that of Naples, in Latin. Bernardino Corio wrote the history of Milan in Italian, but in a rude way.

Leonardo da Vinci wrote a treatise on painting, Leon Battista Alberti one on sculpture and architecture. But the names of these two men are important, not so much as authors of these treatises, but as being embodiments of another characteristic of the age of the Renaissance—versatility of genius, power of application along many and varied lines, and of being excellent in all. Leonardo was an architect, a poet, a painter, an hydraulic engineer and a distinguished mathematician. Alberti was a musician, studied jurisprudence, was an architect and a draughtsman, and had great fame in literature. He had a deep feeling for nature, an almost unique faculty of assimilating all that he saw and heard. Leonardo and Alberti are representatives and almost a compendium in themselves of all that intellectual vigour of the Renaissance age, which in the 16th century took to developing itself in its individual parts, making way for what has by some been called the golden age of Italian literature.

4. Development of the Renaissance.—The fundamental characteristic of the literary epoch following that of the Renaissance is that it perfected itself in every kind of art, in particular uniting the essentially Italian character of its language with classicism of style. This period lasted from about 1494 to about 1560; and, strange to say, this very period of greater fruitfulness and literary greatness began from the year 1494, which with Charles VIII.’s descent into Italy marked the beginning of its political decadence and of foreign domination over it. But this is not hard to explain. All the most famous men of the first half of the 16th had been educated in the preceding century. Pietro Pomponazzi was born in 1462, Marcello Virgilio Adriani in 1464, Castiglione in 1468, Machiavelli in 1469, Bembo in 1470, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Ariosto in 1474, Nardi in 1476, Trissino in 1478, Guicciardini in 1482. Thus it is easy to understand how the literary activity which showed itself from the end of the 15th century to the middle of the following one was the product of the political and social conditions of the age in which these minds were formed, not of that in which their powers were displayed.

Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini were the chief originators of the science of history. Machiavelli’s principal works are the Istorie fiorentine, the Discorsi sulla prima deca di Tito Livio, the Arte della guerra and the Principe. His History. merit consists in having been the creator of the experimental science of politics—in having observed facts, studied histories and drawn consequences from them. His history is sometimes inexact in facts; it is rather a political than an historical work. The peculiarity of Machiavelli’s genius lay, as has been said, in his artistic feeling for the treatment and discussion of politics in and for themselves, without regard to an immediate end—in his power of abstracting himself from the partial appearances of the transitory present, in order more thoroughly to possess himself of the eternal and inborn kingdom, and to bring it into subjection to himself.

Next to Machiavelli both as an historian and a statesman comes Francesco Guicciardini. Guicciardini was very observant, and endeavoured to reduce his observations to a science. His Storia d’ Italia, which extends from the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici to 1534, is full of political wisdom, is skilfully arranged in its parts, gives a lively picture of the character of the persons it treats of, and is written in a grand style. He shows a profound knowledge of the human heart, and depicts with truth the temperaments, the capabilities and the habits of the different European nations. Going back to the causes of events, he looked for the explanation of the divergent interests of princes and of their reciprocal jealousies. The fact of his having witnessed many of the events he related, and having taken part in them, adds authority to his words. The political reflections are always deep; in the Pensieri, as G. Capponi3 says, he seems to aim at extracting through self-examination a quintessence, as it were, of the things observed and done by him—thus endeavouring to form a political doctrine as adequate as possible in all its parts. Machiavelli and Guicciardini may be considered, not only as distinguished historians, but as originators of the science of history founded on observation.

Inferior to them, but still always worthy of note, were Jacopo Nardi (a just and faithful historian and a virtuous man, who defended the rights of Florence against the Medici before Charles V.), Benedetto Varchi, Giambattista Adriani, Bernardo Segni; and, outside Tuscany, Camillo Porzio, who related the Congiura de’ baroni and the history of Italy from 1547 to 1552, Angelo di Costanza, Pietro Bembo, Paolo Paruta and others.

Ariosto’s Orlando furioso was a continuation of Boiardo’s Innamorato. His characteristic is that he assimilated the romance of chivalry to the style and models of classicism. Ariosto was an artist only for the love of his art; his Romantic epic. Ariosto (1474-1533). sole aim was to make a romance that should please the generation in which he lived. His Orlando has no grave and serious purpose; on the contrary it creates a fantastic world, in which the poet rambles, indulging his caprice, and sometimes smiling at his own work. His great desire is to depict everything with the greatest possible perfection; the cultivation of style is what occupies him most. In his hands the style becomes wonderfully plastic to every conception, whether high or low, serious or sportive. The octave stanza reached in him the highest perfection of grace, variety and harmony.

Meanwhile, side by side with the romantic, there was an attempt at the historical epic. Gian Giorgio Trissino of Vicenza composed a poem called Italia liberata dai Goti. Full of learning and of the rules of the ancients, he formed Heroic epic. himself on the latter, in order to sing of the campaigns of Belisarius; he said that he had forced himself to observe all the rules of Aristotle, and that he had imitated Homer. In this again, we see one of the products of the Renaissance; and, although Trissino’s work is poor in invention and without any original poetical colouring, yet it helps one to understand better what were the conditions of mind in the 16th century.

Lyric poetry was certainly not one of the kinds that rose to any great height in the 16th century. Originality was entirely wanting, since it seemed in that century as if nothing better Lyric poetry. could be done than to copy Petrarch. Still, even in this style there were some vigorous poets. Monsignore Giovanni Guidiccioni of Lucca (1500-1541) showed that he had a generous heart. In fine sonnets he gave expression to his grief for the sad state to which his country was reduced. Francesco Molza of Modena (1489-1544), learned in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, wrote in a graceful style and with spirit. Giovanni della Casa (1503-1556) and Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), although Petrarchists, were elegant. Even Michelangelo Buonarroti was at times a Petrarchist, but his poems bear the stamp of his extraordinary and original genius. And a good many ladies are to be placed near these poets, such as Vittoria Colonna (loved by Michelangelo), Veronica Gambara, Tullia d’ Aragona, Giulia Gonzaga, poetesses of great delicacy, and superior in genius to many literary men of their time.

The 16th century had not a few tragedies, but they are all weak. The cause of this was the moral and religious indifference of the Italians, the lack of strong passions and vigorous characters. The first to occupy the tragic stage was Tragedy. Trissino with his Sofonisba, following the rules of the art most scrupulously, but written in sickly verses, and without warmth of feeling. The Oreste and the Rosmunda of Giovanni Rucellai were no better, nor Luigi Alamanni’s Antigone. Sperone Speroni in his Canace and Giraldi Cintio in his Orbecche tried to become innovators in tragic literature, but they only succeeded in making it grotesque. Decidedly superior to these was the Torrismondo of Torquato Tasso, specially remarkable for the choruses, which sometimes remind one of the chorus of the Greek tragedies.

The Italian comedy of the 16th century was almost entirely modelled on the Latin comedy. They were almost always alike in the plot, in the characters of the old man, of the servant, of the waiting-maid; and the argument Comedy. was often the same. Thus the Lucidi of Agnolo Firenzuola, and the Vecchio amoroso of Donato Giannotti were modelled on comedies by Plautus, as were the Sporta by Gelli, the Marito by Dolce, and others. There appear to be only three writers who should be distinguished among the many who wrote comedies—Machiavelli, Ariosto and Giovan Maria Cecchi. In his Mandragora Machiavelli, unlike all the others, composed a comedy of character, creating types which seem living even now, because they were copied from reality seen with a finely observant eye. Ariosto, on the other hand, was distinguished for his picture of the habits of his time, and especially of those of the Ferrarese nobles, rather than for the objective delineation of character. Lastly, Cecchi left in his comedies a treasure of spoken language, which nowadays enables us in a wonderful way to make ourselves acquainted with that age. The notorious Pietro Aretino might also be included in the list of the best writers of comedy.

The 15th century was not without humorous poetry; Antonio Cammelli, surnamed the Pistoian, is specially deserving of notice, because of his “pungent bonhomie,” as Sainte-Beuve called it. But it was Francesco Berni who Burlesque and satire. carried this kind of literature to perfection in the 16th century. From him the style has been called “bernesque” poetry. In the “Berneschi” we find nearly the same phenomenon that we already noticed with regard to Orlando furioso. It was art for art’s sake that inspired and moved Berni to write, as well as Anton Francesco Grazzini, called Il Lasca, and other lesser writers. It may be said that there is nothing in their poetry; and it is true that they specially delight in praising low and disgusting things and in jeering at what is noble and serious. Bernesque poetry is the clearest reflection of that religious and moral scepticism which was one of the characteristics of Italian social life in the 16th century, and which showed itself more or less in all the works of that period, that scepticism which stopped the religious Reformation in Italy, and which in its turn was an effect of historical conditions. The Berneschi, and especially Berni himself, sometimes assumed a satirical tone. But theirs could not be called true satire. Pure satirists, on the other hand, were Antonio Vinciguerra, a Venetian, Lodovico Alamanni and Ariosto, the last superior to the others for the Attic elegance of his style, and for a certain frankness, passing into malice, which is particularly interesting when the poet talks of himself.

In the 16th century there were not a few didactic works. In his poem of the Api Giovanni Rucellai approaches to the perfection of Virgil. His style is clear and light, and he adds interest to his book by frequent allusions to the events Didactic works. of the time. But of the didactic works that which surpasses all the others in importance is Baldassare Castiglione’s Cortigiano, in which he imagines a discussion in the palace of the dukes of Urbino between knights and ladies as to what are the gifts required in a perfect courtier. This book is valuable as an illustration of the intellectual and moral state of the highest Italian society in the first half of the 16th century.

Of the novelists of the 16th century, the two most important were Anton Francesco Grazzini and Matteo Bandello—the former as playful and bizarre as the latter is grave and Fiction. solemn. As part of the history of the times, we must not forget that Bandello was a Dominican friar and a bishop, but that notwithstanding his novels were very loose in subject, and that he often holds up the ecclesiastics of his time to ridicule.

At a time when admiration for qualities of style, the desire for classical elegance, was so strong as in the 16th century, much attention was naturally paid to translating Latin and Translations. Greek authors. Among the very numerous translations of the time those of the Aeneid and of the Pastorals of Longus the Sophist by Annibal Caro are still famous; as are also the translations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses by Giovanni Andrea dell’ Anguillare, of Apuleius’s Golden Ass by Firenzuola, and of Plutarch’s Lives and Moralia by Marcello Adriani.

The historians of Italian literature are in doubt whether Tasso should be placed in the period of the highest development of the Renaissance, or whether he should form a period by himself, intermediate between that and the one Tasso (1544-1595). following. Certainly he was profoundly out of harmony with the century in which he lived. His religious faith, the seriousness of his character, the deep melancholy settled in his heart, his continued aspiration after an ideal perfection, all place him as it were outside the literary epoch represented by Machiavelli, by Ariosto, by Berni. As Carducci has well said, Tasso “is the legitimate heir of Dante Alighieri: he believes, and reasons on his faith by philosophy; he loves, and comments on his love in a learned style; he is an artist, and writes dialogues of scholastic speculation that would fain be Platonic.” He was only eighteen years old when, in 1562, he tried his hand at epic poetry, and wrote Rinaldo, in which he said that he had tried to reconcile the Aristotelian rules with the variety of Ariosto. He afterwards wrote the Aminta, a pastoral drama of exquisite grace. But the work to which he had long turned his thoughts was an heroic poem, and that absorbed all his powers. He himself explains what his intention was in the three Discorsi written whilst he was composing the Gerusalemme: he would choose a great and wonderful subject, not so ancient as to have lost all interest, nor so recent as to prevent the poet from embellishing it with invented circumstances; he meant to treat it rigorously according to the rules of the unity of action observed in Greek and Latin poems, but with a far greater variety and splendour of episodes, so that in this point it should not fall short of the romantic poem; and finally, he would write it in a lofty and ornate style. This is what Tasso has done in the Gerusalemme liberata, the subject of which is the liberation of the sepulchre of Jesus Christ in the 11th century by Godfrey of Bouillon. The poet does not follow faithfully all the historical facts, but sets before us the principal causes of them, bringing in the supernatural agency of God and Satan. The Gerusalemme is the best heroic poem that Italy can show. It approaches to classical perfection. Its episodes above all are most beautiful. There is profound feeling in it, and everything reflects the melancholy soul of the poet. As regards the style, however, although Tasso studiously endeavoured to keep close to the classical models, one cannot help noticing that he makes excessive use of metaphor, of antithesis, of far-fetched conceits; and it is specially from this point of view that some historians have placed Tasso in the literary period generally known under the name of “Secentismo,” and that others, more moderate in their criticism, have said that he prepared the way for it.

5. Period of Decadence.—From about 1559 began a period of decadence in Italian literature. The Spanish rule oppressed and corrupted the peninsula. The minds of men were day by day gradually losing their force; every high aspiration was quenched. The Secentismo. No love of country could any longer be felt when the country was enslaved to a stranger. The suspicious rulers fettered all freedom of thought and word; they tortured Campanella, burned Bruno, made every effort to extinguish all high sentiment, all desire for good. Cesare Balbo says, “if the happiness of the masses consists in peace without industry, if the nobility’s consists in titles without power, if princes are satisfied by acquiescence in their rule without real independence, without sovereignty, if literary men and artists are content to write, paint and build with the approbation of their contemporaries, but to the contempt of posterity, if a whole nation is happy in ease without dignity and the tranquil progress of corruption,—then no period ever was so happy for Italy as the hundred and forty years from the treaty of Cateau Cambresis to the war of the Spanish succession.” This period is known in the history of Italian literature as the Secentismo. Its writers, devoid of sentiment, of passion, of thoughts, resorted to exaggeration; they tried to produce effect with every kind of affectation, with bombast, with the strangest metaphors, in fact, with what in art is called mannerism, “barocchism.” The utter poverty of the matter tried to cloak itself under exuberance of forms. It seemed as if the writers vied with one another as to who could best burden his art with useless metaphors, with phrases, with big-sounding words, with affectations, with hyperbole, with oddities, with everything that could fix attention on the outer form and draw it off from the substantial element of thought.

At the head of the school of the “Secentisti” comes Giovan Battista Marini of Naples, born in 1569, especially known by a poem called L’ Adone. His aim was to excite wonder by novelties; hence the most extravagant metaphors, Marini. the most forced antitheses, the most far-fetched conceits, are to be found in his book. It was especially by antitheses that he thought he could produce the greatest effect. Sometimes he strings them together one after the other, so that they fill up whole stanzas without a break. Achillini of Bologna followed in Marini’s steps. He had less genius, however, and hence his peculiarities were more extravagant, becoming indeed absolutely ridiculous. In general, we may say that all the poets of the 17th century were more or less infected with “Marinism.” Thus Alessandro Guidi, although he does not attain to the exaggeration of his master, is emptily bombastic, inflated, turgid, while Fulvio Testi is artificial and affected. Yet Guidi as well as Testi felt the influence of another poet, Gabriello Chiabrera, born at Savona in 1552. In him the Secentismo took another character. Enamoured as he said he was of the Greeks, he made new metres, especially in imitation of Pindar, treating of religious, moral, historical and amatory subjects. It is easy to understand that a Pindaric style of poetry in the 17th century in Italy could not but end in being altogether artificial, without anything of those qualities which constitute the greatness of the Greek poet. Chiabrera, though elegant enough in form, proves empty of matter, and, in his vain attempt to hide this vacuity, has recourse to poetical ornaments of every kind. These again, in their turn, become in him a fresh defect. Nevertheless, Chiabrera’s school, in the decadence of the 17th century, marks an improvement; and sometimes he showed that he had lyrical capacities, which in better literary surroundings would have brought forth excellent fruit. When he sings, for example, of the victories of the Tuscan galleys against the Turks and the pirates of the Mediterranean, he rises to grand imagery, and seems quite another poet.

Filicaja the Florentine has a certain lyric élan, particularly in the songs about Vienna besieged by the Turks, which seems to raise him more than the others above the vices of the time; but even in him we see clearly the rhetorical artifice and the falseness of the conceits. And in general all the lyric poetry of the 17th century may be said to have had the same defects, but in different degrees—defects which may be summed up as absence of feeling and exaggeration of form. There was no faith; there was no love; and thus art became an exercise, a pastime, a luxury, for a servile and corrupt people.

The belief then arose that it would be sufficient to change the form in order to restore literature, in forgetfulness that every reform must be the effect of a change in social and moral conditions. Weary of the bombastic style of the The Arcadia. 17th century, full of conceits and antithesis, men said—let us follow an entirely different line, let us fight the turgid style with simplicity. In 1690 the “Academy of Arcadia” was instituted. Its founders were Giovan Maria Crescimbeni and Gian Vincenzo Gravina. The Arcadia was so called because its chief aim and intention were to imitate in literature the simplicity of the ancient shepherds, who were fabulously supposed to have lived in Arcadia in the golden age. As the “Secentisti” erred by an overweening desire for novelty, which made them always go beyond the truth, so the Arcadians proposed to themselves to return to the fields of truth, always singing of subjects of pastoral simplicity. This was obviously nothing else than the substitution of a new artifice for the old one; and they fell from bombast into effeminacy, from the hyperbolical into the petty, from the turgid into the over-refined. The Arcadia was a reaction against Secentismo, but a reaction which, reversing the movement of that earlier epoch, only succeeded in impoverishing still further and completely withering up the literature. The poems of the “Arcadians” fill many volumes, and are made up of sonnets, madrigals, canzonets and blank verse. The one who most distinguished himself among the sonneteers was Felice Zappi. Among the authors of songs Paolo Rolli was illustrious. Innocenzo Frugoni was more famous than all the others, a man of fruitful imagination but of shallow intellect, whose wordy verses nobody now reads.

Whilst the political and social conditions in Italy in the 17th century were such as to make it appear that every light of intelligence, all spirit of liberty, was extinguished, there appeared in the peninsula, by that law of reaction Symptoms of revival. Scientific prose. which in great part governs human events, some strong and independent thinkers, such as Bernardino Telesio, Giordano Bruno, Tommaso Campanella, Lucilio Vanini, who turned philosophical inquiry into fresh channels, and opened the way for the scientific conquests of Galileo Galilei, the great contemporary of Descartes in France and of Bacon in England. Galileo was not only a great man of science, but also occupied a conspicuous place in the history of letters. A devoted student of Ariosto, he seemed to transfuse into his prose the qualities of that great poet—a clear and frank freedom of expression, a wonderful art of knowing how to say everything with precision and ease, and at the same time with elegance. Galileo’s prose is in perfect antithesis to the poetry of his time. Perhaps it is the best prose that Italy has ever had; it is clear, goes straight to the point, is without rhetorical ornaments and without vulgar slips, artistic without appearing to be so.

Another symptom of revival, a sign of rebellion against the vileness of Italian social life, is given us in satire and in particular in that of Salvator Rosa and Alessandro Tassoni. Salvator Rosa, born in 1615, near Naples, was a painter, a musician and a poet. As a poet he showed that he felt the sad condition of his country, showed that he mourned over it, and gave vent to his feeling (as another satire-writer, Giuseppe Giusti, said) in generosi rabbuffi. His exhortation to Italian poets to turn their thoughts to the miseries of their country as a subject for their song—their country languishing under the tyrant’s hands—certain passages where he deplores the effeminacy of Italian habits, a strong apostrophe against Rome, make Salvator Rosa a precursor of the patriotic literature which inaugurated the revival of the 18th century. Tassoni, a man really quite exceptional in this century, was superior to Rosa. He showed independent judgment in the midst of universal servility, and his Secchia Rapita proved that he was an eminent writer. This is an heroic comic poem, which is at the same time an epic and a personal satire. He was bold enough to attack the Spaniards in his Filippiche, in which he urged Duke Carlo Emanuele of Savoy to persist in the war against them.

6. The Revival in the 18th Century.—Having for the most part freed itself from the Spanish dominion in the 18th century, the political condition of Italy began to improve. Promoters of this improvement, which was shown in many New Political conditions. civil reforms, were Joseph II., Leopold I. and Charles I. The work of these princes was copied from the philosophers, who in their turn felt the influence of a general movement of ideas, which was quietly working in many parts of Europe, and which came to a head in the French encyclopedists.

Giambattista Vico was a token of the awakening of historical consciousness in Italy. In his Scienza nuova he applied himself to the investigation of the laws governing the progress Historical works. of the human race, and according to which events are developed. From the psychological study of man he endeavoured to infer the “comune natura delle nazioni,” i.e. the universal laws of history, or the laws by which civilizations rise, flourish and fall.

From the same scientific spirit which animated the philosophical investigation of Vico, there was born a different kind of investigation, that of the sources of Italian civil and literary history. Lodovico Antonio Muratori, after having collected in one entire body (Rerum Italicarum scriptores) the chronicles, the biographies, the letters and the diaries of Italian history from 500 to 1500, after having discussed the most obscure historical questions in the Antiquitates Italicae medii aevi, wrote the Annali d’ Italia, minutely narrating facts derived from authentic sources. Muratori’s associates in his historical researches were Scipione Maffei of Verona and Apostolo Zeno of Venice. In his Verona illustrata the former left, not only a treasure of learning, but an excellent specimen of historical monograph. The latter added much to the erudition of literary history, both in his Dissertazioni Vossiane and in his notes to the Biblioteca dell’ eloquenza italiana of Monsignore Giusto Fontanini. Girolamo Tiraboschi and Count Giovanni Maria Mazzuchelli of Brescia devoted themselves to literary history.

While the new spirit of the times led men to the investigation of historical sources, it also led them to inquire into the mechanism of economical and social laws. Francesco Galiani Social science. wrote on currency; Gaetano Filangieri wrote a Scienza della legislazione. Cesare Beccaria, in his treatise Dei delitti e delle pene, made a contribution to the reform of the penal system and promoted the abolition of torture.

The man in whom above all others the literary revival of the 18th century was most conspicuously embodied was Giuseppe Parini. He was born in a Lombard village in 1729, was mostly educated at Milan, and as a youth was known among the Arcadian poets by the name of Darisbo Elidonio. Even as Satire: Parini. an Arcadian, however, Parini showed signs of departing from the common type. In a collection of poems that he published at twenty-three years of age, under the name of Ripano Eupilino, there are some pastoral sonnets in which the poet shows that he had the faculty of taking his scenes from real life, and also some satirical pieces in which he exhibits a spirit of somewhat rude opposition to his own times. These poems are perhaps based on reminiscences of Berni, but at any rate they indicate a resolute determination to assail boldly all the literary conventionalities that surrounded the author. This, however, was only the beginning of the battle. Parini lived in times of great social prostration. The nobles and the rich, all given up to ease and to silly gallantry, consumed their lives in ridiculous trifles or in shameless self-indulgence, wasting themselves on immoral “Cicisbeismo,” and offering the most miserable spectacle of feebleness of mind and character. It was against this social condition that Parini’s muse was directed. Already, improving on the poems of his youth, he had proved himself an innovator in his lyrics, rejecting at once Petrarchism, Secentismo and Arcadia, the three maladies that had weakened Italian art in the centuries preceding his own, and choosing subjects taken from real life, such as might help in the instruction of his contemporaries. In the Odi the satirical note is already heard. But it came out more strongly in the poem Del giorno, in which he imagines himself to be teaching a young Milanese patrician all the habits and ways of gallant life; he shows up all its ridiculous frivolities, and with delicate irony unmasks the futilities of aristocratic habits. Dividing the day into four parts, the Mattino, the Mezzogiorno, the Vespero, the Notte, by means of each of these he describes the trifles of which they were made up, and the book thus assumes a social and historical value of the highest importance. Parini, satirizing his time, fell back upon truth, and finally made art serve the purpose of civil morality. As an artist, going straight back to classical forms, aspiring to imitate Virgil and Dante, he opened the way to the fine school that we shall soon see rise, that of Alfieri, Foscolo and Monti. As a work of art, the Giorno is wonderful for the Socratic skill with which that delicate irony is constantly kept up by which he seems to praise what he effectually blames. The verse has new harmonies; sometimes it is a little hard and broken, not by accident, but as a protest against the Arcadian monotony. Generally it flows majestically, but without that Frugonian droning that deafens the ears and leaves the heart cold.

Gasparo Gozzi’s satire was less elevated, but directed towards the same end as Parini’s. In his Osservatore, something like Addison’s Spectator, in his Gazzetta veneta, in the Mondo morale, by means of allegories and novelties Gozzi; Baretti. he hit the vices with a delicate touch, and inculcated a practical moral with much good sense. Gozzi’s satire has some slight resemblance in style to Lucian’s. It is smooth and light, but withal it does not go less straight to its aim, which is to point out the defects of society and to correct them. Gozzi’s prose is very graceful and lively. It only errs by its overweening affectation of imitating the writers of the 14th century. Another satirical writer of the first half of the 18th century was Giuseppe Baretti of Turin. In a journal called the Frusta letteraria he took to lashing without mercy the works which were then being published in Italy. He had learnt much by travelling; and especially his long stay in England had contributed to give an independent character to his mind, and made him judge of men and things with much good sense. It is true that his judgments are not always right, but the Frusta letteraria was the first book of independent criticism directed particularly against the Arcadians and the pedants.

Everything tended to improvement, and the character of the reform was to throw off the conventional, the false, the artificial, and to return to truth. The drama felt this influence of the times. Apostolo Zeno and Metastasio (the Arcadian name for Pietro Trapassi, a native of Rome) had endeavoured to make “melodrama and reason compatible.” The latter in particular succeeded in giving fresh expression to the affections, a natural Dramatic reform. turn to the dialogue and some interest to the plot; and if he had not fallen into constant unnatural over-refinement and unseasonable mawkishness, and into frequent anachronisms, he might have been considered as the first dramatic reformer of the 18th century. That honour belongs to Carlo Goldoni, a Venetian. He found comedy either entirely devoted to classical imitation or given up to extravagance, to coups de théâtre, to the most boisterous succession of unlikely situations, or else treated by comic actors who recited impromptu on a given subject, of which they followed the outline. In this old popular form of comedy, with the masks of pantaloon, of the doctor, of harlequin, of Brighella, &c., Goldoni found the strongest obstacles to his reform. But at last he conquered, creating the comedy of character. No doubt Molière’s example helped him in this. Goldoni’s characters are always true, but often a little superficial. He studied nature, but he did not plunge into psychological depths. In most of his creations, the external rather than the internal part is depicted. In this respect he is much inferior to Molière. But on the other hand he surpasses him in the liveliness of the dialogue, and in the facility with which he finds his dramatic situations. Goldoni wrote much, in fact too much (more than one hundred and fifty comedies), and had no time to correct, to polish, to perfect his works, which are all rough cast. But for a comedy of character we must go straight from Machiavelli’s Mandragora to him. Goldoni’s dramatic aptitude is curiously illustrated by the fact that he took nearly all his types from Venetian society, and yet managed to give them an inexhaustible variety. A good many of his comedies were written in Venetian dialect, and these are perhaps the best.

The ideas that were making their way in French society in the 18th century, and afterwards brought about the Revolution of 1789, gave a special direction to Italian literature of the second half of the 18th century. Love of ideal Patriotic literature and return to classicism. liberty, desire for equality, hatred of tyranny, created in Italy a literature which aimed at national objects, seeking to improve the condition of the country by freeing it from the double yoke of political and religious despotism. But all this was associated with another tendency. The Italians who aspired to a political redemption believed that it was inseparable from an intellectual revival, and it seemed to them that this could only be effected by a reunion with ancient classicism—in other words, by putting themselves in more direct communication with ancient Greek and Latin writers. This was a repetition of what had occurred in the first half of the 15th century. The 17th century might in fact be considered as a new Italian Middle Age without the hardness of that iron time, but corrupted, enervated, overrun by Spaniards and French, an age in which previous civilization was cancelled. A reaction was necessary against that period of history, and a construction on its ruins of a new country and a new civilization. There had already been forerunners of this movement; at the head of them the revered Parini. Now the work must be completed, and the necessary force must once more be sought for in the ancient literature of the two classic nations.

Patriotism and classicism then were the two principles that inspired the literature which began with Alfieri. He worshipped the Greek and Roman idea of popular liberty in arms against the tyrant. He took the subjects of his Alfieri (1749-1803). tragedies almost invariably from the history of these nations, made continual apostrophes against the despots, made his ancient characters talk like revolutionists of his time; he did not trouble himself with, nor think about, the truth of the characters; it was enough for him that his hero was Roman in name, that there was a tyrant to be killed, that liberty should triumph in the end. But even this did not satisfy Alfieri. Before his time and all about him there was the Arcadian school, with its foolish verbosity, its empty abundance of epithets, its nauseous pastoralizing on subjects of no civil importance. It was necessary to arm the patriotic muse also against all this. If the Arcadians, not excluding the hated Metastasio, diluted their poetry with languishing tenderness, if they poured themselves out in so many words, if they made such set phrases, it behoved the others to do just the contrary—to be brief, concise, strong, bitter, to aim at the sublime as opposed to the lowly and pastoral. Having said this, we have told the good and evil of Alfieri. He desired a political reform by means of letters; he saved literature from Arcadian vacuities, leading it towards a national end; he armed himself with patriotism and classicism in order to drive the profaners out of the temple of art. But in substance he was rather a patriot than an artist. In any case the results of the new literary movement were copious.

Ugo Foscolo was an eager patriot, who carried into life the heat of the most unbridled passion, and into his art a rather rhetorical manner, but always one inspired by classical models. The Lettere di Jacopo Ortis, inspired by Goethe’s Foscolo. Werther, are a love story with a mixture of patriotism; they contain a violent protest against the treaty of Campo Formio, and an outburst from Foscolo’s own heart about an unhappy love-affair of his. His passions were sudden and violent; they came to an end as abruptly as they began; they were whirlwinds that were over in a quarter of an hour. To one of these passions Ortis owed its origin, and it is perhaps the best, the most sincere, of all his writings. Even in it he is sometimes pompous and rhetorical, but much less so than he is, for example, in the lectures Dell’ origine e dell’ ufficio della letteratura. On the whole, Foscolo’s prose is turgid and affected, and reflects the character of the man who always tried to pose, even before himself, in dramatic attitudes. This was indeed the defect of the Napoleonic epoch; there was a horror of anything common, simple, natural; everything must be after the model of the hero who made all the world gaze with wonder at him; everything must assume some heroic shape. In Foscolo this tendency was excessive; and it not seldom happened that, in wishing to play the hero, the exceptional man, the little Napoleon of ladies’ drawing-rooms, he became false and bad, false in his art, bad in his life. The Sepolcri, which is his best poem, was prompted by high feeling, and the mastery of versification shows wonderful art. Perhaps it is to this mastery more than to anything else that the admiration the Sepolcri excites is due. There are most obscure passages in it, as to the meaning of which it would seem as if even the author himself had not formed a clear idea. He left incomplete three hymns to the Graces, in which he sang of beauty as the source of courtesy, of all high qualities and of happiness. Here again what most excites our admiration is the harmonious and easy versification. Among his prose works a high place belongs to his translation of the Sentimental Journey of Sterne, a writer by whom one can easily understand how Foscolo should have been deeply affected. He went as an exile to England, and died there. He wrote for English readers some Essays on Petrarch and on the texts of the Decamerone and of Dante, which are remarkable for the time at which they were written, and which may be said to have initiated a new kind of literary criticism in Italy. Foscolo is still greatly admired, and not without reason. His writings stimulate the love of fatherland, and the men that made the revolution of 1848 were largely brought up on them.

If in Foscolo patriotism and classicism were united, and formed almost one passion, so much cannot be said of Vincenzo Monti, in whom the artist was absolutely predominant. Yet Monti was a patriot too, but in his own way. Monti. He had no one deep feeling that ruled him, or rather the mobility of his feelings is his characteristic; but each of these was a new form of patriotism, that took the place of an old one. He saw danger to his country in the French Revolution, and wrote the Pellegrino apostolico, the Bassvilliana and the Feroniade; Napoleon’s victories caused him to write the Prometeo and the Musagonia; in his Fanatismo and his Superstizione he attacked the papacy; afterwards he sang the praises of the Austrians. Thus every great event made him change his mind, with a readiness which might seem incredible, but is yet most easily explained. Monti was above everything an artist; art was his real, his only passion; everything else in him was liable to change, that alone was persistent. Fancy was his tyrant, and under its rule he had no time to reason and to see the miserable aspect of his political tergiversation. It was an overbearing deity that moved him, and at its dictation he wrote. Pius VI., Napoleon, Francis II., were to him but passing shadows, to which he hardly gives the attention of an hour; that which endures, which is eternal to him, is art alone. It were unjust to accuse Monti of baseness. If we say that nature in giving him one only faculty had made the poet rich and the man poor, we shall speak the truth. But the poet was indeed rich. Knowing little Greek, he succeeded in making a translation of the Iliad which is remarkable for its Homeric feeling, and in his Bassvilliana he is on a level with Dante. In fine, in him classical poetry seemed to revive in all its florid grandeur.

Monti was born in 1754, Foscolo in 1778; four years later still was born another poet of the same school, Giambattista Niccolini. In literature he was a classicist; in politics he was a Ghibelline, a rare exception in Guelph Florence, his Niccolini. birthplace. In translating or, if the expression is preferred, imitating Aeschylus, as well as in writing the Discorsi sulla tragedia greca, and on the Sublime e Michelangelo, Niccolini displayed his passionate devotion to ancient literature. In his tragedies he set himself free from the excessive rigidity of Alfieri, and partly approached the English and German tragic authors. He nearly always chose political subjects, striving to keep alive in his compatriots the love of liberty. Such are Nabucco, Antonio Foscarini, Giovanni da Procida, Lodovico il Moro, &c. He assailed papal Rome in Arnaldo da Brescia, a long tragic piece, not suited for acting, and epic rather than dramatic. Niccolini’s tragedies show a rich lyric vein rather than dramatic genius. At any rate he has the merit of having vindicated liberal ideas, and of having opened a new path to Italian tragedy.

The literary period we are dealing with had three writers who are examples of the direction taken by historical study. It seems strange that, after the learned school begun by Muratori, there should have been a backward movement Historians. here, but it is clear that this retrogression was due to the influence of classicism and patriotism, which, if they revived poetry, could not but spoil history. Carlo Botta, born in 1766, was a spectator of French spoliation in Italy and of the overbearing rule of Napoleon. Hence, excited by indignation, he wrote a History of Italy from 1789 to 1814; and later on he continued Guicciardini’s History up to 1789. He wrote after the manner of the Latin authors, trying to imitate Livy, putting together long and sonorous periods in a style that aimed at being like Boccaccio’s, caring little about that which constitutes the critical material of history, only intent on declaiming his academic prose for his country’s benefit. Botta wanted to be classical in a style that could no longer be so, and hence he failed completely to attain his literary goal. His fame is only that of a man of a noble and patriotic heart. Not so bad as the two histories of Italy is that of the Guerra dell’ indipendenza americana.

Close to Botta comes Pietro Colletta, a Neapolitan born nine years after him. He also in his Storia del reame di Napoli dal 1734 al 1825 had the idea of defending the independence and liberty of Italy in a style borrowed from Tacitus; and he succeeded rather better than Botta. He has a rapid, brief, nervous style, which makes his book attractive reading. But it is said that Pietro Giordani and Gino Capponi corrected it for him. Lazzaro Papi of Lucca, author of the Commentari della rivoluzione francese dal 1789 al 1814, was not altogether unlike Botta and Colletta. He also was an historian in the classical style, and treats his subject with patriotic feeling; but as an artist he perhaps excels the other two.

At first sight it seems unnatural that, whilst the most burning political passions were raging, and whilst the most brilliant men of genius in the new classical and patriotic school were at the height of their influence, a question should The Purists. have arisen about “purism” of language. Yet the phenomenon can be easily accounted for. Purism is another form of classicism and patriotism. In the second half of the 18th century the Italian language was specially full of French expressions. There was great indifference about fitness, still more about elegance of style. Prose then was to be restored for the sake of national dignity, and it was believed that this could not be done except by going back to the writers of the 14th century, to the “aurei trecentisti,” as they were called, or else to the classics of Italian literature. One of the promoters of the new school was Antonio Cesari of Verona, who republished ancient authors, and brought out a new edition, with additions, of the Vocabolario della Crusca. He wrote a dissertation Sopra lo stato presente della lingua italiana, and endeavoured to establish the supremacy of Tuscan and of the three great writers Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio. And in accordance with that principle he wrote several books, taking pains to copy the “trecentisti” as closely as possible. But patriotism in Italy has always had something municipal in it; so to this Tuscan supremacy, proclaimed and upheld by Cesari, there was opposed a Lombard school, which would know nothing of Tuscan, and with Dante’s De vulgari eloquio returned to the idea of the “lingua illustre.” This was an old question, largely and bitterly argued in the Cinquecento (16th century) by Varchi, Muzio, Castelvetro, Speroni and others. Now the question came up again quite fresh, as if no one had ever discussed it before. At the head of the Lombard school were Monti and his son-in-law Count Giulio Perticari. This gave Monti an occasion to write Proposta di alcune correzioni ed aggiunte al vocabolario della Crusca, in which he attacked the Tuscanism of the Crusca, but in a graceful and easy style, such in fact as to form a prose that is one of the most beautiful in Italian literature. Perticari on the other hand, with a very inferior intellect, narrowed and exasperated the question in two treatises, Degli scrittori del Trecento and Dell’ amor patrio di Dante, in which, often disguising or altering the facts, he only makes confusion where there was none. Meantime, however, the impulse was given. The dispute about language took its place beside literary and political disputes, and all Italy took part in it—Basilio Puoti at Naples, Paolo Costa in the Romagna, Marc’ Antonio Parenti at Modena, Salvatore Betti at Rome, Giovanni Gherardini in Lombardy, Luigi Fornaciari at Lucca, Vincenzo Nannucci at Florence.

A patriot, a classicist and a purist all at once was Pietro Giordani, born in 1774; he was almost a compendium of the literary movement of the time. His whole life was a battle fought for liberty. Most learned in Greek Giordani. and Latin authors, and in the Italian trecentisti, he only left a few writings behind him, but they were carefully elaborated in point of style, and his prose was in his time considered wonderful. Now it is looked on as too majestic, too much laboured in phrases and conceits, too far from nature, too artificial. Giordani closes the literary epoch of the classicists.

7. Nineteenth Century and After.—At this point the contemporary period of literature begins. It has been said that the first impulse was given to it by the romantic school, which had as its organ the Conciliatore established in Manzoni. 1818 at Milan, and on the staff of which were Silvio Pellico, Lodovico di Breme, Giovile Scalvini, Tommaso Grossi, Giovanni Berchet, Samuele Biava and lastly Alessandro Manzoni. It need not be denied that all these men were influenced by the ideas that, especially in Germany, at the beginning of the 19th century constituted the movement called Romanticism. Nevertheless, in Italy the course of literary reform took another direction. There is no doubt that the real head of the reform, or at least its most distinguished man, was Alessandro Manzoni. He formulated in a letter of his the objects of the new school, saying that it aspired to try and discover and express “il vero storico” and “il vero morale,” not only as an end, but as the widest and eternal source of the beautiful. And it is precisely realism in art that characterizes Italian literature from Manzoni onwards. The Promessi Sposi is the one of his works that has made him immortal. No doubt the idea of the historical novel came to him from Sir Walter Scott, but he succeeded in something more than an historical novel in the narrow meaning of that word; he created an eminently realistic work of art. The romance disappears; no one cares for the plot, which moreover is of very little consequence. The attention is entirely fixed on the powerful objective creation of the characters. From the greatest to the least they have a wonderful verisimilitude; they are living persons standing before us, not with the qualities of one time more than another, but with the human qualities of all time. Manzoni is able to unfold a character in all particulars, to display it in all its aspects, to follow it through its different phases. He is able also to seize one moment, and from that moment to make us guess all the rest. Don Abbondio and Renzo are as perfect as Azzeccagarbugli and Il Sarto. Manzoni dives down into the innermost recesses of the human heart, and draws thence the most subtle psychological reality. In this his greatness lies, which was recognized first by his companion in genius, Goethe. As a poet too he had gleams of genius, especially in the Napoleonic ode, Il Cinque Maggio, and where he describes human affections, as in some stanzas of the Inni and in the chorus of the Adelchi. But it is on the Promessi Sposi alone that his fame now rests.

The great poet of the age was Leopardi, born thirteen years after Manzoni at Recanati, of a patrician family, bigoted and avaricious. He became so familiar with Greek authors that he used afterwards to say that the Greek mode of Leopardi. thought was more clear and living to his mind than the Latin or even the Italian. Solitude, sickness, domestic tyranny, prepared him for profound melancholy. From this he passed into complete religious scepticism, from which he sought rest in art. Everything is terrible and grand in his poems, which are the most agonizing cry in modern literature, uttered with a solemn quietness that at once elevates and terrifies us. But besides being the greatest poet of nature and of sorrow, he was also an admirable prose writer. In his Operette morali—dialogues and discourses marked by a cold and bitter smile at human destinies which freezes the reader—the clearness of style, the simplicity of language and the depth of conception are such that perhaps he is not only the greatest lyrical poet since Dante, but also one of the most perfect writers of prose that Italian literature has had.

As realism in art gained ground, the positive method in criticism kept pace with it. From the manner of Botta and Colletta history returned to its spirit of learned research, as is shown in such works as the Archivio storico italiano, Political literature.established at Florence by Giampietro Vieusseux, the Storia d’ Italia nel medio evo by Carlo Troya, a remarkable treatise by Manzoni himself, Sopra alcuni punti della storia longobardica in Italia, and the very fine history of the Vespri siciliani by Michele Amari. But alongside of the great artists Leopardi and Manzoni, alongside of the learned scholars, there was also in the first half of the 19th century a patriotic literature. To a close observer it will appear that historical learning itself was inspired by the love of Italy. Giampietro Vieusseux had a distinct political object when in 1820 he established the monthly review Antologia. And it is equally well known that his Archivio storico italiano (1842) was, under a different form, a continuation of the Antologia, which was suppressed in 1833 owing to the action of the Russian government. Florence was in those days the asylum of all the Italian exiles, and these exiles met and shook hands in Vieusseux’s rooms, where there was more literary than political talk, but where one thought and one only animated all minds, the thought of Italy.

The literary movement which preceded and was contemporary with the political revolution of 1848 may be said to be represented by four writers—Giuseppe Giusti, Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, Vincenzo Gioberti and Cesare Balbo. Giusti wrote epigrammatic satires in popular language. In incisive phrase he scourged the enemies of Italy; his manner seemed very original, but it really was partly imitated from Béranger. He was a telling political writer, but a mediocre poet. Guerrazzi had a great reputation and great influence, but his historical novels, though read with ferverish avidity before 1848, are now almost forgotten. Gioberti, a powerful polemical writer, had a noble heart and a great mind; his philosophical works are now as good as dead, but the Primato morale e civile degli Italiani will last as an important document of the times, and the Gesuita moderno will live as the most tremendous indictment ever written against the Jesuits. Balbo was an earnest student of history, and made history useful for politics. Like Gioberti in his first period, Balbo was zealous for the civil papacy, and for a federation of the Italian states presided over by it. His Sommario della storia d’ Italia is an excellent epitome.

(A. Ba.)

After the year 1850 political literature becomes less important, one of the last poets distinguished in this genre being Francesco dall’ Ongaro, with his stornelli politici. For details as to the works of recent writers, reference may be made Contemporary literature. to the separate biographical articles, and here a summary must suffice. Giovanni Prati and Aleardo Aleardi continue romantic traditions. The dominating figure of this later period, however, is Giosuè Carducci, the opponent of the Romantics and restorer of the ancient metres and spirit, who, great as a poet, was scarcely less distinguished as a literary critic and historian. Other classical poets are Giuseppe Chiarini, Domenico Guoli, Arturo Graf, Guido Mazzoni and Giovanni Marradi, of whom the two last named may perhaps be regarded as special disciples of Carducci, while another, Giovanni Pascoli, best known by his Myricae and Poemetti, only began as such. Enrico Panzacchi (b. 1842) was at heart still a romantic. Olindo Guerrini (who wrote under the pseudonym of Lorenzo Stecchetti) is the chief representative of veriomo in poetry, and, though his early works obtained a succès de scandale, he is the author of many lyrics of intrinsic value. Alfredo Baccelli and Mario Rapisardi are epic poets of distinction. Felice Cavallotti is the author of the stirring Marcia de Leonida. Among dialect writers, the great Roman poet Giuseppe Gioachino Belli has found numerous successors, such as Renato Fucini (Pisa), Berto Barbarini (Verona) and Cesare Pascarella (Rome). Among the women poets, Ada Negri, with her socialistic Fatalità and Tempeste, has achieved a great reputation; and others, such as Vittoria Aganoor, A. Brunacci-Brunamonti and Annie Vivanti, are highly esteemed in Italy.

Among the dramatists, Pietro Cossa in tragedy, Gherardi del Testa, Ferdinando Martini and Paolo Ferrari in comedy, represent the older schools. More modern methods were adopted by Giuseppe Giacosa and Gerolamo Rovetta.

In fiction, the historical romance has fallen into disfavour, though Emilio de Marchi has written some good examples in this genre. The novel of intrigue was cultivated by Anton Giulio Barrili and Salvatore Farina, the psychological novel by Enrico Annibale Butti, the realistic local tale by Giovanni Verga, the mystic philosophical novel by Antonio Fogazzaro. Edmondo de Amicis, perhaps the most widely read of all modern Italians, has written acceptable fiction, though his moral works and travels are more generally known. Of the women novelists, Matilde Serao and Grazia Deledda have become deservedly popular.

Gabriele d’ Annunzio has produced original work in poetry, drama and fiction, of extraordinary quality. He began with some lyrics which were distinguished no less by their exquisite beauty of form than by their licence, and these characteristics reappeared in a long series of poems, plays and novels. D’ Annunzio’s position as a man of the widest literary and artistic culture is undeniable, and even his sternest critics admit his mastery of the Italian tongue, based on a thorough knowledge of Italian literature from the earliest times. But with all his genius, his thought is unhealthy and his pessimism depressing; the beauty of his work is the beauty of decadence.

Bibliography.—Among the more aesthetic accounts of Italian literature, those of Emiliano Giudici (Florence, 1855) and Francesco de Sanctis (Naples, 1870) are still the best. Two histories of real scientific value were interrupted by the death of the authors: that of Adolfo Bartoli (Florence, 1879-1899) breaking off in the 14th century, and that of Gaspary (Berlin, 1884-1889; English version, so far only down to the death of Dante, London, 1901) breaking off before Tasso (a completion being undertaken by Wendriner). Bartoli’s article in the 9th edition of this encyclopaedia has been reproduced, with some slight revision, above. Among the many recent Italian works, the most important is the elaborate series of volumes contributing the Storia lett. d’ Italia scritta da una società di professori (1900 sqq.): Giussani, Lett. romana; Novati, Origini della lingua; Zingarelli, Dante; Volpi, Il Trecento; Rossi, Il Quattrocento; Flamini, Il Cinquecento; Belloni, Il Seicento; Concari, Il Settecento; Mazzoni, L’ Ottocento. Each volume has a full bibliography. Important German works, besides Gaspary, are those of Wilse and Percopò (illustrated; Leipzig, 1899), and of Casini (in Gröber’s Grundr. der röm. Phil., Strassburg, 1896-1899). English students are referred to Symonds’s Renaissance in Italy (especially, but not exclusively, vols. iv. and v.; new ed., London, 1902), and to R. Garnett’s History of Italian Literature (London, 1898).

(H. O.)

1 See Giesebrecht, De litterarum studiis apud Italos primis mediaevi saeculis (Berlin, 1845.)

2 See Gaspary, Die sicilianische Dichterschule des 13ten Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1878).

3 Storia della repubblica di Firenze (Florence, 1876).

ITALIAN WARS (1848-1870), a generic name for the series of wars for Italian unity which began with the Milan insurrection of the 18th of March 1848 and closed with the capture of Rome by the Italians on the 20th of September 1870. For their Italian political interest see Italy: History. The present article deals with certain campaigns of distinctively military importance, viz. 1848-49, 1859 and 1866, in the first and third of which the centre of gravity of the nationalist movement was the Piedmontese regular army, and in the second the French army commanded by Napoleon III. On the other side the Austrian army was throughout the basis of the established order of things, settled at the Congress of Vienna on the theory that Italy was “a geographical expression.” Side by side with these regular armies, each of which was a special type, there fought national levies of widely varying kinds, and thus practically every known form of military service, except the fully organized “nation in arms” (then peculiar to Prussia) made its appearance in the field. Further, these wars constitute the greater part of European military history between Waterloo and Königgrätz—a bridge—if a broken one—between Napoleon and Moltke. They therefore present a considerable technical interest, wholly apart from their historical importance and romantic interest.

Austro-Sardinian War of 1848-1849

From about 1846 the spirit of revolt against foreign domination had gathered force, and two years later, when Europe was on the verge of a revolutionary outburst, the struggle for Italian unity was initiated by the insurrection at Milan. At this moment the Austrian army in Lombardy, practically a highly-trained force of long-service professional soldiers, was commanded by Radetzky, one of the greatest generals in Austrian history. Being, however, virtually an army of occupation, it was broken up into many garrisons, and in all was not more than 70,000 strong, so that after five days’ fighting in the streets of Milan, Radetzky did as Wellington had proposed to do in 1817 when his army of occupation in France was threatened by a national rising, and withdrew to a concentration area to await reinforcements. This area was the famous Quadrilateral, marked by the fortresses of Mantua, Verona, Peschiera and Legnago, and there, in the early days of April, the scattered fractions of the Austrians assembled. Lombardy and Venetia had followed the example of Milan, and King Charles Albert of Sardinia, mobilizing the Piedmontese army in good time, crossed the frontier, with 45,000 regulars two days after the Austrians had withdrawn from Milan. Had the insurrectionary movements and the advance of the Piedmontese been properly co-ordinated, there can be little doubt that some, at any rate, of the Austrian detachments would have been destroyed or injured in their retreat, but as it was they escaped without material losses. The blow given to Austrian prestige by the revolt of the great cities was, however, so severe that the whole peninsula rallied to Charles Albert. Venice, reserving a garrison for her own protection, set on foot an improvised army 11,000 strong on the mainland; some 5000 Lombards and 9000 insurgents from the smaller duchies gathered on both sides of the Po; 15,000 Papal troops under Durando and 13,000 Neapolitans under the old patriot general Pepe moved up to Ferrara and Bologna respectively, and Charles Albert with the Piedmontese advanced to the Mincio at the beginning of April. His motley command totalled 96,000 men, of whom, however, only half were thoroughly trained and disciplined troops. The reinforcements available in Austria were about 25,000 disciplined troops not greatly inferior in quality to Radetzky’s own veterans. Charles Albert could call up 45,000 levies at a few weeks’ notice, and eventually all the resources of the patriot party.

The regular war began in the second week of April on the Mincio, the passages of which river were forced and the Austrian advanced troops driven back on the 8th (action of Goito) and 9th. Radetzky maintained a careful defensive, and the king’s attempts to surprise Peschiera (14th) and Mantua (19th) were unsuccessful. But Peschiera was closely invested, though it was not forced to capitulate until the end of May. Meantime the Piedmontese army advanced towards Verona, and, finding Radetzky with a portion of his army on their left flank near Pastrengo, swung northward and drove him over the Adige above Verona, but on turning towards Verona they were checked (action of Pastrengo 28th-30th April and battle of Santa Lucia di Verona, 6th May).

Meantime the Austrian reinforcements assembled in Carniola under an Irish-born general, Count Nugent von Westmeath (1777-1862) and entered Friuli. Their junction with the field marshal was in the last degree precarious, every step of their march was contested by the levies and the townsmen of Venetia. The days of rifled artillery were not yet come, and a physical obstacle to the combined movements of trained regulars and a well-marked line of defence were all that was necessary to convert even medieval walled towns into centres of effective resistance. When the spirit of resistance was lacking, as it had been for example in 1799 (see French Revolutionary Wars), the importance of the walled towns corresponded simply to their material strength, which was practically negligible. But throughout the campaign of 1848-1849, the essential moral conditions of defence being present, the Austrians were hampered by an endless series of minor sieges, in which the effort expended was out of all proportion to the success achieved.

Nugent, however, pressed on, though every day weakened by small detachments, and, turning rather than overpowering each obstacle as it was encountered, made his way slowly by Belluno to Vicenza and Treviso and joined Radetzky at Verona Radetzky in the Quadrilateral. on the 25th of May. The latter then for a moment took the offensive, passing around the right flank of the loyal army by way of Mantua (actions of Curtatone, 29th May, and Goito, 30th May), but, failing of the success he expected he turned swiftly round and with 30,000 men attacked the 20,000 Italians (Papal troops, volunteers, Neapolitans) under Durando, who had established themselves across his line of communication at Vicenza, drove them away and reoccupied Vicenza (9th June), where a second body of reinforcements from Trent, clearing the Brenta valley (Val Sugana) as they advanced, joined him, the king meanwhile being held in check by the rest of Radetzky’s army.

After beating down resistance in the valleys of the Brenta and Piave, the field marshal returned to Verona. Charles Albert had now some 75,000 men actually in hand on the line of high ground, S. Giustina-Somma Campagna, and made the mistake of extending inordinately so as to cover his proposed siege of Mantua. Napoleon, fifty years before on the same ground (see French Revolutionary Wars), had only with great difficulty solved this same problem by the economical grouping and resolute handling of his forces, and Charles Albert, setting out his forces en cordon, was weak at all points of his long front of 45 m. Thus Radetzky, gathering his forces opposite the king’s centre (Sona, Somma Campagna), was able to break it (23rd July). The Piedmontese, however, fell back steadily, and 25,000 of them collected at Villafranca, whence on the 24th they counter-attacked and regained the heights at Custozza and Somma Campagna that they had lost. Radetzky, however, took the offensive again next morning and having succeeded in massing half of his army opposite to one quarter of the Piedmontese, was completely victorious (first battle of Custozza, 24th-25th July). Pursuing vigorously, the Austrians drove the king over the Mincio (action of Volta, 26th-27th), the Chiese, the Adda and the Ticino into his own dominions, Milan being reoccupied without fighting. The smaller bands of patriots were one after the other driven over the borders or destroyed. Venice alone held out to the end. Besieged by land and water, and bombarded as well, she prolonged her resistance until October 1849, long after the war had everywhere else come to an end.

The first campaign for unity had ended in complete failure, thanks to the genius of Radetzky and the thorough training, mobility and handiness of his soldiers. During the winter of 1848-1849—for, to avoid unnecessary waste of his precious veterans, Radetzky let the Piedmontese army retire unmolested over the Ticino—Charles Albert took energetic measures to reorganize, refit and augment his army. But his previous career had not fitted him to meet the crisis. With aspirations for unity he sympathized, and to that ideal he was soon to sacrifice his throne, but he had nothing in common with the distinctively revolutionary party, with whom circumstances had allied him. Radicalism, however, was a more obvious if a less real force than nationalism, and Charles Albert made it a fatal concession in appointing the Polish general Albert Chrzanowski (1788-1861) his principal adviser and commander-in-chief—an appointment that alienated the generals and the army, while scarcely modifying the sentiments of distrust with which the Liberal party regarded the king.1

In March the two main armies were grouped in the densely intersected district between Milan, Vercelli and Pavia (see sketch map below), separated by the Ticino, of which the outposts of either side watched the passages. Charles Campaign of Novara. Albert had immediately in hand 65,000 men, some 25,000 more being scattered in various detachments to right and left. Radetzky disposed of 70,000 men for field operations, besides garrisons. The recovery of Milan, the great city that had been the first to revolt, seemed to the Italians the first objective of the campaign. It was easier indeed to raise the whole country in arms than to crush the field-marshal’s regulars, and it was hoped that Radetzky would, on losing Milan, either retire to Lodi and perhaps to Mantua (as in 1848), or gather his forces for battle before Milan. Radetzky himself openly announced that he would take the offensive, and the king’s plans were framed to meet this case also. Two-thirds of the army, 4 divisions, were grouped in great depth between Novara, Galliate and Castelnuovo. A little to the right, at Vespolate and Vigevano, was one division under Durando, and the remaining division under Ramorino was grouped opposite Pavia with orders to take that place if possible, but if Radetzky advanced thence, to fall back fighting either on Mortara or Lomello,2 while the main body descended on the Austrian flank. The grouping both of Ramorino and of the main body—as events proved in the case of the latter—cannot be seriously criticized, and indeed one is almost tempted to assume that Chrzanowski considered the case of Radetzky’s advance on Mortara more carefully than that of his own advance on Milan. But the seething spirit of revolt did not allow the army that was Italy’s hope to stand still at a foreign and untried general’s dictation and await Radetzky’s coming. On the 19th of March orders were issued to the main body for the advance on Milan and on the 20th one division, led by the king himself, crossed the Ticino at San Martino.

But no Austrians were encountered, and such information as was available indicated that Radetzky was concentrating to his left on the Pavia-Lodi road. Chrzanowski thereupon, abandoning (if indeed he ever entertained) the idea of Radetzky’s retirement and his own triumphal march on Milan, suspended the advance. His fears were justified, for that evening he heard that Ramorino had abandoned his post and taken his division across the Po. After the war this general was shot for disobedience, and deservedly, for the covering division, the fighting flank-guard on which Chrzanowski’s defensive-offensive depended, was thus withdrawn at the moment when Radetzky’s whole army was crossing the Ticino at Pavia and heading for Mortara.3

The four Austrian corps began to file across the Ticino at noon on the 20th, and by nightfall the heads of Radetzky’s columns were at Zerbolo, Gambolo and La Cava, the reserve at Pavia, a flank-guard holding the Cava-Casatisma road over the Po against the contingency of Ramorino’s return, and the two brigades that had furnished the outposts along the Ticino closing on Bereguardo.

Chrzanowski, however, having now to deal with a foreseen case, gave his orders promptly. To replace Ramorino, the 1st division was ordered from Vespolate through Mortara to Trumello; the 2nd division from Cerano to push south on Vigevano; Action of Mortara. the reserve from Novara to Mortara; the remainder to follow the 2nd division. Had the 1st division been placed at Mortara instead of Vespolate in the first instance the story of the campaign might have been very different, but here again, though to a far less culpable degree, a subordinate general’s default imperilled the army. Durando (21st March), instead of pushing on as ordered to Trumello to take contact with the enemy, halted at Mortara. The reserve also halted there and deployed west of Mortara to guard against a possible attack from San Giorgio. The Sardinian advanced guard on the other road reached Borgo San Siro, but there met and was driven back by Radetzky’s II. corps under Lieut. Field Marshal d’ Aspre (1789-1850), which was supported by the brigades that now crossed at Bereguardo. But the Italians were also supported, the Austrians made little progress, and by nightfall the Sardinian II., III. and IV. divisions had closed up around Vigevano. Radetzky indeed intended his troops on the Vigevano road to act simply as a defensive flank-guard and had ordered the rest of his army by the three roads, Zerbolo-Gambolo, Gropello-Trumello and Lomello-San Giorgio, to converge on Mortara. The rearmost of the two corps on the Gambolo road (the I.) was to serve at need as a support to the flank-guard, and, justly confident in his troops, Radetzky did not hesitate to send a whole corps by the eccentric route of Lomello. And before nightfall an important success had justified him, for the II. corps from Gambolo, meeting Durando outside Mortara had defeated him before the Sardinian reserve, prematurely deployed on the other side of the town, could come to his assistance. The remaining corps of Radetzky’s army were still short of Mortara when night came, but this could hardly be well known at the royal headquarters, and, giving up the slight chances of success that a counterstroke from Vigevano on Mortara offered, Chrzanowski ordered a general concentration on Novara. This was effected on the 22nd, on which day Radetzky, pushing out the II. corps towards Vespolate, concentrated the rest at Mortara. That the Italians had retired was clear, but it was not known whither, and, precisely as Napoleon had done before Marengo (see French Revolutionary Wars), he sent one corps to seize the king’s potential line of retreat, Novara-Vercelli, kept one back at Mortara—ready, it may be presumed, to grapple an enemy coming from Vigevano—and engaged the other three in a single long column, widely spaced out, on the Novara road. Thus it came about that on the 23rd d’ Aspre’s II. corps encountered Charles Albert’s whole army long before the III. and Reserve could join it. The battle of Novara was, nevertheless, as great an event in the history of the Imperial-Royal Army as Marengo in that of the French.

First the II. corps, and then the II. and III. together attacked with the utmost resolution, and as the hours went by more and more of the whitecoats came on the field until at last the IV. corps, swinging inward from Robbio, came on to the Novara. flank of the defence. This was no mere strategical triumph; the Austrians, regiment for regiment, were more than a match for the Italians and the result was decisive. Charles Albert abdicated, and the young Victor Emmanuel II., his successor, had to make a hasty armistice.

After Novara, the first great struggle for Italian unity was no more than a spasmodic, if often desperate, struggle of small bodies of patriots and citizens of walled towns to avert the inevitable. The principal incidents in the last phase were the siege of Venice, the sack of Brescia by the merciless Haynau and the capture of Rome by a French expeditionary corps under General Oudinot.

The Italian War of 1859

The campaign of Magenta and Solferino took place ten years later. Napoleon III., himself an ex-carbonaro, and the apostle of the theory of “nationalities,” had had his attention and his ambitions drawn towards the Italian problem by the attempt upon his life by Orsini. The general political horizon was by no means clear at the end of 1858, and on the 1st of January 1859 the emperor of the French publicly expressed to the Austrian ambassador his regret that “our relations are not so good as heretofore.” This was regarded by all concerned as a prelude to war, and within a short time a treaty and a marriage-contract allied Sardinia with the leading European power. In the smaller Italian states, as before, the governments were on the side of Austria and the “settlement of 1815,” and the peoples on that of United Italy. The French still maintained a garrison in Rome to support the pope. The thorny question of the temporal power versus the national movement was not yet in the foreground, and though Napoleon’s support of the former was later to prove his undoing, in 1859 the main enemy was Austria and the paramount factor was the assistance of 200,000 French regulars in solving the immediate problem.

The Sardinian army, reconstituted by La Marmora with the definite object of a war for union and rehabilitated by its conduct in the Crimea, was eager and willing. The French army, proud of its reputation as the premier army in the world, and composed, three-fourths of it, of professional soldiers whose gospel was the “Legend,” welcomed a return to the first Napoleon’s battle-grounds, while the emperor’s ambitions coincided with his sentiments. Austria, on the other hand, did not desire war. Her only motive of resistance was that it was impossible to cede her Italian possessions in face of a mere threat. To her, even more than to France and infinitely more than to Italy, the war was a political war, a “war with a limited aim” or “stronger form of diplomatic note”; it entirely lacked the national and personal spirit of resistance which makes even a passive defence so powerful.

Events during the period of tension that preceded the actual declaration of war were practically governed by these moral conditions. Such advantages as Austria possessed at the outset could only be turned to account, as will presently appear, by prompt action. But her army system was a combination of conscription and the “nation in arms,” which for the diplomatic war on hand proved to be quite inadequate. Whereas the French army was permanently on a two-thirds war footing (400,000 peace, 600,000 war), that of Austria required to be more than doubled on mobilization by calling in reservists. Now, the value of reservists is always conditioned by the temper of the population from which they come, and it is more than probable that the indecision of the Austrian government between January and April 1859 was due not only to its desire on general grounds to avoid war, but also, and perhaps still more, to its hopes of averting it by firmness, without having recourse to the possibly dangerous expedient of a real mobilization. A few years before the method of “bluffing” had been completely successful against Prussia. But the Prussian reservist of 1850 did not want to fight, whereas the French soldier of 1859 desired nothing more ardently.

In these conditions the Austrian preparations were made sparingly, but with ostentation. The three corps constituting the Army of Italy (commanded since Radetzky’s death in 1858 by Feldzeugmeister Count Franz Gyulai (1798-1863)), were maintained at war efficiency, but not at war strength (corps averaging 15,000). Instead, however, of mobilizing them, the Vienna government sent an army corps (III.) from Vienna at peace strength in January. This was followed by the II. corps, also at peace strength, in February, and the available field force, from that point, could have invaded Piedmont at once.4 The initial military situation was indeed all in favour of Austria. Her mobilization was calculated to take ten weeks, it is true, but her concentration by rail could be much more speedily effected than that of the French, who had either to cross the Alps on foot or to proceed to Genoa by sea and thence by one line of railway to the interior. Further, the demands of Algeria, Rome and other garrisons, the complicated political situation and the consequent necessity of protecting the French coasts against an English attack,5 and still more the Rhine frontier against Prussia and other German states (a task to which the greatest general in the French army, Pélissier, was assigned), materially reduced the size of the army to be sent to Italy. But the Austrian government held its hand, and the Austrian commander, apparently nonplussed by the alternation of quiescence Mobilization. and boldness at Vienna, asked for full mobilization and turned his thoughts to the Quadrilateral that had served Radetzky so well in gaining time for the reserves to come up. March passed away without an advance, and it was not until the 5th of April that the long-deferred order was issued from Vienna to the reservists to join the II., III., V., VII. and VIII. corps in Italy. And, after all, Gyulai took the field, at the end of April, with most of his units at three-quarters of their war strength.6 On the side of the allies the Sardinians mobilized 5 infantry and 1 cavalry divisions, totalling 64,000, by the third week in April. A few days later Austria sent an ultimatum to Turin. This was rejected on the 26th, war being thereupon declared. As for the French, the emperor’s policy was considerably in advance of his war minister’s preparations. The total of about 130,000 men (all that could be spared out of 500,000) for the Italian army was not reached until operations were in progress; and the first troops only entered Savoy or disembarked in Genoa on the 25th and 26th of April.

Thus, long as the opening had been delayed, there was still a period after both sides had resolved on and prepared for war, during which the Austrians were free to take the offensive. Had the Austrians crossed the frontier Austrian movements. instead of writing an ultimatum on the 19th of April, they would have had from a week to a fortnight to deal with the Sardinians. But even the three or four days that elapsed between the declaration and the arrival of the first French soldiers were wasted. Vienna ordered Gyulai to take the offensive on the 27th, but it was not until the 30th that the Austrian general crossed the Ticino. His movements were unopposed, the whole of the Sardinian army having concentrated (by arrangement between La Marmora and Marshal Canrobert) in a flank position between Casale and Alessandria, where it covered Turin indirectly and Genoa, the French disembarkation port, directly. Gyulai’s left was on the 2nd of May opposite the allied centre, and his right stretched as far as Vercelli.7 On the 3rd he planned a concentric attack on King Victor Emmanuel’s position, and parts of his scheme were actually put into execution, but he suspended it owing to news of the approach of the French from Genoa, supply difficulties (Radetzky, the inheritor of the 18th-century traditions, had laid it down that the soldier must be well fed and that the civilian must not be plundered, conditions which were unfavourable to mobility) and the heavy weather and the dangerous state of the rivers.

Gyulai then turned his attention to the Sardinian capital. Three more days were spent in a careful flank march to the right, and on the 8th of May the army (III., V. and VII.) was grouped about Vercelli, with outposts 10-14 m. beyond the Sesia towards Turin, reserves (II. and VIII.) round Mortara, and a flank-guard detached from Benedek’s VIII. corps watching the Po. The extreme right of the main body skirmished with Garibaldi’s volunteers on the edge of the Alpine country. The Turin scheme was, however, soon given up. Bivouacs, cancelled orders and crossings of marching columns all contributed to exhaust the troops needlessly. On the 9th one corps (the V.) had its direction Austrians grouped at Mortara. and disposition altered four times, without any change in the general situation to justify this. In fact, the Austrian headquarters were full of able soldiers, each of whom had his own views on the measures to be taken and a certain measure of support from Vienna—Gyulai, Colonel Kuhn his chief of staff, and Feldzeugmeister Hess, who had formerly played Gneisenau to Radetzky’s Blücher. But what emerges most clearly from the movements of these days is that Gyulai himself distrusted the offensive projects he had been ordered to execute, and catching apparently at some expression of approval given by the emperor, had determined to imitate Radetzky in “a defensive based on the Quadrilateral.” His immediate intention, on abandoning the advance on Turin was to group his army around Mortara and to strike out as opportunity offered against the heads of the allied columns wherever they appeared. Meantime, the IX. corps had been sent to Italy, and the I. and XI. were mobilizing. These were to form the I. Army, Gyulai’s the II. The latter was by the 13th of May grouped in the Lomellina, one third (chiefly VII. corps) spread by brigades fanwise from Vercelli along the Sesia and Po to Vaccarizza, two thirds massed in a central position about Mortara. There was still no information of the enemy’s distribution, except what was forwarded from Vienna or gathered by the indefatigable Urban’s division, which moved from Milan to Biella, thence to Brescia and Parma, and back to Lombardy in search of revolutionary bands, and the latter’s doings in the nature of things could not afford any certain inferences as to the enemy’s regular armies.

On the side of the allies, the Piedmontese were grouped on the 1st of May in the fortified positions selected for them by Canrobert about Valenza-Casale-Alessandria. The French III. corps arrived on the 2nd and 3rd and the IV. corps on the 7th at Alessandria from Genoa. Unhampered by Gyulai’s offensive, though at times and places disquieted by his minor reconnaissances, the allies assembled until on the 16th the French were stationed as follows: I. corps, Voghera and Pontecurone, II., Sale and Bassignana, III., Tortona, IV., Valenza, Guard, Alessandria, and the king’s army between Valenza and Casale. The V. French corps under Prince Napoleon had a political mission in the duchies of middle Italy; one division of this corps, however, followed the main army. On the eve of the first collision the emperor Napoleon, commanding in chief, had in hand about 100,000 French and about 60,000 Sardinian troops (not including Garibaldi’s enlisted volunteers or the national guard). Gyulai’s II. Army was nominally of nearly equal force to that of the allies, but in reality it was only about 106,000 strong in combatants.

The first battle had no relation to the strategy contemplated by the emperor, and was still less a part of the defence scheme framed by Gyulai. The latter, still pivoting on Mortara, had between the 14th and 19th drawn his army somewhat Montebello. to the left, in proportion as more and more of the French came up from Genoa. He had further ordered a reconnaissance in force in the direction of Voghera by a mixed corps drawn from the V., Urban’s division and the IX. (the last belonging to the I. Army). The saying that “he who does not know what he wants, yet feels that he must do something, appeases his conscience by a reconnaissance in force,” applies to no episode more forcibly than to the action of Montebello (20th May) where Count Stadion, the commander of the V. corps, not knowing what to reconnoitre, engaged disconnected fractions of his available 24,000 against the French division of Forey (I. corps), 8000 strong, and was boldly attacked and beaten, with a loss of 1400 men against Forey’s 700.

Montebello had, however, one singular result: both sides fell back and took defensive measures. The French headquarters were already meditating, if they had not actually resolved upon, a transfer of all their forces Flank march of the Allies. from right to left, to be followed by a march on Milan (a scheme inspired by Jomini). But the opening of the movement was suspended until it became quite certain that Stadion’s advance meant nothing, while Gyulai (impressed by Forey’s aggressive tactics) continued to stand fast, and thus it was not until the 28th that the French offensive really began.8 The infantry of the French III. corps was sent by rail from Pontecurone to Casale, followed by the rest of the army, which marched by road. To cover the movement D’Autemarre’s division of Prince Napoleon’s corps (V.) was posted at Voghera and one division of the king’s army remained at Valenza. The rest of the Piedmontese were pushed northward to join Cialdini’s division which was already at Vercelli. The emperor’s orders were for Victor Emmanuel to push across the Sesia and to take post at Palestro on the 30th to cover the crossing of the French at Vercelli. This the king carried out, driving back outlying bodies of the enemy in spite of a stubborn resistance and the close and difficult character of the country. Hearing of the fighting, Gyulai ordered the recapture of Palestro by the II. corps, but the Sardinians during the night strengthened their positions and the attack (31st) was repulsed with heavy loss. These two initial successes of the allies, the failures in Austrian tactics and leadership which they revealed, and the fatigues and privation to which indifferent staff work had exposed his troops, combined to confirm Gyulai in his now openly expressed intention of “basing his defensive on the Quadrilateral.” And indeed his only alternatives were now to fall back or to concentrate on the heads of the French columns as soon as they had passed the Sesia about Vercelli. Faithful to his view of the situation he adopted the former course (1st June). The retreat began on the 2nd, while the French were still busied in closing up. Equally with the Austrians, the French were the victims of a system of marching and camping that, by requiring the tail of the columns to close up on the head every evening, reduced the day’s net progress to 6 or 7 m., although the troops were often under arms for fourteen or fifteen hours. The difference between the supreme commands of the rival armies lay not in the superior generalship of one or the other, but in the fact that Napoleon III. as sovereign knew what he wanted and as general pursued this object with much energy, whereas Gyulai neither knew how far his government would go nor was entire “master in his own house.”

The latter became very evident in his retreat. Kuhn, the chief of staff, who was understood to represent the views of the general staff in Vienna, had already protested against Gyulai’s retrograde movement, and on the 3rd Hess Austrian retreat. appeared from Vienna as the emperor’s direct representative and stopped the movement. It was destined to be resumed after a short interval, but meanwhile the troops suffered from the orders and counter-orders that had marked every stage in the Austrian movements and were now intensified instead of being removed by higher intervention. Meanwhile (June 1-2) the allies had regrouped themselves east of the Sesia for the movement on Milan. The IV. corps, driving out an Austrian detachment at Novara, established itself there, and was joined by the II. and Guard. The king’s army, supported by the I. and III. corps, was about Vercelli, with cavalry far out to the front towards Vespolate. From Novara, the emperor, who desired to give his troops a rest-day on the 2nd, pushed out first a mixed reconnaissance and then in the afternoon two divisions French advance to the Ticino. to seize the crossing of the Ticino, Camou’s of the Guard on Turbigo, Espinasse’s of the II. corps on San Martino. Further the whole of the Vercelli group was ordered to advance on the 3rd to Novara and Galliate, where Napoleon would on the 4th have all his forces, except one division, beyond Gyulai’s right and in hand for the move on Milan. The division sent to Turbigo bridged the river and crossed in the night of the 2nd/3rd, that at San Martino (on the main road) occupied the bridge-head and also the river bridge itself, though the latter was damaged. Espinasse’s division here was during the night replaced by a Guard division and went to join a growing assembly of troops under General MacMahon, which established itself at Turbigo and Robecchetto on the morning of the 3rd. Lastly, in order to make sure that no attack was impending from the direction of Mortara, Napoleon sent General Niel with a mixed reconnoitring force thither, which returned without meeting any Austrian forces—fortunately for itself, if the fate of the “reconnaissance in force” at Montebello proves anything.

The centre of gravity was now at Buffalora, a village on the main Milan road at the point where it crosses the Naviglio Grande. Here, on the night of the 1st, Count Clam-Gallas, commanding the Austrian I. corps (which had just arrived in Italy and was to form part of the future I. Army) had posted a division, with a view to occupying the bridge-head of San Martino. On inspecting the latter Clam-Gallas concluded that it was indefensible, and, ordering the San Martino road and railway bridges to be destroyed (an order which was only partially executed), he called on Gyulai for support, sent out detachments to the right against the French troops reported at Turbigo, and prepared to hold his ground at Buffalora. On receipt of Clam-Gallas’s report at the Austrian headquarters, Hess ordered the resumption of the retreat that he had countermanded, but it was already late and many of the troops did not halt for the night till midnight, June 3rd/4th. Gyulai promised them the 4th as a rest-day, but fortune ordered it otherwise. This much at least was in favour of the Austrians, that when the troops at last reached their assigned positions four-fifths of them were within 12 m. of the battlefield. But, as before, the greater part of the army was destined to be chained to “supporting positions” well back from the battlefield.

When day broke on the 4th, the emperor of the French was still uncertain as to Gyulai’s whereabouts, and his intention was therefore no more than to secure the passage of the Ticino and to place his army on both sides of the river, in sufficient Battle of Magenta. strength to make head against Gyulai, whether the latter advanced from Mortara and Vigevano or from Abbiategrasso. He therefore kept back part of the French army and the whole of the Sardinian. But during the morning it became known that Gyulai had passed the Ticino on the evening of the 3rd; and Napoleon then ordered up all his forces to San Martino and Turbigo. The battlefield of Magenta is easily described. It consists of two level plateaux, wholly covered with vineyards, and between them the broad and low-lying valley of the Ticino. This, sharply defined by the bluffs of the adjoining plateaux, is made up of backwaters, channels, water meadows and swampy woods. At Turbigo the band of low ground is 1½ m. wide, at Buffalora 2½. Along the foot of the eastern or Austrian bluffs between Turbigo and Buffalora runs the Grand Canal (Naviglio Grande); this, however, cuts into the plateau itself at the latter place and trending gradually inwards leaves a tongue of high ground separate from the main plateau. The Novara-Milan road and railway, crossing the Ticino by the bridge of San Martino, pass the second obstacle presented by the canal by the New Bridges of Magenta, the Old Bridge being 1000 yards south of these. The canal is bridged at several points between Turbigo and Buffalora, and also at Robecco, 1½ m. to the (Austrian) left of the Old Bridge. Clam-Gallas’s main line of defence was the canal between Turbigo and the Old Bridge, skirmishers being posted on the tongue of high ground in front of the New Bridges, which were kept open for their retreat. He had been joined by the II. corps and disposed of 40,000 men, 27,000 more being at Abbiategrasso (2½ m. S. of Robecco). Of his immediate command, he disposed about 12,000 for the defence of the New Bridges, 12,000 for that of Buffalora, 8000 at Magenta and 8000 at Robecco; all bridges, except the New Bridges, were broken. Cavalry played no part whatever, and artillery was only used in small force to fire along roads and paths.

Napoleon, as has been mentioned, spent the morning of the 4th in ascertaining that Gyulai had repassed the Ticino. Being desirous merely of securing the passage and having only a small force available for the moment at San Martino, he kept this back in the hope that MacMahon’s advance from Turbigo on Magenta and Buffalora would dislodge the Austrians. MacMahon advanced in two columns, 2 divisions through Cuggiono and 1 through Inveruno. The former drove back the Austrian outposts with ease, but on approaching Buffalora found so serious a resistance that MacMahon broke off the fight in order to close up and deploy his full force. Meantime, however, on hearing the cannonade Napoleon had ordered forward Mellinet’s division of the Guard on the New Bridges and Buffalora. The bold advance of this corps d’élite carried both points at once, but the masses of the allies who had been retained to meet a possible attack from Mortara and Vigevano were still far distant and Mellinet was practically unsupported. Thus the French, turning towards the Old Bridge, found themselves (3.30 P.M.) involved in a close fight with some 18,000 Austrians, and meantime Gyulai had begun to bring up his III. and VII. corps towards Robecco and (with Hess) had arrived on the field himself. The VII. corps, on its arrival, drove Mellinet back to and over the New Bridges, but the French, now broken up into dense swarms of individual fighters, held on to the tongue of high ground and prevented the Austrians from destroying the bridges, while the occupants of Buffalora similarly held their own, and beyond them MacMahon, advancing through orchards and vineyards in a line of battle 2 m. long, slowly gained ground towards Magenta. The III. Austrian corps, meanwhile, arriving at Robecco spread out on both sides of the canal and advanced to take the defenders of the New Bridges in rear, but were checked by fresh French troops which arrived from San Martino (4 P.M.). The struggle for the New and Old Bridges continued till 6 P.M., more and more troops being drawn into the vortex, but at last the Austrians, stubbornly defending each vineyard, fell back on Magenta. But while nearly all the Austrian reinforcements from the lower Ticino had successively been directed on the bridges, MacMahon had only had to deal with the 8000 men who had originally formed the garrison of Magenta. The small part of the reinforcing troops that had been directed thither by Gyulai before he was aware of the situation, had in consequence no active rôle defined in their orders and (initiative being then regarded as a vice) they stood fast while their comrades were beaten. But it was not until after sunset that the thronging French troops at last broke into Magenta and the victory was won. The splendid Austrian cavalry (always at a disadvantage in Italy) found no opportunity to redress the balance, and their slow-moving and over-loaded infantry, in spite of its devotion, was no match in broken country for the swift and eager French. The forces engaged were 54,000 French (one-third of the allied army) to 58,000 Austrians (about half of Gyulai’s total force). Thus the fears of Napoleon as regards an Austrian attack from Mortara-Vigevano neutralized the bad distribution of his opponent’s force, and Magenta was a fair contest of equal numbers. The victory of the French was palpably the consequence not of luck or generalship but of specific superiority in the soldier. The great result of the battle was therefore a conviction, shared by both sides, that in future encounters nothing but exceptional good fortune or skilful generalship could give the Austrians victory. The respective losses were: French 4000 killed and wounded and 600 missing, Austrians 5700 killed and wounded, 4500 missing.

While the fighting was prolonged to nightfall, the various corps of the Austrian army had approached, and it was Gyulai’s intention to resume the battle next day with 100,000 men. But Clam-Gallas reported that the I. and II. corps were fought out, and thereupon Gyulai resolved to retreat on Cremona and Mantua, leaving the great road Milan-Brescia unused, for the townsmen’s patriotism was sharpened by the remembrance of Haynau, “the Hyena of Brescia.” Milan and Pavia were evacuated on the 5th, Hess departed to meet the emperor Francis Joseph (who was coming to take command of the united I. and II. Armies), and although Kuhn was still in favour of the offensive Gyulai decided that the best service he could render was to deliver up the army intact to his sovereign on the Mincio. On the 8th of June Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel made their triumphal entry into Milan, while their corps followed up rather than pursued the retreating enemy along the Lodi and Cremona roads. On the same day, the 8th of June, the I. and II. French corps, under the general command of Marshal Baraguay d’Hilliers, attacked an Austrian rearguard (part of VIII. corps, Benedek) Melegnano. at the village of Melegnano. MacMahon with the II. corps was to turn the right flank, the IV. the left of the defenders, while Baraguay attacked in front. But MacMahon, as at Magenta, deployed into a formal line of battle before closing on the village, and his progress through the vineyards was correspondingly slow. The IV. corps was similarly involved in intricate country, but Baraguay, whose corps had not been present at Magenta, was burning to attack, and being a man aussi dur à ses soldats qu’à lui-même, he delivered the frontal attack about 6 P.M. without waiting for the others. This attack, as straightforward, as brusque, and as destitute of tactical refinements as that of the Swiss on that very ground in 1515 (Marignan), was carried out, without “preparation,” by Bazaine’s division à la baïonnette. Benedek was dislodged, but retreated safely, having inflicted a loss of over 1000 men on the French, as against 360 in his own command.

After Melegnano, as after Magenta, contact with the retiring enemy was lost, and for a fortnight the story of the war is simply that of a triumphal advance of the allies and a quiet retirement and reorganization of the Austrians. Up to Magenta Napoleon had a well-defined scheme and executed it with vigour. But the fierceness of the battle itself had not a little effect on his strange dreamy character, and although it was proved beyond doubt that under reasonable conditions the French must win in every encounter, their emperor turned his attention to dislodging rather than to destroying the enemy. War clouds were gathering elsewhere—on the Rhine above all. The simple brave promise to free Italy “from the Alps to the Adriatic” became complicated by many minor issues, and the emperor was well content to let his enemy retire and to accelerate that retirement by manœuvre as far as might be necessary. He therefore kept on the left of his adversary’s routes as before, and about the 20th of June the whole allied army (less Cialdini’s Sardinian division, detached to operate on the fringe of the mountain country) was closely grouped around Montechiaro on the Chiese. It now consisted of 107,000 French and 48,000 Sardinians (combatants only).

The Austrians had disappeared into the Quadrilateral, where the emperor Francis Joseph assumed personal command, with Hess as his chief of staff. Gyulai had resigned the command of the II. Army to Count Schlick, a cavalry Austrians on the Mincio. general of 70 years of age. The I. Army was under Count Wimpffen. But this partition produced nothing but evil. The imperial headquarters still issued voluminous detailed orders for each corps, and the intervening army staff was a cause not of initiative or of simplification, but of unnecessary delay. The direction of several armies, in fact, is only feasible when general directions (directives as they are technically called) take the place of orders. All the necessary conditions for working such a system—uniformity of training, methods and doctrine in the recipients, abstention from interference in details by the supreme command—were wanting in the Austrian army of 1859. The I. Army consisted of the III., IX. and XI. corps with one cavalry division and details, 67,000 in all; the II. Army of the I., V., VII. and VIII. corps, one cavalry division and details or 90,000 combatants—total 160,000, or practically the same force as the allies. The emperor had made several salutary changes in the administration, notably an order to the infantry to send their heavy equipment and parade full-dress into the fortresses, which enormously lightened the hitherto overburdened infantryman. At this moment the political omens were favourable, and gathering the impression from his outpost reports that the French were in two halves, separated by the river Chiese, the young emperor at last accepted Hess’s advice to resume the offensive, in view of which Gyulai had left strong outposts west of the Mincio, when the main armies retired over that river, and had maintained and supplemented the available bridges.

The possibility of such a finale to the campaign had been considered but dismissed at the allied headquarters, where it was thought that if the Austrians took the offensive it would be on their own side, not the enemy’s, of the Mincio and in the midst of the Quadrilateral. Thus the advance of the French army on the 24th was simply to be a general move to the line of the Mincio, preparatory to forcing the crossings, coupled with the destruction of the strong outpost bodies that had been left by the Austrians at Solferino, Guidizzolo, &c. The Austrians, who advanced over the Mincio on the 23rd, also thought that the decisive battle would take place on the third or fourth day of their advance. Thus, although both armies moved with all precautions as if a battle was the immediate object, neither expected a collision, and Solferino was consequently a pure encounter-battle.

Speaking generally, the battlefield falls into two distinct halves, the hilly undulating country, of which the edge (almost everywhere cliff-like) is defined by Lonato, Castiglione, Cavriana and Volta, and the plain of Medole and Guidizzolo. The Battle of Solferino. village of Solferino is within the elevated ground, but close to the edge. Almost in the centre of the plateau is Pozzolengo, and from Solferino and Pozzolengo roads lead to crossing places of the Mincio above Volta (Monzambano-Salionze and Valeggio). These routes were assigned to the Piedmontese (44,000) and the French left wing (I., II. and Guard, 57,000), the plain to the III. and IV. corps and 2 cavalry divisions (50,000). On the other side the Austrians, trusting to the defensive facilities of the plateau, had directed the II. Army and part of the I. (86,000) into the plain, 2 corps of the I. Army (V. and I.) on Solferino-Cavriana (40,000), and only the VIII. corps (Benedek), 25,000 strong, into the heart of the undulating ground. One division was sent from Mantua towards Marcaria. Thus both armies, though disposed in parallel lines, were grouped in very unequal density at different points in these lines.

The French orders for the 24th were—Sardinian army on Pozzolengo, I. corps Esenta to Solferino, II. Castiglione to Cavriana, IV. with two cavalry divisions, Carpenedolo to Guidizzolo, III. Mezzane to Medole by Castel Goffredo; Imperial Guard in reserve at Castiglione. On the other side the VIII. corps from Monzambano was to reach Lonato, the remainder of the II. Army from Cavriana, Solferino and Guidizzolo to Esenta and Castiglione, and the I. Army from Medole, Robecco and Castel Grimaldo towards Carpenedolo. At 8 A.M. the head of the French I. corps encountered several brigades of the I. Army in advance of Solferino. The fighting was severe, but the French made no progress. MacMahon advancing on Guidizzolo came upon a force of the Austrians at Casa Morino and (as on former occasions) immediately set about deploying his whole corps in line of battle. Meanwhile masses of Austrian infantry became visible on the edge of the heights near Cavriana and the firing in the hills grew in intensity. Marshal MacMahon therefore called upon General Niel on his right rear to hasten his march. The latter had already expelled a small body of the Austrians from Medole and had moved forward to Robecco, but there more Austrian masses were found, and Niel, like MacMahon, held his hand until Canrobert (III. corps) should come up on his right. But the latter, after seizing Castel Goffredo, judged it prudent to collect his corps there before actively intervening. Meantime, however, MacMahon had completed his preparations, and capturing Casa Morino with ease, he drove forward to a large open field called the Campo di Medole; this, aided by a heavy cross fire from his artillery and part of Niel’s, he carried without great loss, Niel meantime attacking Casa Nuova and Robecco. But the Austrians had not yet developed their full strength, and the initial successes of the French, won against isolated brigades and battalions, were a mere prelude to the real struggle. Meanwhile the stern Baraguay d’Hilliers had made ceaseless attacks on the V. corps at Solferino, where, on a steep hill surmounted by a tower, the Austrian guns fired with great effect on the attacking masses. It was not until after midday, and then only because it attacked at the moment when, in accordance with an often fatal practice of those days, the Austrian V. corps was being relieved and replaced by the I., that Forey’s division of the I. corps, assisted by part of the Imperial Guard, succeeded in reaching the hill, whereupon Baraguay stormed the village and cemetery of Solferino with the masses of infantry that had gradually gathered opposite this point. By 2 P.M. Solferino was definitively lost to the Austrians.

During this time MacMahon had taken, as ordered, the direction of Cavriana, and was by degrees drawn into the fighting on the heights. Pending the arrival of Canrobert—who had been alarmed by the reported movement of an Austrian force on his rear (the division from Mantua above mentioned) and having given up his cavalry to Niel was unable to explore for himself—Niel alone was left to face the I. Army. But Count Wimpffen, having been ordered at 11 to change direction towards Castiglione, employed the morning in redistributing his intact troops in various “mutually supporting positions,” and thus the forces opposing Niel at Robecco never outnumbered him by more than 3 to 2. Niel, therefore, attacking again and again and from time to time supported by a brigade or a regiment sent by Canrobert, not only held his own but actually captured Robecco. About the same time MacMahon gained a foothold on the heights between Solferino and Cavriana, and as above mentioned, Baraguay had stormed Solferino and the tower hill. The greater part of the II. Austrian Army was beaten and in retreat on Valeggio before 3 P.M. But the Austrian emperor had not lost hope, and it was only a despairing message from Wimpffen, who had suffered least in the battle, that finally induced him to order the retreat over the Mincio. On the extreme right Benedek and the VIII. corps had fought successfully all day against the Sardinians, this engagement being often known by the separate name of the battle of San Martino. On the left Wimpffen, after sending his despondent message, plucked up heart afresh and, for a moment, took the offensive against Niel, who at last, supported by the most part of Canrobert’s corps, had reached Guidizzolo. In the centre the Austrian rearguard held out for two hours in several successive positions against the attacks of MacMahon and the Guard. But the battle was decided. A violent storm, the exhaustion of the assailants, and the firm countenance of Benedek, who, retiring from San Martino, covered the retreat of the rest of the II. Army over the Mincio, precluded an effective pursuit.

The losses on either side had been: Allies, 14,415 killed and wounded and 2776 missing, total 17,191; Austrians, 13,317 killed and wounded, 9220 missing, total 22,537. The heaviest losses in the French army were in Niel’s corps (IV.), which lost 4483, and in Baraguay d’Hilliers’ (I.), which lost 4431. Of the total of 17,191, 5521 was the share of the Sardinian army, which in the battle of San Martino had had as resolute an enemy, and as formidable a position to attack, as had Baraguay at Solferino. On the Austrian side the IX. corps, which bore the brunt of the fighting on the plain, lost 4349 and the V. corps, that had defended Solferino, 4442. Solferino, in the first instance an encounter-battle in which each corps fought whatever enemy it found in its path, became after a time a decisive trial of strength. In the true sense of the word, it was a soldier’s battle, and the now doubly-proved superiority of the French soldier being reinforced by the conviction that the Austrian leaders were incapable of neutralizing it by superior strategy, the war ended without further fighting. The peace of Villafranca was signed on the 11th of July.

The Campaign of 1866

In the seven years that elapsed between Solferino and the second battle of Custozza the political unification of Italy had proceeded rapidly, although the price of the union of Italy had been the cession of Savoy and Nice to Napoleon III. Garibaldi’s irregulars had in 1860 overrun Sicily, and regular battles, inspired by the same great leader, had destroyed the kingdom of Naples on the mainland (Volturno, 1st-2nd October 1860). At Castelfidardo near Ancona on the 18th of September in the same year Cialdini won another victory over the Papal troops commanded by Lamoricière. In 1866, then, Italy was no longer a “geographical expression,” but a recognized kingdom. Only Rome and Venetia remained of the numerous, disunited and reactionary states set up by the congress of Vienna. The former, still held by a French garrison, was for the moment an unattainable aim of the liberators, but the moment for reclaiming Venetia, the last relic of the Austrian dominions in Italy, came when Austria and Prussia in the spring of 1866 prepared to fight for the hegemony of the future united Germany (see Seven Weeks’ War).

The new Italian army, formed on the nucleus of the Sardinian army and led by veterans of Novara and Solferino, was as strong as the whole allied army of 1859, but in absorbing so many recruits it had temporarily lost much of its efficiency. It was organized in four corps, of which one, under Cialdini, was detached from the main body. Garibaldi, as before, commanded a semi-regular corps in the Alpine valleys, but being steadily and skilfully opposed by Kuhn, Gyulai’s former chief of staff, he made little or no progress during the brief campaign, on which indeed his operations had no influence. The main Austrian army, still the best-trained part of the emperor’s forces, had been, up to the verge of the war, commanded by Benedek, but Benedek was induced to give up his place to the archduke Albert, and to take up the far harder task of commanding against the Prussians in Bohemia. It was in fact a practically foregone conclusion that in Italy the Austrians would win, whereas in Bohemia it was more than feared that the Prussians would carry all before them. But Prussia and Italy were allied, and whatever the result of a battle in Venetia, that province would have to be ceded in the negotiations for peace with a victorious Prussia. Thus on the Austrian side the war of 1866 in Italy was, even more than the former war, simply an armed protest against the march of events.

The part of Hess in the campaign of Solferino was played with more success in that of Custozza by Major-General Franz, Freiherr von John (1815-1876). On this officer’s advice the Austrian army, instead of remaining Second Battle of Custozza. behind the Adige, crossed that river on the 23rd of June and took up a position on the hills around Pastrengo on the flank of the presumed advance of Victor Emmanuel’s army. The latter, crossing the Mincio the same day, headed by Villafranca for Verona, part of it in the hills about Custozza, Somma-Campagna and Castelnuovo, partly on the plain. The object of the king and of La Marmora, who was his adviser, was by advancing on Verona to occupy the Austrian army (which was only about 80,000 strong as against the king’s 120,000), while Cialdini’s corps from the Ferrara region crossed the lower Po and operated against the Austrian rear. The archduke’s staff, believing that the enemy was making for the lower Adige in order to co-operate directly with Cialdini’s detachment, issued orders for the advance on the 24th so as to reach the southern edge of the hilly country, preparatory to descending upon the flank of the Italians next day. However, the latter were nearer than was supposed, and an encounter-battle promptly began for the possession of Somma-Campagna and Custozza. The king’s army was unable to use its superior numbers and, brigade for brigade, was much inferior to its opponents. The columns on the right, attempting in succession to debouch from Villafranca in the direction of Verona, were checked by two improvised cavalry brigades under Colonel Pulz, which charged repeatedly, with the old-fashioned cavalry spirit that Europe had almost forgotten, and broke up one battalion after another. In the centre the leading brigades fought in vain for the possession of Custozza and the edge of the plateau, and on the left the divisions that had turned northward from Valeggio into the hills were also met and defeated. About 5 P.M. the Italians, checked and in great disorder, retreated over the Mincio. The losses were—Austrians, 4600 killed and wounded and 1000 missing; Italians, 3800 killed and wounded and 4300 missing. The archduke was too weak in numbers to pursue, his losses had been considerable, and a resolute offensive, in the existing political conditions, would have been a mere waste of force. The battle necessary to save the honour of Austria had been handsomely won. Ere long the bulk of the army that had fought at Custozza was transported by rail to take part in defending Vienna itself against the victorious Prussians. One month later Cialdini with the re-organized Italian army, 140,000 strong, took the field again, and the 30,000 Austrians left in Venetia retreated to the Isonzo without engaging.

In spite of Custozza and of the great defeat sustained by the Italian navy at the hands of Tegetthof near Lissa on the 20th of July, Venetia was now liberated and incorporated in the kingdom of Italy, and the struggle for unity, that had been for seventeen years a passionate and absorbing drama, and had had amongst its incidents Novara, Magenta, Solferino and the Garibaldian conquest of the Two Sicilies, ended in an anti-climax.

Three years later the cards were shuffled, and Austria, France and Italy were projecting an offensive alliance against Prussia. This scheme came to grief on the Roman question, and the French chassepôt was used for the first time in battle against Garibaldi at Mentana, but in 1870 France was compelled to withdraw her Roman garrison, and with the assent of their late enemy Austria, the Italians under Cialdini fought their way into Rome and there established the capital of united Italy.

Bibliography.—The war of 1848-49 has been somewhat neglected by modern military historians, but the following are useful: Der Feldzug der österr. Armee in Italien 1848-49 (Vienna, 1852); Gavenda, Sammlung aller Armeebefehle u.s.w. mit Bezug auf die Hauptmomente des Krieges 1848-49; Major H. Kunz, Feldzüge des F. M. Radetzki in Oberitalien (Berlin, 1900), and Major Adams, Great Campaigns. Both the French and the Austrian governments issued official accounts (Campagne de Napoléon III en Italie 1859, Der Krieg in Italien 1859) of the war of 1859. The standard critical work is Der italienische Feldzug 1859 by the German general staff (practically dictated by Moltke). Prince Kraft zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, who had many friends in the Austrian army, deals with the Magenta campaign in vol. i. of his Letters on Strategy. General Silvestre’s Étude sur la campagne de 1859 was published in 1909. In English, Col. H. C. Wylly, Magenta and Solferino (1906), and in German General Cämmerer, Magenta, and Major Kunz, Von Montebello bis Solferino should be consulted.

For the Italian campaign of 1866 see the Austrian official history, Österreichs Kämpfe 1866 (French translation), and the Italian official account, La Campagna del 1866, of which the volume dealing with Custozza was published in 1909. A short account is given in Sir H. Hozier’s Seven Weeks’ War, and tactical studies in v. Verdy’s Custozza (tr. Henderson), and Sir Evelyn Wood, Achievements of Cavalry.

(C. F. A.)

1 Several of the French generals—Lamoricière, Bedeau, Changarnier and others—who had been prominent in Algeria and in the 1848 revolution in France had been invited to take the command, but had declined it.

2 Students of Napoleonic strategy will find it interesting to replace Ramorino by, say, Lannes, and to post Durando at Mortara-Vigevano instead of Vespolate-Vigevano, and from these conditions to work out the probable course of events.

3 Ramorino’s defence was that he had received information that the Austrians were advancing on Alessandria by the south bank of the Po. But Alessandria was a fortress, and could be expected to hold out for forty-eight hours; moreover, it could easily have been succoured by way of Valenza if necessary.

4 The Sardinians, at peace strength, had some 50,000 men, and during January and February the government busied itself chiefly with preparations of supplies and armament. Here the delay in calling out the reserves was due not to their possible ill-will, but to the necessity of waiting on the political situation.

5 The Volunteer movement in England was the result of this crisis in the relations of England and France.

6 As far as possible Italian conscripts had been sent elsewhere and replaced by Austrians.

7 The movements of the division employed in policing Lombardy (Urban’s) are not included here, unless specially mentioned.

8 The advantages and dangers of the flank march are well summarized in Colonel H. C. Wylly’s Magenta and Solferino, p. 65, where the doctrinaire objections of Hamley and Rüstow are set in parallel with the common-sense views of a much-neglected English writer (Major Adams, Great Campaigns) and with the clear and simple doctrine of Moltke, that rested on the principle that strategy does not exist to avoid but to give effect to tactics. The waste of time in execution, rather than the scheme, is condemned by General Silvestre.

ITALIC, i.e. Italian, in Roman archaeology, history and law, a term used, as distinct from Roman, of that which belongs to the races, languages, &c., of the non-Roman parts of Italy (see Italy, Ancient Languages and Peoples). In architecture the Italic order is another name for the Composite order (see Order). The term was applied to the Pythagorean school of philosophy in Magna Graecia, and to an early Latin version of the Bible, known also as Itala, which was superseded by the Vulgate, but its special technical use is of a particular form of type, in which the letters slope to the right. This is used, in present-day printing, chiefly to emphasize words or phrases, to indicate words or sentences in a foreign language, or to mark the titles of books, &c. It was introduced by the Aldine Press (see Manutius and Typography).

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Table of Contents

- THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

- ELEVENTH EDITION

- VOLUME XIV SLICE VIII Isabnormal Lines to Italic

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