Charles Morgan, Appendix to Italy

In an appendix to Lady Morgan’s Italy, her husband, Sir T. C. Morgan, writes about the prevalence of verse in the Italian academy, a tendency that he describes as intolerable. Improvisation is only pleasing because it is presented using the forms of poetry and music.

Performer Name:
 
Performance Venue:
 
Performance Date:
 
Author:
Morgan, Sir T. C. [Charles]
Date Written:
 
Language:
English
Publication Title:
Italy, by Lady Morgan (Sydney Owenson)
Article Title:
Appendix: Note on Literary Disputes in Italy
Page Numbers:
2:465
Additional Info:
 
Publisher:
Colburn
Place of Publication:
London
Date Published:
1824

Text:

The peculiar feature of the Italian Academy is its intolerable flux of verse; a circumstance arising, in some measure, from the genius of the language, but still more favoured by that of the ecclesiastical and civil government of the country, which not only punishes the higher exertions of thought, but, by the education it enforces, incapacitates the subject for thinking. Smooth, harmonious, and sounding lines, readily cover poverty of idea and inconclusive reasoning; and the incoherent rambling and misplaced expletives of the improvisatori, listened to with pleasure when embodied in melodious verse, would be rejected with disgust, if reduced to prose. The brevity of the sonnet likewise multiplies bad poets, because such compositions demand nearly as little labour as genius.

Notes:

Written by Sir T. C. Morgan [Charles Morgan, Lady Morgan's husband]

Collected by:
DP