The sun., 1909-02-21

civil CONSTITUTION Oh tnc CicfBy' "h"
violence failed to accomplish q century
ago the Third Republic hopes to CON-
pass by guile and fraud. labelled liberty
and legality
A Courtier Of the Renaissance.
JULIA CABTwRIoHT (Mrs. ADY) ha'
devoted two volumes large octave. oon'
tanning collectively about thousand
pages, TO a life OF Batddssdre Cdstielion'
E. p. Dutton d Coz The subject Of thi'
work. a work sufficiently capacicus for
history Of the Italian Renaissance. u
man who though admired In his owl
day came to be utterly forgotten. snt
who now lives again in memory only
as the author Of single book. III Cor
tegiano' Che Courtier). widely read in
the sixteenth century. but afterward
and until lately read by scarcely any one
It seems to US that all that was needed
vas a reprint Of an old English translation
Of the book. prefaced by q biographies
introduction Of some fifty pages Life
is too short to spend a considerable
fraction of it over the biography Of an
unim mportant Italian gentleman, from
which. moreover. can be elicited no
definite idea Of the book which furnishes
the sole excuse for the biography's ex-
istence. After purchasing two large vol
umes for the purpose Of learning some
thing about an author in whom the world
has long ceased 10 take any interest We
hnd ourselves obliged to expend an addi-
tional sum to procure a copy OF his sin
gle book.
II is true enough that Castiglione. who
was a descendant OF a good but by no
means eminent Lombard family and who
lived from A. d. 147s to 1899, was by turns q
soldier, a diplomat and poet, but achieved
no high distinction in any Of those direc-
tions and commended himself chiefly to his
contemporaries. as he has TO poeterity
by good manners and his discourse about
them. The best book that was ever written
upon good breeding DR.. johnson told
Boswell, 'the best book tell you, II Cor
tegiano,' by Castiglione, grew up at the
little court Of Urbino. and you should read
it, Mrs Ady Ia justified In saying that
Johnson's utterance did but confirm the
verdict Of the preceding two
hundred years. Castiglione's book was
first issued from the Aldine Press in 1928.
and before the close Of the sixteenth CEN
tury more than hundred editions Of the
work had already seen the light, Spanish,
French. English and German versions
followed each other In rapid succession
and The Cortegiano' was universally
acclaimed as the most admired prose
work OF the Italian Renaissance. For
a while indeed nowhere was the popularity
Of Castiglione's treatise on good manners
greater than in England
Only thirty-four years after its first
appearance in Venice Sir Thomas Hoby's
The Book Of the Courtyer.
took the Elizabethan world by storm.
No fewer than seventeen English versions
Of the work have been published. In
those days, when translations Of Boccaocio
and vandello's novels -were sold In every
shop Castiglione's book was In the hands
Of all cultivated Englishrnen. Ben Jonson
and Webster mention it. and Marston In
his -Satires- speaks Of the author as
: the absolute Castillo Mr.. Wyndham
has maintained that the Platonio philoso-
ply Of Shakespeare Sonnets was bor-
rowed from Bembo's oration in The
Courtier' and Miss Scott, an American
writer, insists that the characters OF Bene-
dick and Beofrice were derived from two
persona ses described In the 'Cortegiano.
For his treatise on good manners even
Roger Ascham, who looked askance on
most thineQA Arought from Italy. had a
good word. ITO join learning with
comely exercises. Count valdesar Castig-
lone doth truly teach; which book. ad-
read and diligently followed but
one year at home In England, would do
A young gentleman more good. wiss.
han three years travels spent abroad
In his own country and on the Continent
1t large Castislione's book passed through
many and strange vicissitudes. We have
,een that It was FIRST printed at Venice
IN 1928. Before the end Of the same year
the book had been published in Florence
also and was reprinted In the latter city
three times within the next few years.
In 1879 an edition appeared in Tosoolano
and was quickly followed BY three others
from a press at Parma. In 1883 q second
sdition was brought out in Venice from
the Aldine Press. In the following year
a Spanish translation was published at
and met instantly with great
vogue. Successive Spanish editions of
the treatise appeared at Toledo, Sala-
nanca, Saragossa and Antwerp. The
first extant French translation OF the
aCorteg egiano' bears the date 1888, but the
writer Of the preface slludes to two earlier
French editions which he says had already
rendered the book popular at court. A
Latin edition was published at witten-
berg in 1851 and was followed Ave years
Iater by German TRANSLATION Two
other German editions appeared at
in 1898 and at Frankfurt In 1854.
None Of these. however. was as popular
In Germany, it seems. a. Latin version
by one Bartholomew Clerke. first pub
iished In London in i57i. and afterward
reprinted at Strasburg and Frankfurt.
Il Is even said that tho 'Cortegiano' was
into Flemish and that Rus
sian version appeared at Moscow In the
seventeenth century. There ID also a
egend that two Japanese Ambassadors
~ho visited Man:ua IL 1895 treasured
Count Baldassare's book as q precious
jewel and took 1t back to their own country
n order to give the people Of Japan some
Of Italian civilization.
So far a. England was concerned the