THE SYMPATHY BETWEEN ENGLAND AND ITALY. T HE Prince of Naples'
visit, and his evident satisfac- tion in obtaining a knowledge of England at first- hand, is a useful reminder of the fact that, be the reason what it may, there does and has always existed what we may call a natural sympathy between the English and Italian peoples. The intense interest taken by England in the attempts of the Italians to throw off the yoke of the Haps- burgs and the Bourbons, and to create a united nationality, was not due to any sudden or capricious wave of feeling. It rested upon a sympathy of three hundred years' standing. Ever since Englishmen have been articulate in literature, the love of Italy and the Italians is to be traced. It might have been expected that we should have been intellectually far more en rapport with France, Germany, Holland, or Spain, than with far-distant Italy. Yet the reverse was the case. We left what was easily attainable and near at hand, for something difficult and unapproachable. Again, the fact that German or even French methods of thought and life have always borne a far closer resemblance to our own than those of Italy, ought apparently to have put our neighbours at an advantage in regard to intellectual intercourse and sympathy. In spite, however, of all these obstacles, Italy is the country of all others with which we have succeeded in maintaining a union of hearts. Despite their mental elec- tricity and our phlegm, Italians and Englishmen have always understood each other. Ever since the early Elizabethan poets who, following Greene's example, not only soaked themselves in Italian romances, but actually visited Italy, the continuity of poetic contact between the two countries has been maintained. Surrey, Wyatt, Marlowe, Shake- speare, Webster, Ford, to name only a few, were all " Italianate,"—the Elizabethans were forced to coin a word to describe Englishmen who had fallen completely under the spell of Italy. Next, even the staid and intensely patriotic Milton regarded Italy as the land in which to develop his intellectual faculties. The Puritan bard might have visited Geneva, Holland, North Germany, or the Huguenot portions of France, and have sat at the feet of Protestant theologians. Instead, he sought Venice, Florence, and Rome. Even in the eighteenth century, men of letters turned naturally to Italy ; and at the beginning of the nineteenth, Byron and Shelley adopted Italy as a second fatherland. Walter Savage Landor kept up the tradition, and Mr. and Mrs. Robert Browning gave a final sanction to the notion that English poets can only livand sing in two places—England or Italy. The poets were followed throughout our history by the rest of the world. In spite of the vicinity of France, and of the respect with which French thought was treated in the eighteenth cen- tury, Paris was, as a rule, treated but as the half-way house to Rome or Florence. There were, no doubt, Frenchified men, like Bolingbroke and Gibbon ; but it is clear from the Memoirs, that the ordinary man felt far more at home in Italy than in France. Travellers' comments and criticisms grow far less severe after the Alps have been crossed. In the later part of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, Italy held beyond all question the foremost place in men's minds. England was full of Italian books, Italian ideas, and Italianated English- men. When St. Paul's Cathedral was burnt, and the vast stores of books stowed away in the crypt perished, it was not. principally French or Spanish works that were destroyed, but Italian. The demand for Italian novelli and romances of all kinds was very great, and the playwrights seem hardly to have thought it possible to lay their scenes anywhere but in Italy or at home. It will perhaps be said that this intimate literary sympathy was due in reality to accident, and that very little can be built upon it. Italy, it may be urged, was the centre of light and leading during the sixteenth century, and England, in going to the fountain-head of the new learning, was only doing what all other countries were doing. Add to this the fact that we were intensely hostile to and jealous of France and Spain, and so disinclined for social or intellectual intercourse. In a word, it may be urged that our historical friendship with Italy is simply due to the fact that the two nations were too widely separated in their political interests for jealousy or to grow up between them. They grew, and have remained, sympathetic merely because they have no cause for antagonism. We are friendly only because neither wants anything of the other.
No doubt there is a certain amount of truth in this view of the matter, but it is by no means the whole truth. There is, we firmly believe, something in the characteristics of either nation which makes them inclined to be friendly. The undoubted fact that hundreds of Englishmen entertain a real feeling of love for and devotion to Italy and the Italians, and that there are plenty of Italians who cherish a similar sentiment in regard to us, cannot be explained by the allegation that we have always lived far enough away from the Italians to prevent our quarrelling with them. What, then, are these national characteristics which tend to a reciprocal understanding ? We believe, in the first place, Englishmen and Italians like each other because each nation instinctively feels that the one is the complement of the other. Their quickness of perception is a relief to our slowness, their fancy and brightness of temper to our pedestrian straightforwardness and matter-of-factness. Again, their gaiety and fun afford a pleasing contrast to our humour, which has often a touch of melancholy. Then, too, their love of sparkling superficiality offers a positive sense of repose to men all too conscious of their dull thoroughness. We are drab ; they give us colour. We are cold and phlegmatic, they warm and vivacious. We find each other agreeable, in fact, for the same reasons which so often influence men and women in determining whom to marry. Like attracts unlike. The Germans, French, Spaniards, and Russians are like ourselves in many particulars, and yet different. They afford not so much a contrast as a variation, and this is by no means a sure foundation for friendship. We see, or fancy we see, not the opposites of our own qualities, but our qualities distorted, and hence there is a failure of sympathy. The Italian and the Englishman are not, as it were, com- peting in moral characteristics, and so can afford to regard each other with equanimity. But though superficial con- trasts of character may be the most obvious source of the sense of sympathy felt by Englishmen and Italians, there is, we believe, another and underlying foundation for this sym- pathy which, though at first it may sound contradic- tory, is not really so. This is the fact that in one or two particulars there is a moral identity between English- men and Italians. It is variation—the possessing a similar characteristic, but with a difference which hinders sym- pathy. Identity, like contrast, is a cause of understanding. There is a certain strain of moral identity discoverable in the two races. Garibaldi once said that the English are the Romans of modern times, and he said truly. But the Italians still retain something of the Roman nature, though a softer and more plastic temperament has been overlaid. The Italians, like the English, have an immense capacity for not being beaten, for holding on and not giving in. If not, how would Italy have survived the degradation of the eighteenth century ? The effects of this characteristic may be seen in both nations. Both have always made good seamen, good men of business, and capable inventors, and in all these matters doggedness—the power of keeping on—is one of the necessary requirements. In the first two instances this is obvious, though in the third less so. Yet when we say necessity is the mother of invention, we admit the fact. A man seldom really triumphs over Nature by a new invention unless he sets himself doggedly to conquer, and refuses to desist from the attempt until he is victorious. Another common characteristic is the love of beauty. This, we contend, both nations have in a high degree. No doubt this will be denied, and it will be said that the English people, as a whole, are peculiarly insensible to what is beautiful. We venture to differ. The English, we admit, are often sadly wanting in taste ; but that is another matter. Our literature and our almost universal love of flowers and of natural scenery, show that the abstract love of beauty is intensely strong in Englishmen. We want, then, no political understanding to draw us towards Italy, for already there is an instinctive sympathy between the two peoples.
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