Not only they did nothing. There was nothing for them to do. They
floated about in a peaceful millpool, whose placid surface
reflected nothing but their own idle selves, little guessing that
the dam whereby their mimic sea was confined, would shortly break
with a thundering crash and empty them all into the stream of real
life that flowed below. For the few who disliked idleness there
was no occupation but literature, and literature, to the Roman
mind of 1867, and in the Roman meaning of the word, was
scholarship. The introduction to a literary career was supposed to
be obtained only by a profound study of the classics, with a view
to avoiding everything classical, both in language and ideas,
except Cicero, the apostle of the ancient Roman Philistines; and
the tendency to clothe stale truisms and feeble sentiments in
high-sounding language is still found in Italian prose and is
indirectly traceable to the same source. As for the literature of
the country since the Latins, it consisted, and still consists, in
the works of the four poets, Dante, Tasso, Ariosto, and Petrarch.
Leopardi is more read now than then, but is too unhealthily
melancholy to be read long by any one. There used to be Roman
princes who spent years in committing to memory the verses of
those four poets, just as the young Brahman of to-day learns to
recite the Rig Veda.
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