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Read Ebook: Notes and Queries Number 80 May 10 1851 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men Artists Antiquaries Genealogists etc. by Various
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Introduction
PART FIRST
From Philology to Philosophy
PART SECOND
The Philosophy of Mind
PART THIRD
Philosophy as History
Bibliographical Note
Index
BENEDETTO CROCE
INTRODUCTION
Croce's family, and early education--His religion--Life in Rome in the eighties--Labriola's influence--Meditations on ethics--Return to Naples; life as a scholar--Travels; and the problem of history --Philosophus fit--The intellectual conditions of Italy after the Risorgimento--Contemporary European culture--American analogies --Two leaders of Italian thought--Francesco de Sanctis--Giosu?? Carducci--Croce's approach to philosophy, and his method of work--His relations to the philosophical practition--Vico and the philosophy of the Renaissance--Bruno and Campanella--The humanism of Vico--Naturalism and spiritualism--A philosophy of the human spirit.
Benedetto Croce was born in 1866, in a small town in the Italian province of Aquila, the only son of an old-fashioned, Catholic, and conservative Neapolitan family. His grandfather had been a high magistrate, untouched by the new liberal currents in his devotion to the old r?gime and to the Bourbon dynasty then reigning in Naples. His father followed the traditional maxim of the "good people" of Naples: that an honest man must take care of his family and of his business, and keep away from the intrigues of political life. His mother was a woman of culture and taste, such as the old type of education for women, which is now as completely forgotten as if it had never existed, used to produce. Bertrando Spaventa, the philosopher, and Silvio Spaventa, a statesman who had brought to his enthusiasm for the national cause all the traditions of his Neapolitan conservatism, were her brothers: both of them, however, estranged from Croce's family because of their political ideas.
The child grew in this greyish, subdued atmosphere, in which the only touches of colour were added by his own passion for books of history and romance, and by the visits to the beautiful old churches to which he accompanied his mother. To the circumstances of his childhood, Croce attributes the relative delay in the development of his political feelings and ideals, for a long time submerged by his interests in literature and erudition. But because every fault brings with itself some compensation, he also owed to them his critical attitude towards partisan political legends, his impatience towards the rhetoric of liberalism, his vehement dislike of great emphatic words, and of any kind of pomp and ceremony, together with a power to appreciate what is useful and effectual in the actions of men, wherever it may come from.
As a boy, he went to a Catholic "collegio" or boarding school, and in this too his experience differed from that of the majority of his contemporaries. The insistence on lay education imparted by the State, and the preference for the day school, which allows the family to supplement the work of the school, in fact, to take care of the moral and social side of education, as distinct from the purely intellectual one, are characteristics of the new Italian methods, obviously in keeping with the general tendencies of the age. I remember that to myself as a boy it was inexplicable why anybody should be sent to a "collegio" unless he were an orphan or an unmanageable scamp. But Croce seems to have enjoyed his experience, to which he was submitted merely in accordance with the habits of his family; and even now he praises the system for breeding in him those feelings of loyalty and honour, which are the result of life in common with boys of one's own age, and of the necessity of adapting oneself to a variety of dispositions and temperaments.
After this final consummation, it is amusing to notice a slight "incuria" on the part of the poet, which I wonder has never been corrected in the later editions. Having described the nuptial ceremony of Cranstoun and Margaret in the early part of the last Canto, he says in Section xxviii.,
"That he from the first determined, that without shutting his ears to the voice of true criticism, he would pay no regard to that which assumed the form of satire."
A BORDERER.
POEMS DISCOVERED AMONG THE PAPERS OF SIR KENELM DIGBY.
Since I last wrote to you on the subject of these poems, I have discovered the remaining portions of Ben Jonson's poem on the Lady Venetia: I have therefore no doubt now that my MS. is a genuine autograph; and if so, not only this, but the "Houreglasse," which was inserted in your 63rd No., is Ben Jonson's. This last has, I think, never been published; nor have I ever seen in print the followings lines, which are written in the same hand and on the same paper as the "Houreglasse." They were probably written after Lady Venetia's death.
If I am wrong in supposing this never to have been printed, I shall feel much obliged by one of your correspondents informing me of the fact.
H. A. B.
Trin. Col. Cambridge.
FOLK LORE.
S. S. B.
"On May-Day the Milk-Maids who serve the Court, danced Minuets and Rigadoons before the Royal Family, at St. James's House, with great applause."
Y. S.
A friend of mine formerly met Dr. Beddoes riding up Park Street in Bristol almost concealed by a vast bladder tied to his horse's mouth. He said he was trying an experiment with oxygen on a broken-winded horse. Afterwards, finding that oxygen did not answer, he very wisely tried the gas most opposite to it in nature.
C. B.
KERRIENSIS.
"Nettle out, dock in."
This charm is so common in Huntingdonshire at this day that it seems to come to children almost instinctively. None of them can tell where they first heard it, any more than why they use it.
ARUN.
METROPOLITAN IMPROVEMENTS.
The following passage from a sermon preached at Paul's Cross, March 26, 1620, by John King, Bishop of London, refers in a curious manner to many improvements and alterations which have either been already effected in our own time, or are still in contemplation. The sermon was "on behalfe of Paule's Church," then in a ruinous condition; and was delivered in the presence of James himself, who suggested the preacher's text, Psal. cii. 13, 14.
"So had my manner ever beene aforetime," says the Bishop, "to open the volume of this Booke, and goe through the fields of the Old and New Testament, plucking and rubbing such eares of corne therein as I best liked, makings, choice of my text, and buckling myself to my task at myne owne discretion; but now I am girt and tied to a Scripture by him, who as he hath most right to command, so best skill to direct and appoint the best service I can."
After an elaborate laudation of England, and of London as the "gem and eye," which has
the Bishop proceeds thus:
RICHARD JOHN KING.
Minor Notes.
A. L.
"Me, the contented man desires, The poor man has, the rich requires, The miser gives, the spendthrift saves, And all must carry to their graves."
Possibly he may not object to read, without troubling himself as to the authorship of, the subjoined translation:
"Me, qui sorte sua contentus vixerit, optat, Et quum pauper habet, dives habere velit; Spargit avarus opum, servat sibi prodigus aeris, Secum post fati funera quisque feret."
EFFIGIES.
BLOWEN.
At Hagley Park, Worcestershire, the seat of Lord Lyttleton, is a painting by Varotari, a pupil of Paul Veronese, of Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery. One of the Jewish elders present wears spectacles.
At Kedleston, Derbyshire, the seat of Lord Scarsdale, is a painting by Rembrandt, Daniel interpreting Belsazzar's Dream. Daniel's head is covered with a peruke of considerable magnitude.
J. E.
"Her silver feet, fair washed against this day,"
"Eione well-in-age, And seeming-still-to-smile Glauconome."
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