One
of them has kept it; and as six years have passed over our heads, I
presume he has now acquired a title by "adverse possession." Much good
may it do him!
Had the discovery been mine, I should have endeavoured to hide my light
under the proverbial bushel. But it is not mine, and therefore I make
bold to say that Mr. Bliss Perry, of the "Atlantic Monthly," knew better
than his English colleagues when he published the article from which I
take what follows.
"Charles Dunster ('Considerations on Milton's Early Reading,' etc.,
1810) traces the prima stamina of 'Paradise Lost' to Sylvester's 'Du
Bartas.' Masenius, Cedmon, Vendei, and other older writers have also
been named in this connection, while the majority of Milton's English
commentators - and among foreigners Voltaire and Tiraboschi - are inclined
to regard the 'Adamus Exul' of Grotius or Andreini's sacred drama of
'Adamo' as the prototype."
This latter can be consulted in the third volume of Cowper's 'Milton'
(1810).
The matter is still unsettled, and in view of the number of recent
scholars who have interested themselves in it, one is really surprised
that no notice has yet been taken of an Italian article which goes far
towards deciding this question and proving that the chief source of
'Paradise Lost' is the 'Adamo Caduto,' a sacred tragedy by Serafino
della Salandra. The merit of this discovery belongs to Francesco Zicari,
whose paper, 'Sulla scoverta dell' originale italiano da cui Milton
trasse il suo poema del paradiso perduto,' is printed on pages 245
to 276 in the 1845 volume of the Naples 'Album scientifico-
artistico-letterario' now lying before me. It is in the form of
a letter addressed to his friend Francesco Ruffa, a native of
Tropea in Calabria. [Footnote: Zicari contemplated another paper on
this subject, but I am unaware whether this was ever published. The
Neapolitan Minieri-Riccio, who wrote his 'Memorie Storiche' in 1844,
speaks of this article as having been already printed in 1832, but does
not say where. This is corroborated by N. Falcone ('Biblioteca
storica-topo-grafica della Calabria,' 2nd ed., Naples, 1846, pp.
151-154), who gives the same date, and adds that Zicari was the author
of a work on the district of Fuscaldo. He was born at Paola in Calabria,
of which he wrote a (manuscript) history, and died in 1846. In this
Milton article, he speaks of his name being 'unknown in the republic of
letters.'. He it mentioned by Nicola Leoni (' Della Magna Grecia,' vol.
ii, p. 153),]
Salandra, it is true, is named among the writers of sacred tragedies in
Todd's 'Milton' (1809, vol. ii, p. 244), and also by Hayley, but neither
of them had the curiosity, or the opportunity, to examine his 'Adamo
Caduto'; Hayley expressly says that he has not seen it. More recent
works, such as that of Moers ('De fontibus Paradisi Amissi Miltoniani,'
Bonn, 1860), do not mention Salandra at all.
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