Such, then, was the brilliant light which literature and science displayed from the ninth to the fourteenth century of our era in those vast countries which had submitted to the yoke of Islamism. In this immense extent of territory, twice or thrice as large as Europe, nothing is now found but ignorance, slavery, terror, and death. Few men are there capable of reading the works of their illustrious ancestors, and few who could comprehend them are able to procure them. The prodigious literary riches of the Arabians no longer exist in any of the countries where the Arabians or Mussulmans rule. It is not there that we must seek for the fame of their great men or for their writings. What has been preserved is in the hands of their enemies, in the convents of the monks, or in the royal libraries of Europe.
9. EDUCATION.--At present there is little education, in our sense of the word, in Arabia. In the few instances where public schools exist, writing, grammar, and rhetoric sum up the teaching. The Bedouin children learn from their parents much more than is common in other countries. Great attention is paid to accuracy of grammar and purity of diction throughout the country, and of late literary institutions have been established at Beyrout, Damascus, Bagdad, and Hefar.
Such is the extent of Arabic literature, that, notwithstanding the labors of European scholars and the productions of native presses, in Boulak and Cairo, in India, and recently in England, where Hassam, an Arabian poet, has devoted himself to the production of standard works, the greater part of what has been preserved is still in manuscript and still more has perished.
INTRODUCTION.--1. Italian Literature and its Divisions.--2. The Dialects. --3. The Italian Language.
PERIOD FIRST.--1. Latin Influence.--2. Early Italian Poetry and Prose.--3. Dante.--4. Petrarch.--5. Boccaccio and other Prose Writers.--6. First Decline of Italian Literature.
PERIOD SECOND.--1. The Close of the Fifteenth Century; Lorenzo de' Medici.--2. The Origin of the Drama and Romantic Epic; Poliziano, Pulci, Boiardo.--3. Romantic Epic Poetry; Ariosto.--4. Heroic Epic Poetry; Tasso.--5. Lyric Poetry; Bembo, Molza, Tarsia, V. Colonna.--6. Dramatic Poetry; Trissino, Rucellai; the Writers of Comedy.--7. Pastoral Drama and Didactic Poetry; Beccari, Sannazzaro, Tasso, Guarini, Rucellai, Alamanni. --8. Satirical Poetry, Novels, and Tales; Berni, Grazzini, Firenzuola, Bandello, and others.--9. History; Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Nardi, and others.--10. Grammar and Rhetoric; the Academy della Crusca, Della Casa, Speroni, and others.--11. Science, Philosophy, and Politics; the Academy del Cimento, Galileo, Torricelli, Borelli, Patrizi, Telesio, Campanella, Bruno, Castiglione, Machiavelli, and others.--12. Decline of the Literature in the Seventeenth Century.--13. Epic and Lyric Poetry; Marini, Filicaja.--14. Mock Heroic Poetry, the Drama, and Satire; Tassoni, Bracciolini, Andreini, and others.--15. History and Epistolary Writings; Davila, Bentivoglio, Sarpi, Redi.