United States or Faroe Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I saw it was there as free to sin, not only without all punishment, but also without any man's marking, as it is free in the City of London to choose without all blame whether a man lust to wear shoe or pantocle. Robert Greene, who did so much to introduce the novels of Italy into England, confesses that during his youthful travels in the south he 'saw and practiced such villany as it is abominable to declare. The whole of our dramatic literature corroborates these witnesses, while the proverb, Inglese Italianato è un diavolo incarnato, quoted by Sidney, Howell, Parker, Ascham, shows how pernicious to the coarser natures of the north were the refined vices of the south.
In the autumn of 1575 Drake returned to England with a new friend, Thomas Doughty, a soldier-scholar of the Renaissance, clever and good company, but one of those 'Italianate' Englishmen who gave rise to the Italian proverb: Inglese italianato è diavolo incarnato 'an Italianized Englishman is the very Devil. Doughty was patronized by the Earl of Essex, who had great influence at court.
Roger Ascham says, "I was once in Italy myself, but I thank God my abode there was but nine days; and yet I saw in that little time, in one city, more liberty to sin than ever I heard tell of in our noble city of London in nine years." He quotes triumphantly the proverb, Inglese italianato, diavolo incarnato.
Inglese Italianato è un diavolo incarnato passed into a proverb: we find it on the lips of Parker, of Howell, of Sidney, of Greene, and of Ascham; while Italy itself was styled by severe moralists the court of Circe.
"Inglese Italianato?" "E un diavolo incarnato! You know the proverb?" She did not. Nor did it seem applicable to a young man who had spent a quiet winter in Rome with his mother. But Cecil, since his engagement, had taken to affect a cosmopolitan naughtiness which he was far from possessing. "Well," said he, "I cannot help it if they do disapprove of me.
But, as the old proverb puts it, 'Inglese Italianato è un diavolo incarnato. 'An Englishman assuming the Italian habit is a devil in the flesh. The Italians were depraved, but spiritually feeble. The English playwright, when he brought them on the stage, arrayed with intellectual power and gleaming with the lurid splendour of a Northern fancy, made them tenfold darker and more terrible.
Word Of The Day