the seventeenth century, and few people will dispute this decision. . . . His subjects, . . though obviously suggested by Horace, are yet coloured by his own experience. . . . Vincenzo da Filicaia (1642-1707) owed his fame in his own day principally to his canzoni on the siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683, and on its subsequent relief. ... But these canzoni are now rightly discredited as mere florid rhetoric without a spark of genuine inspiration, and Filicaia will henceforth always be remembered for his two famous patriotic sonnets. ... We must also mention Francesco Redi (162698), . . . whose dithyramb in praise of Montepulciano wine is full of life, and energy and the best of its kind in Italian, and Alessandro Guidi (1650-1712) whose style, though possessed of all the pomposity and excessive rhetoric of the age, is nevertheless not without a certain stateliness. . . . To this century Italy also owes her first mockheroic poem, the 'Secchia Rapita,' by Alessandro Tassoni (1565-1635), which was the parent of all later poems of the kind, including Pope's 'Rape of the Lock' and Boileau's 'Lutrin.'"-L. CollisonMorley, Modern Italian literature, pp. 7-9. ITALIAN LITERATURE which is still its headquarters. Arcadia was Crudeli (1703-45). . . wrote a great quantity of 1670-1745.-Philosophy and history.-Vico.Muratori. "Among the philosophical writers who conferred so much distinction upon Italy in the eighteenth century, the first, both in order of time and of importance was Giovanni Battista Vico, a... We must pass over in silence the other 900 Neapolitan (1668-1744).... Vico's fame rests less upon any particular achievement than upon the general impression which he produces as a man greatly in advance of his age. His superiority in almost every branch of investigation except physical science, of which he knew little, arises from his unflinching application of a principle which be was almost the first of moderns to recognise, that man is to be viewed collectively. . . . As a metaphysician and a jurist, Vico's claims to attention are very high, but do not properly fall within our scope. . . . We [are concerned with] .. Vico where he comes into contact with history and literary criticism, as he does very remarkably in his criticisms upon Roman history and upon Homer. . . . [A great] name is Lodovico Antonio Muratori (1672-1745), but his imperishable monument was raised not as author but as editor. The publication of twenty-seven folio volumes of mediæval Italian historians displays a man singly equal to many learned societies. No one has stamped his name more deeply on the historical literature of his country than he has done by this publication."-R. Garnett, History of Italian literature, pp. 290, 294-295.-See also HisTORY: 25; 30. and odd poets of the academies, and proceed to Pietro Metastasio, the greatest product of Arcadia. We shall first, however, give some account of the 'melodrama' or opera, with the reform and perfection of which his name is so closely connected. Italy can claim to have given birth to the opera and finally to have brought it to maturity in the eighteenth century. . . . By this time, in fact, Italian opera had not only driven almost every other form of dramatic entertainment from the stage in the land of its birth, but had invaded virtually the whole of Europe. . . . Yet it was in many ways in a very unsatisfactory state at the beginning of the century. Scenic display was the first consideration, and the audience expected the most elaborate stage effects. . . . Some kind of reform was absolutely necessary, and the reformer appeared in Venice in the person of Apostolo Zeno (1668-1750). . . . Zeno wished to construct his plays more regularly, on the lines of French classical tragedy, without, however, rigidly observing the unities of time and space. . . . Zeno had given early proof of his abilities in historical poems such as 'L'incendio Veneto,' and he prefers classical or historical subjects for his operas, though he often merely adapts a play, like Racine's 'Andromache,' to suit his purposes. 'Scipione,' 'Semiramide,' and 'Caio Fabrizio' were among his most popular productions. With the assistance of Pariati he even dramatised 'Don Quixote' and the story of 'Hamlet.' The complete ignorance of Shakespeare prevalent in Italy at this time can be gathered from the fact that Zeno had never apparently heard of our greatest poet. 'Ambleto' is based on Saxo Grammaticus' story with some remarkable variations. . . . It is obvious that the traditions of the opera were more important than historic truth in Zeno's eyes. Everything harrowing or tragic is eliminated. . . . Zeno's best work is to be found in his oratorios, such as 'Gioaz' and 'David,' in which he was hardly surpassed by Metastasio himself. . . . Pietro Trapassi, or Metastasio (1698-1782), was born in Rome. . . . The 'Giustino' [was] a classical play composed in his fourteenth year on a subject from the 'Italia Liberata' on the lines of Gravina's own tedious productions. . . . He certainly has the true 1690-1800.-Arcadian Academy and some of its members.-Rise of opera.-Metastasio."The Arcadian Academy, which represents the first attempt at a reform, sought to counteract Marino's turgid conceits by the imagined simplicity of the pastoral life.... This Academy owes its origin to Christina of Sweden. . . . In 1690, the year after her death, the gatherings were continued. .. Italy has always been the home of academies and the Arcadian Academy, with Crescimbeni, the historian of Italian poetry, as its President (Custode) at once came into existence. . . . Very soon, thanks largely to the energy and enthusiasm of their President, the academy captured Roman society.... Colonies were established all over Italy till Crescimbeni could boast that there were over a thousand poets in the country. This was not surprising when one sonnet was enough to earn a man the title. In 1725, King John V of Portgual gave the Academy a triangular piece of ground on the Janiculum, called the Serbatoio, verse. ITALIAN LITERATURE Goldoni; Alfieri lyric gift, with the necessary touch of melancholy, and his Neapolitan cantate to Nice seem to describe a genuine passion, which breaks out in 'La Tempesta' even in those formal days. His 'La Libertà,' better known as the Ode to Nice, beginning 'Grazie agli inganni tuoi,' may be called the love-poem of the eighteenth century. Metastasio, however, was soon to find his true vocation. In 1721 ... he produced the 'Orti Esperidi,' which instantly made him famous, for it gave full scope to his rich poetic gift, his descriptive powers and the musical qualities of his 'Didone abbandonata,' his first real opera appeared in 1721. It took Naples by storm and was given at Venice and in Rome in the following year, being set to music by all the chief composers of the day. Metastasio's position was now assured, for he showed from the first a genius for writing musical verse which has never been surpassed. . . . The 'Didone' is the best of his early works.. The plays that followed'Siroe,' 'Catone in Utica,' 'Artaserse,' etc., were artificial in construction and inferior to 'Didone,' though they were enthusiastically welcomed throughout Europe. . . . Among the eleven plays of the period [between 1731 and 1740] are 'Olimpiade,' 'Adriano in Siria,' 'Clemenza di Tito,' 'Achille in Sciro,' 'Temistocle,' 'Zenobia' and 'Attilio Regolo,' which was not, however, performed till 1750, and with 'Didone' they contain his best work. . . . Metastasio had definitely separated tragedy from comedy in the opera, but comedy continued to develop on its own lines throughout the early part of the century, especially at Naples, and often in dialect, for it aimed at portraying the life of the people. The best composers wrote music for the opera-bouffe, so great was its popularity, till at last it gave birth to a masterpiece in the 'Socrate immaginario,' which has been called 'one of the most delightful productions of Italian dramatic literature.' It was planned by the witty Galiani and completed by Lorenzi, the comic dramatist, and is largely an amusing skit on a learned Neapolitan doctor. At Vienna, opera-bouffe soon ousted serious opera almost entirely. Here Casti wrote "Teodoro in Venezia' and his famous 'Prima la musica, poi le parole,' in revenge for his having once been told that Salieri had completed the music and he must provide words for it-a circumstance which clearly shows the inevitable doom that was threatening the librettist. More important was Lorenzo Da Ponte, Casti's rival for Imperial favour, a literary adventurer whose memoirs are capital reading and who ended his days in America. He was in Vienna from 1782-1793 and wrote 'Don Giovanni' and the 'Nozze di Figaro' for Mozart. But as literature the opera reached its zenith and disappeared with Metastasio and his contemporaries. Since then the words have been a mere accessory to the music."-L. Collison-Morley, Modern Italian literature, pp. 11-16, 18-22, 24-27, 31. 1710-1890. Drama. Goldoni. - Alfieri. French influence. - Romanticism. - Manzoni's influence on drama.-Pastoral plays.-Early realists. "Carlo Goldoni [1707-1793] . . . began his dramatic career as a writer of those scenarios upon which the comedians were wont to embroider as the inspiration of the moment prompted them.... Goldoni soon learned that he could not depend upon the actors to put into his story any of the finer shades of meaning or any of the subtler touches of character that were in his own image of it. So he proceeded to write out the words he wanted the actors to speak. The result was a drama, a real drama on the general ITALIAN LITERATURE outline of the Commedia."-L. MacClintock, Contemporary drama of Italy, p. 10.-"Goldoni was prosaic and matter of fact, genial and tolerant. His highest ambition was to give a picture of the life of his day, especially in Venice, exactly as he saw it. He was no satirist. His keen sense of humour made the world as it was with all its extravagances, inconsistencies and even vices, so amusing in his eyes that he had no wish to reform it. Nor was he a profound philosopher, plumbing the depths of character. He caught character as it showed itself in action without seeking for the springs that move it. Had he attempted more he could never have been the author of some 250 plays and scenarios. Yet he considered that character was the foundation of all good comedy. His personages are not passionate, for passion was not a characteristic either of Goldoni or of the age in which he lived. . . . Goldoni belonged to the middle classes and had little sympathy with the nobility. He avoids describing them as much as possible, and they are always the most artificial people in his plays. He was bound to show them some respect, however, and he yielded to popular prejudice by giving Pamela a noble father. All his admiration was reserved for the old merchant class which had made Venice great, though it had almost disappeared by the eighteenth century, and Pantalone dei Bisognosi, the typical old-fashioned Venetian father, was his ideal. . . . The merest trifle suggested a play to his fertile brain. He draws upon older writers, as in the 'Buggiardo,' founded on Corneille's 'Menteur,' or upon his own experience, as in 'Gli innamorati,' or in 'L'avventuriere onorato,' or upon an incident that had arrested his attention. Then, in a few strokes, he starts the story. You are interested at once and the plot develops as if of itself. He is at his best in street scenes, as in the 'Bottega del Caffè' or 'Il Ventaglio,' where the life and bustle were exactly suited to his mixed and uncritical audience, brought up on the 'Commedia dell' arte.'" -L. Collison-Morley, Modern Italian literature, pp. 66-67, 69-Among Goldoni's best comedies must be included "La Donna de Garbo," "Pamela nubile," "Le Baruffe chiozzotte," "I Rusteghi," "Todero Brontolon," "La Casa nova," "Il Burbero benefico," and "La Locandiera." "The place that Goldoni occupies in comedy must in tragedy be assigned to Alfieri [1749-1803]. In tragedy he is the fountainhead of Italian inspiration. Since his overmastering talent gave its first impulse to verse tragedy this form of drama has been admired and enjoyed in Italy with a relish and a steadiness that it has not achieved in any other country. Alfieri had a certain definite theory of tragedy which he followed with unswerving fidelity. He aimed at the simplicity and directness of the Greek drama. He sought to give one clear, definite action, which should advance in a straight line from beginning to end, without deviation, and carry along the characters-who are, for the most part, helplessly entangled in the toils of a relentless fate-to an inevitable destruction. For this reason the well-known confidantes of the French stage were discarded, no secondary action or episodes were admitted, and the whole play was shortened to a little more than two-thirds of the average French classic drama. . . . Alfieri's purpose in producing these plays was not to amuse an idle public, but to promulgate throughout his native land-then under Spanish domination-the great and lofty principle of liberty which inspired his whole life. A deep, uncompromising hatred of kings is seen in every drama, where ITALIAN LITERATURE invariably a tyrant figures as the villain. Romanticism Early Realists There is a constant declamation against tyranny and slavery. Liberty is portrayed as something dearer than life itself. The struggle for freedom forms the subjects of five of his plays, 'Virginia,' 'The Conspiracy of the Pazzi,' 'Timoleon,' the 'First Brutus,' and the 'Second Brutus.' One of these is dedicated to George Washington-'Liberator dell' America. The warmth of feeling with which, in the 'Conspiracy of the Pazzi,' the degradation and slavery of Florence under the Medici is depicted, betrays clearly Alfieri's sense of the political state of Italy in his own day. And the poet undoubtedly has gained the gratitude of his countrymen for his voicing of that love for liberty which has always existed in their hearts. . . . There is a uniformity, or even a monotony, in these nineteen plays, whose characters are more or less alike, whose method of procedure is the same, whose sentiments are analogous, and in which an activity devoid of incident hurries the reader to an inevitable conclusion, foreseen from the first act. And yet the student cannot fail to detect great tragic power, sombre and often unnatural, but never producing that sense of the ridiculous which sometimes mars the effect of Victor Hugo's dramas. The plots are never obscure, the language is never trivial, and the play ends with a climax which leaves a profound impression."-L. O. Kuhns, Vittorio Alfieri (World's Best Literature, J. W. Cunliffe and A. H. Thorndike, ed., v. 1, PP. 372374). "In direct contrast to the comedy of Goldoni, the tragedy of Alfieri is not native to Italian soil, has no root in the life of the people. It is rather a purely conventional art drama on the classical model. . . "This influence of French models upon Italian literature, notably upon drama, is one of the outstanding features of the modern movement. The borrowing from the French is incessant; all aspects of the movement had had a prompt echo in Italy.... Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) ... when still a youth. . . became acquainted with Northern literature under the guidance of Madame de Staël.... Through her he became acquainted with the plays of Shakespeare, whom he passionately admired. . . . He wrote two important plays,... Il Conte di Carmagnola (1819) and Adelchi (1822). . . . From a technical point of view Manzoni is of great importance in the history of the drama. In his day the Italian play was still saddled with the weight of the three unities, and other conventional working rules. . . . Manzoni is the outstanding dramatic writer of Italian Romanticism: [See also below: 1750-1873.] Next to Manzoni . . . the man who stands out above the group is Giovanni Battista Niccolini (1782-1861). He was prominent enough to give his name to a type of play. After his tragedy Nabucco, the patriotic drama came to be called the 'tragedia Niccoliana.' He enjoyed in his own day a most flattering success, which may have been due to the popular nature of his subject matter rather than to the dramatic or poetic merits of his plays; William Dean Howells, however, who has translated parts of Niccolini's best known play, Arnaldo di Brescia, calls this play a mighty tragedy."-L. MacClintock, Contemporary drama of Italy, pp. 13, 15, 19, 21.-Among his plays are "Polissena," 1870, "Media," 1812, "Nabucco," 1816, "Antonio Foscarini," 1821, "Giovanni da Procida," 1830, "Ludovico Sforza," 1832, "Rosmunda d'Inghilterra," 1838, "Arnaldo di Brescia," 1843, and "Felippo Strozzi," 1847. "It is Pietro Cossa that stands out as the commanding figure of this epoch of the Italian theatre; he was the first ITALIAN LITERATURE genuine man of the theatre of the nineteenth century. . . . Nero is in many respects Cossa's best play and remains almost a great play. . . . Besides Nero one is tempted to single out for mention Messalina, called by some critics his best, and Cleopatra, in connection with which Costetti has not hesitated to mention the name of Shakespeare. As a poet Cossa seldom rose above the level of mediocrity, but his average verse is quite well suited to dramatic dialogue. While the his torical play in its various varieties was the most characteristic product of Italian Neo-Romanticism, the pastoral play was, fortunately, confined to the sixties and seventies. Marenco, just as he had invented the Dramma medievale, boasts that with his Marcellina (1860), Giorgio Gandi (1861) and Celeste (1866) he set a fashion and wrote the first of a long line of similar plays. Indeed they did start a type of drama as false to life as it was to art. . . . The same motives which in America inspired the New England farm drama found their expression in Italy in the pastoral plays of Marenco and his followers. Paolo Giacometti (1816-1882), though the best of them, serves to represent a large group of writers who flourished at this time, whose cry was sensation, and whose effort was solely for effect- . . . the large group of melodramatists. . . . He is put in the front rank of melodramatic playwrights by his two plays Maria Antonietta, Regina di Francia and La Morte Civile, which Tonelli calls the most notable works of Italian basso romanticismo. The latter was particularly important. . . . It was Paolo Giacometti who produced what we are justified in calling the first comedy of manners of the modern school, a play which he assures us is an étude sur le vif, and a picture of manners or satire in dialogue rather than a comedy-The Poet and the Dancing Girl (Il Poeta e la Ballerina). ... Felice Cavalotti wrote comedies also, his The Song of Songs and Love Letters, delightful and flimsy pieces, still being seen occasionally; but with Paolo Ferrari, Achille Torelli, Del Testa and Martini comedy really anticipates the modern movement. That realism which is latent in the historical plays and melodramas becomes vocal in the comedies. The plays of Paolo Ferrari (18221889) fall inevitably into three groups: in the first historical plays, in the manner of Goldoni in which Ferrari did his most expert work, producing two masterpieces Goldoni and his Sixteen New Comedies (Goldoni e le sue sedici commedie nuove) (1852) and Satire and Parini (La Satira e Parini) (1856) both on subjects derived from Italian literary history; in the second group are plays of popular inspiration and of contemporary life, A Sick Girl's Medicine (La medecina d'onna ragazza amaleda) and Uncle Venanzio's Will (Il Codicillo del Zio Venanzio); in the third group, under the inspiration of Augier, Dumas fils and Pailleron, he goes frankly over to the pièce à thèse."—Ibid., pp. 26-31.-—In this group, besides other plays, are "Prose," 1867, "The Dual," 1868, and "Ridicule," 1872. 1750-1873.-Satirical poetry of Parini.Growth of national consciousness.-Revival of classical influence.-Monti.-Poetry and criticism of Foscolo.-Pindemonte.-Leopardi.Romantic spirit.-Poetry and novels of Manzoni. -Giuseppe Parini "was born in Bosisio, an obscure town of the Milanese, on the 22d of May, 1729.... He had to struggle with hard poverty all his life, and engaged in work as a private tutor to support himself and his mother. At every leisure moment he labored on what he intended should be his great work, a satire which National Consciousness he called 'Il Giorno,' or 'The Day,' which he published in parts. He attracted the favorable notice of the Austrian minister in Lombardy, who encouraged his writing and ultimately obtained for him some important positions as Professor of Literature, where his lectures bore worthy fruit. He joined a so-called patriotic society, which engaged him to write the funeral eulogy of the Empress Maria Theresa. . . . The premature reforms of Joseph II drew his attention to politics. On the arrival of the French in Milan, he was placed on the magistracy of the city . . . but he died poor, on the 15th of August, 1799. The chief work of Parini is his satire of "The Day' in three parts, 'Morning,' 'Noon,' and 'Evening.' It is conceived precisely in the temper of the Roman satirist Persius, and is a bitter piece of irony, arraigning the worthless young nobility of Milan their indolence, their frivolity, their effeminacy, their surrender to the cook, the barber, and the dancing-master."-W. Everett, Italian poets since Dante, PP. 217-219.-"If Parini had paved the way for the moral regeneration of Italy and Alfieri for the political, it was to the French Revolution that she owed her first taste of liberty and self-government.. But a restoration of the old governments did not mean a restoration of the old order of things. . . . Italy had become conscious of herself as a nation, and unity and independence were soon the goals towards which all that was best in the land was struggling. Just as in the Middle Ages the ideal was religious, as at the Renaissance it was aesthetic, so now it had become political. Hence it is impossible to separate literature from politics, for the idea of Italian unity gradually becomes the dominant note in the one as in the other. This transi tion period is noticeable for a steady revival of the classical influence in poetic form, while even in content classicism recovered much lost ground. Its most typical representative in every way was Vincenzo Monti (1754-1828)."-L. Collison-Morley, Modern Italian literature, pp. 143-144"When Alfieri died . . . there was a strong feeling, which lasted long, that his true successor, the veritable regenerator of Italian poetry, was Vincenzo Monti. . . . He was sent to the University of Ferrara, and developed such fondness for literature and poetry that he gave up his life to them entirely. He was admitted to the academy called Arcadia, where he showed a disposition to satire and a dislike of criticism by no means acceptable to his coadjutors. . . . Alfieri was at this time winning his first tragic successes, and Monti brought out a drama called 'Aristodemus,' [1786] in which was to be all Alfieri's life and force with greater elegance of style. . . . The 'Aristodemus' has a plot that revolted everybody and I fail to find in it any compensating attraction. Monti followed it up with 'Galeotto Manfredi,' and subsequently with 'Caius Gracchus,' both in imitation of Alfieri, but they have little force. About this time Basseville, the Girondist ambassador at Rome, was assassinated in the streets, and Monti poured himself forth in a poem in which all the horrors of the ultra-Catholics and Legitimists against the French Convention was displayed in what was supposed to be the true style of Dante. He retained this tone for some years, till, on the advent of Napoleon, he discovered that here was to be the deliverer of Italy; and the same pen that had compared Lewis XVI to the Savior of the world was employed to extol Bonaparte as the savior of the Italians. Monti was employed in the service of the Cisalpine Republic, and Bonaparte, hearing one of his poems in honor of revolutionary liberty, declared him a mighty genius. . . . Monti continued to exalt Bonaparte through his career, but interrupted his court poetry to prepare a translation of Homer, admitting he knew no Greek. After Napoleon's fall, he composed two poems in praise of the imperial house of Austria, and lived on, a voluminous and controversial bookman, till 1828."I W. Everett, Italian poets since Dante, pp. 220-222. "Monti... was always an improvvisatore, and the subjects which events cast in his way were like the themes which the improvvisatore received from his audience. He applied his poetic faculty to their celebration with marvelous facility, and, doubtless, regarded the results as rhetorical feats. His poetry was an art, not a principle; and perhaps he was really surprised when people thought him in earnest, and held him personally to account for what he wrote. 'A man of sensation, rather than sentiment,' says Arnaud, 'Monti cared only for the objective side of life. He poured out melodies, colors, and chaff in the service of all causes.' . . . Of course such a man instinctively hated the ideas of the Romantic school, and he contested their progress in literature with great bitterness. He believed that poetry meant feigning, not making; and he declared that 'the hard truth was the grave of the beautiful.' . . . His poems fill many volumes; and all display the ease, . perspicuity, and obvious beauty of the improvvisatore."-W. D. Howells, Modern Italian poets, pp. 110-111.-"Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827), the second eminent poet of the revolutionary period, successively Monti's champion and his adversary, is in most respects a violent contrast to him. . . . His romance, Jacopo Ortis (1798), perhaps the most celebrated of his productions, is a reminiscence of Werther and a forerunner of René, but adds to the merely personal sorrows of these tragic autobiographies the nobler motive of despair at the ruin and enslavement of the hero's country. Foscolo, though born at Zante, was prouder of his Venetian descent than of his Greek nativity, and the ignominious end of so glorious a history as the Republic's not unnaturally or ignobly drove him to despair. . . . Unlike the exuberant Monti, Foscolo wrote little poetry, but his scanty production is of choice quality. His most celebrated poem is the Sepolcri (1807), which in style and subject bears a remarkable resemblance to . . . Bryant's Thanatopsis. . . . Foscolo's other most considerable poetical composition, his Hymns to the Graces, celebrated as the beneficent spirits of Greece, Italy, and an ideal world, was long but an aggregation of fragments, and was recovered as a whole only in 1856. Foscolo's tragedies, Ajax and Ricciarda, are fine compositions in the spirit of Alfieri. The few minor poems of Foscolo are admirable. . . . As a critic he accomplished more than it will be easy to accomplish after him, coming just at the moment when Europe, weary of the superficial aesthetics of the eighteenth century, was anxiously looking for a guide to the spirit of the past. It is as much by this happy fortune as by their intrinsic merit that his essays mark an era in the literary history of Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, and Boccaccio. . . . Little Ippolito Pindemonte (1754-1825) resembled Foscolo either as an author or as a man, their names are frequently associated on account of Pindemonte's reply to Foscolo's Sepolcri, a fine poem breathing the spirit of resignation and tranquillity, for which his gloomy predecessor had left him abundant scope. Pindemonte's best production, however, is his Antonio Foscarini, a true tale of unhappy love, recited with great pathos in ele as gant octaves.... Monti and Foscolo, with their genius, could not escape the influence of their times. In the French and Italian literature of the Imperial period, and still more in its art, a certain pseudo-classical affectation is visible."-R. Garnett, History of Italian literature, pp. 337-342. -"In the year 1798, at Recanati, a little mountain town of Tuscany, was born, noble and miserable, the poet Giacomo Leopardi.... At the age of sixteen . . . Leopardi already knew all Greek and Latin literature; he knew French, Spanish and English; he knew Hebrew, and disputed in that tongue with the rabbis of Ancona."-W. D. Howells, Modern Italian poets, p. 245.-"At eighteen he wrote a remarkable poem on the Approach of Death. . . . In 1819 he wrote and published two odes, expressing the deep distress of all his countrymen at the sad position in which Italy found herself.... No lyrics so powerful had been written since Filicaja, one should rather say since Petrarch. . . . He published more poems which, like all he wrote, received the warmest applause.... [He] drifted to Florence, where he formed a new and considerate friend in Ranieri, with whom he passed the last few years of his life in Naples. During these he wrote one tremendous satire on his country's foreign tyrants. But the feeble frame was worn out, and he died on the 15th of June, 1837."-W. Everett, Italian poets since Dante, pp. 234-235.-"Leopardi's poems, though the majority are in blank verse, may generally be defined as canzoni, either odes in the strict sense of the term, addresses to friends, impassioned outpourings of lovely thought, ITALIAN LITERATURE and Place, demonstrating that the unity of action is the only unity which need be regarded by the dramatist."-Ibid., pp. 342-345, 348-349. 1827-1872.-Political activity and writings of Gioberti and Mazzini.-"Among the more distinguished authors. . . who systematically laboured for the deliverance and regeneration of their country must be named two most illustrious men, both called upon to deal with practical affairs, yet chiefly efficacious through their writings, Vincenzo Gioberti and Giuseppe Mazzini. Both were subjects of the King of Sardinia-Gioberti a royal chaplain at Turin; Mazzini a man of letters at Genoa writing essays in defence of the romantic school. Both were incarcerated and banished-Gioberti through the animosity of the Jesuits, Mazzini as a Carbonaro. Gioberti betook himself to France, Mazzini to England. Gioberti soon obtained an European reputation by his philosophical writings, but does not appear to have materially influenced French opinion in favour of his country. Mazzini, on the other hand, produced great effects by his mission to England, VINCENZO GIOBERTI or apostrophes to inanimate objects. . . Three of the most celebrated odes, To Italy, On the Florentine monument to Dante, and To Angelo Mai on the Recovery of Cicero de Republica, may be styled patriotic.... Leopardi's blank verse is the finest in Italian literature. . . . [His] prose works, his correspondence and philological essays excepted, are, like his poetry, limited in extent and in range of subject, but incomparable for refinement and beauty of form. . . . The most remarkable of his prose writings are the Dialogues, which almost all turn upon the everlasting theme of the misery of mankind."-R. Garnett, History of Italian literature, pp. 360-362.-"The reigning taste required to be brought nearer to Nature, and the writer who could effect this was sure to mark an epoch in the literature of his country. The mission was discharged by Alessandro Manzoni, a man who announces a new departure in many ways. From one point of view he signalises the invasion of the romantic spirit. . . . From another, he founds the Neo-Catholic school, and personifies the revival of the religious spirit in its most gentle and edifying form. . . . In 1812 he began to produce his hymns, mostly on the festivals of the Church. . . . They attracted little attention until the appearance of his famous ode on the death of Napoleon, Il Cinque Maggio. . . . A patriotic poem of equal power, the ode on the march of the Piedmontese volunteers to succour the... died suddenly in 1852, just as a new chapter Lombards in 1821. . . has suffered less, or indeed nothing, from the lapse of time. [See also above: 1710-1890.] . . . If Manzoni was surpassed as a dramatist and equalled as a lyrist by others among his countrymen, he has hitherto found no competitor as a novelist. I Promessi Sposi (1825) was the first great Italian romance, and it remains the greatest. . . . His other prose works comprise, the Column of Infamy, an historical appendix to I Promessi Sposi, Letters on Romanticism, an able polemic on behalf of the romantic school, and Letters on the Unities of Time where the 'swift, yet still, Ligurian figure; merciful and fierce; true as steel, the word and thought of him limpid as water' (Carlyle), fascinated the best men and women, and made the emancipation of Italy a cause dear to the heart of the people. ... Gioberti accomplished infinitely more for the national cause by his great book, Il Primato d'Italia (1845), which dissuaded Italy from abortive conspiracies, and preached spiritual as a preparation for political unity. It also, by its own merits and the reputation which the author had already gained as a thinker, compelled men of intellect to look into her case. . . . Gioberti of events was opening.... It would have been well for the political, though not the literary reputation of Mazzini if he had died about the same time in the good odour of the courage and capacity he had shown in the defence of Rome against the French.... His public career down to his death in 1872 is a series of lamentable mistakes.... Happily there was another and more extensive field in which this enthusiasm was perfectly in place. Mazzini was much more than a conspirator, more even than a patriot. As a man of letters, he concerned himself with Ger |