UGO FOSCOLO

1778-1827.

The most necessary quality of an author is, that he should impress us with the conviction that he has something to say. In reading his pages, we ought to feel that he puts down the overflowing of his mind—ideas and notions which, springing up spontaneously, force a birth for themselves from the womb of silence, and acquire an existence through their own native energy and vitality. An author, therefore, is a human being whose thoughts do not satisfy his mind, ruminated on merely in his own isolated bosom: he requires sympathy, a world to listen, and the echo of assent from his fellow-creatures. But this is not all. Few men can be excited by a mere abstraction, by the images of their own mind, and the desire of communicating them for the benefit of their fellow-creatures. Pride or vanity mingle essentially in the fabric of a writer's mind: the pride which leads him to desire to build up an enduring monument for his name, formed from his own compositions; or the vanity that leads him to introduce himself to the reader, and to court the notoriety which usually attends those who let the public into the secret of their individual passions or peculiarities.

The three great authors of modern Italy form a singular contrast to each other, as to their apparent motives for authorship. Alfieri, proud, independent, and gloomy, sought at once to honour his own name, to exalt and refine his countrymen, and to produce such works as would benefit his species; while the vehement passions of his own soul were their primal source and inspiration. Monti was a poet of the imagination. He wrote because the imagery, the melody, the aerial fabric of poesy were a part of his essence. The subjects of his poems were of less consequence, in his eyes, than the well treating them, or the variety, grandeur, and fantastic ideality displayed in his verses. Thus, at the word of command, he could celebrate the usurper, taint the struggles of a noble and free nation, and adorn the naked form of despotism with garments of beauty. Foscolo, on the contrary, was impelled to produce and reproduce himself: and yet to this assertion we must put some limit, for Foscolo was a man of learning and taste, and he was capable of giving light to compositions formed by the rules of art, and adorned by the graces culled from an intimate knowledge of the finest of human works. But vanity was still the mainspring,—a vanity accompanied by honesty of principle and independence of soul, and yet which was vanity—the worship of self—the making his own individuality the mirror in which the world was reflected.

Ugo Foscolo was born in the island of Zante, about the year 1778. The Ionian isles had long been under the dominion of Venice. The family of Foscolo was of Venetian origin; and his father was a surgeon in the navy of the republic. Little is known of his early years. He seldom mentioned them in conversation, though his imagination sometimes delighted to recur to the sunny land of his birth, and to regret it. In one of his sonnets he exclaims,—

The Ionian islands were at that time held as colonies of the Venetian government, and tyrannised over by the most odious and oppressive laws. Among others, no schools nor colleges were allowed to exist, and the youth of the islands were sent to Venice for the purposes of education. At an early age, therefore, Foscolo repaired to the parent city. His father, it would seem, was at this time dead, for we hear only of his mother, to whom he was always tenderly attached; and it appears that she, also, transferred herself to Venice at the same period. Foscolo seldom mentioned his family, with the exception of his mother. He had two brothers, one who died, it is reported by his own hand, about the year 1797; the other enlisted as a soldier, and rose, from his good conduct and valour, to the rank of captain of dragoons.

When boyhood was passed, Foscolo was sent to the university of Padua, and studied under Cesarotti. There was great dissimilarity in the tastes and literary opinions of the master and pupil; and thus Foscolo soon displayed his original and independent turn of mind. Cesarotti explained and commented upon Homer, and undertook at the same time to emend and improve the verses of the father of poetry. He preferred Voltaire to Euripides, and Ossian to Homer. While a great portion of ridicule attaches itself to such paradoxes, the real learning and extensive reading of the professor benefited his scholars; and by liberating them from the narrow system of instruction which had subsisted for many years, he introduced them, as it were, from the paled and guarded park of classical literature, to the wilds, the moors, the incult mountains, in short, to all the vast variety of unfettered nature.

Foscolo, though taught by the advocate of Ossian, was all his life a worshipper of Homer. Studious, as well as ardent in his literary pursuits, he became a critical scholar; and, admiring not only Greek poetry, but the fabric and machinery which constitute its structure, he modelled his own poetic productions on them, and made ancient mythology, and allusions to classical history, the props as well as the ornaments of his verses. At the same time he admitted Cesarotti's rules with regard to the Italian language, and abandoned the dialect of the Trecentisti,—so long held up as a model, and yet which had become a dead tongue,—to form an animated, simple, living language, introducing into it phrases and words of modern use; expressions for ever on the lips of the Italians, though heretofore banished from their pens.

We are told that, on leaving college, Foscolo hesitated whether to enter the clerical profession, which held out the prospect of competency to its followers; but he was fortunately turned aside from a profession whose narrow rules and arbitrary laws were in direct opposition to his impetuous and independent disposition. Instead of assuming the tonsure, Foscolo resolved to follow in the steps of Alfieri, and to acquire fame as a tragedian. 1797.
Ætat.
19. He produced his drama of "Thyestes" at the early age of nineteen; and it may be said to be a creditable production for a youth. It is from his after works that we judge that it was not inexperience, but an absolute defect of a certain species of talent, that made this boy's tragedy a mere bald imitation of those of his illustrious predecessor. Alfieri was not a fanciful poet; his talent lay in developing plot, animating dialogue, and interesting the reader by the clash of passion, or the concentrated feelings of a single person. Foscolo possessed far more of the peculiar spirit of poetry; but it was of didactic poetry. He could not invent incident, nor describe any feelings but such as originated in his own heart. "Thyestes," founded on one of the domestic crimes of the unfortunate house of Pelops, possesses all the faults of Alfieri's tragedies. He imitated him in producing only a few personages on the scene; so that, as a critic observes, it seems as if it were written just after the deluge, when the human race congregated by threes and fours: obscurity of plot is added to this simplicity of action, and the purpose and aim of the poet is never clearly discerned. One scene follows another, not because produced by the antecedent one, but because it is necessary that something should be said and done, or all would be at a full stop. The language is clear and energetic; but, as we are uninterested by the ideas which it conveys, this must appear a very secondary merit.

"Thyestes," however, succeeded in the theatre; and, as success in representation is certainly the test of dramatic merit, we might suppose some latent energy in its concoction, unapparent to the reader, but that its success appears to have arisen from political feeling. It was acted for the first time on January 4. 1797, in the theatre of St. Angelo at Venice, to a vast concourse of spectators, and was repeated with applause for nine consecutive nights. The extreme youth of the author filled the audience with admiration, and he was called for after the representation. We cannot well discern the political allusions that gave it its chief interest, except that the name of king and tyrant are made synonymous; a style, it might be imagined, neither distasteful nor injurious to a republican government, however aristocratic. It would appear, however, that this avidity for liberal sentiments was the cause of its temporary success; for it was never again acted on any stage in Italy.

Adversity meanwhile was hanging over the head of the poet. The fall of Venice, which occurred in the autumn of the same year, deprived him of the very name of country. Hatred of the Austrian is a sentiment profoundly engraved in every Italian heart; and when Venice was made over by treaty to the German despot, Foscolo became a voluntary exile. Whether he was in danger of being marked out in any of the lists of proscription does not appear; but as it is evident that he is the hero of his "Letters of Jacopo Ortis," we gather from that book, that his friends feared for his personal liberty if he remained, and besought him to shelter himself, while there was yet time, from the enmity of the new government. "I have left Venice," Ortis writes, "to avoid the first and most violent persecutions. How many victims remain! We Italians ourselves bathe our hands in Italian blood. Let what will happen to me! Since I despair of good, either for myself or my country, I can await in tranquillity a prison or death."

All these letters are full of the indignant struggles, and the sorrow, as well as of the opinions which ruled the heart of Foscolo, as he found himself driven a wanderer from his home, sometimes lamenting his own misfortunes, sometimes those of his country.

"How many of our fellow-citizens repent their flight from home," he writes, "and mourn! for what can we expect except indigence and indignity—or, at the best, that brief and sterile compassion which uncivilised nations offer to the stranger exile? And where shall I seek an asylum—in Italy? Unhappy land! and can I behold those who have robbed, scorned, and sold us, and not weep with rage? Oh! if the tyrants were one only, and if the slaves were less abject, my hand would suffice. But those who now blame me for cowardice would then accuse me of crime; and the prudent would lament over, not the heroism of one resolved, but the frenzy of a desperate man. What can be done between two powerful nations, who, from being sworn, ferocious, and eternal enemies, colleague to enslave us? and where force alone does not avail, the one cajoles us with the name of liberty, the other with that of religion; and we, debased by ancient servitude and new-born licence, groan, betrayed, enslaved, famished, and yet not roused, either by treason or famine. Ah! if I could, I would destroy my house and all dear to me, and myself with them; I would leave nothing for the tyrants to triumph over. Were there not people who, to escape the Romans, robbers of the world, gave to the flames their dwellings, their wives, their children, and themselves, burying their sacred independence among the glorious ashes of their country?"

Thus passionately attached to liberty, Foscolo was not to be deluded by the false halo that then surrounded the name of Bonaparte, or by the fallacious promises of the French republican crusaders. "Another set of lovers of their country," he writes, "lament loudly. They exclaim that they are betrayed and sold; but, if they had armed themselves, they might have been conquered, but never had been betrayed; and if they had defended themselves to the last drop of blood, the conquerors could not have sold, nor would the conquered have sought to buy, them. Many of our countrymen imagine that freedom can be bought with money. They fancy that foreign nations come from a disinterested love of justice to slaughter each other mutually on our fields, for the sake of liberating Italy. But will the French, who have rendered the divine theory of public liberty execrable, become Timoleons for our sakes? Many, meanwhile, confide in the young hero, sprung from Italian blood, born where our language is spoken. But I expect nothing useful or noble from a cruel and base mind. What is it to me that he has the strength and roar of the lion, if he have the soul of a fox—and glories in it? Yes! base and cruel; nor are these epithets exaggerated. Has he not sold Venice, with open and boasted barbarity? Selim I., who caused 30,000 Circassian warriors, who had surrendered, confiding in his faith, to be massacred on the shores of the Nile; and Nadir Shah, who, in our time, massacred 300,000 Indians, are more atrocious, but less contemptible. With these eyes I saw a democratic constitution signed by the young hero; yes, it was subscribed by his own hand, and sent by Passeriano to Venice for acceptance; and at that very time the treaty of Campo Formio was already confirmed and ratified: Venice was sold; and the confidence which the hero fostered in us all, has filled Italy with proscriptions and exiles. I do not blame the reasons of state, through which nations are sold like flocks of sheep; it was ever so, and so will it ever be: but I grieve for my country, which I have lost. 'He was born Italian, and will one day regenerate his country:' others may believe this,—I never can. I replied, and shall always reply, 'Nature made him a tyrant, and a tyrant cares not for his country, nor does he possess one.'"

Ruminating on all these violent and bitter feelings, the offspring of patriotism and adversity, Foscolo took the road to Tuscany. "In this blessed land," he writes, "poetry and letters first awoke from barbarism. Wherever I turn, I behold the houses where were born, and the turf that covers, those renowned Tuscans; and I fear at every step to tread on their remains. Tuscany is a garden, its inhabitants are naturally courteous, the sky serene, and the air full of life and health; but I am not happy here. I hope always for better things on the morrow, when I shall reach another town: but to-morrow arrives, and I pass from city to city; and this state of exile and solitude grows each day more unendurable. We Italians are foreigners and exiles even in Italy; and scarcely do we leave our little native territory, than neither understanding, nor fame, nor blameless habits can shelter us; and we are lost if we endeavour to distinguish ourselves. Our very fellow-citizens look upon all Italians who are not natives of their own town, and on whose limbs the same chains do not hang, as strangers." Thus Tuscany afforded no asylum to the fugitive. He desired to see no one in Florence except Alfieri; and the retired and reserved habits of the count prevented his seeking his acquaintance. He saw him, as he describes in one of his poems, wandering silently along the most solitary bank of the Arno, gazing anxiously on earth and heaven; but, finding nothing living that could warm his heart, he took refuge in the aisles of Santa Croce, while wished-for death overspread his countenance with pallid hues."[54] The silence and the concentrated melancholy of Alfieri made a deep impression on the mind of his admirer; and Foscolo sought afterwards to imitate it in his own person, forgetful that his natural impetuosity and vehemence were very dissimilar to the gloom and pride of his model.

From Florence, Foscolo pursued his way to Milan, which was then the capital of the Cisalpine republic, and imparted its rights of citizenship to all the wandering patriots of Italy. The new republic afforded a strange spectacle: formed upon notions of Greek and Roman liberty, picked up from learned priests, mingled with modern notions of freedom, it displayed the most ridiculous anachronisms; and its members, all Italians, yet strangers to each other, and regarding with oblique looks all those born in a different city, met without amalgamating. The young found hope and life in the new stage on which they were permitted to act a part; and though ridicule and blame might be attached to many of their public actions, still the more sanguine lovers of their country hoped that, when the first springtide of enthusiasm should ebb, prudence, unanimity, and strength would be the first born of national independence. Foscolo, however, was not among those. Irascible and misanthropic, and sensitively alive to the sufferings of his fellow-creatures, he saw the evils around him, and desponded.

One of the advantages derived from this new capital was, that it served to draw together the most distinguished Italians within the walls of the same city. Each town of the peninsula sent some man esteemed for his talents; and names, scattered before over the surface of the country, now congregated together. Foscolo had thus an opportunity of becoming acquainted with all his more illustrious countrymen. In his "Letters of Jacopo Ortis," he mentions Parini especially with reverence and affection; and he became intimate also with Monti, who then displayed fervour in the cause of liberty, while his inward dislike for the members of the actual government must have accorded with the sentiments of Foscolo. Two decrees, passed at that time, served, indeed, to show that blame deservedly attached itself to them: one was the law enacted to deprive of office all those who had formerly written against liberty—an act of despotism levelled expressly against Monti; the other was the sentence passed by the great council against the Latin language: whether it was because Latin was the language of their religion and the priests, or from mere stupid barbarism, they passed a decree to prohibit its being taught in the public schools. Foscolo saw, in the languages of the ancient world, not only the root of all our knowledge, but also the most splendid monuments of human intellect: he knew how fallacious and trivial all translations are; he was imbued to the heart with a love of classic lore; and he saw, in the suppression of the Latin, the paramount influence of the French language. No wonder that he, as well as every well-educated man, regarded such a law and its promulgators with mingled scorn and disgust.

To make the resemblance between Foscolo and his imaginary hero, Jacopo Ortis, the more exact, we are told that, at this very time, he fell in love with a young lady of Pisa: his passions, naturally vehement, were inflamed to their utmost by the influence of the most engrossing of them all. The object of his attachment was singularly beautiful; her large black eyes, rich raven hair, her dignified stature and noble carriage, her whole person, in short, cast in the very mould of majestic beauty, was formed to inspire admiration and love. She possessed also all that natural talent which so usually falls to the lot of Italian women: her voice was harmonious, and her proficiency in music great. She was known afterwards to several of the biographers of her lover; and, with the simplicity and frankness usual to the Italians, spoke openly of their mutual attachment. One among them, after calling the lady "the flower of all loveliness," adds, "We heard from her—for she yet lives—that the few lines cited as being written by Teresa, in a letter of Ortis, dated 17th September, 1798, were a part of a letter which she wrote to Foscolo."[55] Giuseppe Pecchio, in his Life of Foscolo, speaks of her with great enthusiasm: "I saw her," he writes, "several times after she was married, when, at a private theatre, she took the part of Isabella in the 'Filippo' of Alfieri; and I still remember, with pleasure, her dignified action and her expressive countenance, which filled the audience with enthusiasm, and carried their feelings along with her."

This attachment was not fortunate; and Foscolo suffered all the throes of disappointment and grief. Violent in all his feelings, love possessed his heart like a burning fire; he grew sullen and gloomy, only breaking silence by muttering a few sentences indicative of his ardent desire for self-destruction. He did not openly speak of his passion; but his feelings overflowed on paper, and he wrote and published "The Letters of Two Lovers," a sort of novel, which afterwards served as a foundation to the "Letters of Ortis." While thus occupied by literature and love, he added the duties of a more laborious profession. Bonaparte, having created the Cisalpine republic, strove to raise an Italian army for its defence. The Lombard legion formed the nucleus of these troops, and the sons of the noblest families in Italy accepted commissions: among others, Foscolo became an officer.

1800.
Ætat.
22.

The absence, however, of Bonaparte in Egypt, and the invasion of the Austrio-Russian army, put a sudden end to the existence of the new republic. At the same time that Monti fled across the Alps, and wandered, a famished exile, among the ravines and woods of Savoy, Foscolo, forced also to provide for his own safety, took refuge in Genoa, and joined the French garrison commanded by Massena. It was here that the French made a last stand, endeavouring to stop the progress of the invading army. The siege of Genoa was formed; and Foscolo, serving under the French banners, had an opportunity of studying at once the military art and the science of government during the various chances of a long and arduous struggle. While day lasted, there were perpetual combats along the whole line of mountains which surround Genoa to the north; and the night was spent in popular assemblies, in which the leaders strove to inspire the citizens with resolution to endure the evils of the siege. These soon grew intolerable; and famine, and consequent disease, made frightful ravages. Foscolo sometimes collected the people together in a spot of the city made famous by the act of an Austrian corporal, who (1748) struck with his cane a Genoese, who was striving in vain to move a cannon: he endeavoured to animate his audience to heroic deeds, by describing the magnanimous vengeance with which their ancestors had vindicated the insult. Nor was he less forward in the performance of his military duties; and his name occurs in the lists of those who were most distinguished for their bravery.

During the siege, on occasion of Napoleon's return from Egypt, and being named consul, Foscolo addressed a letter to him from Genoa, which prophesied the height to which he would hereafter rise, and besought him to rest content with his present exaltation, nor to taint his well-merited renown by schemes of unmeasured ambition. This letter, which is of two pages only, is written with the freedom of a patriot and the dignity of a disinterested and noble mind. He incurred no danger by this address, but he displeased the ear of power; and the truth and frankness of his representations form an honourable contrast with the general adulation, and the barefaced flatteries, which other writers addressed to the victor.

The energetic mind of Foscolo was not satisfied by the arduous duties of his profession, to which were added the not less exciting task of guiding and animating the minds of the citizens of Genoa, when they flagged under the visitation of the most frightful calamities. It was at this period that he wrote an ode to Luigia Pallavicini, on her falling from her horse, which betrays no signs of the sufferings which he was enduring, except its motto, taken from Horace: "Sollicitæ oblivia vitæ." This poem is all grace, elegance, and classic allusion; but there is no originality nor poetic fire. The machinery is mythological, the imagery drawn from the same source; and it is rather the work of one imbued with the poetry of the ancients, and translating remembered ideas into his native language, than the outpourings of a mind inspired by passion and nature. It is strange that Foscolo should have found time to compose verses at a period when the town he inhabited was being bombarded by the English fleet, when the Austrians were making daily assaults, and the streets were filled by a famished and dying multitude. But while Foscolo shared the labours and dangers of the garrison, he did not partake their amusements; and while they were immersed in the grosser pleasures of the bottle, of cards, and smoking, he took refuge in his imagination, and found relief in the soothing and refined feelings generated by study and poetry.

Meanwhile Genoa, reduced by famine, surrendered on the 4th of June, 1800, with the condition that the garrison should be conveyed to France by the English fleet. Foscolo accompanied his fellow-soldiers, but he endured only a brief exile from his country. The battle of Marengo drove the Austrians from Italy; the Cisalpine republic was restored; and Foscolo, together with the rest of the Italian fugitives, returned to Milan.

Already known as an author and a man of letters, he increased his fame at this period by the publication of the "Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis," a romance which at once acquired great popularity, and, as being the first that had been written in the Italian language, demanded the praise of some sort of originality. Yet its chief fault is, that it is an imitation. Foscolo could not invent incidents, nor weave the artful texture of a well-told story. The plot of "Ortis" is similar to that of Goethe's more celebrated romance of "Werter." A youth of disappointed expectations, and devoured by a morbid melancholy, falls in love with a girl who is already betrothed to another. He resolves to die as soon as the marriage shall take place; but, meanwhile, fosters his passion by frequenting the society of the young lady. She had never been attached to her intended husband, and is the victim of obedience to her father's will, who, besides that his honour is engaged, would have found an insuperable obstacle to the pretensions of Ortis in his plebeian birth. His sorrowing daughter, while she obeys, returns the affection of her passionate, adoring lover; her destined husband become jealous, her father uneasy; and Ortis, called upon by duty and friendship, absents himself from her society: he travels to Florence, to Milan, to Genoa; and then, hearing of Teresa's marriage, retraces his steps to the Euganean hills, the abode of his mistress, and fulfils his long-nurtured intention of putting an end to his existence. The slight differences between this story and "Werter" are founded on Foscolo's own attachment, before alluded to.

There is, indeed, this main difference between the work of Goëthe and that of Foscolo,—that the former is, so to speak, a dramatic, and the latter a didactic, author. Goëthe founded his story on the feelings of another. He delineated the sentiments and passions of his unfortunate young friend Jerusalem; and, putting himself in his place, filled out, from his own experience and imagination, the various portions of a picture, the most highly wrought, refined, and true that, perhaps, exists in the world of fictitious portraits. Foscolo painted a beau idéal of himself. So full was his mind of his own idea, that he prefixed a portrait of Ortis, which was only a favoured likeness of himself. Like the author, Ortis fled from Venice when it was made over to the Austrians. Like the author, his heart was tortured by patriotic sufferings, and his soul was in arms against the oppressor. Ortis, like Foscolo, saw misery and evil rife around him: compassion rose with him into a passion; and his heart bled and burnt alternately, as he pitied the victim, and abhorred the tyrant. Ortis, like Foscolo, meditated suicide as the cure for all evils, and regarded death as a harbour whence to retreat from the tempests of life. Yet Foscolo did not, like Ortis, destroy himself; because, we are apt to say, he is in this greater than his prototype, since he felt powers and capacities within him that led him to continue to endure the evils of life, to raise for himself a name among his fellow-creatures, to benefit and to exhort them; while Ortis, like a weak plant that wants all self-erecting power, fell prostrate, and was trampled on by the iron heels of destiny. Egotists, perhaps, are, of all people, the least likely to put an end to themselves; yet they like to dwell on their own deaths, and, feeling that the drama of their lives is incomplete without a striking catastrophe, they ponder on it, and, if led to bring themselves forward, are pretty sure to adorn their lives by describing its disastrous conclusion.

This morbid shrinking from the woes of existence, this total want of fortitude, added to a lively sensibility, presents a picture which, a few years ago, was the model by which the youth of Europe delighted to dress their minds. Men need a career—an hope, an aim: the French revolution first gave new life to these natural instincts, and then, aided by Napoleon's despotism, blighted and tore them up. Since then, a better day has dawned, and men are glad to live for the morrow, since each day is full of spirit-stirring expectation. The influence of a book like "Ortis" is null now: it was pernicious at the time when it was written. And yet, in representing his hero as a self-destroyer, Foscolo was not without moral aim. The Italians fear death to the extent of the most contemptible cowardice; they consider any one insane who engages in any actions that even remotely endanger his life; and Foscolo was earnest to prove that death was not the worst of evils, but that it might be sought voluntarily as a refuge from slavery or woe. We find, therefore, conjoined to intolerance of personal suffering, the most ardent patriotism, integrity, and independence of spirit; lively compassion for the physical evils of the poor, which are too often disregarded; and observations on life and our natural feelings, full of delicacy and profound truth. What more true than the remark, "that we are too proud to give our compassion, when we feel that we can give nothing else?" What can come more home to a man of sensibility than the exclamation of Ortis,—"I am always in perfect harmony with the unhappy, for indeed I always find something wicked in the prosperous?" And, again, when he says, "Let us gather up a treasure of dear and soothing feelings, which, during the course of years, destined, perhaps, to be sad and persecuted, may awaken the memory that we have not always been unhappy." Another merit which these letters have may be mentioned, which an Italian author has also discovered: they display a love for, and an observation of, nature, seldom found among their greatest writers. The Italians, generally speaking, are not lovers of nature: full of passion and talent, yet they do not ally themselves to the mighty mother, nor do their pulses beat responsive to her varied and living phenomena. Dante alone, perhaps, displays a true feeling for external objects, describing them as they are, and as they may be supposed to feel; while the others dilate rather on their beauty, as if they presented a scenic exhibition, than were in themselves animated beings to feel and have existence. The rambles of Ortis amidst the Euganean hills; the sentiments with which he contemplates a tempest and the succeeding calm; the glories of summer, or tyranny of winter; resemble those so often to be found in English authors, and give the work a charm peculiar to itself. The style, also, of these letters (and the Italians make style a chief merit) is pure, elegant, and forcible. It created a language hitherto unknown to his countrymen, uniting the familiar and colloquial with the tasteful and the expressive. It is too rhetorical, even thus, for our ears; but the Italians easily pardon inflation.

The success of "Ortis" was immediate and striking. The Italians usually love to be amused and made laugh; but they were caught by the charm, and content to weep over the misfortunes of the victim of love. The author had artfully contrived to mingle himself inextricably with the image of his hero; and the ladies of Italy were interested by his appearance, uncouth as it was, and his manners, dissimilar to the inanity of their usual companions. He became what we call "a lion," and he himself fell in love with one of his fair admirers; but, as is too often the case where the author is more thought of than the man, this lady's love was more of the head than the heart, and Foscolo, after a short period, was dismissed. We are told that this lady was the daughter of the courteous Marchesa F., mentioned by Sterne in his "Sentimental Journey." True passion often enforces sympathy; otherwise, we cannot wonder that Foscolo did not create a sentiment in another as strong as that which he himself felt. In personal appearance he was not formed to excite tender admiration. Pecchio, who knew him at this time, describes him in vivid but no attractive colours. According to him, Foscolo was of middle stature, rather strong and muscular of frame; he had thick, reddish, rough hair, which added to his expression of wild vehemence, and rendered his fits of gloomy silence, or transports of rage, more horrible. His eyes were of a blueish grey, small, deep set, and intensely sparkling. His complexion was ruddy; his features well formed, except that his lips, though thin, protruded, having that animal-look about the jaw which is the opposite of the beau idéal of the human countenance: he wore his chin thickly covered with hair, which gave him a sort of resemblance to an oran-outang. There is a story told of him that a Frenchman said to him one day, "Vous êtes bien laid, monsieur;" to which Foscolo wittily replied, "Oui, monsieur, à faire peur." On another occasion he was engaged in a duel with a friend, who impertinently compared him to the animal above mentioned. To add to the wildness and singularity of his appearance, he was fond, in an awkward sort of imitation of Alfieri, of appearing immersed in thought, maintaining a gloomy silence, interrupted only as he muttered, or rather growled forth, various quotations or verses, in a voice which made an Italian young lady once name him "a sentimental clap of thunder." Such was the outward appearance and manners of the Italian Werter; and if he met with success among the fair sex, it must be attributed to the ready sympathy they are apt to afford to sincere feeling, and to a generous, independent spirit.

1802.
Ætat.
24.

When Bonaparte, under the name of first consul, rose to supreme power in France, it became necessary to remodel the Cisalpine republic; and a congress of 450 deputies was held at Lyons, to decide on the new form of government. On this occasion Foscolo published an "Oration to Bonaparte." A good deal of uncertainty exists as to the exact circumstances under which this oration was composed. It has been supposed that it was delivered publicly at the congress; but there is no foundation for this idea, as Foscolo was not one of the deputies, and did not accompany them to Lyons. It is said, on one hand, that he wrote it at the desire of Bonaparte himself; and on the other, that the task was entrusted to him by the triumvirate, who, under the title of committee of government, were placed at the head of the Cisalpine republic; and it is said that the oration was delivered before the committee itself[56], which, considering its nature, can hardly be believed. It commences with a grandiloquent eulogium of Napoleon; it then diverges into indignant and sarcastic representations of the mal-conduct of the heads of the republic. "Men," he describes them, "who are neither statesmen nor warriors, formerly slaves, now tyrants, and for ever slaves of themselves, and of circumstances, which they neither will nor can command; conscious of their own vices, and therefore timid and discordant; cowardly with the bold, bold with the cowardly, they crush accusations by bribery, and complaints by menaces. Men who took the arms out of the hands of the militia soldiery, an army formed of citizens, to give them to bands of runaway felons and deserters." He then dilates on the miseries endured in Italy during the period of the success of the Austrians and Russians, and describes Bonaparte's return as the advent of a demigod; and he calls on him to complete his work by assuming the supreme command, instead of leaving it to the triumvirate, who betrayed the cause of liberty and oppressed their countrymen. Independent as Foscolo was, we are surprised when he goes on to say, that every patriotic Italian would elect Bonaparte for their legislator, captain, father, and perpetual prince. But this surprise diminishes when we read on, and find that he expects this supreme ruler to gift the subject country with liberty. He entreats him not to entrust the state to men, but to laws; not to the generosity of other nations, but to its own force. "Let such be your institutions," he exclaims, "such your example, such our strength, that no one shall dare rule us after you. Who, indeed, would be worthy to succeed to Bonaparte? As you cannot live for ever for us, let the seal of our liberty be set; you yourself leaving it inviolate: and, with the whole nation, I call freedom our not having (with the exception of Bonaparte) any magistrate who is not Italian, nor any general who is not our fellow-citizen. If, while you live, our liberty totters, what hope have we that it will endure after you are withdrawn from the earth? No! there is no liberty, no property, no life, no soul in any country, and under whatever form of government, when national independence is fettered!"

It is impossible that Foscolo, despite his assertions, and despite, perhaps, his hopes, should not have been aware that the strongest chain that can be imposed on the freedom of a nation is its having a foreign prince at the head of government. Still he vindicated the cause he espoused, by demanding national institutions and a national army. The style of the oration is forcible, but too rhetorical; and, though full of truths that intimidated the oppressors and did honour to the free spirit of the writer, calmer representations and closer reasoning would command more of our admiration. Not that such would have availed with the conqueror: Italy was, to him, only one other lever added to the vast engine of military force which was to raise him to the throne of the world.

Yet, though not gifted with liberty, the present epoch was a happy one for the north of Italy. After suffering from the persecutions of demagogues, and from the devastations of war, it reposed contentedly under the wise and liberal administration of Melzi. Foscolo continued to inhabit Milan: by day immersed in study, his evenings were spent in amusements. His sanguine disposition often led him to try the chances of a gambling table: when he won, he launched out into extravagant expenses; he bought horses and dress, and hired the most magnificent apartments. When Fortune turned her back, all this show of prosperity as suddenly disappeared; and he retired into a corner to study.[57] In one of these intervals of seclusion, he wrote a translation of the Hymn of Callimachus on the Hair of Berenice, accompanied by a whole volume of comments. The sort of learning which he here displayed obtained no applause; but we are told that the erudition thus made show of had for its aim, not the instructing the ignorant, but the ridicule of pedants and book-worms. It is difficult, however, to cull wit from the dry bones of verbal criticism.

Under the presidency of Melzi, an Italian legion had been formed in which Foscolo held a commission. When Bonaparte formed the camp at Boulogne, for the avowed purpose of invading England, the division of the Italian army to which the poet belonged made part of the vast assemblage of troops called together. He held the rank of captain, and was attached to the staff of general Tulliè. The Italian troops were stationed at St. Omer and Calais, at which latter place Foscolo entered on the study of the English language. The spot which he selected for the purpose of study was curiously chosen: he was often seen writing with eagerness by the light of the lamp of the billiard-table, while his fellow-officers were playing, drinking, and conversing around.

To exercise himself in English, he undertook the translation of Sterne's "Sentimental Journey;" and it is much praised for the purity of its style. But the most curious part of the publication is a disguised account of the translator. Foscolo's excessive vanity shines very apparent in this account of himself, in which he indulges in an egotistical description of his own singularities; and, according to his old fancy, conducts himself to the grave, and writes his own epitaph. The title-page of the translation declares the translator to be one Didimo Chierico; and on the character of this Didimo (being himself) Foscolo fondly dilates; mentions various works of his, the manuscripts of which he says that he possesses; and records his eccentricities and opinions in a manner which excites a smile, when we remember that he is his own memorialist of trifles, which it would be hardly worth mentioning when appertaining to the greatest men. "Didimo entertained," he tells us, "strange systems, which, nevertheless, he did not defend by argument; and, as apology to those who brought forward irresistible reasons, he replied by the single word 'opinions.' He respected, also, the systems of others, and, from carelessness or some other motive, never tried to refute them; but always remained silent, without making sign of dissent, except that he uttered the word 'opinions' with religious seriousness. On these systems or notions he founded actions and words worthy of laughter. He called don Quixote happy, because he deluded himself with glory and love. He drove away cats, because they appeared to him the most silent of all animals; at the same time he praised them, because, like dogs, they took advantage of society, and enjoyed their liberty like owls. He did not believe that you could trust any one who lived next door to a butcher, or near the place destined for public executions. He believed in prophetic inspiration, and fancied that he was acquainted with its source. He accused the nightcap, dressing-gown, and slippers of husbands, as the cause of a wife's first infidelity. He gave no better specimen of his knowledge: asserting that the sciences were a series of propositions which had need of demonstrations apparently self-evident, but substantially uncertain; and that geometry, in spite of algebra, would remain an imperfect science, until the incomprehensible system of the universe was known: and he maintained that the arts could render truth more useful to men than the sciences."

"When travelling, he dined at the public tables: he easily became familiar, though he spoke dryly to the ceremonious, proudly to the rich, and avoided all sects and confraternities. He frequented mostly the society of women; because he thought them more richly endowed by nature with pity and modesty, two pacific qualities which, he said, alone temper the combative propensities of human beings. He was listened to readily; though I know not where he found matter of discourse, since he would talk a whole evening without uttering a word concerning politics, religion, or scandal. He never asked questions, that he might not lead others to answer falsely. He was glad to receive his acquaintances at home; but when walking he liked to be alone, or with strangers to whom he took a fancy; and if any of his acquaintance approached, he took a book from his pocket, and, in room of salutation, recited scraps from a modern translation of the Greek poets; on which he was left alone."

And thus he goes on, for several pages, describing eccentricities, partly natural, partly assumed, which he wished should attract attention, as is evident by his thus introducing them to the public, who would otherwise have been ignorant of their existence.

1805.

On his return to Italy, he became intimate with general Caffarelli, minister of war of the kingdom of Italy. Warmed by the recent sight of the encampment of Boulogne, he proposed to the general to make a new edition of the military works of Montecucoli, with notes. The text was furnished him by the marchese Trivulzio, and the edition was brought out with great splendour; but Foscolo is accused of having used his imagination, rather than critical acumen, in the emendation of his author.

The north of Italy was enjoying a great degree of prosperity at this time. Melzi gave encouragement to all undertakings that tended to elevate the Italian character; and literary men were held in that esteem which ensures their exerting themselves to bestow on their country the richest harvest of their talents. Foscolo, though he still held his captain's commission, was, in honour of his literary character, exempted from the toils of service; and, taking advantage of the liberty allowed him, he left Milan for a time, and took up his residence at Brescia. He resided in a small house, situated on an open hill, not far from the city. Here he was accustomed to study till sunset; and, whether alone or in company, he would recite the poetry of the ancients, or his own, which he was then occupied in composing. The Brescians are a happy, gay people; they live less in the town than the inhabitants of the rest of Italy, and take peculiar pleasure in rural amusements; they are hospitable and fond of festivity; not very refined, they are yet open-hearted and cordial, and noted for bravery when in the field. Foscolo's neighbours admired and visited him; persons of every sect and opinion, even the priests, flocked to his house; and often seated under a wide-spreading fig tree which was in his garden, he held forth to a numerous audience. The Brescians are naturally enthusiastic: he had the art of inflaming the souls of the young, and they crowded round him as, with stentorian voice, he uttered his moral apophthegms. When night closed in, he left his rustic drawing room, and visited the theatres; and was often seen paying homage to the dark eyes of some Brescian beauty.[58]

It was here that he wrote the most perfect of his poems—his "Ode on Sepulchres." The elegance and pure taste of this composition have caused it to be compared to Gray's well-known "Elegy;" but it is more classical in its ideas and construction, and would rather remind the reader of Milton's "Lycidas." Every verse is harmonious music; and the melancholy that is cast over it is graceful and touching, not harrowing and sombre. A law had been passed at Milan instituting a public cemetery without the walls of the city, in which all the dead were to be promiscuously buried, without marks of distinction. The poet, addressing Pindemonte, begins by commenting upon the notion that funeral pomp and an honourable tomb are of no avail to the dead; and then he speaks of the sacred sentiment that leads us to live still with our lost friends, and makes the spot of their interment precious in our eyes. Alluding to the new law, he apostrophises the muse, asking her if she does not love to linger near the desecrated tomb of her Parini, whose venerated remains, cast among the bodies of criminals, are scarcely protected from the assaults of the houseless dog, while night birds hover, screaming, over it. He speaks of the pious sentiments with which the sad relics of mortality have ever been regarded since religion first instituted sacred and social laws; and describes, in heartfelt but poetic language, the various ways in which survivors love to pay homage to the beloved dead. From tender and pathetic pictures of domestic bereavement, he then rises to describe the ennobling sentiment inspired by a sight of the tombs of the great and good. He apostrophises Florence, and gracefully brings in the well-known predilection of Alfieri for the aisles of Santa Croce; and then, taking a still higher flight, he describes Providence and destiny as presiding over the graves of the worthy, and vindicating their unforgotten names, even from the silent turf that covers them; and, carried away by his love for classic lore, with no forced digression, he concludes by speaking of the mounds that still mark the spot where the warriors of Greece died on the Trojan shore, and describes Homer, the poet blind and old, wandering around, and bestowing on them the immortal fame of which they would otherwise have been deprived.

This anatomy of a poem can convey but a slight and incomplete idea of its merits. The harmony of the versification—the tender and soft melancholy diffused throughout—the grace of the transitions—and the continual rising in his subject to the end, are all lost. Nor could a translation do justice to these, since, as evanescent as they are delicate, they would be lost in another language. The whole poem is Foscolo's masterpiece.

He also published at this time his translation of the first book of the Iliad. Monti was bringing out his version, and there was much hardihood in Foscolo's rivalship. His knowledge of Greek, contrasted with the other's ignorance, no doubt instigated him. To remove any unpleasant feeling, he dedicated it to Monti; in which he speaks at once with modesty of his own attempt, and in high praise of Monti's genius. It is difficult for a stranger to judge between the merits of the translators; but even if Foscolo's is the best, it is a mere fragment. He never published more than the first and third books; while Monti went through the labour of the entire translation, and bestowed a complete work on his country.

In 1808, Foscolo was installed professor of eloquence in the university of Pavia—a chair formerly filled by Monti and Cesarotti. The choice was universally popular; and his introductory oration, "On the Origin and Use of Letters," was listened to with enthusiasm. He had refused to introduce any praise of Napoleon into it, and the whole was conceived in the spirit of personal and political independence. This fault was visited with singular severity; since, after a short time, the professorship of eloquence at Pavia was entirely suppressed, under the pretence of a reform in the plan of studies, but in reality as a mark of disapprobation. Petty jealousy and the vain desire of ruling even the thoughts of the subject world, induced Napoleon on all occasions to punish severely any demonstration of independence. Nor was the vengeance confined to Foscolo and Pavia alone. The literary professorships at Bologna and Padua were also abolished, as well as those for the Greek and oriental languages; for history, and, in short, all except those instituted to teach law, medicine, and the sciences. Several learned and excellent men were thus deprived of an honourable living. The nation was at once robbed of all easy access to a liberal education, and to the inappreciable knowledge of those languages which contain the most glorious monuments of man's genius: and thus Napoleon gave testimony to the Italians of the truth of Alfieri's axiom, that absolute monarchs hate the historian, the poet, and the orator, and give the preference to the sciences.[59]

Foscolo retreated from the university to the seclusion of the Lake of Como; giving proof of his pure and ardent love of nature, so rare among Italians, by his retirement from cities to the sublime and luxuriant scenery of this lake. He took up his residence at a villa named the Pliniana, built on the site of the fountains whose periodical ebb and flow the younger Pliny records in his letters. The lake, paled in by mountains, bathes the walls of the villa; and the neighbouring banks, clothed with myrtle and arbutus, overhang the waters, and cast their deep shade on the clear depths: the precipitous mountain rises behind, diversified by chestnut woods; and here and there are seen huge cypresses, whose spires seem to pierce the skies, when regarded from the terraced garden of the villa. The flowing fountains keep up a perpetual murmur; and, perhaps, in all the varied earth there is no spot which affords such a combination of the picturesque, the beautiful, the rich, the balmy, and the sublime. The house itself, without being ruinous, is huge and desolate; but its vast cool halls are a pleasant refuge against the heats of mid-day. Here Foscolo studied through the morning, varying his life by spending his evenings with the family of count Giovio, a man of education and learning, whose young and gay family served to dissipate the fumes of melancholy in which the poet was rather fond of indulging.[60]

He here commenced his "Ode to the Graces:" this was a favourite composition, yet left unfinished. He was never weary of altering or improving—of softening its language, or adding new melody to the versification. It is purely classical in its idea, yet varied by the most beautiful touches of natural beauty. He occupied himself also by finishing his tragedy of "Ajax." The same faults are discoverable in this drama as in his juvenile production of "Thyestes." It is founded on the dispute between Ulysses and Ajax for the arms of Achilles, and the self-destruction of the latter. The action ends almost before it begins; the scenes are frigid, the interest null; still it excited a good deal of expectation; and reading, as he did, speeches and scenes to various friends, its representation on the stage was looked forward to with eagerness at Milan. The theatre was crowded on the first night, and the audience sat patiently and listened for a long time to scene following scene, of sonorous words, high-sounding declamations, and vehement apostrophes, all leading to nothing, ending in nothing—exciting no sympathy, but wearying the ear. At length they grew tired; and though they listened to the conclusion, it was evident that they were delighted to be dismissed.

It was a strange accident, that a drama which thus failed of eliciting any interest in the audience, and the great fault of which was dulness, should have excited a persecution against its author. His enemies spread the report that the tragedy had a political aim; that Napoleon was symbolised in Agamemnon, the king of kings; and that general Moreau was pictured in Ajax, who deserved, but did not obtain, the arms of Achilles. There seems to have been no real foundation for this supposition, but Foscolo did not deny it: he preserved a mysterious silence; whether from disdain, or from a covert pleasure in the annoyance of government, is uncertain. The ministers of Napoleon were inquisitorial and revengeful; not to praise their emperor was sin sufficient to render any author obnoxious, and any expressions that could be distorted into blame were criminal. The cities of Italy, whose inhabitants are forbidden all political discussions, and who are shut out from the pursuits that naturally excite ambition, are singularly apt to diversify the monotony of their lives by gossiping. Such a supposition as the one above mentioned spread rapidly through Milan: men met together to wonder and dispute; they worked themselves up into an idea that something had been done, and that something would ensue; while the spies of the police excited and reported each unguarded expression. The city became disturbed by the notion of Foscolo's attempt to bring Napoleon on the stage as an object of censure, and in expectation of the punishment with which his boldness would be visited; while he, silent and mysterious, refused to offer any explanation. It was intimated accordingly to him, that he would do well to change the air; and, submitting to an exile from Milan, he again visited Tuscany.

He took the house at Camaldoli, near Florence, which had, in ages gone by, been inhabited by Galileo. He alludes to this in his "Ode to the Graces," in some verses which describe the nocturnal murmur of the distant Arno, which flowed clear yet hid beneath its willows, and visited the ear of the astronomer as he watched the star of eve. It was here, he records, that dawn, and the moon, and the sun displayed to him, with various tints, the serene clouds that hung below the Alps, or illumined the plain which stretches to the Tyrrhene sea; a wide-spread scene of cities and woods, diversified by the labours of the happy husbandman, by temples; or the hundred hills with which, adorned by caverns, and olive groves, and marble palaces, the Apennines encircle the lovely city, where Flora and the Graces have garlands.[61] In one point, the poetry of Foscolo may be compared to the more didactic parts of Milton. He never omits a romantic or classical allusion; and, bringing forward all that ennobles and animates his subject, adorns it with human interest. Whoever reads in the original the verses I have so lamely translated into prose, cannot help remembering various passages inspired by the memory of Tuscany, which show like pictures of Claude in the pages of the most graceful as well as the most sublime of our poets.

We cannot refrain from observing, in this place, that we possess a proof, in the bent of Foscolo's genius, of how little the intellect is often in accord with the heart. Wild, vehement, gloomy almost to savageness, independent even to an incapacity of yielding to the common rules of society, he could not depict the wild furies of Ajax, nor, indeed, the more burning throes that often tore his own heart. His best compositions, on the contrary, seem to emanate from an impassioned but brooding spirit, nursed in soft melancholy and elegant and fanciful reverie. As we have before mentioned, he was purely a didactic writer; but perhaps no modern poet ever displayed so much harmony, grace, and truth of description. We have not the fantastic imagery nor the fire of Monti; neither the storms of the deep, nor the thunders of the sky; but an inland landscape, where the balmy air broods over waving forest and murmuring stream, and the heart of man reposing seems to take refuge