{1} Question of Machiavelli. Whether “The Prince” was written in earnest, with a wish to serve the Devil, or in irony, with a wish to serve the people, is still in dispute.

{2} Michelangelo.

{3} Galileo.

{4} Newton.

{5} Florence.

{6} It is the opinion of many historians that the Divina Commedia was commenced before the exile of Dante.—Foscolo.

{7} Petrarch was born in exile of Florentine parents.—Ibid.

{8} Alfieri. So Foscolo saw him in his last years.

{9} The poet, quoting Pausanias, says: “The sepulture of the Athenians who fell in the battle took place on the plain of Marathon, and there every night is heard the neighing of the steeds, and the phantoms of the combatants appear.”

The poem ends with the prophecy that poetry, after time destroys the sepulchers, shall preserve the memories of the great and the unhappy, and invokes the shades of Greece and Troy to give an illusion of sublimity to the close. The poet doubts if there be any comfort to the dead in monumental stones, but declares that they keep memories alive, and concludes that only those who leave no love behind should have little joy of their funeral urns. He blames the promiscuous burial of the good and bad, the great and base; he dwells on the beauty of the ancient cemeteries and the pathetic charm of English churchyards. The poem of I Sepolcri has peculiar beauties, yet it does not seem to me the grand work which the Italians have esteemed it; though it has the pensive charm which attaches to all elegiac verse. De Sanctis attaches a great political and moral value to it. “The revolution, in the horror of its excesses, was passing. More temperate ideas prevailed; the need of a moral and religious restoration was felt. Foscolo's poem touched these chords ... which vibrated in all hearts.”

The tragedies of Foscolo are little read, and his unfinished but faithful translation of Homer did not have the success which met the facile paraphrase of Monti. His other works were chiefly critical, and are valued for their learning. The Italians claim that in his studies of Dante he was the first to reveal him to Europe in his political character, “as the inspired poet, who availed himself of art for the civil regeneration of the people speaking the language which he dedicated to supreme song”; and they count as among their best critical works, Foscolo's “exquisite essays on Petrarch and Boccaccio”. His romance, “The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis”, is a novel full of patriotism, suffering, and suicide, which found devoted readers among youth affected by “The Sorrows of Werther”, and which was the first cry of Italian disillusion with the French. Yet it had no political effect, De Sanctis says, because it was not in accord with the popular hopefulness of the time. It was, of course, wildly romantic, of the romantic sort that came before the school had got its name, and it was supposed to celebrate one of Foscolo's first loves. He had a great many loves, first and last, and is reproached with a dissolute life by the German critic, Gervinius.

He was made Professor of Italian Eloquence at the University of Pavia in 1809; but, refusing to flatter Napoleon in his inaugural address, his professorship was abolished. When the Austrians returned to Milan, in 1815, they offered him the charge of their official newspaper; but he declined it, and left Milan for the last time. He wandered homeless through Switzerland for a while, and at last went to London, where he gained a livelihood by teaching the Italian language and lecturing on its literature; and where, tormented by homesickness and the fear of blindness, he died, in 1827. “Poverty would make even Homer abject in London,” he said.

One of his biographers, however, tells us that he was hospitably welcomed at Holland House in London, and “entertained by the most illustrious islanders; but the indispensable etiquette of the country, grievous to all strangers, was intolerable to Foscolo, and he soon withdrew from these elegant circles, and gave himself up to his beloved books.” Like Alfieri, on whom he largely modeled his literary ideal, and whom he fervently admired, Foscolo has left us his portrait drawn by himself, which the reader may be interested to see.

{Illustration: UGO FOSCOLO.}

CantÙ thinks that Foscolo succeeded, by imitating unusual models, in seeming original, and probably more with reference to the time in which he wrote than to the qualities of his mind, classes him with the school of Monti. Although his poetry is full of mythology and classic allusion, the use of the well-worn machinery is less mechanical than in Monti; and Foscolo, writing always with one high purpose, was essentially different in inspiration from the poet who merchandised his genius and sold his song to any party threatening hard or paying well. Foscolo was a brave man, and faithfully loved freedom, and he must be ranked with those poets who, in later times, have devoted themselves to the liberation of Italy. He is classic in his forms, but he is revolutionary, and he hoped for some ideal Athenian liberty for his country, rather than the English freedom she enjoys. But we cannot venture to pronounce dead or idle the Greek tradition, and we must confess that the romanticism which brought into literary worship the trumpery picturesqueness of the Middle Ages was a lapse from generous feeling.