passed chiefly in his father's library, which consisted wholly of theological and classical books. After being taught Latin and the elements of philosophy by two priests, he seems to have been left to pursue his own course; and, at ten years old, he describes himself as having commenced a wild and desperate life of study, the result of which was a mastery of ancient classic and church literature, not only displayed in positive knowledge, but reproduced habitually in the form of translations and commentaries. Greek is little cultivated in Italy, and in this, as well as other branches of learning, he was quite isolated. In seven years his health was completely ruined by unremitted mental application. Niebuhr and Angelo Mai soon recognized him as a philologist of remarkable acumen and attainment; and laudatory articles in the French, German, and Holland journals, as well as complimentary letters from distinguished men, found their way to his secluded home. He duped scholars by tricks like those of Macpherson and Chatterton, in the pretended translation of an Hellenic fragment; he engaged in a literary correspondence with Monti and Gioberti; wrote able commentaries on the rhetoricians of the first and second centuries, annotations on the chronicle of Eusebius; invented new narratives of martyrdoms that passed for genuine; translated parts of the Odyssey, Epictetus, and Socrates; and, in fact, performed Herculean labors of research and criticism.

But the most remarkable feature of his life is the contrast between its profound scholarship and its domestic environment. During this period Leopardi was treated like a child, kept at home by poverty, utterly destitute of companionship, except what he found in an occasional disputation with the Jews of Ancona; wretched in appearance, consumed by melancholy, struggling with his father against the project to dedicate him to the church; without sympathy from his kind, or faith in his Creator, or joy in his youth, or hope in his destiny. He only found temporary solace when consciousness was absorbed in his studious vigils, in the solitary library of a forlorn palace in that secluded town. Such is an epitome of Leopardi's youth. Of his works thus produced there are but few and imperfect copies, many being still unedited; and his peculiar genius would be faintly revealed to

us, had it not found more direct and personal expression in a few sincere and highly finished original writings, which shadow forth and embody, with singular eloquence, the life and the nature of the man.

Leopardi was born at Recanti, on the twenty-ninth of June, 1798, and died at Naples, on the fourteenth of June, 1837. The restraint under which he lived, partly that of circumstances, and partly of authority, both exerted upon a morbidly sensitive and lonely being, kept him in his provincial birthplace until the age of twenty-four. After this period he sought a precarious subsistence in Rome, Florence, Bologna, and Naples. Of the conscious aim he proposed to himself as a scholar, we may judge by his own early declaration: "Mediocrity frightens me; my wish is to love, and become great by genius and study." In regard to the first desire, he seems, either from an unfortunate personal appearance, or from having been in contact with the insincere and the vain, to have experienced a bitter disappointment; for the craving for sympathy, and the praise of love, continually find expression in his writings, while he says of women, "L'ambizione, l'interesso, la perfidia, l'insensibilità delle donne che io definisco un animale senza cuore, sono cose che mi spaventano.' He translated, with great zest, the satire of Simonides on women. Elsewhere, however, there is evinced a remarkable sensibility to female attractions, and indications appear of gratified, though interrupted, affinities. Indeed, we cannot but perceive that Leopardi belongs to that rare class of men whose great sense of beauty and "necessity of loving" is united with an equal passion for truth. It was not, therefore, because his taste was too refined, or his standard too ideal, that his affections were baffled, but on account of the extreme rarity of that sacred union of loveliness and loyalty, of grace and candor, of the beautiful and the true, which, to the thinker and the man of heart, alone justifies the earnestness of love.

Nature vindicated herself, as she ever will, even in his courageous attempt to merge all youthful impulse in the pursuit of knowledge, and twine around abstract truth the clinging sensibilities that covet a human object. He became, indeed, a master of lore, he lived a scholar, he kept apart from the multitude, and

enacted the stoical thinker; but the ungratified portion of his soul bewailed her bereavement; from his harvest-fields of learning went up the cry of famine; a melancholy tone blended with his most triumphant expositions; and an irony that ill conceals moral need underlies his most vivacious utterance.

himself to have been

In his actual life Leopardi confesses greatly influenced by prudential motives. There was a reserve in his family intercourse, which doubtless tended to excite his thoughts and feelings to a greater private scope; and he accordingly sought in fancy and reflection a more bold expansion. His scepticism has been greatly lamented as the chief source of his hopelessness; and the Jesuits even ventured to assert his final conversion, so important did they regard the accession of such a gifted name to the roll of the church; but his friend, Ranieri, in whose arms he died, only tells us that he "resigned his exalted spirit with a smile." He presents another instance of the futility of attempting to graft religious belief externally, and by prescriptive means, upon a free, inquiring, and enthusiastic mind. Christianity, as practically made known to Leopardi, failed to enlist his sympathies, from the erroneous form in which it was revealed, while, speculatively, its authority seemed to have no higher sanction than the antique philosophy and fables with which he was conversant. Had he learned to consider religion as a sentiment, inevitable and divine; had he realized it in the same way as he did love as an experience, a feeling, a principle of the soul, and not a technical system, it would have yielded him both comfort and inspiration.

Deformed, with the seeds of decay in his very frame, familiar with the history, the philosophy, the languages, of the earth, reflective and susceptible, loving and lonely, erudite, but without a faith, young in years, but venerable in mental life, he found nothing, in the age of transition in which he lived, to fix and harmonize his nature. His parent was incapable of comprehending the mind he sought to control. Sympathy with Greece and Rome, compassion for Italy, and despair of himself, were the bitter fruits of knowledge unillumined by supernal trust. says the inesplicabile mistero dell 'universo weighed upon his soul. He longed to solve the problem of life, and tried to believe,

with Byron, that "everything is naught "- tutto é nulla; and wrote, la calamità é la sola cosa che vi convenga essendo virtuoso. Nostra vita, he asks, che val? solo a spregiarla. He thought too much to be happy without a centre of light about which his meditations could hopefully revolve; he felt too much to be tranquil without some reliable and endeared object to which he might confidently turn for solace and recognition. The facts of his existence are meagre; the circle of his experience limited, and his achievements as a scholar give us no clue to his inward life; but the two concise volumes of prose and verse are a genuine legacy; a reflection of himself amply illustrative to the discriminating reader.

As regards the diction of Leopardi, it partakes of the superiority of his mind and the individuality of his character. Versed, as he was, both in the vocabulary and the philosophy of ancient and modern languages, he cherished the highest appreciation of his native tongue, of which he said it was sempre infinita. He wrote slowly, and with great care. In poetry, his first conception was noted, at once, and born in an access of fervor; but be was employed, at intervals, for weeks, in giving the finishing touches to the shortest piece. It is, indeed, evident that Leopardi gave to his deliberate compositions the essence, as it were, of his life. No one would imagine his poems, except from their lofty and artistic style, to be the effusions of a great scholar, so simple, true, and apparently unavoidable, are the feelings they embody. It is this union of severe discipline and great erudition with the glow, the directness, and the natural sentiment, of a young poet, that constitutes the distinction of Leopardi. The reflective power, and the predominance of the thoughtful element in his writings, assimilate him rather with German and English than modern Italian literature. There is nothing desultory and superficial; vigor of thought, breadth and accuracy of knowledge, and the most serious feeling, characterize his works.

His taste was manly, and formed altogether on the higher models. In terse energy he often resembles Dante; in tender and pensive sentiment, Petrarch; in philosophical tone he manifested the Anglo-Saxon spirit of inquiry and psychological tendency of Bacon and Coleridge; thus singularly combining the poetic and

the erudite, grave research and fanciful speculation, deep wisdom and exuberant love. Of late Italian writers, perhaps no one more truly revives the romantic associations of her literature; for Leopardi "learned in suffering what he taught in song," as exclusively as the "grim Tuscan" who described the world of spirits. His life was shadowed by a melancholy not less pervading than that of Tasso; and, since Laura's bard, no poet of the race has sung of love with a more earnest beauty.

He has been well said to have passed a "life of thought with sorrow beside him." The efflorescence of that life is concentrated in his verse, comparatively limited in quantity, but proportionally intense in expression; and the views, impressions, fancies, and ideas, generated by his studies and experience, we may gather from his prose, equally concise in form and individual in spirit. From these authentic sources we will now endeavor to infer the characteristics of his genius.

His faith, or rather his want of faith, in life and human destiny, is clearly betrayed in his legend or allegory, called Storia del Genere Umano. According to this fable, Jove created the world infinitely less perfect than it now exists, with obvious limits, undiversified by water and mountains; and over it man roved without impediment, childlike, truthful, and living wholly in the immediate. Upon emerging from this adolescent condition, however, the race, wearied by the monotony and obvious bounds to their power and enjoyment, grew dissatisfied. Satiety took the place of contentment, and many grew desperate, loathing the existence in which they originally rejoiced. This insensibility to the gifts of the gods was remedied by introducing the elements of diversity and suggestiveness into the face of nature and the significance of life. The night was made brilliant by stars; mountains and valleys alternated in the landscape; the atmosphere, from a fixed aspect, became nebulous and crystalline by turns. Nature, instead of ministering only to vitality and instinctive enjoyment, was so arranged and developed as constantly to excite imagination and act upon sympathy. Echo was horn, at this time, to startle with mysterious responses; and dreams first invaded the domain of sleep, to prolong the illusive agencies thus instituted to render human life more tolerable.