oyer, his irony was not sdegnosa ed acerba, ma riposata e dolce. He was of opinion that the greatest delights of existence are illusions, and that children find everything in nothing, and adults nothing in everything. He compared pleasure to odors, which usually promised a satisfaction unrealized by taste; and said, of some nectar-drinking bees, that they were blest in not understanding their own happiness. He remarked that want of consideration occasioned far more suffering than positive and intentional cruelty, and that one who lived a gregarious life would utter himself aloud when alone, if a fly bit him; but one accustomed to solitude and inward life would often be silent in company, though threatened with a stroke of apoplexy. He divided mankind into two classes those whose characters and instincts are overlaid and moulded by conformity and conventionalism, and those whose natures are so rich or so strong as to assert themselves intact and habitually. He declared that. in this age, it was impossible for any one to love without a rival; for the egotist usually combined with and struggled for supremacy against the lover in each individual. He considered delusion a requisite of all human enjoyment, and thought man, like the child who from a sweet-rimmed chalice imbibed the medicine, according to Tasso's simile, e dal' inganno sus vita riceve. In these, and many other ideas attributed to Ottonieri, we recognize the tone of feeling and the experience of Leopardi; and the epitaph with which it concludes breathes of the same melancholy, but intelligent and aspiring nature: "Nato alle opere virtuose e alla gloria, vissuto ozioso e disutile, e morto sensa fama non ignaro della natura nè della fortuna sua." To The Wager of Prometheus is a satire upon civilization, in which a cannibal feast, a Hindoo widow's sacrifice, and a suicide in London, are brought into vivid and graphic contrast. exhibit the fallacy which estimates life, merely as such, a blessing, and to show that it consists in sensitive and moral experience rather than in duration, as color is derived from light, and not from the objects of which it is but a quality, he gives us an animated and discriminating argument between a metaphysician and a materialist; and, in illustration of the absolute mental nature of happiness when closely analyzed, he takes us to the cell of Tasso, where a most characteristic and suggestive discussion takes place between him and his familiar genius. The tyranny of Nature, her universal and inevitable laws, unredeemed, to Leopardi's view, by any compensatory spiritual principle, is displayed in an interview between her and one of her discontented subjects, wherein she declares man's felicity an object of entire indifference; her arrangements having for their end only the preservation of the universe by a constant succession of destruction and renovation. As His literary creed is emphatically recorded in the little treatise on Parini o vero della Gloria; and it exhibits him as a true nobleman in letters, although the characteristic sadness of his mind is evident in his severe estimate of the obstacles which interfere with the recognition of an original and earnest writer; for to this result, rather than fame, his argument is directed. a vocation, he considers authorship unsatisfactory, on account of its usual effect, when sedulously pursued, upon the animal economy. He justly deems the capacity to understand and sympathize with a great writer extremely rare; the preoccupation of society in the immediate and the personal, the inundation of books in modern times, the influence of prejudice, ignorance, and narrowness of mind, the lack of generous souls, mental satiety, frivolous tastes, decadence of enthusiasm and vigor in age, and impatient expectancy in youth, are among the many and constant obstacles against which the individual who appeals to his race, through books, has to contend. He also dwells upon the extraordinary influence of prescriptive opinion, wedded to a few antique examples, upon the literary taste of the age. He considers the secret power of genius, in literature, to exist in an indefinable charm of style almost as rarely appreciated as it is exercised; and he thinks great writing only an inevitable substitute for great action, the development of the heroic, the beautiful, and the true in language, opinion, and sentiment, which under propitious circumstances would have been embodied, with yet greater zeal, in deeds. He thus views the art in which he excelled, in its most disinterested and noblest relations. There is great naturalness, and a philosophic tone, in the interview between Columbus and one of his companions, as they approach the New World. In the Eulogy on Birds, it is touching to perceive the keen appreciation Leopardi had of the joyous side of life, his complete recognition of it as a phase of nature, and his apparent unconsciousness of it as a state of feeling. The blithe habits of the feathered creation, their vivacity, motive power, and jocund strains, elicit as loving a commentary as Audubon or Wilson ever penned; but they are described only to be contrasted with the hollow and evanescent smiles of his own species; and the brief illusions they enjoy are pronounced more desirable than those of such singers as Dante and Tasso, to whom imagination was a funestissima dote, e principio di sollecitudini, e angosce gravissime e perpetue. With the tokens of his rare intelligence and sensibility before us, it is affecting to read his wish to be converted into a bird, in order to experience a while their contentment and joy. The form of these writings is peculiar. We know of no English prose work at all similar, except the Imaginary Conversations of Landor, and a few inferior attempts of a like character. But there is one striking distinction between Leopardi and his classic English prototype; the former's aim is always to reproduce the opinions and modes of expression of his characters, while the latter chiefly gives utterance to his own. This disguise was adopted, we imagine, in a degree, from prudential motives. Conscious of sentiments at variance with the accepted creed, both in religion and philosophy, the young Italian recluse summoned historical personages, whose memories were hallowed to the imagination, or allegorical characters, whose names were associated with the past, and, through their imaginary dialogues, revealed his own fancies, meditations, and emotions. In fact, a want of sympathy with the age is one of the prominent traits of his mind. He was sceptical in regard to the alleged progress of the race, had little faith in the wisdom of newspapers, and doubted the love of truth for her own sake, as the master principle of modern science and literature. Everywhere he lauds the negative. Ignorance is always bliss, and sleep, that "knits up the ravelled sleeve of care," the most desirable blessing enjoyed by mortals. He scorns compromise with evil, and feels it is "nobler in the mind to suffer" than to reconcile itself to error and pain through cowardice, illusion, or stupidity. He writes to solace himself by expression; and he writes in a satirical and humorous vein, because it is less annoying to others, and more manly in itself, than wailing or despair. Thus, Leopardi's misanthropy differs from that of Rousseau and Byron in being more intellectual; it springs not so much from exasperated feeling as from the habitual contemplation of painful truth. Philosophy is rather an available medicament to him than an ultimate good. Patriotism, learning, despair, and love, are expressed in Leopardi's verse with emphatic beauty. There is an antique grandeur, a solemn wail, in his allusions to his country, which stirs, and, at the same time, melts the heart. This sad yet noble melody is ' quite untranslatable; and we must content ourselves with an earnest reference to some of these eloquent and finished lyrical strains. How grand, simple, and pathetic, is the opening of the first, Al' Italia! "O patria mia, vedo le mura e gli archi E le colonne e i simulacri e l'erme Torri degli avi nostri, Ma la gloria non vedo, Non vedo il lauro e il ferro ond'éran carchi I nostri padri antichi. Or fatta inerme Nuda la fronte e nudo il petto mostri. Oimè quante ferite, Che lividor, che sangue! oh qual ti veggio, Chi la ridusse a tale? E questo é peggio, Siede in terra negletta e sconsalata, Tra le ginocchia, e piange." In the same spirit are the lines on the Monument to Dante, to whom he says: "Beato te che il fato A viver non danno fra tanto orrore ; Che non vedesti in braccio L'itala moglie a barbaro soldato. Non si conviene a sì corrotta usanza Questa d'animi eccelsi altrice a scola : Meglio l'è rimaner vedova e sola." The poem to Angelo Mai, on his discovery of the Republic of Cicero, is of kindred tone the scholar's triumph blending with the patriot's grief. An identical vein of feeling, also, we recognize, under another form, in the poem written for his sister's nuptials. Bitterly he depicts the fate of woman in a country where and declares "Virtù viva sprezziam, lodiamo estinta ;" "O miseri o codardi Figluioli avrai. Miseri eleggi. Immenso Il corrotto costume. Ahi troppo tardi, Acquista oggi chi nasce il moto e il senso." Bruto Minore is vigorous in conception, and exquisitely modulated. In the hymn to the patriarchs, La Primavera, Il Sabato del Vilaggio, Alla Luna, Il Passaro Solitaria, Il Canto notturno d' un Pastore errante in Asia, and other poems, Leopardi not only gives true descriptive hints, with tact and fidelity, but reproduces the sentiment of the hour, or the scene he celebrates, breathing into his verse the latent music they awaken in the depths of thought and sensibility; the rhythm, the words, the imagery, all combine to produce this result, in a way analogous to that by which great composers harmonize sound, or the masters of landscape blend colors, giving birth to the magical effect which, under the name of tone, constitutes the vital principles of such emanations of genius. But not only in exalted patriotic sentiment, and graphic portraiture, nor even in artistic skill, resides all the individuality of Leopardi as a poet. Ilis tenderness is as sincere as it is manly. There is an indescribable sadness native to his soul, quite removed from acrid gloom, or weak sensibility. We have already traced it in his opinions and in his life; but its most affecting and impressive expression is revealed in his poetry. |