nally conceived, or to his wish to give them a new turn. Indeed all his writings bear the mark of meditation, although much forethought cannot be discovered in his familiar conversation, in which he gives a loose to all his ideas as they first present themselves. A literary lady has described him as parlatore felicissimo e fecondo and this copious eloquence is accompanied with an incessant agitation of limb and body; which, however, is, when he harangues in public, converted into an absolute inactivity. It is told of him that he has spoken for hours at the councils of war with his hands fixed on the back of a chair, without indulging in the slightest action.

This fact, incredible as it may be to such as have seen Mr. Foscolo only in private society, will not be lost upon those who please themselves with discriminating between the different modes of intellectual exertion, and who will be obliged to account for so singular a discrepancy by recollecting that Foscolo may have deliberately preferred this motionless eloquence. The truth is, as we find in his Discourse upon Literature, that he decries the quackery of the latter orators of Athens by praising the more ancient speakers, who harangued in the manner of Pericles, wrapped up in their clamys, without gesture or melody: Peroravano avvolti, all' uso di Pericle, nella clamide, senza gesto nè melodia.

'Ritratti scritta dalla Contessa Isabella Albrizzi.

The published poetry of this writer is confined to two odes, and a little work called I Sepolcri, written when it was forbidden to bury the dead in family tombs.

Pur nuova legge impone oggi i sepolcri

Fuor de' guardi pietosi, e il nome a' morti
Contende.

According to the provisions of this new law, all bodies, without distinction, were to be interred in public cemeteries without the towns, and the size of the sepulchral stone was prescribed, and the epitaphs were subject to the revision and approval of the magistrates. The aim of Foscolo in this poem appears to be the proof of the influence produced by the memory of the dead on the manners and on the independence of nations.

It may be sufficient to quote a specimen which will be more easily understood by those who have visited the church of Santa Croce at Florence.

Io quando il monumento
Vidi ove posa il corpo di quel grande
Che temprando lo scettro a' regnatori
Gli allôr ne sfronda, ed alle genti svela
Di che lagrime grandi e di che sangue ';,
E l'arca di colui che nuovo Olimpo
Alzò in terra a' celesti; e di chi vide

1

Machiavelli.

• Michael Angelo.

Sotto l'etereo padiglion rotarsi

Più mondi, e il Sole irradiarli immoto, 1
Onde all' Anglo che tanta ala vi stese'
Sgombrò primo le vie del Firmamento;
Te beata! gridai, per le felici

.

Aure pregne di vita, e pe' lavacri
Che da suoi gioghi a te versa Apennino:
Lieta dell' aer tuo, veste la Luna
Di luce limpidissima i tuoi colli
Per vendemmia festanti; e le convalli
Popolate di case e d'oliveti

Mille di fiori al Ciel mandano incensi :
E tu prima, Firenze, udivi il carme
Che allegrò l'ire al Ghibellin fuggiasco ;3
E tu i cari parenti e l' idioma

Desti a quel dolce di Calliope labbro

Che Amore in Grecia nudo, e nudo in Roma
D'un velo candidissimo adornando
Rendea nel grembo a Venere Celeste.
Ma più beata che in un tempio accolte
Serbi le Itale glorie (ultime forse!)
Da che le malvietate Alpi e l'alterna
Onnipotenza delle umane sorti
Armi, e sostanze t' invadeano, ed are
E Patria, e, tranne la memoria, tutto.

This poem contains only three hundred lines, but it called forth pamphlets and criticisms in every shape, and from all quarters. The younger writers tried to imitate it: the critics pro

nounced it to have brought about a reform in the lyrical poetry of Italy. The academy of Brescia proposed a prize for the best Latin translation, and awarded their premium to the professor Frederic Borgno, who soon after published his version in hexameters, accompanied with a dissertation, a passage of which may be quoted to shew the tone of Italian criticism.

“It is the business of lyrical poetry, properly so called, to present to us interesting facts so as to excite our strongest feelings, and to promulgate those opinions which tend to the prosperity of nations. Any ten verses which do not furnish the painter with images sufficient to compose an historical picture, which do not shake the soul by the noble recollections they recal, by the generous passions they awaken, which do not engrave in luminous characters some useful truth upon the mind—these verses may, I confess, be admirable in their kind, but they do not belong to lyrical poetry. The prophetic portion of the Bible, some of the hymns attributed to Homer, Pindar, Catullus in his marriage of Peleus, the sixth eclogue of Virgil, the episodes in the Georgics, a dozen of the odes of Horace, six of the canzoni of Petrarch, a few of Chiabrera, of Guidi, of Filicaja, those of Dryden, and two of Gray, are really lyrical. All the other poetry of Petrarch, and of those called

lyrical, may be justly praised, and may charm a greater number of readers even than those above cited, but it is necessary to adopt the division of Cicero, in his distinction between poetæ lyrici et melici. Pindar belongs to the first; Sappho, Anacreon, and Simonides, to the second."

The Italians are fond of these classifications, and indulge in them more than we should esteem profitable to the study of language. But it is also true, that their critics seldom praise even their favourite authors with the indiscriminate fury of our eulogists. Mr. Borgno subjoins to his notice of Chiabrera, Guidi, and Filicaja, a list of exceptions to their merits which might surprise a foreigner, accustomed to think of the name, rather than the works of their authors. According to this authority, sonorous words, and a magnificence of verse and of phrase, are substituted by these writers for the requisite variety of harmony and of imagery, whilst they are totally deficient in the chiaroscuro of poetry, and have chosen subjects which either are not national, or, what is as bad, are totally incapable of interesting their nation.

Mr. Borgno quotes other poetical works of Foscolo, which appear to be in the same style, and, amongst others, his Alceus, which describes the political vicissitudes of Italian poetry from the fall of the eastern empire to the present