LEOPARDI 465
the model; but the wit and irony which were playthings to Lucian are terribly earnest with Leopardi. Leopardi's invention is fully equal to Lucian's, and his only drawback in comparison with his exemplar is that, while the latter's campaign against pretence and imposture commands hearty sympathy, Leopardi's philosophical creed is a repulsive hedonism in the disguise of austere stoicism. His Ice lander rebuking Nature for his cruelty and inhospitality, his Soul protesting against the original wrong of creation, his Familiar Spirit explaining the impossibility of making his master happy for a single instant – all, in fact, of the chief interlocutors in these dialogues profess the same unmitigated pessimism, claim emancipation from every illusion that renders life tolerable to the vulgar, and assert or imply a vast moral and intellectual superiority over unenlightened mankind. When, however, we come to inquire what it is the privation of which renders them miserable, we find it is nothing but pleasurable sensation, fame, fortune, or some other external thing which a lofty code of ethics would deny to be either indefeasibly due to man or essential to his felicity. A page of Sartor Resartus scatters Leopardi's sophistry to the winds, and leaves nothing of his dialogues but the consummate literary skill that would render the least fragment precious. As works of art they are a possession for ever, as contributions to moral philosophy they are worthless, and apart from their literary qualities can only escape condemnation if regarded as lyrical expressions of emotion, the wail extorted from a diseased mind by a diseased body. "Filippo Otto- nieri" is a portrait of an imaginary philosopher, imitated from the biography of a real sage in Lucian's Demonax. Lucian has shown us the philosopher he wished to copy, Leopardi has truly depicted the philosopher he was. No thing can be more striking or more tragical than the picture of the man superior to his fellows in every quality of head and heart, and yet condemned to sterility and impotence because he has, as he imagines, gone a step too far on the road to truth, and illusions exist for him no more. The little tract is full of remarks on life and character of sur prising depth and justice, manifesting what powers of observation as well as reflexion were possessed by the sickly youth who had seen so little of the world.
Want of means soon drove Leopardi back to Recanati, where, deaf, half-blind, sleepless, tortured by incessant pain, at war with himself and every one around him except his sister, he spent the two most unhappy years of his unhappy life. In May 1831 he escaped to Florence, where he formed the acquaintance of a young Swiss philologist, M. de Sinner. To him he confided his unpublished philological writings, with a view to their appearance in Germany. Sinner showed himself culpably remiss in the execution of his trust, and it is no adequate extenuation of his negligence that these treatises were of less value than Leopardi may have thought. Though continually reclaimed by the latter's friends after his death, they were never published by Sinner, but were purchased after his decease by the Italian Government, and, together with Leopardi's correspondence with the Swiss philologist, have been partially edited by M. Aulard. In 1831 appeared a new edition of Leopardi's poems, comprising several new pieces of the highest merit. These are in general less austerely classical than his earlier compositions, and evince a greater tendency to description, and a keener interest in the works and ways of ordinary mankind. "The Resurrection," composed on occasion of his unexpected recovery, is a model of concentrated energy of diction, and "The Song of the Wandering Shepherd in Asia" is one of the highest nights of modern lyric poetry. The range of the author's ideas is still restricted, but his style and melody are unsurpassable. Shortly after the publication of these pieces (October 1831) Leopardi was driven from Florence to Rome by an unhappy attachment, the history and object of which have remained unknown. His feelings are powerfully expressed in two poems, "To Himself" and "Aspasia," which seem, however, to breathe wounded pride at least as much as wounded love. In 1832 Leopardi returned to Florence, and there formed acquaintance with a young Neapolitan, Antonio Ranieri, himself an author of merit, and destined to enact towards him the part performed by Severn towards Keats, an enviable title to renown if Ranieri had not in his old age tarnished it by assuming the relation of Trelawny to the deceased Byron. Leopardi accompanied Ranieri and his sister to Naples, and under their care enjoyed four years of comparative tranquillity. He made the acquaintance of the German poet Platen, his sole modern rival in the classical perfection of form, and composed "La Ginestra," the most consummate of all his lyrical masterpieces, strongly resembling Shelley's "Mont Blanc," but more perfect in expression. He also wrote at Naples "The Sequel to the Battle of the Frogs and Mice," his most sustained effort, a satire in ottava rima on the abortive Neapolitan revolution of 1820, clever and humorous, but obscure from the local character of the allusions. The more painful and distasteful details of his Neapolitan residence may be found by those who care to seek for them in the deplorable publication of Ranieri's peevish old age (Sette Anni di Sodalizio). The decay of his constitution continued; he became dropsical; and a sudden crisis of his malady, unanticipated by himself alone, put an end to his life-long sufferings on June 15, 1837.
Leopardi's sole but sufficient apology for the effeminacy of endless
complaints, and an extremely low view of the conditions of human
happiness, is to have been a poor invalid tortured by incessant pain,
who in demanding pleasurable sensations for mankind was but
craving what was indeed an absolute necessity for himself. With
all his dramatic skill in dialogue, the cast of his mind was essen
tially subjective; he was wholly incapable of placing himself at any
other point of view than his own. His philosophical opinions
accordingly possess merely a personal interest, and are valueless
except as illustrations of human nature in abnormal circumstances.
The patriotic spirit of his earliest poems, the brief gleam of happi
ness he enjoyed in female society at Bologna, reveal how different
might have been his history and the spirit of his writings had his
physical organization qualified him for either love or action.
Bereft of every possibility of healthy energy, it is no wonder that
he should have sunk into a despairing quietism, a solace probably to
himself, and only hurtful to others if represented as a powerful in
tellect's deliberate and unbiassed solution of the problem of the
universe. Leopardi's perfect literary expression owes nothing to the
nature of the ideas it is employed in embellishing, and is, indeed,
most conspicuous when he stands upon common ground with other
poets. Thus the magnificent description of the setting of the moon
in "Il Tramonto della Luna" is finer than the reflexions it ushers in,
and his crowning work, "La Ginestra," owes most of its impressive-
ness to the assemblage of noble and picturesque objects which the
poet summons as witnesses to the frailty of man. In the presence
of Vesuvius and Pompeii such meditations seem natural, and, after
all, the association of the destinies of mankind with the revolutions
of nature produces rather a sentiment of grave and chastened exal
tation than the self-abasement enforced by the poet. This natural
and moral sublimity raises it above Leopardi's other lyrics, which in
point of poetical feeling and literary workmanship are for the most
part nearly on a par. They are truly classic – not, as with Platen,
by a laborious imitation of antique metres, but, as with Shelley and
Landor and the English neo-classic poets, by a perfect appropriation
of the classical spirit. As with the ancients, their range of senti
ment is narrow but their form perfect; there is probably no other
modern writer in whom it would be so impossible to alter a line
without detriment. The same perfection characterizes Leopardi's
prose writings, and his letters would be hardly less admirable but
for the hollow professions and inflated compliments exacted by the
conventional proprieties of Italian correspondence. The insincerity
of his letters to his father is especially painful; and his professed
yearning for death is strangely associated with a frantic dread of
cholera. Censure, however, is silent in the contemplation of his
moral and physical sufferings; and his intimates unanimously attest
the attractiveness of his personal character save for some infirmities
that should never have been dragged to light. As a precocious
