The Edinburgh Magazine, June 1821, pages 512-515
PATRIOTIC EFFUSIONS OF THE ITALIAN POETS.
Whoever has attentively studied the works of the Italian Poets, from the days of Dante and Petrarch, to those of Foscolo and Pindemonte, must have been struck with those allusions to the glory and the fall, the renown and the degradation of Italy, which give a melancholy interest to their pages. Amidst all the vicissitudes of that devoted country, the warning voice of her bards has still been heard to prophesy the impending storm, and to call up such deep and spirit-stirring recollections from the glorious past, as have resounded through the land, notwithstanding the loudest tumults of those discords which have made her
Long, long a bloody stage,
For petty kinglings tame,
Their miserable game
Of puny war to wage.
There is something very affecting in these vain, though exalted aspirations after that independence, which the Italians, as a nation, seem destined never to regain. The strains in which their high-toned feelings on this subject are recorded, produce on our minds the same effect with the song of the imprisoned bird, whose melody is fraught, in our imagination, with recollections of the green woodland, the free air, and unbounded sky. We soon grow weary of the perpetual violets and zephyrs, whose cloying sweetness pervades the sonnets and canzoni of the minor Italian Poets, till we are ready to "die in aromatic pain;" nor
