24. Somewhat later he had, as we may perceive from the next short extract, perfected his power of turning a compliment a power certainly never so becoming as in a man of generally bold and independent character, and in this instance most gracefully veiling a rebuke. It is addressed to Count Perticari, himself an author :—

"Recanati, 30 Ottobre 1820.

"Sig. Conte mio carissimo e stimatissimo: Poco dopo la mia prima lettera, alla quale rispondeste graziosamente quest' anno passato, io ve ne scrissi altre due, alle quali non rispondeste. Ma non mi dolgo, che non voleste gittare in benefizio di un solo quel tempo che spendevate in vantaggio di molti."

25. His letters to his father are written in the language of conventional respect and affection, but under evident constraint throughout. In those to his brother, the Count Carlo, and to his sister, he is entirely free and unreserved, but they refer chiefly to matters of domestic concern, or of outward and minor, not always entirely pure, interest, and afford no measure in general of his powers or of his trials. It is in the letters to Giordani, the only man (July 1819) that he knows,* that he most fully pours out his whole soul, and displays the riches of his acquirements, of his critical taste, and of his constructive understanding. They abound, like those of Giordani himself, which are subjoined, in expressions of the warmest affection. Indeed, the correspondence is carried on with the fervour and impatience of two lovers, and with a redundancy of attachment, breaking out into jealousies almost infantine, and slight quarrels just made in order to be mended; the stream only foams the more from being

* Epistolario, I. 151.

obstructed, and it is sometimes almost dammed up by the cruel, the abominable, the all-obstructing, all-devouring posts.

*

26. It is curious, too, to observe how the two minds respectively find their level according to their power, without strain or even consciousness. In the early part of these communications, Giordani cheers, encourages, and patronises his youthful correspondent. But about Leopardi's twenty-second year he began, quite without ostentation or assumption, to act the tutor, and, in the familiar phrase, pat his friend on the back. This man, however— we understand an ex-Benedictine who had receded from his vows for many years had a monopoly of the rich commerce of his mind; and he was an evil genius to Leopardi, confirming every negative and downward tendency by his own very gross and scoffing unbelief.

27. There are other parts of this collection of letters, which throw light upon Italian manners and habits in small things and great. It is amusing to find Leopardi recommending his brother to give up his moustaches when he had just reared them to perfection; and assuring him that the English, and even the French, not only did not any longer wear them, but even laughed at those who did. There are also many letters relating to the search for fit matches for his sister, and then for his brother, Count Carlo; which was prosecuted with great vigour, not only in Recanati and the neighbourhood, but at Ravenna, Modena, Reggio, and Parma, with occasional references to Milan, Florence, and Rome. We must not judge of these matters wholly with an English eye, but must recollect that the facilities of locomotion in a country, and the

*See, e.g., Epist. I. 163.

habit of resorting to capitals give facilities of association and of choice, the want of which elsewhere requires more or less the intervention of third parties. The practical difference between Italian habits and our own seems, however, to extend further. There the matter is openly entertained, discussed, and arranged by the relations, with a sort of veto in the last stage to the person most concerned. What sort of veto, it may reasonably be asked? We should presume from these letters, more than a Royal, but somewhat less than a Presidential one. But in England the whole actual process, except the bare initiative of social introduction, belongs usually even to a daughter, with a veto to the parents: in short, the English daughter exchanges places with the Italian father.

28. Injudicious, though doubtless well-meant, attempts appear to have been made to press him into holy orders; and they were, most unwarrantably, continued even after he had given evidence conclusive to any dispassionate mind of his infidel opinions: for in 1824 he published the Bruto Minore, with its ominous appendix in prose; and some of his Dialogues were in print as early as January 1826. In that month, it seems that his father offered him a nomination to one or more benefices; and he accepted it on certain conditions, one of which was that he should be dispensed from saying mass after the first few days, though he had no objection to undertaking to recite prayers by himself instead. For this he pleaded his studies, and the state of his eyes, as an excuse. A subsequent letter, however, throws a strange light upon the current notions of church property; and exhibits to us a form of abuse perhaps more flagrant, but perhaps also more rare, than those which prevail in England. He writes to say he hears that patrons are sometimes allowed

at Rome to suspend a presentation for six or eight years, and to apply the revenues in the interim, subject to the usual burdens (of provision for divine service, we presume), for some honourable purpose. He then suggests that his father perhaps might make this arrangement with a view to his support, retaining all the time the same control over the money as over any other part of his income. In April, however, of the same year, we find him finally declining "the benefices" which his father still pressed upon him; and the nomination seems to have fallen on his youngest brother.

29. We have referred to his view of his own mothertongue. Every day he read it as a portion of his studies; and he early said (1817) that the man, who had familiarised himself with the deeper resources of the Italian, would pity those who were obliged to use any other tongue. It was to him la lingua regina di tutte le lingue viventi, e delle morte se non regina certo non suddita. Again, he is struck with the difficulty of translating the noble Greek word. aλos, represented sufficiently for our purpose by the English term feat.

"Con qual parola italiana renderemo questa greca? Travaglio ha il disgustoso, ma non il grande e il vasto. Non pertanto io non m'arrischio di affermare che questa parola non si possa rendere in italiano, tanto poco mi fido di conoscere questa nostra lingua, SOVRANA, IMMENSA, ONNIPOTENTE."-Op. V. p. 50.

He was encouraged in this view of his own tongue by his friend Giordani, who writes to him, non s'impara mai bene la lingua, che è sempre infinita."*

* [I shall rejoice, if these words should attract some attention from the reader. The deplorable and barbarous neglect of the Italian tongue and literature, had begun, but had scarcely begun, to be felt among us in 1850. It is now general, and hardened.-W. E. G., 1878.]

30. Accordingly, when he published his Canzoni' in 1824, he appended to them a philological commentary, which has been republished in the third, or miscellaneous, Volume of his works. It is directed steadily towards a particular scope, namely, that of enlarging the resources of the language, rarely or never by arbitrary invention, almost always by recurring to its classical authorities. He criticises with great severity the Della Cruscan dictionary, which imposes upon us foreigners by its bulk and pretensions, but is, we believe, lightly esteemed by every Italian scholar. In the same spirit he betook himself to the reproduction of the style of the Trecentisti. These he considered to approach most nearly to the manner of the Greeks, and best to develop the close affinity which he conceived to exist between the two languages, and which, indeed, is obvious in some points of Italian that are not represented in Latin. Among them are the highly diversified forms of diminution and augmentation, the employment of the article, the virtual possession of a middle voice, and the free use of the verb infinitive with the functions of a noun substantive. Yet he must himself, when translating the Odyssey, have felt the want of a flexible quality in Italian to enable it faithfully to represent the Greek compound adjectives.

31. Under the name of a trecentista translation from an ancient MS., he published a fictitious account of the martyrdom of certain monks; and the imposition was successful, even with the best judges of the style of that period. Nor let it be understood that he inherited the faculty from his father. On the contrary, Count Monaldo had, so far as he bred him at all, bred him in the Gallicising taste of an earlier generation. At the outset, he says, in April 1817— being then only eighteen years old-he had his head full