utterance.

GIACOMO LEOPARDI.

PESSIMISM found its most thrilling and most sorrowful voice in the poetry of Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837). The sorrow of life, which the German Schopenhauer later embodied in a definite philosophy, was the burden of Leopardi's It has been pronounced "the most agonizing cry in modern literature, uttered with a solemn quietness that at once elevates and terrifies us." In this poetry of despair Leopardi surpasses even Byron and Shelley. But Mr. William Dean Howells interprets Leopardi's muse in its national aspect. "Leopardi seems to have been the poet of a national mood; he was the final expression of that long, hopeless apathy in which Italy lay bound for thirty years after the fall of Napoleon and his governments, and the re-establishment of all the little despots, native and foreign, throughout the peninsula. In this time there was unrest enough, and revolt enough of a desultory and unorganized sort, but every struggle, apparently every aspiration, for a free political and religious life, ended in a more solid confirmation of the leaden misrule which weighed down the hearts of the people. To such an apathy the pensive monotone of the sick poet's song might well seem the only truth."

The melancholy life of Leopardi is thus summed up by the Neapolitan writer, Francesco de Sanctis: "In his boyhood Leopardi saw his youth vanish forever; he lived obscure, and achieved posthumous envy and renown; he was rich and noble, and he suffered from want and despite; no woman's love ever smiled upon him, the solitary lover of his own mind, to which he gave the names of Sylvia, Aspasia, and Nerina. Therefore, with a precocious and bitter penetration, he held what we call happiness to be illusions and deceits of fancy; the objects of our desire he called idols, our labors idleness, and everything vanity. Thus he saw nothing here below equal to his own intellect, or that was worthy the throb of his heart; and inertia, rust, as it were, even more than pain, consumed his life, alone in what he called this formidable desert of the world."

In plain prose, Leopardi was a sensitive soul doomed to such early unsympathetic environment and such later lack of events for enthusiasm that he became the victim of a painful ennui. Born at Recanati-one of the dullest of dull little Italian towns-he was reared by a narrow-minded father, who crushed his aspirations and dreams both of liberty and love in youth. Neglected in a literary way, he was allowed to ruin his eyes and make himself almost a hunchback over the books in his father's well-stocked library. He thus managed, by his precocious genius, to emerge one of the greatest philologists and critics of the Italy of his day, but-as Niebuhr saw him-"a mere youth, pale and shy, frail in person, and obviously in ill health." Though permitted to leave the prison of his home, Leopardi was forced by his father to live most penuriously, and Niebuhr could secure for him no Italian office, because he was not a cleric. Before leaving Recanati he had lost his heart to a poor loom girl in a cottage opposite his father's palace, but that stern sire had promptly snuffed out this romantic first love. The young girl died, and her memory gave a melancholy tinge to all Leopardi's life and poetry. A second love tragedy occurred in Florence; only this time the beloved lady is reported to have scorned her wooer. The Florentine ladies are said to have made general mock of the unprepossessing young pessimist.

Leopardi's own progress in pessimism may be thus outlined: first, a view of the ills of the human race as a result of the degeneration of human nature; then, as due to the woe itself of humanity; and, lastly, as a curse laid on mankind by both God and nature. But, as has already been insisted, pessimism was with Leopardi not a philosophy but a sentiment and habit of mind. His general pessimism was embodied, however, in the "Operette Morali" (Moral Works). His "Bruto Minore" is also a condensation of his own despair. In the biography of Filippo Ottonieri, he sketches the life and views of an imaginary philosopher who really represents himself. In his poems he pictures the Icelander complaining of nature, the soul rebuking Creation, and the human spirit denouncing the elusive shade of happiness. In "La Ginestra" he compares the littleness of man to the immen

sity of Vesuvius and nature. His sentiments are somewhat trite to modern view, but his verse still remains exquisite and limpid-the jewel casket that holds a skull. Among the poems of Leopardi's worthy of note are his "Ode to Italy," and his tribute to Dante, which brought him his earliest fame, at the time when Florence was erecting a statue to her exiled son. Leopardi also wrote a "Sequel to the [pseudo-Homeric] Battle of Frogs and Mice," in which he satirizes the abortive Neapolitan revolution of 1820.

THE LAST SONG OF SAPPHO.

THOU peaceful night, thou chaste and silver ray

Of the declining Moon; and thou, arising

Amid the quiet forest on the rocks,

Herald of day; O cherished and endeared,

Whilst Fate and Doom were to my knowledge closed,
Objects of sight! No lovely land or sky
Doth longer gladden my despairing mood.
By unaccustomed joy we are revived
When o'er the liquid spaces of the Heavens
And o'er the fields alarmed doth wildly whirl
The tempest of the winds, and when the car,
The ponderous car of Jove, above our heads
Thundering, divides the heavy air obscure.
O'er mountain peaks and o'er abysses deep
We love to float amid the swiftest clouds;
We love the terror of the herds dispersed,
The streams that flood the plain,

And the victorious, thunderous fury of the main.

Fair is thy sight, O sky divine, and fair
Art thou, O dewy Earth! Alas! of all
This beauty infinite, no slighest part
To wretched Sappho did the Gods or Fate
Inexorable give. Unto thy reign
Superb, O Nature, an unwelcome guest
And a disprized adorer doth my heart
And do mine eyes implore thy lovely forms;
But all in vain. The sunny land around
Smiles not for me, nor from ethereal gates
The blush of early dawn; not me the songs

Of brilliant-feathered birds, not me the trees
Salute with murmuring leaves; and where in shade
Of drooping willows doth a liquid stream
Display its pure and crystal course, from my
Advancing foot the soft and flowing waves
Withdrawing with affright,

Disdainfully it takes through flowery dell its flight.

What fault so great, what guiltiness so dire
Did blight me ere my birth, that adverse grew
To me the brow of fortune and the sky?
How did I sin, a child, when ignorant
Of wickedness is life, that from that time
Despoiled of youth and of its fairest flowers,
The cruel Fates wove with relentless wrath
The web of my existence? Reckless words
Rise on thy lips; the events that are to be
A secret council guides. Secret is all,
Our agony excepted. We were born,
Neglected race, for tears; the reason lies
Amid the Gods on high.

O cares and hopes

Of early years! To beauty did the Sire,

To glorious beauty an eternal reign

Give o'er this human kind; for warlike deed,
For learned lyre or song,

In unadorned shape, no charms to fame belong.

Ah! let us die. The unworthy garb divested,
The naked soul will take to Dis its flight

And expiate the cruel fault of blind
Dispensers of our lot. And thou for whom
Long love in vain, long faith, and fruitless rage
Of unappeased desire assailed my heart,

Live happily, if happily on earth

A mortal yet hath lived. Not me did Jove
Sprinkle with the delightful liquor from
The niggard urn, since of my childhood died
The dreams and fond delusions. The glad days
Of our existence are the first to fly;

And then disease and age approach, and last,
The shade of frigid Death. Behold! of all
The palms I hoped for and the errors sweet,

Hades remains; and the transcendent mind

Sinks to the Stygian shore

Where sable Night doth reign, and silence evermore.

THE VILLAGERS' SATURDAY NIGHT.

FROM copse and glade the maiden takes her way
When in the west the setting sun reposes;
She gathered flowers; her slender fingers bear
A fragrant wealth of violets and roses,

And with their beauty she will deck her hair,
Her lovely bosom with their leaves entwine;
Such is her wont on every festive day.

The aged matron sits upon the steps

And with her neighbors turns the spinning wheel,
Facing the heavens where the rays decline;
And she recalls the years,-

The happy years when on the festive day

It was her wont her beauty to array,

And when amidst her lovers and compeers

In youth's effulgent pride

Her rapid feet through mazy dance did glide.

The sky already darkens, and serene

The azure vault its loveliness reveals;

From hill and tower a lengthened shadow steals

In silvery whiteness of the crescent moon.

We hear the distant bell

Of festive morrow tell;

To weary hearts how generous a boon!

The happy children in the open space

In dancing numbers throng

With game and jest and song ;

And to his quiet home and simple fare

The laborer doth repair

And whistles as he goes,

Glad of the morrow that shall bring repose.

Then, when no other light around is seen, No other sound or stir,

We hear the hammer strike,

The grating saw of busy carpenter;

He is about and doing, so unlike