Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/329

Rh time an inglorious, he was fortunately not a mute Milton. Victor Cousin was similarly snatched from the gutter, for different issues and from different motives. His sonorous appellative was the gift of his patron, Who Hellenised his protégé's original name of Trapasso, and left him a fortune. After wasting most of his benefactor's legacy, Metastasio articled himself to a Neapolitan lawyer named Castagnola, who received him on condition that he should not even read, much less write, a line of verse. This pledge Was broken by the composition in 1722 of the Gardens of the Hesperides, a little mask composed under compulsion from the Austrian viceroy. The secret of the authorship Was ferreted out by La Romanina, the celebrated cantatrice, who pounced upon Metastasio, bore him from Castagnola's house to her own, and made him a dramatic poet. She was a married woman much older than Metastasio, and there seems no suggestion that her affection was other than maternal. It ended, however, unhappily, perhaps tragically. The immense success of his Didone Abbandonata, performed at Rome in 1723, and followed by a number of similar pieces, had made Metastasio the undisputed sovereign of the lyric stage, and in 1730 he was invited to Vienna to replace the veteran Zeno. He went. La Romanina wished to follow, but never did, and died very suddenly in 1734. Had Metastasio, now devoted to Countess Althan, to whom he is said to have been privately married, obstructed her journey? and was her death natural? There is nothing but surmise as to the precise nature of the case; but Vernon Lee's tragical summing-up is true as a statement of fact: "Thus ended the romance of Metastasio's life, and with it his