Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/330

312 youth, and soon after his hope and his genius." His Vienna period between 1730 and 1740 was artistically the most brilliant of his life, but he wrote little afterwards; though his dramas long monopolised the Italian lyric stage; and the decline of his productive power seems to have been chiefly owing to the untoward interruption to dramatic performances occasioned by the Austrian war of succession in 1740 and following years. When peace returned, Metastasio had become, nervous and hypochondriacal; he yet gained his culminating triumph with the Atilio Regolo in 1750, and the later half of his life, which ended in 1782, was embellished by his friendship with the Italian singer-statesman, Farinelli. Metastasio was selfish, but not cold-hearted; he pined for affection, but shrank from self-sacrifice, and his self-regarding instinct was not ennobled by devotion to any of the causes or pursuits which inspired Goethe. Yet he was a connoisseur in virtue, and his dramas represent her in some of her most attractive shapes. He saw forty editions of his works in his own library; he had not only accumulated but had refused distinctions; if he could feel free from blame towards La Romanina, there was nothing with which he needed to reproach himself. His life had been a continual triumph; no wonder if he had become weary of it at last.

Operatic success requires two endowments rarely united in the same person, the ingenuity pf a playwright and the melody of a nightingale. Both these are combined in Metastasio; he is a very Scribe for briskness, deftness, and clever contrivance of plot; ere he had become nervous and depressed, his Neapolitan brain seethed at a dramatic situation; his Achille in Sciro, one