Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/369

Rh afterwards in easy circumstances, Niccolini spent an uneventful life in the service of the Academy of Florence; his mode of living was sequestered, and his character stainless.

With all his good-will, Niccolini could deal no such blows at foreign or domestic oppressors as that which a brother dramatist of greatly inferior power delivered by the mere record of his sufferings. Le Mie Prigioni made (1789–1854) as typical a figure as the Iron Mask or the Prisoner of Chillon, and won Italy a moral victory in her darkest day (1832). It is needless to give any particular account of so famous a book. The candid and innocent author was born to move mankind by a single story, and to relapse into obscurity after delivering his message. His dramas and lyrics do not exceed mediocrity, with the exception of Francesca da Rimini (1818), a tragedy full of tender feeling, admired by Byron, to whom the version of some scenes in the Quarterly Review has been attributed. They were, however, in fact rendered by Milman.