Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/373

Rh the son of a learned and high-minded, but unfortunately bigoted and retrograde Italian nobleman, of anti-national politics and antiquarian tastes, whose embarrassed circumstances and incapacity for business had induced him to assign his property to a practical but parsimonious wife, Leopardi solaced the forlornness of existence in a spiritual desert by intense study, favoured by his father's extensive library, in which he immured himself to a degree propitious to neither bodily nor mental health. So extraordinary were his powers that at nineteen, besides many excellent bonâ fide translations, he produced imaginary versions of lost Greek authors which deceived accomplished classical scholars. But the maladies from which he was to suffer all his life had already made progress; he could follow no profession, and was entirely dependent upon well-intentioned but uncongenial parents, whose dread of the liberal and free-thinking opinions he had imbibed, chiefly from correspondence with Pietro Giordani, induced them to imprison him at home.

Though solaced by the affection of his brother Carlo and his sister Paolina, Leopardi's position was most uncomfortable, and the chief external events of his history for many years are his temporary escapes and his enforced returns. He sought refuge successively at Rome, Bologna, and Florence, meeting with friends everywhere, especially at Rome, where he won the esteem and excited the wonder of Niebuhr and Bunsen. His craving for deeper sympathy twice involved him in love affairs, both fruitful in humiliation and disappointment. Nothing else, indeed, could be expected for the suit of the pallid, deformed youth, whose blood barely circulated, whose