Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/377

Rh The bulk of Leopardi's writings, indeed, is diminutive, and the range ot his ideas narrow; but within these limits he has approached absolute perfection more closely, not only than any other Italian, but than any modern writer. He is one of that small and remarkable class of men who have arisen here and there in recent Europe to reproduce each some peculiar aspect of the ancient Greek genius. Shelley is a Greek by his pantheism, Keats by his feeling for nature, Platen by the architectonic of his verse, so is Leopardi by his impeccability. All the best Greek productions, whether of poetic or of plastic art, have this character of inevitableness; they can neither be better nor other than they are. It is not the same in romantic poetry. Shakespeare no doubt always chose the best path, but he always seems to have had the choice among a thousand. In almost everything of Leopardi's, whether verse or prose, form and thought appear indissolubly interfused without the possibility of disjunction. This is eminently the case with his poems, perfect examples of lofty and sustained eloquence entirely uncontaminated by rhetoric. There are few thoughts which strike by their hovelty, few elaborated similes, few phrases which stand forth in isolation from the environing text. All seems of a piece; but the words chosen are invariably the most apt to express the idea sought to be conveyed, and the stream of sentiment is as pellucid as it is impetuous. The same mastery is evinced in the descriptive passages, which never appear to exist for their own sakes, but as depicting the inner feeling of the poem by a visible symbol. Be the subject small ot great, from the disappearance of a vast landscape at the setting of the moon, or the terrified peasant listening sleeplessly to the roar of Vesuvius, down to the