Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/388

370 he was almost the mainspring of the literary movement of his time. Italian authors resorted to him for ideas, as English authors resorted to Samuel Rogers for breakfasts, and neither went empty away. But for him Leopardi might have wasted his life on classical philology and verbal criticism; he helped Manzoni and Giusti to their fame; he lived familiarly with Niccolini, Capponi, and Colletta, and was the intimate friend of Monti and Canova. The first forty years of his life, spent in various official employments, had been troubled and needy, but he ultimately inherited a fortune, and during the Thirty Years' Peace his activity incessantly pervaded Italian letters like an unseen sap, save when he came forward to promote a savings-bank or an infant-school, or got himself expelled from the territories of some petty prince. His style is highly finished and polished, but is the chief recommendation of his writings, the epistolary excepted.

Finally, among the more distinguished authors of the period who systematically laboured for the deliverance and regeneration of their country must be named two most illustrious men, both called upon to deal with practical affairs, yet chiefly efficacious through their writings, and. Both were subjects of the King of Sardinia—Gioberti a royal chaplain at Turin; Mazzini a man of letters at Genoa writing essays in defence of the romantic school. Both were incarcerated and banished—Gioberti through the animosity of the Jesuits, Mazzini as a Carbonaro. Gioberti betook himself to France, Mazzini to England. Gioberti soon obtained an European reputation by his philosophical writings, but does not appear to have materially influenced French opinion in favour of his