The Italian Poets Since Dante (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1904. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VIII PARINI--MANZONI--LEOPARDI--SUMMARY Although the part of Alfieri in the regeneration of Italian poetry was the boldest, the most deliberate, and the most original, it did not comprehend the entire work. The Italian critics of the present day are disposed to assign an effective share to Giuseppe Parini who, if we consider dates alone, should have come before Alfieri. Parini was born in Bosisio, an obscure town of the Milanese, on the 22d of May, 1729. He was a man of the people, and rather boasted of his comparatively humble origin. His father hoped to make a priest of him, and the youth earned his living at first by copying legal papers, though he early took to studying the great masters of poetry, and a volume of his early poems admitted him into more than one of the literary academies. But he had to struggle with hard poverty all his life, and engaged in work as a private tutor to support himself and his mother. At every leisure moment he labored on what he intended should be his great work, a satire which he called "II Giorno," orl "The Day," which he published in parts. He attracted the favorable notice of the Austrian minister in Lombardy, who encouraged his writing and ultimately obtained for him some important positions as Professor of Literature, where his lectures bore worthy fruit. He joined a so-called patriotic society, which engaged him to write the funeral eulogy of the Empress Maria Theresa. This delicate and difficult task, for which he had no liking, told on his nerves and his whole health. He was subject, from early youth, to a chronic weakness of the muscles, which ended by almost wholly depriving him of the use of his limbs; and his poetic vein flowed by no means as easily towards the end of his life. The intense bitterness of his...