political topics, and left his opinion still uncompromised and unknown. It is generally reported that he finished, although he never ventured to publish, a translation of Pindar. The Greek poet has had many happy imitators in Italy, especially in the days of Chiabrera, of Filicaja, of Menzini, and of Guidi; but his translators have failed there no less than in all other countries. Mazza, besides his poetical reputation, had the character of a scholar profoundly versed in ancient and modern languages, and the acquisition of the latter is the more singular, as he had never been out of Italy, and indeed had seldom quitted his native town.* JOSEPH PARINI. Parini was almost the only Italian poet of the last century who dared to conceive, and certainly he was the only one who was capable of completing, the project of directing the efforts of his art towards the improvement of his fellowcitizens. If by moralizing his song he has failed to correct his contemporaries, he has, however, acquired a reputation much more valuable than can be the share of those whose talents are devoted solely to the amusement of the public. His parents were peasants on the borders of the lake Pusiano, the Eupilis of Pliny, about twenty miles to the north of Milan. It is usual in Italy to choose from the poorest classes those destined to supply the humblest and most laborious duties in the church, whilst the valuable benefices are reserved for the younger sons of noble families. When one of these children of poverty shows signs of superior talent, the monks endeavour to attach him to their community, and the charity of the bishop provides him a gratuitous education. In this way Parini was sent to study in the capital of Austrian Lombardy. He applied to his scholastic pursuits until nearly his twentieth year, when * Mazza died in 1817, at Parma. He was in his 76th year. There is a long epitaph on him in the cathedral. his constitution, feeble from the beginning, almost sunk under an attack which took away the use of his lower limbs, and occasioned his retreat from the seminary in a condition that seemed to deprive him of all hopes of aspiring even to a country curacy. All that medical care, all that time could do for the improvement of his health, from his youth to the day of his death, barely enabled him to crawl along by the help of a stick, or by leaning on the arm of a friend. Some of the verses published in his posthumous works are painfully affecting, from the picture which they afford of the extreme indigence in which he languished even after he had arrived at years of maturity. His whole livelihood, and that of an aged mother, were derived from composing articles for a newspaper. He speaks thus in requesting an intimate friend to send him relief: He had already published some poetry which had dropt after the partial applauses that usually succeed the first essays of every author, that are not bad enough for ridicule nor good enough for envy. Parini would never allow these specimens to be reprinted. It was not until his thirty-fifth year that he published the first canto of that poem, which rendered him formidable to the most powerful families around him, and established him in the eyes of the literary world as the founder of a new school in poetry. This poem is called The Day' (Il Giorno), and is divided into four cantos-Morning (Mattino); Noon (Meriggio); Evening (Vespro); and Night (Notte)--and it contains a satirical description of the manner in which the Italian nobles contrive to waste away the four-and-twenty hours of an existence for the most part truly despicable. Before entering into an examination of this poem, a word or two may be requisite * Parini, Oper., vol. iii. on the author. The literary history of every nation abounds with instances of the distresses and ill success of those endowed with the finest abilities; and. it is a painful truth that the union of the severest virtue with those abilities is no shield against the arrows of Fortune. The case of Parini, however, is not to be confounded with these examples. Infirm, indigent, without the advantage of a regular education, struggling against the obscurity of his birth, and the disgrace of poverty, he lived in a city where the nobles are not only more rich, but are perhaps more haughty and more ignorant than in any other town in Italy. At that time they were important from their influence, direct and indirect, and formidable from the impunity with which they could give a loose to their revenge. It is universally known that before the revolution the Italian nobles enjoyed a sort of prescriptive right of employing assassins; but it is more wonderful still, that at this day, and in the face of the new noblesse created by Bonaparte, there is not a single instance of the daughter or wife of any but those in possession of ancient titles being admitted to the ball-room or drawing-room of a Milanese patrician. The same absurd distinction prevails at Turin. At Venice, at Bologna, at Florence, at Rome, the exclusion is not so strictly observed, and a few young females of the middling ranks are allowed to stand in the same dance with the daughters of barons and of counts. Such was the state of society that Parini undertook to correct. And this difficult, this dangerous task he adventured upon, by boldly reproaching the nobles with their vices and their crimes. He raised his own reputation by the depression of a whole order, which, in spite of their being essentially more despicable than in any other country of Europe, were, owing to the ignorance and extreme poverty of the lower classes, in fact, more respectable. The care taken by Parini to conceal his personal allusions could not prevent the discovery that his portraits were all drawn from living characters; and if his originals recognised their likeness only now and then, the public were never mistaken. There was not a single Milanese who did not see, in the chief personage of the poem, the Prince Belgiojoso, of the reigning family of Este, the eldest brother of the field-marshal of the same name, who was Austrian ambassador at our court, and governor of the Low Countries. It should be here observed, to the honour of Parini, and indeed of the Italian authors in general, that, let a work be ever so much admired, it never brings the writer money enough to defray the expense of the first edition. There is but a very limited number of readers in Italy; and though a work may receive from their applause a character which secures the esteem of the whole nation, a multitude of purchasers, such as we are accustomed to, is not to be procured by any merit, or any accident. Twelve hundred names to a subscription are reckoned an extraordinary instance of public patronage, and it is hazardous to demand. more than three francs (half-a-crown) for any new production in a single volume under the quarto size. The copyright law can hardly exist in a country divided into so many small governments, and the booksellers find it no difficult matter to elude the prosecutions, which must be transferred from one state to another before they can be brought before any competent tribunal. After the revolution an effort was made to correct this abuse; but it was found almost impossible to change the practice of a whole class of tradesmen long habituated to consider all literary profits their own, and to esteem every mercenary art a fair branch of speculation. Those accustomed to the liberality of English publishers, which affords a decent subsistence to many whose talents and whose fame do not rise above mediocrity, will hardly believe that the best authors in Italy think themselves fortunate if they find a publisher to take the expense of printing off their hands. In that country the booksellers are also printers, and have it in their power to multiply indefinitely the copies of any edition, without accounting for the accruing profits. The fidelity of the printer, and our other protections of literary property, are unpractised and unknown. Alfieri, in a sort of preface, in verse, prefixed to the second edition of his tragedies, complains that his eagerness for renown has cost him a portion of his health, of his intellects, of his peace of mind, and, above all, of his fortune -the latter having been sacrificed to the rapacity of the bookseller : "Profonder tutto in linde stampe il mio, There were, however, certain coincidences favourable to the bold project of Parini. A sort of colony of French encyclopædists had settled at Milan, and four or five patricians having taken to reading, dared also to disseminate in writing the principles of the approaching revolution. The Marquis Beccaria had recently published his work on 'Crimes and Punishments,' which effected an important change in the criminal jurisprudence of his own country, and extended its beneficial influence to many other nations, where torture prevailed, and was consequently abolished. Joseph II. had himself begun those innovations which ended by diminishing the preponderating influence of the Lombard nobles. Count Firmian, the governor of those provinces, when questioned as to the publication of the poem of Parini, exclaimed, “Let him make haste; we want it mightily!"— Qu'il se hâte, nous en avons une nécessité extrême. In addition to such a powerful ally, Parini was backed by all the middling classes of society, which, generally speaking, are certainly the most moral and the most enlightened portion of civilised mankind. Some individuals amongst them having quarrelled with the church-rectors of certain collegiate establishments, found in Parini a champion who overwhelmed their adversaries with a few |