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attempted, and used it for the castigation of vice without detracting from the belief in virtue.

Giusti's life and character are illustrated by a mass of letters, which are among the greatest models of epistolary style extant in any language, and are invariably recommended to students of Italian as the ne plus ultra of vivacity and purity of diction. They give the impression of the most unstudied spontaneity, and seem to reflect the mood of the writer at the moment, now witty, now tender, exalted with the most lofty sentiments of wisdom and morality, bitter with cynical irony, or tragic with the terrible eloquence of suffering. Here is a portion of one addressed to the Marchesa d' Azeglio in October 1844:

MY DEAR FRIEND,-I write to you from Colle in Val d' Elsa, a little village which, like Pescia, is by courtesy called a town. The air of these districts is good; the people in the main as good as the air; and Poldo Orlandini, who has received me into his house, is own brother to that Checco Orlandini whom you saw at the Mayers', and who, in that process of mutual friction that we call social intercourse, has kept his primitive stamp, a shade rough to one accustomed to everything polished, but of sound metal. The touch of these pavements was like the pouring of fresh oil on a dying lamp to my health; but after eight or ten days' breathing space I am not going to be such an ass as to be caught by the bait of hope which has been dangled before me so long. The untempered wind of Leghorn plays the very mischief with a wretch whose nerves are strained like the strings of a violin. Up here the winds arrive, I might almost say watered, and even that accursed African blast, after the exertion required for reaching these heights, is so changed that it seems as if it were a native of them.

I mount a pony every morning that seems scarcely bigger than a pigeon, and which, being accustomed to carry the doctor, tries to turn down every lane and stop at every door, like the tinker's donkey. These peasants, who look no higher than the beast's legs, call out to me from all sides, "Oh Doctor, is that you?' Indeed a few days ago a woman brought her child out to me to the road to be physicked, and it was no easy matter to persuade her that I had nothing of the doctor but the mount. From the very first days the animal and I had made a pact of mutual forbearance, and after going five or six miles at a pace suited to my invalid pulse, we return straight home, as pleases heaven. The natives of Colle, whose eyes are not trained to a certain harmony between the horse and rider (only think how indispensable on our Cascine, or your ramparts), see nothing extraordinary in the discrepancy between my Florentine surtout and the Maremman saddle, but unlucky me if I were to stumble upon some summer visitor accustomed to breathe the unadulterated air of the capital! If I ever wished to split myself in two, after the fashion of St. Anthony, it would be now, and I would give anything to be able to dismount from the saddle in spirit, while I remained there in flesh and blood, to see the fine figure I cut. Not being equal to this, I study myself as best I can in my shadow, and sigh for the pencil of him who drew the vignettes to Don Quixote.

Here is an extract from another written to a friend (Luigi Alberti)

in April 1845, in which he analyses his physical sufferings, and, after some preliminary description, goes on thus :

When in bed it seems as if the time to get up would never come; when up, every hour seems a thousand before going back to bed; in the house I feel a mania to go out; out of doors, a passion to rush back to the house; when standing I long to sit down, when sitting to stand up; and so in everything. Add to this, now the most burning desire for life and health, now a weary longing to have done with it once for all; on one side the dearest memories, the most loved faces, with all the follies, hopes, and seductions of youth crowding on my mind ; on the other the future, now glowing with light, now gloomy with silence and darkness; now imaged as a place of rest, now as an interminable and unknown track, or again as a black and fathomless abyss. Days of calm that hold me in suspense like a soul in Limbo, and in which my complaints

'Sound not as wild laments, but gentle sighs;'

and then again a spasm which has no defined name or locality, which, without being a distinct pain or a recognised affection, mimics and includes all the tortures of a hospital; resembling in this some of those phrases in vogue, which say nothing, but hint everything. A red-hot pincers rending the vitals-a garment of flax-carding machines—a strait-waistcoat which cramps and racks me from head to foot-are feeble comparisons for this class of tribulation. There are sluggard troubles which delight in sticking close to you in bed; there are others which have the noble ambition of keeping you company at table, out walking, at the theatre, and even at the ball; granting you a sort of habeas corpus, which never releases your mind from the wretched feeling of having a prosecution hanging over you. Mine is one of those maladies of vagrant tendency which are never believed in, as those other maladies which make themselves your bedfellows are little believed in until they arrive at the point of setting eight chemists hard at work, four doctors in agitation, and strewing sand before the door.

Giusti's was, doubtless, one of those obscure maladies in which mind and body act and react on one another in a series of mutual jars, and the sensitive organisation of genius had to discount thus in bodily pain its exalted intellectual privileges. In these letters the poet's disposition and character are seen under their best aspect, and there are some, such as the letter of advice to a boy entering college, and of consolation to a young cousin afflicted with lameness, which, for their combination of practical wisdom and admirable sentiments, deserve to be written in letters of gold.

Few artists have left so clear and minute an analysis of their creative impulses as Giusti, who had the power of dissecting and detailing, like an indifferent spectator, all the wayward vagaries of inspiration in his own mind. He describes how, in the first frenzy of working out an idea, he would sit at his desk for hours, writing, erasing, sketching out, recasting, in a fever of activity and creation; then, disgusted with the futility of his attempts at expression, would fling aside his papers in disgust, and abandon all mental exertion for a

phase of wild gaiety and social distraction. Then after an interval, his glance would light accidentally on the notes he had been at work on, and he would find that the fancied failure contained all the elements of completion, and only required in reality a little arrangement and reconstruction to be a presentable addition to his literary offspring. His biographer, Signor Frassi, tells us that when the first idea of a subject kindled in his brain, he began to cast it into shape whatever place or circumstances he might be in; while walking or in society, listening to conversation or making himself agreeable to a lady, however otherwise engaged, the rhymes and verses went on forming themselves in his mind. As soon as it was thus as it were blocked out, he would read the rough draft to his friends, to ladies, servants, or any audience he could get, judging of its effect not so much from their words as from the expression of their faces or some involuntary gesture of dissent or appreciation. Then modifying and changing whatever had seemed to fall flat or be unintel ligible, he would lay it by for some time, until he had forgotten it, and could judge of it from a fresh point of view, when he would put it through another process of reconstruction. He was not less prompt in adopting and assimilating the ideas of others than in taking corrections and suggestions from them, so that his mind, always on the alert, gathered materials everywhere.

The insight his life gives into his method of working is an additional instance of the unwearied patience of genius in pursuing its ideal; for we find that these playful trifles, apparently spontaneous and facile as though written impromptu, were in reality the result of infinite thought and pains. Each was kept by him for months, during which it received, day by day, the last finishing touches of perfection from his fastidious taste; attaining by the substitution, here of a more concisely forcible phrase, there of a more felicitous epithet, that consummate degree of polish in which it was finally given to the world. The facsimiles of his manuscripts prefixed to the editions of his works are embroidered with erasures and corrections, in which one can see how laboriously the idea struggles into life.

It was not through the ordinary channels of publicity that Giusti's poems reached their readers, for the rigorous censorship of the press made it impossible to make use of it for their circulation. It was in manuscript form that they left their author's hands; then passed eagerly from one to the other, they were copied, recopied, multiplied and reproduced until they attained in this primitive fashion a diffusion as great as if they had issued from the press in several editions. Signor Carducci, who has written a brief memoir prefixed

to one edition of these poems, relates how when a boy he was dragged from shop to shop in a remote village to transcribe and recite them. Thus the singular fact came to pass, that Giusti was a famous poet before a line of his had been printed, and that it was only by the surreptitious publication of his works by others that he was himself compelled to edit them for the press.

The mode of action on his mind of the state of society in which he lived, and the forcible impressions he received from its abuses, are vividly portrayed in many of his pieces, which are thus an analysis of the poet's mental processes from his own point of view. They sum up in his own concentrated diction a review of the evolution of his genius, and show how it was bent or warped to satire by bitter. ness of spirit inspired by the circumstances around him. The poem addressed to Gino Capponi is of this introspective nature, and we subjoin some stanzas of it as an example of his graver style. The metre he has here chosen is, as he says in a note, an old one, which notwithstanding its great difficulty he desired to restore, as the additional line lends greater solemnity and impressiveness to the

octave stanza.

As one who mid the torrent's rush doth guide
His bark, while angry currents stem the way,
Seems to stand motionless, while past him glide
Shores, hills, and distant woods in shifting play;
So doth my mind amid the eddying tide
Of human destinies bewildered stray,

And while the varied scene doth pass before it
Of universal life, feels coming o'er it

Dull stupor that no utterance dare essay.

Till with the dizzy tumult wearied quite
The secret forces of my soul I feel,
And gaze and think, and fail to grasp aright
What to mine eyes intent those sights reveal,
Nor feel within me of such verse the might
As should respond to that wild clarion-peal.
So hurried by the stir and hum around me,

I dream and rave and in its whirl confound me,

Like the dead leaf the wind doth drift and wheel.

But when from men afar I meditate

Some task of subtle fancy breathing warm,
And in the mind's sweet toil would recreate
The heart that weary travail doth inform,
Lo! to assail me come importunate

As though of insects vile a buzzing swarm,

Past memories clothed in jeers to mock and flout me:
Like spectres armed with scoffs, all crowd about me,
Till they and I in combat strive and storm.

Thus to her room withdrawn, the maiden fair
In glad intoxication brief and light,

That left by dance and music lingering there
Nor sleep nor weariness can put to flight,
Still seems to hear the hushed and vacant air
Thrill to the festive clamour of delight,
Till the impressions left by loving glances,

The lights, the whirl, the vortex of the dances,

Change to a troublous vision of the night.

The poet then goes on to describe his mental questionings as in moments when inspiration flagged he seemed to doubt the genuineness of his vocation as a satirist, and almost to loathe the darker view it compelled him to take of life.

Then o'er this sea whose perils thou dost brave
With sail so feeble and with bark so slight,
Doth storm-cloud ever lower, and tempest rave,
And plaints of wretches drowned the hearing smite?
Nor e'er doth laugh the sky, or pause the wave?
And doth the sun in clouds aye veil its light?
And in this dust much burdened and much daring,
Which on the road to heaven with thee is faring,

Is naught but vice apparent to thy sight?

And who art thou with scourge so prompt to smite,
Who the harsh truth so harshly dost proclaim?
And stinting praise to what is fair and bright,
Dost tune thy acrid verse to wrath and blame?
Hast thou thy standard following aright,
Learned Art's true ministry, and secret aim?
And hast thou first from thine own heart uprooted
Vain pride and folly to thy part unsuited-

Thou whose rebuke would others' feet reclaim?

Then stung with grief I breathe a sigh of care,
And curb my vagrant thoughts to musing slow,
As calling back the how, the when, the where,
My brief life-record o'er and o'er I go.
Ah! thus the past retracing I cull there
'Mid thousand thorns but one poor flower ablow.
With error wroth-with error stained-now soaring
With the great few supernal heights exploring-

Now sunk to raving with the vulgar low.
Sad theme of wrath that solely fires me still,
How is my heart by thee opprest and tried !
Oh butterfly, who in glad flight at will

From flower to flower along thy path dost glide,

And thou sad nightingale, whose voice doth fill

With love-songs all the woods at even-tide,

Compared with your sweet tasks how sore doth fret me
The strife of soul in which doth ever set me,

This seeming mirth which is but grief belied.

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