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Updated: May 16, 2025
This letter has been adduced as an evidence of Dante's poem having transpired during his lifetime: a thing which, in the teeth of Boccaccio's statement to that effect, and indeed the poet's own testimony , Foscolo holds to be so impossible, that he turns the evidence against the letter.
He taught French in the Soldiers' Orphans' School at Milan. At Milan he was admitted to the friendship of Vincenzo Monti, a poet then touching his sixtieth year, and of the younger Ugo Foscolo, by whose writings he had been powerfully stirred, and to whom he became closely bound.
He is here jesting, as Foscolo has observed, on the academy instituted by Lorenzo for encouraging the Greek language, doubtless with the laughing approbation of the founder, who was sometimes not a little troubled himself with the squabbles of his literati. Our author probably had good reason to call his illustrious friend his "refuge."
His youthful brain was enflamed by Alfieri and Foscolo, who remained his favourite authors. He hated Austria well, and he hated the Papal government as no one but one of its own subjects could hate it. For a time they were repulsed, then they resumed the cloak of friendship, but only to wait for reinforcements.
He was extremely excitable and irritable, and when some one spoke of a translation of Dante as being perfect, "Impossible," shouted Foscolo, starting up in great excitement, at the same time tossing his cup full of coffee into the air, cup and all, regardless of the china and the ladies' dresses. He died in England, I fear in great poverty.
The ambassadors, who were soon to depart, presented the bride with costly gifts consisting of beautiful stuffs and silverware. The most remarkable present was brought by the representatives of Venice. The Republic at its own expense had sent two noblemen to the festivities, Niccolò Dolfini and Andrea Foscolo, both of whom were magnificently clothed.
No one dares to write scarcely to think politics; if truth is to be told, it must be told by the English; England is the only tribunal yet open to the complaints of Europe. A greater poet and nobler man, Ugo Foscolo, had but lately uttered a wail still more despondent: 'Italy will soon be nothing but a lifeless carcass, and her generous sons should only weep in silence without the impotent complaints and mutual recriminations of slaves. That as patriotic a heart as ever beat should have been afflicted to this point by the canker of despair tells of the quagmire not only political but spiritual into which Italy was sunk.
We know that PETRARCH made forty-four alterations of a single verse: "whether for the thought, the expression, or the harmony, it is evident that as many operations in the heart, the head, or the ear of the poet occurred," observes a man of genius, Ugo Foscolo. Quintilian and Horace dread the over-fondness of an author for his compositions: alteration is not always improvement.
Foscolo quotes this passage from the Dictionnaire Philosophique; and adds another from Sir Joshua Reynolds, in which the painter speaks of a similar inability on his own part, when young, to enjoy the perfect nature of Raphael, and the admiration and astonishment which, in his riper years, he grew to feel for it.
And as she could not comprehend this feeling, the mainspring of Foscolo's soul, so she could understand of Foscolo only the slighter, meaner things: his troubles and intrigues, his loves and quarrels. The moment came when the grief of miscomprehension was revealed to poor Foscolo; when he saw how little he was understood by this woman whom he loved as a mother.
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