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Updated: June 12, 2025
The two became as devoted to each other as Silvio Pellico and Count Oroboni; but it soon became evident to Valerian Vasilowitch that, unless Zaluski was released, he would soon succumb to the terrible restrictions of prison life. "Keep up your heart, my friend," he used to say. "I have borne it three years, and am still alive to tell the tale."
Il martire scriva: e la sua penna, come quella d' un altro martire, Silvio Pellico, sara una spada nel cuoro dell' Austria."
Of recent prison-writers in England, the best known are James Montgomery, who wrote his first volume of poems while a prisoner in York Castle; and Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, who wrote his 'Purgatory of Suicide' in Stafford Gaol. Silvio Pellico was one of the latest and most illustrious of the prison writers of Italy.
His love for his country, and his desire for its regeneration, were as strong as ever, and he very soon placed himself at the head of the Carbonari, a sect which, years afterwards, was rendered illustrious by the constancy and sufferings of a Maroncelli, a Silvio Pellico, and many others. The Prince was again detected and arrested, but he was not thrown into prison.
Silvio Pellico was born at Saluzzo, in North Italy, in the year of the fall of the Bastille, 1789. His health as a child was feeble, his temper gentle, and he had the instincts of a poet. Before he was ten years old he had written a tragedy on a theme taken from Macpherson's Ossian.
This was followed by a similar silence, in order to hear the rest of the document. A fresh murmur arose on the announcement of the following: condemned to hard imprisonment, Maroncelli for TWENTY YEARS, and Pellico for FIFTEEN. The Captain made a sign for us to descend. We cast one glance around us, and came down.
On the 12th of December the Countess Bubna made a last effort to save him; her carriage was ready, she implored him to take it and escape across the frontier. He refused, and next day he was arrested. Austrian legal procedure was slow; the trial of the first Carbonari, Silvio Pellico and his companions, did not take place till 1822.
In 1819 Silvio Pellico began publishing Il Conciliatore, a journal purely literary, that was to look through literature to the life that it expresses, and so help towards the better future of his country. But the merciless excisions of inoffensive passages by the Austrian censorship destroyed the journal in a year.
In the eighteenth century Goldoni appeared and gave to the world his graceful comedies, which were followed by the lyric dramas of Metastasio and the lofty tragedies of Alfieri. Since then there has been a succession of able dramatists Monti, Gozzi, Manzoni, Pellico, Ippolito d'Asti, etc.; and as the class of plays acted was elevated, so the character of the performers was also improved.
My lecture upon European politics is, I am afraid, somewhat lengthy, but it must be remembered that I am a prisoner, and that Silvio Pellico, under similar circumstances, wrote one of the most dreary books that it ever was my misfortune to read and to be required to admire. I return to the recital of what is passing in my prison house.
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