The Poems of Leopardi

Giacomo Leopardi, the greatest Italian poet of the Nineteenth Century, was, born at Recanati, a town of the March of Ancona, on the twenty-ninth of June, 1798; the eldest son of Count Monaldo Leopardi, and Adelaide, his wife, daughter of the Marquis Antici. He had four brothers and one sister—Paolina. His father possessed a splendid library, and was a man of learning and literary tastes, appearing himself as an author in prose and verse.
Recanati is situated on an eminence in the Appenines, not far from Ancona and the celebrated shrine of Loreto; and as a biographer of our poet says: Its natural beauties are superb, and the genius of its great son has made them incomparable. Up to the age of twenty-four Leopardi did not leave his native place. The constant sight of so lovely a landscape, bordered in the distance by the Adriatic, contributed in no slight measure to give him that exquisite taste and sympathy for nature, for which he is unique among the poets of his country.
He, very early, gave proofs of extraordinary ability. Of modern languages, he knew—besides his own—English, French, German, and Spanish. His knowledge of Greek and Latin is proved by his philological works; and at the age of fourteen, his intimate acquaintance with Rabbinical literature astonished some learned Jews of Ancona. But his industry was fatal to himself. As a child he seems to have enjoyed good health; but from the age of sixteen to twenty-one his form became bent and his constitution weaker and weaker; and from the latter date, his life was one series of infirmities.
The deepest melancholy took possession of his mind. His imagination was of intense strength, but it served only to conjure up the gloomiest visions. He conceived a morbid hatred of Recanati, hatred uttered in immortal verse in the Ricordanze. Though surrounded by those he loved, and living in a handsome style in his father's house, life became unendurable to him. He conceived a wild idea of flight, and actually wrote a letter to his father, explaining his motives for so doing. But happily the scheme was abandoned, and the letter never delivered, although it was preserved by his brother Carlo and published some years ago. This letter was written in July, 1819. He complains of the little liberty that was allowed him; of the dreadful monotony of life at I Recanati, of the little opportunity he had of exercising his N talents to his future advantage; and of the sufferings inflicted upon him by his strange imagination in the absence of all pleasure and recreation.