In October, 1831, he suddenly vanished from Florence and appeared in Rome, why, none could tell. He wrote to his brother Carlo on the subject, begging him not to ask for the details of a long romance, full of pain and anguish. It has been conjectured that he fixed his affections upon an unworthy object and was bitterly undeceived. Whatever the circumstances may have been, it is certain that in Rome his mental misery, always great, rose to an intolerable height, and that for a time he harboured thoughts of self-destruction. But the strength of his character overcame the strength of his affliction, and he gradually softened to a serener mood. At this time the Florentine Accademia della Crusca elected him a member, a worthy tribute to his genius and eloquence. After five months sojourn in Rome, he returned to Florence, where he fell so dangerously ill that the rumour was spread of his decease. The doctors urged him to try a milder climate, and in September, 1833, he set out for Naples, accompanied by Ranieri.
In Naples and its vicinity the remainder of his life was destined to be passed.
The natural beauties of the surrounding country were delightful to one so appreciative of their charm. His health improved after a time, and he was able to display the riches of his intellect by writing the Paralipomeni, many detached thoughts in prose, like the Pensées of Pascal and the Maxims of La Rochefoucauld; and above all, his philosophic and immortal poem, the Ginestra, of which it may be said that had he written nothing else his fame would be perpetuated by that production alone.
In March, 1836, he who had formerly sighed so deeply for death and who had invoked it in such exquisite verse, felt so greatly improved in health that he imagined he had many years before him. But this was only the last flickering of the flame before it went out for ever. The Cholera was raging in 1837, and the prospect of falling a victim to a mysterious and terrible disease, filled him with horror. The great German poet Platen who had resided in Naples previous to his departure for Sicily, where he died, was the first to instil him with alarm on the subject.
Leopardi was thoroughly unhappy, and his strange aversion to the places where he lived revived with unreasonable violence. He wrote of Naples as a den of barbarous African savagery. He yearned for home and pined for his family, and the last letter he sent to his father (three weeks before his decease), was full of plans for returning to Recanati as soon as his infirmities and the Quarantine would allow. He had not been able to write his letters for some years, owing to failing sight, and was obliged to dictate them to an amanuensis.
"If I escape from the Cholera," he says in this letter which was to be his last, "and as soon as my health allows, I will do my utmost to rejoin you, whatever time of year it may be; because I must hasten, persuaded as I am that the term prescribed by God to my days, cannot now be distant. My physical sufferings, incessant and incurable, have in course of time attained such a degree that they cannot get worse, and I hope that when at last the feeble resistance of my dying body is exhausted, they may conduct me to that eternal rest which I pray for daily, not from heroism, but from the intensity of the agonies I suffer."
His earthly sorrows were indeed drawing to a close, and he died suddenly at Capo di Monte, when preparing to go out for a drive, at five o'clock in the afternoon on the fourteenth of June, 1837, aged thirty-nine years all but a fortnight. "His body," says Ranieri, "saved as by a miracle from the common and confused burial place enforced by the Cholera regulations, was interred in the suburban Church of San Vitale on the road of Pozzuoli, where a plain slab indicates his memory to the visitor." He was slight and short of stature, somewhat bent and very pale, with a large forehead and blue eyes, an aquiline nose and refined features, a soft voice and a most attractive smile. His father survived him ten years; his mother, twenty years; his sister Paolina, thirty-two years; and his brother Carlo, nearly forty-one years. His youngest brother, Pierfrancesco, who died in 1851, also at the age of thirty-eight, was alone destined to continue the family. Carlo was twice married, but had only one daughter, who died young, by his first wife. I am indebted to the kindness of the Count and Countess Leopardi for several interesting works relating to the poet.
Mr. Charles Edwardes has translated with great skill Leopardi's Prose Works; I have translated his Poems, so that readers who may not be acquainted with Italian, can now obtain an idea of his philosophy and of his poetry. Equally as a thinker and as a poet, he is distinguished by depth. As a Prose writer, he bears a striking resemblance to Pascal. In both there is the same gloomy power of imagination, the same method of profound meditation, and the same intensity of pessimism. As a poet he displays the most marvellous variety of thought and of expression. His mock-heroic poem, entitled Paralipomeni della Batracomiomachia, is, as the name indicates, a sort of continuation of the Greek Poem describing the War of the Frogs and the Rats. The subject is wretchedly chosen and it is obvious that the narrative serves only to introduce the digressions, and it is in these digressions that the poet's brilliant imagination and felicity of style are displayed. Indeed, in the style alone can the work be said to have any merit. It is the longest of his poetical productions, and it is greatly to be regretted that he did not bestow the labour wasted on so frivolous a subject upon a theme worthier of his genius. Still, there are some fine passages, as, for instance, a most poetical description of Night, of which I subjoin a translation:
"The star of Venus in the Heavens high
Appeared before the other stars or moon;
Silent was all; no breath was heard, no cry,
Unless the murmur of a far lagoon,
And buzzing gnats who from the forest fly
When veiling shades replace the glare of noon;
The lovely face of Hesperus serene
Was in the lake in pure reflection seen.
The poem also offers an exquisite description of the Cuckoo, which may be compared to Wordsworth's poem on the same subject: