His friends alone had hitherto been aware of his talent; but the enthusiasm they felt on reading these spirited odes led them to give copies; and they got into the hands of those princes who, as the leaders of the armies against the Turks, were celebrated in them. One of his finest odes he had addressed to John, king of Poland; who acknowledged the honour in letters full of praises and thanks. Christina, queen of Sweden, displayed in a more kind and liberal manner her admiration: hearing that Filicaja had two sons, she insisted upon providing for their education; declaring that she would bring them up as her own children. She showed herself so generous, that the poet was accustomed to say, that he could not look on his home and family without perceiving the marks of her favour. While her modesty was such, that she insisted that her bounty should be kept a secret; declaring she was ashamed it should be known that she did so little for a man, whom she esteemed so much; and her benevolence remained unknown till after her death. Filicaja's life was not, however, wholly prosperous: on the death of Christina, he became involved in pecuniary embarrassments, and he was attacked by a dangerous malady. He lost, also, his eldest son, who, since the queen's death, had been appointed page of honour to the grand duke of Tuscany. The high opinion entertained of him by Cosmo III. extricated him from a part of his difficulties. This prince named him to the command of the city of Volterra. Ancient feuds and old and almost irremediable abuses of various kinds, afflicted the town; and it required all the influence which Filicaja obtained by his justice, his benevolence, and urbanity to put an end to these evils. Volterra enjoyed tranquillity and plenty under his direction; trade and the arts flourished; and this venerable city was restored to a portion of its former splendour: he thus became so dear to the citizens, that they twice petitioned the grand duke to continue him in the government. Their request was accorded; and when, at last, he was recalled, he carried with him the universal regret.
On his removal from Volterra, he was, for two years, governor of Pisa,—a situation of high trust. On his return to Florence, he filled several law offices of great power and emolument. He was popular and beloved throughout: equitable, but benevolent; diligent and conscientious, his virtues were adorned by his pleasing and affable manners. His piety caused him to devote much of his leisure to devotional exercises; and his taste led him to cultivate poetry. His industrious habits enabled him to compose a great deal when his time was otherwise much taken up by his public duties. He wrote much in Latin, a small portion only of which has been published; and it displays a deep knowledge and command of that language. He employed himself also in correcting and adding to his Italian poetry. He was a severe critic on his own works; and yet, mistrusting his judgment, he submitted them to the further censorship of four selected friends. He was much beloved, as well as admired, by all who knew him; and belonged to the Della Crusca academy, and to the Arcadian,—of both of which he was the brightest ornament. His last work was an "Ode to the Virgin," which occupied him but a few days before his death. Filicaja was not only devout, but a rigid catholic. One of the acts of his life previous to entering on a new career, had been a pilgrimage to Loretto; and, in his dying moments, a picture of the Virgin excited his pious and poetic thoughts. There is great spirit and sweetness in this ode, in which he recurs to the love of his earlier days; and how, on losing the object, he transferred his devotion, entire and for ever, to the mother of his Saviour.
While thus employed, he was seized by an inflammation of his lungs. His religious faith supported him in his sufferings, and did not forsake him to the last. He died on the 24th of September, 1707, at the age of sixty-five. He was buried in his family tomb in the church of San Piero, at Florence.
[METASTASIO]
1698-1782.
Metastasio was of obscure origin. He owed his prosperity, in the first place, to the talents with which nature had endowed him; and, in the second, to singular good fortune; while his amiable disposition and excellent character gave a scope to the course of felicitous circumstances; which, among men of genius, is frequently checked by their impetuosity and thoughtlessness, or by the proud sense of independence attendant upon their organisation. The name of the poet's father was Felice Trapassi, a citizen of Assisi. His poverty had forced him to enter into the Corsican regiment of the pope; and he added to his slender means by acting as copyist. He married Francesca Galasti, of Bologna; by whom he had two sons and two daughters. Later in life, he saved money enough to enter into partnership in a shop of l'arte bianca,—a sort of chandler, where maccaroni, oil, and other culinary materials, are sold. His younger son, Pietro, was born at Rome, on the 13th of January, 1698. The child gave early indications of genius; and his father resolved to bestow on him the best education in his power; and placed him, at a very early age, with a watchmaker, that he might learn a respectable art.
But the boy was born to pursue a nobler career. He was already a poet; and, when only ten years old, attracted an audience in his father's shop by his talents as improvisatore. It happened, one summer evening, that Vincenzo Gravina, a celebrated jurisconsult, and renowned for his learning and love of letters, was walking with the poet Lorenzini in the streets of Rome. Passing by Trapassi's shop, he was attracted by the childish voice of the juvenile poet, who was in the act of reciting extempore verses. He joined the audience; and, being perceived by Pietro, the little fellow introduced some stanzas in his praise into his effusion. Gravina, charmed by his talent and prepossessing appearance, offered him money, which the child refused. The lawyer continued to question him, and was so satisfied by the propriety and spirit of his answers, that he immediately proposed to adopt him as his son; promising to give him a good education, and to facilitate his career in the same profession as himself. No objection could be raised to so generous and beneficent an offer. The boy was not to be taken from his native town, nor were his duties towards his parents to be interfered with.
One of Gravina's first acts was to change his adopted son's, name from the ignoble one of Trapassi to the better sounding appellation of Metastasio, which was a sort of translation of his paternal name into Greek. Gravina did not delay to cultivate the boy's understanding, so as to fit him for a literary career. Being an idolater of ancient learning, his first care was to initiate his pupil in the languages of the writers of Greece and Rome, and then to imbue him with a knowledge of their works. Metastasio showed himself an apt scholar: at the age of fourteen he wrote a tragedy, which, in a letter written in after years, he freely criticised. "My tragedy of 'Giustino,'" he says, "was written at the age of fourteen, when the authority of my illustrious master did not permit me to diverge from a religious imitation of the Greek models; and when my own inexperience prevented me from discerning the gold from the lead in those mines whose treasures were but just opened to me." The tragedy, written thus in strict imitation, is necessarily frigid; nor does the language bear the stamp of the ease and grace which so distinguished Metastasio's after writings.
He still continued to improvisare verses in company. This attractive art renders the person who exercises it the object of so much interest and admiration, that it is to be wondered that any one who has once practised it, can ever give it up. The act of reciting the poetry that flows immediately to the lips is peculiarly animating: the declaimer warms, as he proceeds, with his own success; while the throng of words and ideas that present themselves, light up the eyes, and give an air of almost supernatural intelligence and fire to the countenance and person. The audience—at first curious, then pleased, and, at last, carried away by enthusiastic delight—feel an admiration, and bestow plaudits, which, perhaps, no other display of human talent is capable of exciting. The youth, the harmonious voice, and agreeable person of Metastasio added to the charm: yet, fortunately, he gave up the exercise of his power before it had unfitted him for more arduous compositions. He gives an account of his success, and his quitting the practice, in a subsequent letter to Algarotti. "I do not deny," he writes, "that a natural talent for harmony and rhythm displayed itself in me earlier than is usually the case; that is, when I was about ten years of age. This strange phenomenon so dazzled my great master. Gravina, that he selected me as soil worthy to be cultivated by so celebrated a man. Until I was sixteen, he brought me forward to improvisare verses on any given subject; and Rolli, Vanini, and Perfetti, then men of mature years, were my rivals. Many people tried to write down our effusions while we extemporised, but with no success; for, besides that they were no adepts in short-hand, it was necessary to deceive us cleverly, otherwise the mere suspicion of such an operation would have dried up my vein. This occupation soon became burdensome and injurious to me; burdensome, because I was perpetually obliged, by invitations which could not be refused, to task myself every day, and sometimes twice a day,—now to gratify some lady's whim, now to satisfy the curiosity of some high-born fool, and now to fill up a blank in some grand assembly,—losing thus miserably the greater part of the time necessary for my studies. It was injurious, because my weak and uncertain health suffered. It was perceptible to every one that the agitation attendant on this exercise of the mind, used to inflame my countenance and heat my head, while my hands and extremities became icy cold. Gravina consequently exerted his authority to prohibit me from making extempore verses,—a prohibition which, from the age of sixteen, I have never infringed, and to which I believe that I owe the remnant of reasonable and connected ideas that are to be found in my waitings." He goes on to state the evils that result to the intellect perpetually bent on so exciting a proceeding; when the poet, instead of selecting and arranging his thoughts, and then using measure and rhyme as obedient executors of his designs, is obliged to employ the small time allowed him in collecting words, in which he afterwards clothes the ideas best fitted to these words, even though foreign to his theme: thus the former seeks at his ease for a dress fitted to his subject; while the latter, in haste and disturbance, must find a subject fitted to his dress.
On withdrawing his pupil from the exercise of this fascinating art. Gravina became aware that his education could not be carried on with success amidst the pleasures and idleness of his life at Rome; and he sent him to study under his cousin Camporese, who lived near the ancient Cortona, a town of Magna Græcia, famous in antiquity for its schools of philosophy. Metastasio was very happy at this period of his life; and, in a letter written at an advanced age, he recurs to it with yearning fondness. "Of how many dear and pleasing ideas, my friend," he writes to Don Saverio Mattei, "you have awakened the recollection, by causing me to go over in my thoughts the happy time I spent, not less usefully than delightfully, between boyhood and adolescence, in Magna Græcia. I saw again as if they were present all those objects which pleased me so much at that time. Again I inhabited the little chamber, in which the sound of the breakers of the neighbouring sea so often lulled me into the sweetest sleep; and, by force of my imagination, I revisited in my boat the shores of neighbouring Scalea; and the names and aspects of many places recurred to me, before forgotten. I heard again the venerable voice of the renowned philosopher Camporese; who, stooping to instruct one so young, led me, as it were, by the hand among the vortexes of the then reigning Descartes, of whom he was a strenuous advocate, and attracted my boyish curiosity, by showing me in wax, as if in a game, how globules were formed from atoms, and filling me with admiration of the bewitching experiments of philosophy. It seems to me as if I again saw him labouring to persuade me that his dog was formed upon the same principle as a watch; and that the trinal dimension is a sufficient definition of solid bodies. And I behold him smile, when, having kept me long plunged in a dark reverie, by forcing me to doubt of every thing, he perceived that I breathed again, on his assertion, 'I think, therefore, I am;' the invincible proof of a certainty which I had despaired of ever again attaining." Camporese died, unfortunately, in the midst of these studies, and Metastasio returned to Rome.