It is a strange fact, how little we are contented with negative qualities in our fellow-creatures; and, indeed, how amiability, and even generosity, become slight in our eyes, if unaccompanied by energy, independence, and pride. Metastasio was the most amiable of men: his disposition was affectionate and constant; yet he was derided in his own time for his courtier-like qualities, and the gratitude he naturally evinced towards his imperial benefactors; and censured for a coldness of heart of which we can find no trace in his writings or actions. There is one circumstance that renders posterity more just, and, in particular, induces those who write his biography to regard him with a favourable eye: this is the publication of his letters. We possess a series from the age of thirty to that of eighty-four, when he died, which let us into the secrets of his heart, and display his good sense, his friendly disposition, his justice, and the ready sympathy that he afforded to those to whom he was attached, in a more undisguised manner than could be known to his contemporaries. These letters prepossess the reader in his favour; and, while the biographer finds few events to record, and little of misfortune or error to mark his pages with high-wrought interest, he may envy the tranquil career of the fortunate poet, and wish that fate had made him the friend of such a man.
Metastasio entered on his employments at Vienna in the year 1730, at the age of thirty-two. He took up his abode in the house of Niccolo Martinetz, who held a place in the court of the apostolic nuncio, and with whom he remained to the end of his life. The dramas that he brought out during the year succeeding to his arrival were eminently successful. These were "Adriano," and "Demetrio;" and, during the three following, he wrote the "Olimpiade," "Demoofonte," and "Issipile." Each, as it appeared, excited still renewed admiration and applause. After the representation of "Issipile," the emperor broke through his habitual majestic reserve, and expressed his satisfaction to the poet, who was enraptured by the unusual condescension. His imperial master soon after testified his approbation in a more solid manner, by bestowing on him the place of treasurer to the province of Cosenza in Naples, worth annually 350 sequins. Unfortunately, the war of the Spanish succession deprived him of this income, after he had enjoyed it but for a few years.
The poet's heart and soul were in his profession, and his operas were written with that fervent and exalted spirit which marks the compositions of genius; while his modesty engendered doubts concerning their reception, which were delightfully dissipated by the triumph of their success. His feelings are all ingenuously expressed in his letters to Marianna Bulgarelli, who, together with her husband, still remained at Rome with the poet's family. "I did not believe," he writes, "that I should have been able to send you the good news I now give—I was so entirely prepared for the contrary. My Demetrio was brought out last Sunday, and with so great success, that the old people here assure me they never witnessed such universal applause. The audience wept at the Addio—my august master was not unmoved—and, notwithstanding the respect paid to the imperial presence, the public could not restrain themselves from giving marks of applause. My enemies have become my applauders. I cannot express my surprise, for this opera is so delicately touched, without any of that strong colouring that strikes at once, that I feared that it was not adapted to the national taste. I was mistaken—every one seems to understand it, and passages are recited in conversation, as if it were written in German." While composing the "Olimpiade," he thus addresses his friend:—"Here is a moral sonnet which I wrote in the midst of a pathetic scene, that moved me as I wrote it: so that, smiling at myself, when I found my eyes humid from pity at a fictitious disaster, invented by myself, I expressed my feelings in the sonnet I send. The idea does not displease me; and I did not choose to lose it, as it will serve as an incitement for my piety." The thought of the sonnet is, that, while he smiles at himself for weeping over dreams and fables of his own invention, he may remember that every thing that he fears and hopes is equally fictitious,—that all is false, his existence a delirium, and his whole life a dream;—and it ends with a prayer that he may awaken and find repose in the bosom of truth.
Again, he writes, "Will you suggest the subject of an opera? Yes or no? I am in an abyss of doubt. Oh! do not laugh, and say that the disease is incurable; for indeed; the choice of a subject merits all this inquietude and scepticism. It is my lot to be forced to make a choice; and I cannot avoid it; otherwise I should continue to doubt until the day of judgment; and then begin again. Read the third scene of the third act of my 'Adrian;' remark the character which the emperor gives of himself, and you will see my own.[47] From this you may conclude; that I know my faults; but not that I can correct them. This pertinacity in a fault; which torments me without the recompence of any pleasure; and which I clearly perceive; without being able to remedy; makes me often reflect on the tyranny which the body exercises over the mind. If my understanding is convinced, when reasoning calmly, that this excess of indecision is a troublesome, tormenting, and useless vice, and an obstacle to the execution of any design, why do I not get rid of it? Why not abide by a resolution, so often taken, to doubt no more? The answer is clear; that the mechanical constitution of the soul's imperfect habitation gives a false colouring to objects before they reach it, as rays of the sun appear yellow or green or red, according to the hue of the substance which they traverse to meet our eyes. Hence it is clear, that men for the most part do not act from reason, but from mechanical impulse, subsequently adapting, by the force of their understanding, their reason to their actions, so that the cleverest frequently appear the most reasonable. Do not get weary, because I play the philosopher with you; I have none else with whom to play it; and doing it thus by letter, I call to mind conversations of this kind, which made us spend so many happy hours together.—O, how much more matter for such has my experience in the world given me! July 4.
1733. We will again talk on these subjects, if fortune does not, through some caprice, entangle the thread of my honourable but laborious life."
A few months after fortune cut, rather than entangled, the thread of these prospects; Marianna died, and, true to her feelings of friendship[48] to the end, she left the poet heir to her possessions, to the amount of thirty thousand crowns. Metastasio writes thus to his brother, on receiving this sad intelligence:—
"In the agitation I feel from the unexpected death of the poor and generous Marianna, I cannot long dilate. I can only say, that my honour and my conscience have both induced me to renounce her bequest in favour of her husband. I owe it to the world to undeceive it from a great mistake,—that of fancying that my friendship was founded on avarice and interested motives. I have no right to take advantage of the partiality of my poor friend to the injury of her husband, and God will by some other means make up for what I now renounce. I need nothing for myself; I possess sufficient at Rome to maintain my family in decency, and if Providence preserves to me my property in Naples, I will give my relations other marks of my affection, and think seriously of you in particular. Communicate my resolution to my father, as I have not time to write to him. Assure him of my intention always to contribute as heretofore to his comfort, and even to increase my assistance, if my Neapolitan income does not fail me. In short, make him enter into my feelings, so that he shall not imbitter them by disapproving of my honest and Christian determination.
"You will continue to live with signor Bulgarelli, who will, I hope, display towards you that friendly kindness which my conduct with regard to him deserves. All will go on as before; only poor Marianna will never return, nor can I hope for any consolation, and the rest of my life will be insipid and painful."
"I feel," he wrote to another friend on this occasion, "as if I were in the world as in an unpeopled solitude; desolate as a man would feel, if, transported in his sleep among the Chinese or Tartars, he should, on awakening, find himself among a people whose language, manners, and customs are alike unknown to him. In the midst of such fancies, so much reason remains, as permits me to be aware how without foundation they are, and how produced; but reflection has not yet sufficed to dissipate them. You will have heard that I have renounced the bequest. I know not whether this renunciation will be approved of by all, but I know that neither my honour nor my conscience permit me to take advantage of the excessive partiality of a woman to the injury of her relations, and that the want of the riches which I refuse, is more tolerable than the shame which they would produce in me."
Metastasio was, with his accustomed modesty, disturbed by the fear, lest his honourable conduct would be disapproved of by his friends and the world; and he was agreeably surprised when, on the contrary, it met with the general approbation it deserved. "I should be insincere," he writes to the same friend, "if, affecting philosophy, I pretended to be annoyed by the kind approval which my country has universally yielded to my renunciation of Marianna's bequest. It delights me in the first place, and like a vow, confirms me in my opinion of the justice of the act; and in the second, it surprises me, as being the testimony of the affection of so great a mother for the least of her sons."
This, during the space of ten years, from the time of his first arrival in Vienna, was the only event that disturbed Metastasio's life. These ten years are the period during which his poetic powers flourished most vigorously, and during which his best as well as the greater number of his works were produced. The favour they met confirmed his situation at court, while they caused him to labour unintermittingly. It is difficult to give one not versed in the Italian language a correct idea of the peculiar merits of his poetry, and the excellences of his dramas. They are not absolute tragedies: their happy conclusions, the introduction of airs, and their being compressed into three acts, give them a lightness and a brevity unlike the heavier march of tragedy. They are to a great degree ideal, and yet possess the interest which passion and plot, described and developed with masterly skill, necessarily impart. His command of language is singularly great, and he adapted poetic diction to dramatic dialogue with wonderful felicity. A long and profound study of the genius of his native tongue gave him such extreme facility, that the perfection of art takes the guise of the most unadorned nature; and the flow and clearness of his verses so excite our sympathy, as to make us feel as if the thoughts and sentiments which we find in his pages were the spontaneous growth of our own minds. The magic of his style renders sensible and distinct the most delicate and evanescent feelings, so that it has been remarked[49], that many of the movements of the human soul, which the ablest writers have scarcely been able to indicate in prose, and which, from their subtlety, are almost hidden from our consciousness, are brought home to us in his verses with a lucid felicity of expression, that leaves no portion of them either obscure or vague. He thus formed a language peculiarly his own. In his airs the words flow in so unforced a manner and with such extreme propriety, that they appear to place themselves: not one can be changed, not one omitted. There is no pedantry, no affectation; simplicity is his principal charm; it seems as if a child might utter them,—they are so unstudied; and yet no other poet possesses to an equal degree the art of clothing his ideas with the same easy grace.