One of the advantages derived from this new capital was, that it served to draw together the most distinguished Italians within the walls of the same city. Each town of the peninsula sent some man esteemed for his talents; and names, scattered before over the surface of the country, now congregated together. Foscolo had thus an opportunity of becoming acquainted with all his more illustrious countrymen. In his "Letters of Jacopo Ortis," he mentions Parini especially with reverence and affection; and he became intimate also with Monti, who then displayed fervour in the cause of liberty, while his inward dislike for the members of the actual government must have accorded with the sentiments of Foscolo. Two decrees, passed at that time, served, indeed, to show that blame deservedly attached itself to them: one was the law enacted to deprive of office all those who had formerly written against liberty—an act of despotism levelled expressly against Monti; the other was the sentence passed by the great council against the Latin language: whether it was because Latin was the language of their religion and the priests, or from mere stupid barbarism, they passed a decree to prohibit its being taught in the public schools. Foscolo saw, in the languages of the ancient world, not only the root of all our knowledge, but also the most splendid monuments of human intellect: he knew how fallacious and trivial all translations are; he was imbued to the heart with a love of classic lore; and he saw, in the suppression of the Latin, the paramount influence of the French language. No wonder that he, as well as every well-educated man, regarded such a law and its promulgators with mingled scorn and disgust.
To make the resemblance between Foscolo and his imaginary hero, Jacopo Ortis, the more exact, we are told that, at this very time, he fell in love with a young lady of Pisa: his passions, naturally vehement, were inflamed to their utmost by the influence of the most engrossing of them all. The object of his attachment was singularly beautiful; her large black eyes, rich raven hair, her dignified stature and noble carriage, her whole person, in short, cast in the very mould of majestic beauty, was formed to inspire admiration and love. She possessed also all that natural talent which so usually falls to the lot of Italian women: her voice was harmonious, and her proficiency in music great. She was known afterwards to several of the biographers of her lover; and, with the simplicity and frankness usual to the Italians, spoke openly of their mutual attachment. One among them, after calling the lady "the flower of all loveliness," adds, "We heard from her—for she yet lives—that the few lines cited as being written by Teresa, in a letter of Ortis, dated 17th September, 1798, were a part of a letter which she wrote to Foscolo."[55] Giuseppe Pecchio, in his Life of Foscolo, speaks of her with great enthusiasm: "I saw her," he writes, "several times after she was married, when, at a private theatre, she took the part of Isabella in the 'Filippo' of Alfieri; and I still remember, with pleasure, her dignified action and her expressive countenance, which filled the audience with enthusiasm, and carried their feelings along with her."
This attachment was not fortunate; and Foscolo suffered all the throes of disappointment and grief. Violent in all his feelings, love possessed his heart like a burning fire; he grew sullen and gloomy, only breaking silence by muttering a few sentences indicative of his ardent desire for self-destruction. He did not openly speak of his passion; but his feelings overflowed on paper, and he wrote and published "The Letters of Two Lovers," a sort of novel, which afterwards served as a foundation to the "Letters of Ortis." While thus occupied by literature and love, he added the duties of a more laborious profession. Bonaparte, having created the Cisalpine republic, strove to raise an Italian army for its defence. The Lombard legion formed the nucleus of these troops, and the sons of the noblest families in Italy accepted commissions: among others, Foscolo became an officer.
1800.
Ætat.
22.
The absence, however, of Bonaparte in Egypt, and the invasion of the Austrio-Russian army, put a sudden end to the existence of the new republic. At the same time that Monti fled across the Alps, and wandered, a famished exile, among the ravines and woods of Savoy, Foscolo, forced also to provide for his own safety, took refuge in Genoa, and joined the French garrison commanded by Massena. It was here that the French made a last stand, endeavouring to stop the progress of the invading army. The siege of Genoa was formed; and Foscolo, serving under the French banners, had an opportunity of studying at once the military art and the science of government during the various chances of a long and arduous struggle. While day lasted, there were perpetual combats along the whole line of mountains which surround Genoa to the north; and the night was spent in popular assemblies, in which the leaders strove to inspire the citizens with resolution to endure the evils of the siege. These soon grew intolerable; and famine, and consequent disease, made frightful ravages. Foscolo sometimes collected the people together in a spot of the city made famous by the act of an Austrian corporal, who (1748) struck with his cane a Genoese, who was striving in vain to move a cannon: he endeavoured to animate his audience to heroic deeds, by describing the magnanimous vengeance with which their ancestors had vindicated the insult. Nor was he less forward in the performance of his military duties; and his name occurs in the lists of those who were most distinguished for their bravery.
During the siege, on occasion of Napoleon's return from Egypt, and being named consul, Foscolo addressed a letter to him from Genoa, which prophesied the height to which he would hereafter rise, and besought him to rest content with his present exaltation, nor to taint his well-merited renown by schemes of unmeasured ambition. This letter, which is of two pages only, is written with the freedom of a patriot and the dignity of a disinterested and noble mind. He incurred no danger by this address, but he displeased the ear of power; and the truth and frankness of his representations form an honourable contrast with the general adulation, and the barefaced flatteries, which other writers addressed to the victor.
The energetic mind of Foscolo was not satisfied by the arduous duties of his profession, to which were added the not less exciting task of guiding and animating the minds of the citizens of Genoa, when they flagged under the visitation of the most frightful calamities. It was at this period that he wrote an ode to Luigia Pallavicini, on her falling from her horse, which betrays no signs of the sufferings which he was enduring, except its motto, taken from Horace: "Sollicitæ oblivia vitæ." This poem is all grace, elegance, and classic allusion; but there is no originality nor poetic fire. The machinery is mythological, the imagery drawn from the same source; and it is rather the work of one imbued with the poetry of the ancients, and translating remembered ideas into his native language, than the outpourings of a mind inspired by passion and nature. It is strange that Foscolo should have found time to compose verses at a period when the town he inhabited was being bombarded by the English fleet, when the Austrians were making daily assaults, and the streets were filled by a famished and dying multitude. But while Foscolo shared the labours and dangers of the garrison, he did not partake their amusements; and while they were immersed in the grosser pleasures of the bottle, of cards, and smoking, he took refuge in his imagination, and found relief in the soothing and refined feelings generated by study and poetry.
Meanwhile Genoa, reduced by famine, surrendered on the 4th of June, 1800, with the condition that the garrison should be conveyed to France by the English fleet. Foscolo accompanied his fellow-soldiers, but he endured only a brief exile from his country. The battle of Marengo drove the Austrians from Italy; the Cisalpine republic was restored; and Foscolo, together with the rest of the Italian fugitives, returned to Milan.
Already known as an author and a man of letters, he increased his fame at this period by the publication of the "Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis," a romance which at once acquired great popularity, and, as being the first that had been written in the Italian language, demanded the praise of some sort of originality. Yet its chief fault is, that it is an imitation. Foscolo could not invent incidents, nor weave the artful texture of a well-told story. The plot of "Ortis" is similar to that of Goethe's more celebrated romance of "Werter." A youth of disappointed expectations, and devoured by a morbid melancholy, falls in love with a girl who is already betrothed to another. He resolves to die as soon as the marriage shall take place; but, meanwhile, fosters his passion by frequenting the society of the young lady. She had never been attached to her intended husband, and is the victim of obedience to her father's will, who, besides that his honour is engaged, would have found an insuperable obstacle to the pretensions of Ortis in his plebeian birth. His sorrowing daughter, while she obeys, returns the affection of her passionate, adoring lover; her destined husband become jealous, her father uneasy; and Ortis, called upon by duty and friendship, absents himself from her society: he travels to Florence, to Milan, to Genoa; and then, hearing of Teresa's marriage, retraces his steps to the Euganean hills, the abode of his mistress, and fulfils his long-nurtured intention of putting an end to his existence. The slight differences between this story and "Werter" are founded on Foscolo's own attachment, before alluded to.
There is, indeed, this main difference between the work of Goëthe and that of Foscolo,—that the former is, so to speak, a dramatic, and the latter a didactic, author. Goëthe founded his story on the feelings of another. He delineated the sentiments and passions of his unfortunate young friend Jerusalem; and, putting himself in his place, filled out, from his own experience and imagination, the various portions of a picture, the most highly wrought, refined, and true that, perhaps, exists in the world of fictitious portraits. Foscolo painted a beau idéal of himself. So full was his mind of his own idea, that he prefixed a portrait of Ortis, which was only a favoured likeness of himself. Like the author, Ortis fled from Venice when it was made over to the Austrians. Like the author, his heart was tortured by patriotic sufferings, and his soul was in arms against the oppressor. Ortis, like Foscolo, saw misery and evil rife around him: compassion rose with him into a passion; and his heart bled and burnt alternately, as he pitied the victim, and abhorred the tyrant. Ortis, like Foscolo, meditated suicide as the cure for all evils, and regarded death as a harbour whence to retreat from the tempests of life. Yet Foscolo did not, like Ortis, destroy himself; because, we are apt to say, he is in this greater than his prototype, since he felt powers and capacities within him that led him to continue to endure the evils of life, to raise for himself a name among his fellow-creatures, to benefit and to exhort them; while Ortis, like a weak plant that wants all self-erecting power, fell prostrate, and was trampled on by the iron heels of destiny. Egotists, perhaps, are, of all people, the least likely to put an end to themselves; yet they like to dwell on their own deaths, and, feeling that the drama of their lives is incomplete without a striking catastrophe, they ponder on it, and, if led to bring themselves forward, are pretty sure to adorn their lives by describing its disastrous conclusion.