Among these the two who have been most favored by posterity are Silvio Pellico (1789-1854), principally because of the book in which he described his experiences in Austrian dungeons, "Le mie Prigioni" ("My Prisons"), and Leopardi, the intellectual giant of an arid epoch. The immortality of the former is founded in sentiment, of the latter in merit.
The poet who had greatest popularity in Italy at this time was Giuseppe Giusti (1809-1850), a satirist who chose verse as his medium. Although posterity has not given him a very high rating, his "Versi" are still widely read in Italy. His most appealing possession was ability to express in scannable, rememberable, singable verse what may be called every-day sentiment, to depict simple characters whose virtues every one would like to have, and to interlace political satires with the most panoplied, pathetic, patriotic sentiments. There is no safer way to sense to-day the sentiment of the first half of the nineteenth century of Italy than to read Giusti's poems. His "All'Amica Lontana" ("To the Friend Far Away"), "Gli Umanitari" ("The Humanitarians"), and his poems of spleen and of dream have a sprightliness and freshness as if they were of yesterday. Dario Niccodemi has recently borrowed the title "Prete Pero" from one of Giusti's poems for a comedy in which is depicted the conduct of a simple, honest, pious priest confronted with the conflict of ecclesiastical instructions and war problems. Giusti's brief life was a strange mixture of potential joy and actual suffering. In the vigor of his manhood he was seized by a painful disease, and to his sufferings was added the mental agony caused by fear of hydrophobia.
Giuseppina Guacci Nobile (1808-1848), of Naples, a contemporary of Giusti, had great popularity as a poetess of sentiment. She sang of love of country, of art, of husband, of children, of heaven, and when the sadness of the times was so profound that she needs must sing of hate she died.
Three poets of northern Italy must also be mentioned. Francesco Dall'Ongaro, who, though born in the Friuli, went to Venice when he was ten years old and lived for the rest of his life in the northern provinces, had a tremendous popularity in the revolutionary period of 1848 because of a little collection of lyrics called "Stornelli"; Giovanni Prati, of Dasindo, Trent, whose permanent reputation as a poet depends upon his ballads, became widely known through his poem "Edmenegarda"; and Aleardo Aleardi, born at Verona in the early years of the nineteenth century, whose best-known book, "Le Prime Storie," was extensively read.
The pillars of the romantic movement were soon erected in Central Italy by the writings of Leopardi, Niccolini, and Giusti.
Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) had a personality that has fastened itself upon Italy, even unto the present day, in a most extraordinary—one might even say, inexplicable—way. He was laconic, silent, morose, introspective, solitary, celibate. His filial love was readily overdrawn; he loathed his ancestral home and environment; he contended with ill health from infancy; he was denied the understanding friend, save one, whose behavior toward Leopardi has been criticised severely. He wandered solitarily about central Italy wrapped in the mantle of introspection and veiled in melancholy until 1833, when he settled at Naples, and there he remained four years, until he had attained his thirty-ninth year, when he died under most distressing circumstances. Ranieri, in his "Sette Anni di Sodalizio con Giacomo Leopardi," gives this description of Leopardi's appearance: he was of moderate height, bent and thin, with a fair complexion that inclined to pallor, a large head, a square, broad forehead, languid blue eyes, a short nose, and very delicate features; his voice was modest and rather weak; his smile ineffable and almost unearthly.
It is not easy for a foreigner to understand the exalted estimation in which the poetry of Leopardi is held in Italy to-day. To do so one must needs sense the spirit of the times when he lived. The "whatever is is right" day of Pope had been succeeded by a day of tragedy the like of which the world had perhaps never known, and things would never be again as they were. Leopardi sung this change. He was the poet of pain and of despair, the versifier of Schopenhauer's philosophy. He sang of melancholy, but he was never reconciled to supine resignation. Though classical in form, his poems are steeped with the romantic spirit. Although a supporter of the romantic school, he scarcely can be called an exponent or upholder of it. A familiarity with his writings is an integral part of the education of all cultured Italians, and nearly every schoolboy can recite parts of the poems "To Italy" or "The Quiet after the Storm."
Leopardi considered it was harder to write good prose than good verse. Greek thoughts were clearer and more vivid to him than Latin or Italian. It is a pitiable picture that Ranieri draws of him in Naples, suffering from consumption and from dropsy, unable to read, turning night into day, having dinner at midnight to the discomfiture of the household, having to be nursed and entertained, disliking the country, and living in abject terror of the cholera which then raged in Naples.
De Musset praised his work. Sainte-Beuve did homage to him, and at an early date made his name familiar to French readers. The judgment of posterity is the one that counts and not the judgment of individuals, and Leopardi is Italy's greatest modern poet. De Sanctis said of him: "His songs are the most profound and occult verses of that laborious transition called the nineteenth century." His death marked the close of the first romantic period in Italy.
Gian Battista Niccolini (1785-1861) wrote tragedies, historical romances, and poetry, the best known of which is "Arnaldo da Brescia." The Florentines have erected a noble monument to his memory in their Westminster Abbey—the church of Santa Croce.