He also defended the Latin language,
when the legislature, which found time in a season of great public
peril and anxiety to regulate philology, fulminated a decree against
that classic tongue; and he soon afterward quitted Milan, in despair
of the Republic's future. He had many such fits of disgust, and in one
of them he wrote that the wickedness and shame of Italy were so great,
that they could never be effaced till the two seas covered her. There
was fighting in those days, for such as had stomach for it, in every
part of Italy; and Foscolo, being enrolled in the Italian Legion, was
present at the battle of Cento, and took part in the defense of Genoa,
but found time, amid all his warlike occupations, for literature. He
had written, in the flush of youthful faith and generosity, an ode to
Bonaparte Liberator; and he employed the leisure of the besieged
in republishing it at Genoa, affixing to the verses a reproach to
Napoleon for the treaty of Campo-Formio, and menacing him with a
Tacitus. He returned to Milan after the battle of Marengo, but his
enemies procured his removal to Boulogne, whither the Italian Legion
had been ordered, and where Foscolo cultivated his knowledge of
English and his hatred of Napoleon. After travel in Holland and
marriage with an Englishwoman there, he again came back to Milan,
which he found full as ever of folly, intrigue, baseness, and envy.
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