Then the patience, the subtlety,
the strength, with which each character, individual and typical, is
evolved; the picturesqueness with which every event is presented; the
lyrical sweetness and beauty with which so many passages are enriched,
will all be apparent to us, and we shall feel the esthetic sublimity
of the work as well as its moral force and its political significance.
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
I
In the year 1798, at Recanati, a little mountain town of Tuscany, was
born, noble and miserable, the poet Giacomo Leopardi, who began even
in childhood to suffer the malice of that strange conspiracy of ills
which consumed him. His constitution was very fragile, and it early
felt the effect of the passionate ardor with which the sickly boy
dedicated his life to literature. From the first he seems to have had
little or no direction in his own studies, and hardly any instruction.
He literally lived among his books, rarely leaving his own room except
to pass into his father's library; his research and erudition were
marvelous, and at the age of sixteen he presented his father a Latin
translation and comment on Plotinus, of which Sainte-Beuve said that
"one who had studied Plotinus his whole life could find something
useful in this work of a boy.
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