Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
On page 29: "premisses" should possibly be "premises".
On page 184: "Mr Adam" should possibly be "Mr McAdam".
On page 300: "meaning basis" should possibly be "meaningful basis".
EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS
BIOGRAPHY
THE LIFE OF MAZZINI
BY BOLTON KING, M.A.
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Preface
This volume contains a life of Mazzini and a study of his thought. It
can hardly be said that any serious attempt has been made either in
England or Italy to deal with either. Hence the present volume,
however unequal to the subject, may have its use. The thirty years,
which have passed since Mazzini's death, make it possible now to place
him in his true perspective; and the author trusts that the supreme
admiration, which he feels for Mazzini as a man, has not prevented him
from viewing the politician with impartiality. There exists abundant
matter to allow us to judge Mazzini's political work, and it is
unlikely that anything yet to be published will seriously affect our
estimate of it. For the personal side of Mazzini's life, the moment is
not a very opportune one. Ten years ago it would have been possible to
glean reminiscences from many, who are now silent. It has been the
author's privilege, however, to obtain invaluable information from two
of the very few persons now living, who knew Mazzini intimately. While
it is nearly too late for personal reminiscences, it is too early to
avail oneself fully of Mazzini's correspondence. A good many of his
letters have indeed been published, and I have been able to use a
good many unpublished ones, especially his correspondence with Mr and
Mrs Peter Taylor, which I have found of the greatest value. But
unfortunately only one volume has as yet appeared of the collected
edition of his correspondence, and there are still probably many of
his letters, which have yet to come to light in Italy.
With regard to the study, which occupies the second part of this
volume, the author is very sensible of his limitations in dealing with
so vast and complex a system as Mazzini's ethical and political
thought. It is his hope that he may do something to stimulate more
competent writers to labour in a very fruitful field. He believes that
the more Mazzini's thought is disentangled, the more its essential
importance will appear.
I have to acknowledge gratefully the kindness of those who have helped
me in writing this book. Above all I am indebted to Mr and Mrs W. T.
Malleson, to whom I owe the loan of the Peter Taylor correspondence
and other invaluable help; to Miss Shaen for letting me see Mazzini's
letters to her father, Mr W. Shaen, and the MS. of the "Prayer for the
Planters," now first published; to Mr Milner-Gibson Cullum, Miss
Dorothea Hickson, Mr Mazzini Stuart, Mr P. S. King, and Miss Galeer
for the loan of unpublished letters from Mazzini. I have also to
acknowledge my grateful thanks to many others, who have assisted me,
among whom I would especially mention Miss Ashurst Biggs, Signor
Mario Borsa, Mr James Bryce, M.P., Mr W. Burnley, Signora Giuditta
Casali-Benvenuti (to whom I owe the portrait of her grandmother,
Giuditta Sidoli), Mr T. Chambers, Signor Felice Dagnino, Signor G.
Gallavresi, Mrs Goodwin, Miss Edith Harvey, Mr H. M. Hyndman, Dr
Courtney Kenny, Miss Lucy Martineau, Professor Masson, Mr C. E.
Maurice, Mademoiselle Dora Melegari, Mr D. Nathan, Mr T. Okey, Mr
Chas. Roberts, Mr J. J. Stansfeld, the Società Editrice Sonzogno (for
permission to reproduce some illustrations from Madame White Mario's
life of Mazzini), Mr W. R. Thayer, and Mr Remsen Whitehouse.
BOLTON KING.
_October 1902._
A reissue of the book has allowed me to revise it in the light of
recent publications referring to Mazzini. A good many more of his
letters have been printed since 1902 (including a second volume of the
_Epistolario_), but with the exception of Mademoiselle Melegari's
collection of his letters to her father, they are not important. Nor,
with the exception of Signor Cantimori's illuminating _Saggio_, have I
found any useful recent studies of his thought. I still adhere to the
view that subsequent research will add little to our knowledge of him.
I am glad, however, to be able now to take a different view of his
connection with the publication of Kossuth's manifesto in 1853, and of
Madame Sidoli's mission to Florence in 1833 (see pp. 68 and 169).
BOLTON KING.
WARWICK, _November 1911_.
_A complete Bibliography of Mazzini will be found on page 367._
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
THE HOME AT GENOA
1805-1831. Aetat 0-25
PAGE
Boyhood and Youth--University Life--Literary Studies--
Classicism and Romanticism--Joins the Carbonari--Arrest
and Exile 1-19
CHAPTER II
YOUNG ITALY
1831-1833. Aetat 25-27
Condition of Italy--The Revolution of 1831--Young
Italy--Its Principles: Belief in Italy; Inspiration of
Duty; Social Reform--Its Political System: Republicanism;
Italian Unity; War with Austria--Secret Societies 20-34
CHAPTER III
MARSEILLES
1831-1834. Aetat 25-28
At Marseilles--Spread of Young Italy--Letter to Charles
Albert--The Army Plot in Piedmont--At Geneva--The Savoy
Raid 35-50
CHAPTER IV
SWITZERLAND
1834-1836. Aetat 28-31
Life in Exile--Mental Crisis--Principles of the
Revolution--Young Switzerland--Young Europe--Literary
Work--Women Friends: Giuditta Sidoli; Madeleine de
Mandrot 51-72
CHAPTER V
LONDON
1837-1843. Aetat 31-38
Life in London--Spiritual Condition--English Friends--
The Carlyles--Lamennais and George Sand--Literary Work--
Decay of Young Italy--The Italian School at Hatton
Garden--Appeal to Working Men 73-99
CHAPTER VI
THE REVOLUTION
1843-1848. Aetat 38-43
Politics in Italy--The Bandieras--The Post-Office
Scandal--The People's International League--Life in
1845-47--Letter to Pio Nono--Attitude towards the
Royalists--The Revolution of 1848--At Milan 100-122
CHAPTER VII
THE ROMAN REPUBLIC
1848-1849. Aetat 43-44
The Collapse of the War--The People's War--At
Florence--The Mission of Rome--The Roman Republic--The
Triumvirate--Attitude to the Church--The French Attack 123-138
CHAPTER VIII
LONDON AGAIN
1849-1859. Aetat 44-54
In Switzerland--Life in London--English Friends--
English Politics and Literature--The "Friends of Italy" 139-153
CHAPTER IX
MAZZINI AND CAVOUR
1850-1857. Aetat 45-52
The Piedmontese School--Mazzini and Cavour--The French
Alliance--Mazzini and Manin--The Theory of the Dagger--
Conspiracies--The Genoese plot of 1857 154-175
CHAPTER X
UNITY HALF WON
1858-1860. Aetat 53-55
The War of 1859--At Florence--Plans for the South--
Garibaldi's Expedition--Projected Raid into Umbria--
At Naples 176-188
CHAPTER XI
FOR VENICE
1861-1866. Aetat 56-61
Policy after 1860--Disappointment in Italy--Rome and
Venice--Attitude towards the Monarchy--Life in England--
The Greco Plot--American and Irish Politics--Mazzini
and Garibaldi--Overtures from Victor Emmanuel--The War
of 1866 189-207
CHAPTER XII
THE LAST YEARS
1866-1872. Aetat 61-66
The Republican Alliance--Life at Lugano--Mentana--
Republican Movement in 1868-70--Intrigue with Bismarck
--Imprisonment at Gaeta, and Release--Attack on the
International--Death 208-221
CHAPTER XIII
RELIGION
Religion Essential to Society--Paramountcy of the
Spiritual--Criticism of Christianity; Catholicism;
Protestantism--Christ's Teaching: its Truths and
Imperfections--The Doctrines of the New Faith: God;
Progress; Immortality--The Criteria of Truth: the
Conscience; Tradition--Humanity--The Need of Unity;
Authority; Church and State; the New Church 222-248
CHAPTER XIV
DUTY
Morality Depends on an Ideal--Criticism of the Theory
of Rights and Utilitarianism--Happiness not the End of
Life--Life is a Mission--Work for the Sake of
Duty--Thought Useless without Action--Power of the
Principle of Duty--Duties to Self; Family; Country 249-266
CHAPTER XV
THE STATE
The Moral Law and the State--Duties of the State:
Liberty, Association, Education--Sovereignty is in
God--Democracy--The Ideal Government--The Republic--The
Ideal State 267-282
CHAPTER XVI
SOCIAL THEORIES
Importance of Social Questions--Their Moral Basis--
Attack on Socialism--Contrast between Mazzini's and its
Theories and Work--Social Programme--Cooperation 283-295
CHAPTER XVII
NATIONALITY
Country and Humanity--The Marks of Nationality: the
Will of the People; the Sense of National Mission--
Patriotism--International Solidarity--Ethics of Foreign
Policy; Non-Intervention; War; the Special Missions of
each Country--The Future of Europe--The Slavs--The
United States of Europe--Italy's International Function 296-311
CHAPTER XVIII
LITERARY CRITICISM
The Function of the Critic--The Function of the
Poet--Art must avoid 'Art for the sake of Art' and
Realism--It must be Human, Social, Didactic--Poetry of
Modern Life--The Historical Drama--Music--'Objective'
and 'Subjective' Poets--Dante--Shakespeare--Goethe--
Byron 312-328
CHAPTER XIX
THE MAN
Poetic Temperament--Defects as a Thinker--Greatness as a
Moral Teacher--Strength and Weakness as a Politician--The
Man 329-341
APPENDIX A
Some Unpublished (in one case privately published)
Letters and Papers, written by Mazzini 343-367
APPENDIX B
Bibliography of Mazzini's Writings 367-373
INDEX 374
"Where there is no vision, the people perish."
Chapter I
The Home at Genoa
1805-1831. AETAT 0-25
Boyhood and Youth--University Life--Literary
Studies--Classicism and Romanticism--Joins the
Carbonari--Arrest and Exile.
Joseph Mazzini was born in the Via Lomellina at Genoa on June 22,
1805. His father was a doctor of some repute and Professor of Anatomy
at the University, a democrat in creed and life, who gave much of his
time to unpaid service of the poor; at home affectionate and loved,
though sometimes hard and imperious. His mother, to whom in after life
he bore a strong resemblance, was a capable and devoted woman, who had
little of the weakness of an Italian mother, and brought up her
children to bear the brunt of life; with strong interest in the mighty
movements that were remoulding Europe at the time, a mordant critic of
governors and governments inside the four walls of her house. It was a
happy home, and "Pippo" grew up the darling of his parents and three
sisters, a delicate, sensitive, gentle child, quick and insistent to
learn despite his father's fears for his health, and giving precocious
proof of brilliant talents. He was nearly nine years old, when the
Napoleonic system was shattered, and the Emperor went to Elba.
Doubtless, Mazzini heard from his father that Napoleon was Italian
born and was going to exile in an Italian island. The shock of the
downfall was felt at Genoa, for the proud city, to which Lord William
Bentinck had promised in the name of England its ancient independence,
learnt that "republics were no longer fashionable," and saw itself
helplessly made over to the alien rule of Piedmont. Bitterly the
Genoese chafed at the traffic of their liberties, and we may be sure
that there was republican talk in Mazzini's home, which sank into the
mind of the thoughtful child. He himself mentions four influences that
turned his boyish mind to democracy: his parents' uniform courtesy to
every rank of life; the reminiscences of the French republican wars in
the talk at home; some numbers of an old Girondist paper, which his
father kept half hidden, for fear of the police, behind his medical
books; and--more than all these, probably--the classics that he read
under his Latin tutor. "The history of Greece and Rome," wrote a
fellow-student, "the only thing taught us with any care at school, was
little else than a constant libel upon monarchy, and a panegyric upon
the democratic form of government." Like many another boy of his time
who had for school exercises to declaim the praises of Cato and the
Bruti, he came to regard republics as the appointed homes of virtue.
It was the unintended fruit of the classical training, which the
despotic governments of the time fostered to keep their youth innocent
of any itch for innovation.
So he lived his quiet, studious home-life, till an incident one day,
when he was nearly sixteen, suddenly changed its tenor. The Carbonaro
revolutions of 1820 and 1821 had ended in deserved collapse; and the
Piedmontese Liberals, abandoned and defeated, crowded to Genoa and
Sampierdarena, while yet there was time to escape to Spain. Some had
fled penniless, and Mazzini, walking with his mother, noted their
despairing faces, and watched while a collection was made for them in
the streets. Their memory haunted him, and with a boy's enthusiasm for
his heroes, he longed to follow them. He neglected his lessons, and
sat moody and absorbed, interested only in gleaning news of the exiles
and learning the history of their defeat. In his boyish impatience,
which came near the truth, he felt "they might have won, if all had
done their duty," and the thought puzzled and obsessed him. He
insisted on dressing in black, and kept the habit to the end of life.
He brooded over Foscolo's _Jacopo Ortis_, till the morbid pessimism of
the book wrought on him, and his mother, apparently with good reason,
feared suicide.
In time he recovered his balance, and went back to his books with the
old zest. He was now studying medicine, intending to follow his
father's profession; but at his first attendance in the operation room
he fainted, and it was clear that he could never be a surgeon.[1] To
his father it must have been a sore disappointment, but he seems to
have at once recognised the inevitable, and allowed the lad to read
law. Mazzini had little heart in his new studies, for the arid,
perfunctory teaching of law current at the time had small attraction
for one who wanted to know the reason of things; but he persevered,
and did well in his examinations, though it is probable that he always
gave a big slice of his time to reading poetry and history. He was now
at the University. Probably he went to school, though there is some
doubt about it; at all events he seems to have escaped the brutality
and bad pedagogy, which generally made school life then one long
misery for a high-principled or sensitive lad. University life began
at an early age in Italy, and Mazzini had matriculated at Genoa, when
he was fourteen. So far as his fellow-students were concerned, he was
in happy surroundings. But he was a troublesome scholar, always ready
to rebel against the formalities that made a big part of University
life. To the last he refused to attend the compulsory religious
observances, not because he disliked them, but because they were
compulsory; and the authorities, tolerant for once, shut their eyes to
his insubordination. The University of Genoa did not possess a high
name for scholarship; and at this time it had its special drawbacks,
for the government was scared by the recent revolution, and fearful
that a few hundred lads might shake the pillars of the state. No one
could matriculate without a certificate that he had regularly attended
church and confession. Those whose parents did not possess a certain
quantity of landed property, had to pass a stiffer examination, though
at the worst, it is probable, not a very prohibitive one. Lecturers,
beadles, porters, all had the cue from government to make life
unpleasant for the students, and the better professors dared not be
detected in any leniency or considerateness. Moustaches were
forbidden, as a mark of the revolutionary mind, and if any student,
greatly daring, grew them, he was carried off between two carabineers
to a barber's shop.
[Illustration: HOUSE at GENOA in which MAZZINI Was BORN]
Mazzini soon became a leader among the clean-living, affectionate,
impetuous undergraduates. His appearance was now, as always, very
striking; he had a high and prominent forehead, black, flashing eyes,
fine olive features, set in a mass of thick black hair, a grave,
serious face, that could look hard at times, but readily melted in the
kindliest of smiles. He led a studious, retiring life, fond of
gymnastics and fencing, but with small taste for amusements, his
cigars and coffee his only indulgences; his days spent among his
books, his evenings with his mother, or in long solitary walks that
defied the weather, or in rare and stolen visits to the theatre, which
he had to leave after the first act, for the home was rigorously shut
at ten. But, though he was slow to make close friendships, he was no
misanthrope. He played much on the guitar and sang well to it; and his
musical talents and clever reciting made him in demand among his
middle-class and patrician friends. There was none yet of the
half-bitter sadness of after life; he had a shrewd sense of humour,
perhaps inherited from his mother; when warmed by enthusiasm or
indignation, he could speak with a fiery eloquence, that was
remarkable even among those declamatory Italian youths. "My soul," he
wrote afterwards, "was then a smile for all created things, life
showed to my virgin fancy as a dream of love, my warmest thoughts were
for nature's loveliness and the ideal woman of my youth." He revelled
in generous actions, sharing books and money, even clothes, with his
poorer friends. But it was sheer force of character that gave him his
ascendancy over them--the loyal, justice-loving nature that made him
champion of every victim of undergraduate or professorial spite, the
purity of thought, that checked each loose or coarse word from those
about him. That clear, high soul, untouched by self, not knowing fear,
passionate for righteousness, gave him even when a lad the power that
belongs only to the saints of God.
His closest friends were three brothers, Jacopo, Giovanni, and
Agostino Ruffini. Jacopo, the eldest of the three, had perhaps more
influence on Mazzini's life than any other man. They were born on the
same day; and Jacopo's fine, sensitive, enthusiastic nature matched
well with Mazzini's own. The tragic fate, that afterwards brought his
life to an early close, only strengthened the influence; and the
memory of one so dear, who gave his life for their common cause,
remained a perennial inspiration to keep his faith alive in years of
weariness and failure. The other brothers had little of Jacopo's
temperament. Giovanni at this time was an even-tempered, humourous,
brilliant lad; Agostino was impressionable, impulsive, shallow, of
quick and artistic nature. Mazzini's closest companions for some
years, they proved how little they could rise to his high level, and
they repaid his devotion by a want of sympathy and an ingratitude,
which, in Agostino's case at all events, was gross. In later life both
attained in their small way; both were deputies in the Piedmontese
parliament, and Giovanni was minister at Paris. They long moved in
English society and had some reputation there. Agostino, who was for a
time a teacher at Edinburgh, is the "Signor Sperano" who tells the
story of _The Poor Clare_, in Mrs Gaskell's _Round the Sofa_.
Giovanni, who became as proficient in English as in his mother tongue,
wrote two notable but now half-forgotten tales, _Lorenzo Benoni_ and
_Doctor Antonio_, which stand among the best second-rate novels of his
time.
Under Mazzini's lead the group of friends at Genoa formed a society to
study literature and politics and smuggle in forbidden books. Half the
masterpieces of contemporary European literature came at this time
under the censor's ban; no foreign papers were admitted except two
ultra-monarchical French journals; and contraband was a necessity of
literary study. Mazzini's strongest interests took him to literature.
He read omnivorously in Italian and French and English and
translations from the German.[2] His favourite books, he tells us,
were the Bible and Dante, Shakespeare and Byron. His close knowledge
of the Gospels comes out in everything he wrote. He shed his orthodoxy
indeed as soon as he began to think; he went sometimes to mass, when a
lad, and read Condorcet's _Esquisse_ disguised as a missal; but he
refused to go to confession as soon as he understood its meaning,--the
one thing, apparently, in all his life which pained his mother. For a
short time he went through a phase of scepticism, but the Ruffinis'
mother soon rescued him from this, and a deep religious faith came to
him, to remain the spring of all his life. The poets he loved best
were Dante and Byron, and he always remained true to them. From Dante
he learnt many of the master-ideas of his mind, the conception of the
unity of man and unity of law, the fervid patriotism, the belief in
Italy and Rome predestined to be teachers of the world, the faith in
Italian Unity, the moral strength that makes life one long fight for
good. When only some twenty years old, he wrote an essay on Dante's
patriotism, which, however boyish in style, proves his close knowledge
of the master. Byron was then at the height of his fame, and then, as
always afterwards, Mazzini thought him the greatest of modern English,
perhaps of modern European poets. He was "completely fascinated" by
Goethe, and would often say that "to pass a day with him or a genius
like him would be the fairest day of life." How his admiration for
Goethe waned, while that for Byron grew, will be told in another
chapter.[3] He read Shakespeare, but always, apparently, with more
respect than enjoyment, and Shakespeare too came under the same ban as
Goethe. He thought very highly of Schiller, and placed him with
Æschylus and Shakespeare, as the third great dramatist of the world.
He read a good deal of English literature; at this time he was a
fervent admirer of Scott, but he seems afterwards to have lost his
interest in him; he knew something at least of Wordsworth and Shelley,
Burns and Crabbe. Modern French literature, except de Vigny's and some
of Victor Hugo's writings, did not now (nor, with the exception of
George Sand and Lamennais, at any time), appeal to him, for he
disliked the tendencies of French Romanticism, and already there were
the beginnings of his life-long prejudice against most things French.
Among his modern fellow-countrymen Alfieri and Foscolo were his
favourites; he read Manzoni and Guerrazzi, but largely to criticise
them, though he was ready to do justice to the strength of both. He
thought Mickiewicz, the Polish national poet, "the most powerful
poetic nature of the time." The classics he no doubt read pretty
widely, as every educated lad was then bound to do, but none seem to
have made much impression on him, except Æschylus, for whom his
veneration was unbounded, and Tacitus. Both now and later he gave much
time to metaphysical and political writers. He read something of
Hegel, whom he detested for his political fatalism, of Kant and
Fichte; but the German who influenced him most was the now-forgotten
Herder. From him he learned or confirmed his spiritual conception of
life, his belief in immortality, his theory of the progress of
humanity and man's co-operation in the work of Providence. Among
Italian philosophers he studied Giordano Bruno and Vico; he rated the
latter at his real worth, and regarded him as the great luminary of an
Italian school of thought whose continuity he professed to trace from
Pythagoras. Among political writers Macchiavelli certainly impressed
him most, as a great Italian patriot, and he excused his morality as a
product of his time. He seems to have known a good deal of Voltaire
and Rousseau. Of recent political writers, he and his circle most read
Guizot and Victor Cousin, whose lectures at this time made them the
mentors of young liberalism; he records how the group at Genoa handed
on to one another manuscript copies of the lectures, and found their
inspiration in the men whom they were soon to regard as traitors.
Now and for long after, literature was the call that spoke sweetest
to Mazzini. Politics and conspiracy were constraining but unwelcomed
duties; he gave his love to literature. To be a dramatist or write
historical novels was at this time his plan of life. Many a time in
later years he was still looking for the day, when Italy would be
united and free, and, his political task accomplished, he could give
himself to the literary schemes he still cherished,--a history of
religious ideas, a popular history of Italy, and the editing of a
series of the great dramas of the world. But the burden of his
country's woe lay too heavily on him to be long forgotten. It was no
time now for Dante studies or play-writing. Sadly and unwillingly he
convinced himself that at such a time pure literature was no patriot's
first task, that the writer, who would not shirk his duty, must make
his work political. Not but what the literary critic still appears on
every page; but the whole gist of his teaching is that the value of a
book is in proportion to its power to inform the reader's soul to love
of country and mankind, and impel him to serve his fellows by
political action in the sight of God. He held it wasted effort to do,
what Manzoni had tried to do,--to school the individual to a smug life
of cloistered virtue, a life which in a vicious or torpid society was
impossible to the many. No religion, no morality, he taught, is worth
the writer's labours, unless it dedicates men to be workers in the
public cause, to hold comfort, and, if need be, home and life itself
as cheap, while oppression and wrong are stunting other lives, and men
and women round are crying to be freed.
He found his opportunity in the controversy between Romanticists and
Classicists, which then divided the literary world of Italy into hot
factions. Not that he held Romanticism to be any final or faultless
form of literature. But when a theory of literary servitude, like
Classicism, lent itself to political oppression and depressed the
vital and spiritual forces of the country, when a young and vigorous
movement was making literature free and stood for liberty all round,
he necessarily took his stand for the latter. There could be no
political or social regeneration for Italy, till she had a literature
that made for freedom and progress. "These literary disputes," he
urged, "are bound up with all that is important in social and civil
life"; "the legislation and literature of a people always advance on
parallel lines," and "the progress of intellectual culture stands in
intimate relationship with the political life of the country." It was
the aim of the Romanticists "to give Italians an original national
literature, not one that is as a sound of passing music to tickle the
ear and die, but one that will interpret to them their aspirations,
their ideas, their needs, their social movement." And thus, while
generously recognising Manzoni's worth, he looked rather to Alfieri
and Foscolo, who had scourged political wrong-doing and preached
resistance to tyranny; he praised the writers of the _Conciliatore_,
the short-lived Milanese journal of Silvio Pellico and Confalonieri,
which, like himself, had turned Romanticism to political purposes.
Here and there in his writings of this time a more or less direct
political allusion manages to escape the censor's eye. He speaks for
the first time of "Young Italy," a name soon to ring through Europe;
he pays his tribute to the political exiles; he slips in a remark
that the spirit of a state cannot be changed without recasting its
institutions. More than this he could not do in a censor-ridden press;
perhaps literature was struggling still with politics to command his
mind.
As it was, he had trouble enough with the censors. His first published
articles appeared in the _Indicatore Genovese_, a commercial paper
issuing at Genoa, whose editor was persuaded to admit short notices of
recent books, which gradually swelled into literary essays. Among his
later contributions were an article on the historical novel and
reviews of Friedrich Schlegel's History of Literature and Guerrazzi's
Battle of Benevento. They do not read very well. They are juvenile and
exaggerated, and it is amusing to find the twenty-three years' old
author telling his coeval Guerrazzi, the young Leghorn novelist, that
he had not drunk enough of the cup of life to be a pessimist. The
_Indicatore_ gradually became a literary paper, and for a few months
the censorship did not see what it was tending to. At the end of 1828,
however, about a year after Mazzini began to write in it, it was
suppressed. Mazzini easily transferred his energies. Guerrazzi had
founded another paper at Leghorn much on the same lines, the
_Indicatore Livornese_, and asked Mazzini to send contributions.
Mazzini readily responded; he wrote, besides minor papers, an article
on Faust, and attacked the defects of the Romanticist School in an
essay on _Some Tendencies of European Literature_. His writing is
still effusive, and generally dogmatic and sententious, but the style
has improved. The censorship was comparatively lenient in Tuscany,
and though the young writers were barred from direct reference to
politics, they were able to make the political allusions sufficiently
transparent. But the paper grew too daring even for the somnolent
Tuscan censors, and, like its predecessor, it was snuffed out after a
year of life. Mazzini and Guerrazzi parted, to go on very different
ways, and meet again nineteen years later when both were famous.
In the meantime Mazzini had with some difficulty got a footing on the
_Antologia_, the one Italian review of the time that ranked among the
great European periodicals. It had been founded some ten years before,
in the hope that it might become an Italian Edinburgh Review, by Gino
Capponi, the blind Florentine noble who traced his race from the
Capponi who bearded Charles VIII., and Vieusseux, a Swiss bookseller
who had settled at Florence and opened the one circulating library of
any note in Italy. Most of the leading Italian writers of the day
contributed to it; and though its aim was avowedly nationalist, and in
a sense Liberal, it had succeeded so far, thanks probably to its
influential patrons, in eluding the censor's ban. Mazzini wrote for it
three articles _On the Historical Drama_ and another _On a European
Literature_. His work had rapidly matured, and there is no trace now
of the juvenilities of his earlier efforts. Every page has the mark of
the strong, original thought, which made him one of the greatest
critics of the century.
Meanwhile he was practising at the bar in a desultory fashion.
Sometimes he pleaded in the lower courts as an "advocate of the poor,"
and was much in demand for his attention and skill. According to the
etiquette of the profession, he read in the rooms of a barrister, who
limited his interest to seeing that his pupils sat with a book in
front of them. The vacations were generally spent in a little country
villa at San Secondo, in the Bisagno valley, within sight of a house
which the Ruffinis occupied; and he shared in attentions to the
Ruffinis' mother, who was now his spiritual guide and dearest friend,
or went on botanical walks or shooting expeditions in the lovely hill
country. He did not do much of the shooting himself, and when he was
more than fifty, he remembered with remorse a thrush that he had
mangled when sixteen.
His interests became more and more absorbed by politics. His Genoese
home no doubt encouraged this, for the nobles and the working-classes
were still unreconciled to Piedmontese rule, while the liberals of the
middle classes looked on the annexation only as a step to some wider
Italian state. But the local environment was only a minor influence,
and Mazzini would doubtless have become a conspirator, had he lived in
any other town of Italy. About the time that he began to write in the
_Indicatore Genovese_, he was admitted into the Society of the
Carbonari. The Carbonari were at this time suffering from the
decadence, which sooner or later palsies every secret society. They
had grown out of Neapolitan Freemasonry in the days of the French
rule, and when, after Napoleon's fall, reaction came and the old
dynasties returned, they swept into their ranks the mass of
discontented men, who, with very varying political ideals, were at one
in resenting the small tyrannies, the bigotry and obscurantism of the
princes, who had come back from exile to misgovern and sometimes to
oppress. The high level of their tenets, their appeals to religion and
morality, the esoteric symbolism of their rites, the vague democratic
sentiment that was often only skin-deep, had made them a vast Liberal
organisation. Since they had made and wrecked the revolutions of
Naples and Piedmont seven years before, they had kept the skeleton of
their party together with considerable skill and persistency. But the
conspiracy had changed its character. It was no longer a purely
Italian society, for the exiles had carried it into France and Spain,
and the headquarters were now at Paris, where Lafayette and the
Orleanist conspirators were using it to upset the Legitimist monarchy
and dreamed of a league of Latin countries to balance the Holy
Alliance. In Italy the democratic sentimentalism had left it, it had
lost touch with the masses, and its leaders were mostly middle-aged
men of the professional classes, who discouraged young recruits, and
had no wish to step outside their meaningless small formalisms and
barren talk of liberty.
Mazzini had little stomach for their ritualism and lack of purpose,
their love of royal and noble leaders; and probably the subordinate
position, that as a young man he necessarily took, sat uncomfortably
on him. But at all events they were the only revolutionary
organisation in the country, and he admired the bravery of men, who
risked prison or exile for however inadequate an end. Though fitfully
in practice, he had a theoretic belief in subordination, which
prepared him for the moment to act under orders. But as soon as he
joined the Carbonari and swore the usual oath of initiation over a
bared dagger, he began to see the futility of it all. He found that
he was sworn only to obey his unknown chiefs, and he was allowed to
know the names of two or three only of his fellow-conspirators. He
suspected that their political programme, if they had any, was but a
thin one. All the Italian in him revolted against men, who talked
lightly of their country, and preached that salvation could only come
from France. The subscription to the Society's funds, of which,
needless to say, no account was rendered, was sufficiently heavy to
bear hardly on his slender purse. He was so sickened by a melodramatic
announcement, perhaps in bluff, that a member was to be assassinated
for criticising the chiefs, that he threatened to withdraw. His
unknown superiors, however, apparently thought well of him, and he was
commissioned to go on propagandist work to Tuscany, where he made a
few recruits. He seems to have returned in better spirits as to the
future of the Society; and if we may believe Giovanni Ruffini, he
began with a few young co-affiliates to organise on his own account,
nominally in the name of the Carbonari, but really to substitute a
more vigorous association. His plan was apparently to bring the
Carbonari of Tuscany and Bologna into closer touch with those of Genoa
and Piedmont. He asked for a passport for Bologna on the pretext that
he wanted to examine a Dante manuscript, but was told by the police,
that if he had no more important business, he could wait. Baffled in
this, he returned to his semi-independent conspiracy at home. The July
Revolution in France had raised the hopes of liberals everywhere; and
he and his friends enrolled affiliates, discarding the Carbonaro
lumber of oaths and secret signs, and simply pledging them to act, if
an insurrection proved possible. Bullets were cast, and other juvenile
preparations made. How far he succeeded in enlisting followers, we do
not know, for he himself has left hardly any record of the plan.
At all events, it was abruptly nipped. The government had its secret
agents among the Carbonari, and Mazzini was arrested on the charge of
initiating one of them. It is probable that the authorities had
suspected him for some time. He was, as the governor of Genoa told his
father, "gifted with some talent, and too fond of walking by himself
at night absorbed in thought. What on earth," asked the offended
officer, "has he at his age to think about? We don't like young people
thinking without our knowing the subject of their thoughts." Mazzini
was taken to the fortress of Savona, where he consoled himself by
watching the sea and sky, which made all the prospect from his cell
windows, and taming a serin finch, which would fly in through the
gratings, and to which he "became exceedingly attached." His case came
before the Senate of Turin, the highest court in the country. In the
eyes of the law he was supremely guilty; but, with an adroitness that
he afterwards recalled with pride, he managed to destroy all
compromising papers, and there was only one witness of the initiation,
whereas the law required two. Mazzini stoutly denied the fact. The
denial was more than a plea of not guilty in an English court; perhaps
he thought that a conspirator is bound to put his government outside
the pale of moral obligation. But whatever we may allow for his
position, the plain man will count his action as one of the
disingenuous lapses, that rarely, now and again, stain the clear
honour of his life.
The court had to acquit him, but the authorities had too much evidence
of his activity to leave him unmolested. They gave him the choice
between internment in a small town or exile. Contemporary events
decided him. The revolution had just broken out in Central Italy; the
French government had encouraged the Carbonari to expect direct or
indirect assistance, and Mazzini thought that he would serve the cause
best at Paris, whence, he confidently hoped, he would soon return to a
liberated Italy. In February 1831 he said his good-byes to his family,
who had hastened to Savona, and crossed the Apennines and, for the
first time, the Alps, afterwards so familiar and beloved. He watched
the sunrise from Mont Cenis, and has left a memorable description of
it, drawn with all the wealth of his artistic imagery. At Geneva he
made the acquaintance of Sismondi and his Scotch wife. While there, he
was advised to join the Italian exiles at Lyons, and, giving up the
projected journey to Paris, he made his way to them.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] So Madame Mario, who probably had it from Mazzini's mother, and
Madame Venturi on the authority of a college friend. The memoir by
another fellow-student in _Epistolario di G. Mazzini_, I. xxix. says
that he thought that a doctor was not free to express his opinions for
fear of offending his patients, and that he therefore never studied
medicine; so too Donaver, _Uomini e libri_, 70. But see his _Vita di
G. Mazzini_, 13, on apparently good evidence.
[2] He seems never to have learnt to read German easily; at all events
he could not do so till comparatively late in life.
[3] See pp. 325-327.