The longing for freedom is the instinct of self-preservation in
literature; and, consciously or unconsciously, the Italian poets of
the last hundred years constantly inspired the Italian people with
ideas of liberty and independence. Of course the popular movements
affected literature in turn; and I should by no means attempt to
say which had been the greater agency of progress. It is not to be
supposed that a man like Alfieri, with all his tragical eloquence
against tyrants, arose singly out of a perfectly servile society. His
time was, no doubt, ready for him, though it did not seem so; but, on
the other hand, there is no doubt that he gave not only an utterance
but a mighty impulse to contemporary thought and feeling. He was in
literature what the revolution was in politics, and if hardly any
principle that either sought immediately to establish now stands, it
is none the less certain that the time had come to destroy what they
overthrew, and that what they overthrew was hopelessly vicious.
In Alfieri the great literary movement came from the north, and by far
the larger number of the writers of whom I shall have to speak were
northern Italians. Alfieri may represent for us the period of time
covered by the French democratic conquests. The principal poets under
the Italian governments of Napoleon during the first twelve years
of this century were Vincenzo Monti and Ugo Foscolo--the former a
Ferrarese by birth and the latter a Greco-Venetian. The literary as
well as the political center was then Milan, and it continued to be so
for many years after the return of the Austrians, when the so-called
School of Resignation nourished there. This epoch may be most
intelligibly represented by the names of Manzoni, Silvio Pellico, and
Tommaso Grossi--all Lombards. About 1830 a new literary life began
to be felt in Florence under the indifferentism or toleration of the
grand-dukes. The chiefs of this school were Giacomo Leopardi;
Giambattista Niccolini, the author of certain famous tragedies of
political complexion; Guerrazzi, the writer of a great number of
revolutionary romances; and Giuseppe Giusti, a poet of very marked and
peculiar powers, and perhaps the greatest political satirist of the
century. The chief poets of a later time were Aleardo Aleardi, a
Veronese; Giovanni Prati, who was born in the Trentino, near the
Tyrol; and Francesco Dall Ongaro, a native of Trieste. I shall mention
all these and others particularly hereafter, and I have now only named
them to show how almost entirely the literary life of militant Italy
sprang from the north. There were one or two Neapolitan poets of less
note, among whom was Gabriele Rossetti, the father of the English
Rossettis, now so well known in art and literature.