Luigi Carrer of Venice was the first of that large number of minor
poets and dramatists to which the states of the old Republic have
given birth during the present century. His life began with our
century, and he died in 1850. During this time he witnessed great
political events--the retirement of the French after the fall of
Napoleon; the failure of all the schemes and hopes of the Carbonarito
shake off the yoke of the stranger; and that revolution in 1848 which
drove out the Austrians, only that, a year later, they should return
in such force as to make the hope of Venetian independence through
the valor of Venetian arms a vain dream forever. There is not wanting
evidence of a tender love of country in the poems of Carrer, and
probably the effectiveness of the Austrian system of repression,
rather than his own indifference, is witnessed by the fact that he has
scarcely a line to betray a hope for the future, or a consciousness of
political anomaly in the present.
Carrer was poor, but the rich were glad to be his friends, without
putting him to shame; and as long as the once famous _conversazioni_
were held in the great Venetian houses, he was the star of whatever
place assembled genius and beauty. He had a professorship in a private
school, and while he was young he printed his verses in the journals.
As he grew older, he wrote graceful books of prose, and drew his
slender support from their sale and from the minute pay of some
offices in the gift of his native city.
Carrer's ballads are esteemed the best of his poems; and I may offer
an idea of the quality and manner of some of his ballads by the
following translation, but I cannot render his peculiar elegance, nor
give the whole range of his fancy: