(Giacomo), Count, eldest son of the Count Monaldo Leopardi and the Marchioness Adelaide Artici, was born at Recanati, in the march of Ancona, June 29, 1798. In early childhood he was taught Latin and the grammar of his own language by two priests; and in his tenth year he began, without assistance, the study of Greek. Until his fourteenth year, he had no other instructor than the extensive library which his father, himself a literary man, had inherited from his ancestors.

The first part of his short career was entirely devoted to philology, in which his attainments were so great as to secure him a place among the most eminent philologists of his day, at an age when most men are still studying at college. In August 1814, when just sixteen years of age, he completed his commentary on Porphyry's *Life of Plotinus*, from which Creuzer has extracted the addenda, to be found in the third volume. In the same year, Leopardi wrote his commentaries—*Sulla vita e gli scritti di taluni retori del II. secolo*, a book of such merit, that, when Cardinal Mai published an edition of Fronto's *Letters*, in the following year, he availed himself of Leopardi's annotations; and not long after, when editing *Dionysius of Halicarnassus*, he quoted his letter to Giordani as an authority. Leopardi's next work, *Saggio sugli errori Popolari degli Antichi*, published in 1815, astonished the learned by the variety and amount of erudition displayed by a youth of seventeen. De Sloner, in his *Excerpta ex schedis criticis Jacobi Leopardi Comitis*, Bonn, 1834, lauds the "admiranda lectionis et eruditissimae opus." Another essay, *Sulla riputazione di Orazio fra gli Antichi*, which appeared in 1816, shows how deeply he was imbued with the feelings of the ancients. The *Osservazioni sulla Batrochiomachia* (1817) were reprinted by the learned Bothe, in his celebrated edition of Homer's *Odyssey* (Leipsic, Leopardi, 1834), and by Berger de Xivrey, in his second edition of the *Batrochiomachia* (1837). The *Annatazioni alla Cronaca di Eusebio*, published by Mai and Zorhab, the dissertation on Moschus and Bion, the translation of their *Idylls*, and a number of valuable researches, remarks, and essays, on other Greek and Latin authors, followed each other in rapid succession during the years 1816–17.

Leopardi's knowledge of the dead languages, added to his own fine intellect and quick perception, enabled him so to identify himself with the ancient world, that his *Hymn to Neptune*, which he gave as a translation of a newly-discovered Greek poem, and two Greek odes, which he passed off as Odys by Anacreon, published in 1817, remained for some time undetected forgeries. Another forgery (in 1826), the translation of a *Martyrdom of the Holy Fathers of Mount Sinai*, was accepted by Cesari, and admired as a *testo di lingua*. A dissertation on the *Titanomachia*, from the *Theogony* of Hesiod, and some very fine translations from Simonides, terminated the first epoch of his life.

From his constant researches into the social, political, and heroic elements of antiquity, he had acquired an enthusiastic elevation of character, which, added to his retired life and his simplicity of manners, seemed to remove him entirely from his own age, and to connect him with the great men of ancient Greece and Rome. Thus inspired by the noble deeds, and tempered by the severe beauty of his models, his poetry burst forth with a pathos and energy that has led an enthusiastic critic to affirm, that Italian poetry began with Dante and ended with Leopardi. His first *canzone* was dedicated to Italy, his second to Dante, his third to Cardinal Mai. With the political feeling common to all the modern poets of Italy, there breathes in Leopardi's verses a spirit of sublime scorn, such as an ancient Roman might be supposed to feel when writing to an audience of his degenerate countrymen.

At the age of twenty, he had a reputation throughout Italy for the finish of his style, the vigour of his sentiments, and the Attic elegance of his versification. He was then at the zenith of his fame. A year before, he had said, in a letter to one of his friends,—"I do not wish to live with the multitude: mediocrity frightens me." But the precocious genius already carried within him the germs of disease and death. He was soon after assailed by a severe illness, and, in 1819, his sight was so much impaired, that he was forbidden to read; and an affection of the spine brought with it acute pain and deformity. He was then, for the first time, compelled to leave his home at Recanati. The snows of the Apennines made his residence there injurious; while political disagreement between him and his father added mental to physical suffering. He went to Rome, where he became acquainted with Niebuhr, who spoke and wrote so highly of him, that the Chevalier Bunsen, when in that city, went to visit him, and was surprised to find the philologist and poet in a poor chamber, "pale and shy, a mere youth, of weakly figure, and obviously in bad health." Niebuhr offered him a professorship in the University of Berlin, but this he declined. Bunsen remained his warm admirer to the last. At this period, he contributed to the *Effermeridi Letterarie di Roma* his annotations on the Armenian *Philol* of Aucher, a translation of Virgil's *Moretum*, and some learned papers on Cicero's *De Republica*; at the same time, he was intrusted with the arrangement of the Greek manuscripts in the *Bibliotheca Barberiniana*.

It was now that he fell into that desponding state of mind which casts a peculiarly mournful shadow over his poetry. The contrast between the great men of antiquity with whom, in his library at home, he may be said to have lived, and the meanness of those with whom he now mingled in daily life, swept away the bright illusions of his youth, and made him feel a stranger in the world. To the political, social, Lepanto, and religious misfortunes of his country, which affected him deeply, there were added personal difficulties and struggles, which made his life a burden. He travelled from Rome to Milan, thence to Florence and Bologna, and then returned to Rome again; but his moral illness seemed even more incurable than that of his body, and nothing could overcome his growing disgust of life. Amid his misfortunes he met with one consolation, the friendship of Antonio Ramieri, a Neapolitan, who invited him to his house at Naples, where he remained seven years. While there, Leopardi passed his time alternately at the foot of Vesuvius, where he uttered the last and most plaintive of his songs, *La Ginestra*, or *il Fiore de' Deserti*, and on the Hill of Capodimonte, where he died of dropsy, 16th June 1837.

As a philologist Leopardi belongs to that class of patient investigators who have thrown that light of sound criticism on classic literature by which Germany has so justly acquired her learned reputation. The Italians, however, to whom Europe is indebted for the preservation of the treasures of ancient culture, have not, in the midst of adverse circumstances, forgotten the traditions of their ancestors, and the Niebuhrs, Creuzers, Bothes, Thielis, &c., find their rivals in the Marinis, Mais, Giordani, Cancelliers, &c., to whom we must now add the name of Leopardi. As a poet, Leopardi has written some of the most painfully eloquent passages to be found in any language. His passion is spontaneous, deep, and true—never exceeding the modesty of nature. He stands almost alone between Alfieri, Parini, and Foscolo, on one side, and Monti and Manzoni, on the other. The *Paralipomeni della Patriarchomachia* exhibit a fair example of his power of satire; in this style of composition he is neither so delicate as Parini, nor so original as Giusti; yet he is more impassioned than the one, and more correct than the other. He is, however, more a Lucian than a Juvenal. Among his poems may be found some charming sketches from nature, calm, delicate, and highly finished. Such are *Il Sabato del Villaggio*, *La sera del di di Festa*, &c. As to his prose, when his *Opere Morali, Detti Memorabili di F. Ottoliani*, and his *Dialoghi* appeared in 1827, Manzoni exclaimed, "This is the best written prose that has appeared for many years."

Leopardi's friend, Ramieri, erected in the little church of St Vitale, in Naples, near the Grotte di Posillipo, not far from the last resting-place of Virgil and Sannazzaro, a tomb of marble to his memory. The whole of his works have been translated into German by Karl L. Kannegiesser, while another translation of a part of them was published by Bothe, the learned editor of Homer. (See *Opere di Leopardi raccolte da ordinate per cura di Ramieri, Giordani, Pellegri e Viani*, Firenze, 1845, which is the last and most complete edition in Italian; *Sainte Beure, Portraits Contemporaines*, vol. iii., Paris, 1846; *De Montlaur G. Leopardi*, Moulins, 1846; *Reinische's Museum*, Bonn, 1834; *Schult in the Italia*, a German selection of various writers, Rome, 1840; *Blessig-Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung*, 1840; and the *Quarterly Review*, London, 1849-50, vol. lxviii.)