GIOVANNI, born the 4th of May 1740, died the 20th of December 1815, at Palermo in Sicily. Although his works are all written in the vernacular of his native island, he has left a reputation as one of the greatest modern poets of Italy. He early became a graduate in the faculty of medicine, and at the same time displayed a strong sympathy for the philosophical doctrines of Wolfius. His poetical talents, however, made him accepted in literary rather than scientific circles. His Italian verses were admired for their smoothness, and for their delicate sentiments and graceful descriptions. He was induced soon after by the Prince of Campofranco to write his verses in the Sicilian dialect; and while it was with considerable reluctance that he complied with the wishes of the prince, his patron, he nevertheless applied himself to his new vocation with so much energy and taste, that he ultimately gained for himself a place among the brightest names in Italian literature. He took the language of the people, adopted all the grace and strength with which a southern and imaginative race love to clothe their affections and feelings, and applied it to so many different styles, forms, and subjects, as to show its flexibility, aptitude, and inexhaustible power in expressing all forms of sentiment, from the tenderest to the strongest, from the most familiar to the most abstract, without losing its vivacity, harmony, and dignity. Not that he was the first poet who cultivated his native dialect; nor a few poets of some note, and above all Vitali, called "Il Cicero di Giunci" (the blind poet of Ganci), who was the author of an epic entitled Sicily Delivered, or the Conquest of Sicily by the Normans, had preceded Meli; but none of them had enjoyed the advantage of a liberal education. Meli's first poem, La Fata Galante, in eight cantos, published before he was twenty, won for him at once a high reputation, which his subsequent works did not diminish. His longest poem, Don Chisciotte (Don Quixote), in 12 cantos, is of the mock-heroic type, resembling the famous novel of Cervantes. The Origine del Mondo, a satire on the philosophical doctrine of pantheism, is a more original production, and written much in the same style. He has attempted, with admirable success, all styles of poetry except the dramatic; but the species of composition in which he truly excels is in eclogues and anacreontics. The life-like spontaneity of his dialogues, and the direct simplicity of his odes, have seldom been surpassed even by the classic and copious literature of Italy. Meli has been compared to Burns; and his influence over the Italian mind would have been equal to that of the Scottish poet over the English, had Italy enjoyed the social and political advantages of England. Yet the fame of Meli, even during his lifetime, was not confined to the country in whose language he sang—Alfieri, Cesarotti, Rezzonico, Denina, Metastasio, Pananti, and Casti, the greatest men of the day, admired his genius, although they regretted he had not written in the language of Italy. No less a man than Foscolo attempted to translate his poetry into Italian. Professor Rosini of Pisa accomplished this task, although with indifferent success. The translations into the other dialects of Italy have been more happy. Gregorovius, the author of Wanderings in Corsica, is at present (1857) translating them into German.

Meli, having studied medicine, was appointed to the chair of chemistry at the university of Palermo, a position which he held till his death. An edition of his essays on scientific subjects was published in Sicily, of which the most esteemed are his Riflessioni sul Meccanismo della Natura Rapporto alla Conservazione e Riparazione degli Individui, Palermo, 1839. A medal was struck in honour of him by order of the Prince of Syracuse, bearing his portrait, with the inscription, "Anacreonti Sicula." A tomb was erected in St Francesco, Palermo, by his family; and the inhabitants of Palermo raised a public monument to him in one of the squares of their town. (See Poesie di Giovanni Meli, Palermo, 1847; and No. IX. of the Foreign Quarterly Review, 1829.)

MEISSUS, a philosopher of the Eleatic school, was born in Samos, and flourished about 444 B.C. He took a very active part in the political struggles of his country, and his fellow-citizens honoured him on one occasion with the command of a naval armament. Little more is known respecting his life. Like almost all the philosophers of this epoch of Greek speculation, he composed a treatise on "Being and Nature" (τὸ ἔστιν καὶ τὸ φύσις). He raised a vigorous protest against the empirical sensationalism of the Ionic philosophers, among whom he spent his life in his native island. His master, Parmenides, maintained that the senses could furnish nothing certain, and that the study of being, essentially and absolutely one and immoveable, was the only occupation worthy of a philosopher. Zeno, again, had proved to the Ionians that to admit matter is to admit divisibility, which is the condition of extension; but being is indivisible, and hence matter has only a phenomenal existence. Such was the position of antagonism of the two schools when Melissus appeared. He attempted to enlarge the basis of the Eleatic school by borrowing the notions of time and space admitted by the Ionians, but ignored by Parmenides. Having pronounced being to be infinite and one, Melissus applied the same quality to time and space, which led him to their identification. Nothing relative, according to him, can be eternal; motion is impossible, for being is infinite, and motion requires a void. Aristotle (Met. i. 8) accuses Melissus of confounding being with matter, but places him higher than Parmenides as a philosopher. As for the existence of the gods, Melissus, like the rest of his school after the time of Xenophanes, declared that it was impossible to arrive at any certainty. Melissus was the last representative of the Eleatic doctrines. (See the Fragments of Melissus, collected by Brandis, Comment. Eleat., Copenhagen, 1813.)