iring inertia which he preached. Few works have had more effect
than his _Letters of Jacobo Ortis_. As often happens with books which
strongly move contemporaries, the reader may wonder now what was the
secret of its power, but if the form and sentiment of the Italian
_Werther_ strike us as antiquated, the intense, though melancholy
patriotism that pervades it explains the excitement it caused when
patriotism was a statutory offence. Such mutilated copies as were
allowed to pass by the censor were eagerly sought; the young read it,
women read it--who so rarely read--the mothers of the fighters of
to-morrow. Foscolo's life gave force to his words: when all were
flattering Napoleon, he had reminded him that no man can be rightly
praised till he is dead, and that his one sure way of winning the
praise of posterity was to establish the independence of Italy. The
warning was contained in a 'discourse' which Foscolo afterwards
printed with the motto from Sophocles: 'My soul groans for my country,
for myself and for thee.' Sooner than live under the Austrians, he
went into voluntary exile, and finally took refuge in England, where
he was the _feted_ lion of a season, and then forgotten, and left
almost without the necessaries of life. No one was much to blame;
Foscolo was born to misunderstand and to be misunderstood; he hid
himself to hide his poverty, which, had it been known, might have been
alleviated. His individual tragedy seemed a part of the universal
tragedy.

With Foscolo, his literary predecessor Alfieri must be mentioned as
having helped in rekindling the embers, of patriotic feeling, because,
though dead, he spoke; and his plays, one of which was prophetically
dedicated _al libero Popolo Italiano_, had never been so much read.
The _Misogallo_, published for the first time after the fall of
Napoleon, though aimed at the French, served equally well as an
onslaught on every foreign dominion or even moral or intellectual
influence. 'Shall _we_ learn liberty of the Gauls, _we_ who taught
every lofty thing to others?' was a healthy remonstrance to a race
that had lost faith in itself; and the Austrians were wise in
discountenancing the sale of a work that contained the line which gave
a watchword to the future:--

_Schiavi or siam si; ma schiavi almen frementi_.

Like Foscolo's, Alfieri's life was a lesson in independence: angry at
the scant measure of freedom in Piedmont, he could never be induced to
go near