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 his sovereign till Charles Emmanuel was staying at Florence as a proscript.  Then the poet went to pay his respects to him, and was received with the good-humoured banter:  ’Well, Signor Conte, here am I, a king, in the condition you would like to see them all.’