[In the following excerpted review, Gladstone observes that Leopardi was not a poet of the very highest status but finds much that is great and admirable in his collected works of poetry.]

When we regard Leopardi in his character of a poet—in which no Italian of the present generation, we conceive, except Manzoni even approaches him, and he in a different order, and perhaps but in a single piece—it is not difficult to perceive that he was endowed in a peculiar degree with most of the faculties which belong to the highest excellence. We shall note two exceptions. The first is the solid and consistent wisdom which can have no other foundation in the heart of man than the Gospel revelation: without which, even while we feel the poet to be an enchanter, we cannot accept and trust him as a guide: and of which Wordsworth is an example unequalled probably in our age, and unsurpassed in any age preceding ours. Nor let it be said that this is not properly a poetical defect; because the highest functions of the human being stand in such intimate relations to one another, that the want of any one of them will commonly prevent the attainment of perfection in any other. The sense of beauty enters into the highest philosophy, as in Plato. The highest poet must be a philosopher, accomplished, like Dante, or intuitive, like Shakspeare. But neither the one nor the other can now exist in separation from that conception of the relations between God and man, that new standard and pattern of humanity, which Christianity has supplied. And although much of what it has indelibly impressed upon the imagination and understanding, the heart and life of man, may be traceable and even prominent in those who individually disown it—although the splendour of these disappropriated gifts may in particular cases be among the very greatest of the signs and wonders appointed for the trial of faith—there is always something in them to show that they have with them no source of positive and permanent vitality: that the branch has been torn from the tree, and that its life is on the ebb. There is another point in which Leopardi fails as compared with the highest poets. He is stronger in the reflective than in the perceptive, or at any rate than in the more strictly creative powers. Perhaps these latter were repressed in their growth by the severe realities of his life. It is by them that the poet projects his work from himself, stands as it were completely detached from it, and becomes in his own personality invisible. Thus did Homer and Shakspeare perhaps beyond all other men: thus did Goethe: thus did Dante when he pleased, although his individuality is the local centre, to so speak, of his whole poem; which is only to say in other words that by this gift the poet throws his entire strength into his work and identifies himself with it; that he not only does, but for the time being is, his work; and that then, when the work is done, he passes away and leaves it: it is perfect in its own kind, and bears no stamp or trace of him—that is of what in him pertains to the individual as such, and does not belong to the general laws of truth and beauty. Thus all high pictorial poetry is composed: thus every great character in the drama or romance is conceived and executed.

It is the gift of imagination in its highest form and intensity which effects these wonderful transmutations, and places the poet of the first order in a rank nearer to that of creative energies than anything else we know. Next, perhaps, to him comes the great intuitive discoverer. These are the privileged children of Nature, who walk a royal road, and constitute the signal exceptions to that broad and general law of human knowledge: Homo, naturæ minister et interpres, tantum facit et intelligit quantum de naturæ ordine re vel mente observaverit: nec amplius scit, aut potest. (Bacon, Novum Organum, Aph. I.)

Leopardi, though he had abundance both of fancy and of imagination, either was not possessed of this peculiar form of the latter gift or had not developed it: his impersonations are beautiful, but rather after the manner of statues: they have just so much of life as is sufficient to put his metaphysical conceptions in motion; but we always seem to discover his hand propping them up and moving them on: they have not the flesh and blood reality: he is eminently a subjective poet, and the reader never loses him from view. But he is surely a very great subjective poet, and applies to his work, with a power rarely equalled, all the resources of thought and passion, all that his introspective habits had taught him: he has choice and flowing diction, a profound harmony, intense pathos: and he unites to very peculiar grace a masculine energy and even majesty of expression, which is not surpassed, so far as we know, in the whole range of poetry or of eloquence, and which indeed gives the highest evidence of its prerogative by endowing sentiments, now become trite and almost vulgar through use, with perfect freshness of aspect and the power to produce lively and strong impressions. Of this some examples may be noticed in the extracts we are about to make. His gift of compression, in particular, is one which seems, not borrowed, for such things no man can borrow—they are marked ‘not transferable’—but descended or inherited from Dante himself.

Although it has appeared that his first poetical efforts were relatively late, yet they were as early as those of most poets who have acquired particular celebrity for juvenile productions, and they will bear, we imagine, favourable comparison with those of Pope or of Milton. Indeed, as their beginning and maturity were almost simultaneous, he is really no less remarkable as a youthful poet than as a youthful scholar and critic, and holds one of the very first places in the troop of beardless Apollos. Nothing to our minds can be more beautiful than his first effort; the piece entitled ‘Il Primo Amore,’ in that purely and perhaps inalienably Italian measure, the terza rima. It is so even a tissue of harmonious thought and language, that we have laboured in vain to discover how to do it justice by an extract: but rather than pass it by altogether, we will quote the passage which begins by describing the superior and subtler force that drew him away from his first love, his studies:—

Nè gli occhi ai noti studi io rivolgea,
          E quelli m' apparian vani, per cui
          Vano ogni altro desir creduto avea.
Deh come mai da me sì vario fui
          E tanto amor mi tolse un altro amore?
          Deh quanto in verità vani siam nui!
.....E l' occhio a terra chino o in se raccolto
          Di riscontrarsi fuggitivo e vago
          Nè in leggiadro soffria nè in turpe volto:
Che la illibata, la candida imago
          Turbare egli temea pinta nel seno,
          Come all' aure si turba onda di lago.
E quel di non aver goduto appieno
          Pentimento, che l' anima ci grava,
          E' l piacer che passò cangia in veleno,
Per li fuggiti dì mi stimolava
          Tuttora il sen: che la vergogna e il duro
          Suo morso in questo cor già non oprava.
Al cielo, a voi, gentili anime, io giuro
          Che voglia non mi entrò bassa nel petto,
          Ch' arsi di foco intaminato e puro.
Vive quel foco ancor, vive l' affetto,
          Spira nel pensier mio la bella imago
          Da cui, se non celeste, altro diletto
Giammai non ebbi, e sol di lei m' appago.

In the next year he thus apostrophises Italy: with respect to which we must observe that he was comprehensive and impartial in his repugnance to the yoke of strangers, and that he appears still more to have revolted from a French than from a German domination. We conceive that this Canzone, with the one which follows it, must at once have placed him in the first rank among the lyric poets of his country:—

O patria mia, vedo le mura e gli archi
E le colonne e i simulacri e l' erme
Torri degli avi nostri;
Ma la gloria non vedo,
Non vedo il lauro, e il ferro, ond' eran carchi
I nostri padri antichi. Or, fatta inerme,
Nuda la fronte e nudo il petto mostri.
Oimè quante ferite,
Che lividor, che sangue! Oh qual ti veggio,
Formosissima donna! Io chiedo al cielo
E al mondo: dite, dite,
Chi la ridusse a tale? E questo è peggio
Che di catene ha carche ambe le braccia:
Sì, che sparte le chiome e senza velo
Siede in terra negletta e sconsolata,
Nascondendo la faccia
Tra le ginocchia, e piange.
Piangi! che ben hai donde, Italia mia,
Le genti a vincer nata
E nella fausta sorte, e nella ria.
Se fosser gli occhi tuoi due fonti vive,
Mai non potrebbe il pianto
Adeguarsi al tuo danno ed al scorno
Che fosti donna, or sei povera ancella.
.....                                                                                O numi, O numi!
Pugnan per altra terra itali acciari!
Oh misero colui, che in guerra è spento
Non per li patrii lidi, e per la pia
Consorte e i figli cari,
Ma da nemici altrui
Per altra gente, e non può dir morendo:
Alma terra natia,
La vita che mi desti ecco ti rendo!

We cannot but think that in the strong indignation which prompted the following verses in the same year, from the piece ‘On the Monument of Dante to be erected in Florence,’ the master of all Italian poetry,

                                                  per lo cui verso
Il Meonio cantor non è più solo,

as he goes on to say, would have recognized a genius entitled to claim some kindred with his own:—

O Italia, a cor ti stia
Far ai passati onor: che d' altrettali
Oggi vedove son le tue contrade:
Nè v' è chi d' onorar ti si convegna.
Volgiti indietro, e guarda, O patria mia,
Quella schiera infinita d' immortali,
E piangi, e di te stessa ti disdegna:
Che senza sdegno omai la doglia è stolta:
Volgiti, e ti vergogna, e ti riscuoti,
E ti punga una volta
Pensier degl' avi nostri e de' nepoti.

And again in this majestic burst:—

O dell' etrusco metro inclito padre,
Se di cosa terrena,
Se di costei che tanto alto locasti,
Qualche novella ai vostri lidi arriva,
Io so ben che per te gioia non senti:
Che saldi men che cera e men ch' arena
Verso la fama che di te lasciasti
Son bronzi e marmi: e dalle nostre menti
Se mai cadesti ancor, s' unqua cadrai,
Cresca, se crescer può, nostra sciaura,
E in sempiterni guai
Pianga tua stirpe, a tutto il mondo oscura:
Ma non per te!

In the ‘Bruto Minore,’ published in 1824, he gave more visibly to the world his unhappy opinions, still, however, veiling himself by putting them into the mouth of the Roman hero. The following passage may, however, serve as a specimen of its high poetical merits:—

E tu dal mar cui nostro sangue irriga,
Candida Luna, sorgi,
E l' inquieta notte e la funesta
All' ausonio valor campagna esplori.
Cognati petti il vincitor calpesta,
Fremono i poggi, dalle somme vette
Roma antica ruina:
Tu sì placida sei? Tu la nascente
Lavinia prole, e gli anni
Lieti vedesti, e i memorandi allori;
E tu su l' alpe l' immutato raggio
Tacita verserai quando, ne' danni
Del servo italo nome,
Sotto barbaro piede
Rintronerà quella solinga sede.

In ‘Consalvo,’ a dying youth—recalling, we need hardly add, the poet—abandoned by all but the object of his love, entreats of her the parting gift of an only kiss. The description which follows is surely a noble specimen of the power of the Italian language in blank verse:—

Stette sospesa e pensierosa in atto
La bellissima donna: e fiso il guardo,
Di mille vezzi sfavillante, in quello
Tenea dell' infelice, ove l' estrema
Lacrima rilucea. Nè dielle il core
Di sprezzar la dimanda, e il mesto addio
Rinacerbir col niego: anzi la vinse
Misericordia dei ben noti ardori;
E quel volto celeste, e quella bocca,
Già tanto desiata, e per molt' anni
Argomento di sogno e di sospiro,
Dolcemente appressando al volto afflitto
E scolorato dal mortale affanno,
Più baci e più, tutta benigna e in vista
D' alta pietà, sulle convulse labbra
Del trepido, rapito amante impresse.

From the serious poems we have quoted somewhat largely, yet insufficiently. We might, if space permitted, advert to ‘La Ginestra,’ the Fragment xxxix, and others: but we pass on from them with the observation that the reader, opening them at hazard, will find no page of them without abundant beauties, though in some places they are scarred and blighted by emanations from the pit of his shoreless and bottomless despair. …