The Ionian islands were at that time held as colonies of the Venetian government, and tyrannised over by the most odious and oppressive laws. Among others, no schools nor colleges were allowed to exist, and the youth of the islands were sent to Venice for the purposes of education. At an early age, therefore, Foscolo repaired to the parent city. His father, it would seem, was at this time dead, for we hear only of his mother, to whom he was always tenderly attached; and it appears that she, also, transferred herself to Venice at the same period. Foscolo seldom mentioned his family, with the exception of his mother. He had two brothers, one who died, it is reported by his own hand, about the year 1797; the other enlisted as a soldier, and rose, from his good conduct and valour, to the rank of captain of dragoons. When boyhood was passed, Foscolo was sent to the university of Padua, and studied under Cesarotti. There was great dissimilarity in the tastes and literary opinions of the master and pupil; and thus Foscolo soon displayed his original and independent turn of mind. Cesarotti explained and commented upon Homer, and undertook at the same time to emend and improve the verses of the father of poetry. He preferred Voltaire to Euripides, and Ossian to Homer. While a great portion of ridicule attaches itself to such paradoxes, the real learning and extensive reading of the professor benefited his scholars; and by liberating them from the narrow system of instruction which had subsisted for many years, he introduced them, as it were, from the paled and guarded park of classical literature, to the wilds, the moors, the incult mountains, in short, to all the vast variety of unfettered nature. Foscolo, though taught by the advocate of Ossian, was all his life a worshipper of Homer. Studious, as well as ardent in his literary pursuits, he became a critical scholar; and, admiring not only Greek poetry, but the fabric and machinery which constitute its structure, he modelled his own poetic productions on them, and made ancient mythology, and allusions to classical history, the props as well as the ornaments of his verses. At the same time he admitted Cesarotti's rules with regard to the Italian language, and abandoned the dialect of the Trecentisti,--so long held up as a model, and yet which had become a dead tongue,--to form an animated, simple, living language, introducing into it phrases and words of modern use; expressions for ever on the lips of the Italians, though heretofore banished from their pens.