ESSAYS AND DIALOGUES OF GIACOMO LEOPARDI. _TRANSLATED_ BY CHARLES EDWARDES. _With Biographical Sketch._ LONDON: TR‹BNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 1882. CONTENTS. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE DIALOGUE BETWEEN HERCULES AND ATLAS DIALOGUE BETWEEN FASHION AND DEATH PRIZE COMPETITION OF THE ACADEMY OF SILLOGRAPHS DIALOGUE BETWEEN A GOBLIN AND A GNOME DIALOGUE BETWEEN MALAMBRUNO AND FARFARELLO DIALOGUE BETWEEN NATURE AND A SOUL DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE MOON THE WAGER OF PROMETHEUS DIALOGUE BETWEEN A NATURAL PHILOSOPHER AND A METAPHYSICIAN DIALOGUE BETWEEN TASSO AND HIS FAMILIAR SPIRIT DIALOGUE BETWEEN NATURE AND AN ICELANDER PARINI ON GLORY DIALOGUE BETWEEN RUYSCH AND HIS MUMMIES REMARKABLE SAYINGS OF PHILIP OTTONIERI DIALOGUE BETWEEN COLUMBUS AND GUTIERREZ PANEGYRIC OF BIRDS THE SONG OF THE WILD COCK DIALOGUE BETWEEN TIMANDRO AND ELEANDRO COPERNICUS DIALOGUE BETWEEN AN ALMANAC SELLER AND A PASSER-BY DIALOGUE BETWEEN PLOTINUS AND PORPHYRIUS COMPARISON OF THE LAST WORDS OF BRUTUS AND THEOPHRASTUS DIALOGUE BETWEEN TRISTANO AND A FRIEND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. "Manure with Despair, but let it be genuine, and you will have a noble harvest."--RAHEL. The name of Giacomo Leopardi is not yet a household word in the mouths of Englishmen. Few of us have heard of him; still fewer have read any of his writings. If known at all, he is probably coupled, in a semi-contemptuous manner, with other foreign representatives of a phase of poetic thought, the influence of which has passed its zenith. As a contemporary of Byron, Leopardi is perhaps credited with a certain amount of psychological plagiarism, and possibly disregarded as a mere satellite of the greater planet. But if this be so, it is unjust. His fame is his own, and time makes his isolation and grand individuality more and more prominent. What Byron and Shelley, Millevoye, Baudelaire and Gautier, Heine and Platen, Pouchkine and Lermontoff, are to England, France, Germany, and Russia respectively, Leopardi is, in a measure, to Italy. But he is more than this. The jewel of his renown is triple-faceted. Philology, poetry, and philosophy were each in turn cultivated by him, and he was of too brilliant an intellect not to excel in them all. As a philologist he astonished Niebuhr and delighted Creuzer; as a poet he has been compared with Dante; as a philosopher he takes high rank among the greatest and most original men of modern times. One of his biographers (Dovari: "Studio di G. Leopardi," Ancona, 1877) has termed him "the greatest philosopher, poet, and prose-writer of the nineteenth century." Though such eulogy may be, and doubtless is, excessive, the fact that it has been given testifies to the extraordinary nature of the man who is its subject.