Leopardi was not only the poet and the moralist of despair. At the age of seventeen he had already achieved note as a scholar and a Hellenist, with his Essay Upon Popular Errors Of The Ancients (1815). During the two years that followed he produced several dissertations on the Batrachomyomachia, on Horace, on Moscus, and Greek odes in the manner of Callimachus, the perfection of which was such that it was believed some forgotten manuscript had been brought to light. Niebuhr affirmed in 1822 that the Notes On The Chronicle of Eusebus would have done honor to the foremost German philologists. Leopardi had reached this point when in a flash his personal genius was revealed to him, and then there appeared his Poems, followed by his Moral Tracts. He died at the age of thirty-nine (1837), leaving a series of labors of which each separate division achieves perfection: the scholar, the poet, the writer of prose, the translator, the man of wit are equally admirable in Leopardi. Were it not for the lingering illness that accompanied his deeply sensitive career, he would have been one of the most luminous geniuses of humanity. His originality lies in his having been the most sombre. II "The three greatest pessimists who ever existed," said Schopenhauer one day,--"that is to say, Leopardi, Byron and myself,--were in Italy during the same year, 1818-1819, and did not make one another's acquaintance!" One of these "great pessimists," Leopardi, happened just at this time to be writing a little dialogue that might well be reprinted at the beginning of every year. It would always seem new. Life is bad, says Leopardi, and here is the proof: nobody has ever found a man who would wish to live his life over again exactly as it happened at first:--who would wish even, at the beginning of a new year, to have it exactly the same as the year just past. What we love in life is not life such as it is, but rather life such as it might be, such as we desire it to be. But since this Dialogue Between The Passer-By And The Almanac-Vendor, if it has ever been translated, has remained buried in unreadable volumes, here is a version of this excellent, though somewhat bitter, page: _The Almanac-Vendor_.--Almanacs, new almanacs! New calendars! Will you buy some almanacs, sir? _The Passer-by_.--Almanacs for the new year? _Vendor_.--Yes, sir. _Passer-by._ Do you think it will be a happy one,--this coming year? _V._--Oh, yes, sir! Certainly! _P._--As happy as the one just past? _V._--Oh! Far, far more so! _P._--As happy as the one before that? _V._--Far, far more. _P._--As happy as which other one, then? Wouldn't you be glad to have the coming year the same as any one of the recent years? _V._--No, sir. No. That would hardly please me. _P._--How long have you been selling almanacs? _V._--For twenty years, sir. _P._--Which of those twenty years would you prefer the new year to resemble? _V._--I? I don't know.