The romantic Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), who translated passages from the _Odyssey_ and wrote an interesting essay on the _Popular Errors of the Ancients_, composed also a _Last Song of Sappho_. In this poem, drawn from Ovid, he has given the modern reader a strong impression for better or worse of the stormy and passionate soul of the great poetess. As in his _Brutus_, Leopardi is giving his own views of life, which are biased by his physical affliction; but he blends his sorrow with that of nature and rises, especially in the third stanza, almost to the heights attained by Aeschylus in his _Prometheus_. He ends his song with beautiful mysterious pathos: Placida notte, e verecondo raggio Della cadente luna ... ... Bello il tuo manto, o divo cielo; e bella Sei tu, rorida terra. Ahi di cotesta Infinita beltà parte nessuna Alla misera Saffo i numi e l’empia Sorte non fenno. Thou peaceful night, thou chaste and silver ray Of the declining Moon; ... Fair is thy sight, O sky divine, and fair Art thou, O dewy earth! Alas, of all This beauty infinite, no slightest part To wretched Sappho did the Gods or Fate Inexorable give ... (F. H. CLIFFE) One is reminded of Sappho’s silver moon in Leopardi’s calm first lines, and also of Sappho’s autumn fragment in the lines “where in shade Of drooping willows doth a liquid stream Display its pure and crystal course....” Leopardi also translated the famous midnight song (p. 78) and imitated the third fragment in _La Impazienza_. Carducci’s (1888) comment on Leopardi is worth quoting: “la poetessa di Lesbo non fu nè brutta nè infelice come il Leopardi l’accolse a imagine sua da una tarda tradizione, e che della bellezza e dell’amore intese gustò, e cantò più non potesse il Leopardi.” Leopardi believed in two Sapphos, as did Zannoni (1822), following the judgment of Visconti. About 1793, Pagnini (Pilenejo), wishing to praise Teresa Bandettini Landucci, likened her to Sappho in genius but not in habit: Te rediviva Saffo ognuno estima Pari d’ingegno, e d’arte a quella prima: Ma per costumi e voglie in tutto sei (Vanto maggior) dissimile da lei! Parini about 1777 dedicated an ode to Lady Pellegrina Amoretti d’Oneglia on her graduation from the University of Padua, _La Laurea_, in which he said that if instead of studying law she had given herself to literature she would have been the equal of Sappho. In 1782 Verri published _Le Avventure di Saffo_, in which there is a paraphrase of the second ode. This romance was written in good literary style and had some fine thoughts and considerable Greek atmosphere. It went through more than a dozen editions, and was twice translated into French. In 1787 Parini celebrated the seductive qualities of a Venetian Signora Cecilia Tron in a poem of which I quote the first two stanzas: