Under Mazzini's lead the group of friends at Genoa formed a society to study literature and politics and smuggle in forbidden books. Half the masterpieces of contemporary European literature came at this time under the censor's ban; no foreign papers were admitted except two ultra-monarchical French journals; and contraband was a necessity of literary study. Mazzini's strongest interests took him to literature. He read omnivorously in Italian and French and English and translations from the German.[2] His favourite books, he tells us, were the Bible and Dante, Shakespeare and Byron. His close knowledge of the Gospels comes out in everything he wrote. He shed his orthodoxy indeed as soon as he began to think; he went sometimes to mass, when a lad, and read Condorcet's _Esquisse_ disguised as a missal; but he refused to go to confession as soon as he understood its meaning,--the one thing, apparently, in all his life which pained his mother. For a short time he went through a phase of scepticism, but the Ruffinis' mother soon rescued him from this, and a deep religious faith came to him, to remain the spring of all his life. The poets he loved best were Dante and Byron, and he always remained true to them. From Dante he learnt many of the master-ideas of his mind, the conception of the unity of man and unity of law, the fervid patriotism, the belief in Italy and Rome predestined to be teachers of the world, the faith in Italian Unity, the moral strength that makes life one long fight for good. When only some twenty years old, he wrote an essay on Dante's patriotism, which, however boyish in style, proves his close knowledge of the master. Byron was then at the height of his fame, and then, as always afterwards, Mazzini thought him the greatest of modern English, perhaps of modern European poets. He was "completely fascinated" by Goethe, and would often say that "to pass a day with him or a genius like him would be the fairest day of life." How his admiration for Goethe waned, while that for Byron grew, will be told in another chapter.[3] He read Shakespeare, but always, apparently, with more respect than enjoyment, and Shakespeare too came under the same ban as Goethe. He thought very highly of Schiller, and placed him with Æschylus and Shakespeare, as the third great dramatist of the world. He read a good deal of English literature; at this time he was a fervent admirer of Scott, but he seems afterwards to have lost his interest in him; he knew something at least of Wordsworth and Shelley, Burns and Crabbe. Modern French literature, except de Vigny's and some of Victor Hugo's writings, did not now (nor, with the exception of George Sand and Lamennais, at any time), appeal to him, for he disliked the tendencies of French Romanticism, and already there were the beginnings of his life-long prejudice against most things French. Among his modern fellow-countrymen Alfieri and Foscolo were his