Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/385

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
GIUSTI
367

with the monastic inclinations attributed to invalid devils, and Giusti went back into opposition, more annoyed and dispirited by the follies and vagaries of his own party than by the iniquities of the enemy. The French Revolution of February 1848 gave the upper hand to the Tuscan liberals, who had superabundantly manifested their incapacity ere, in March 1849, the fate of Tuscany was decided on the battlefield of Novara. The heart-broken poet, already suffering from grievous illness, could not survive until the better day, dying on 31st March 1850. Chi dura vince. His profession had been that of an advocate, and, until his last days, his life was uneventful except for an unfortunate attachment. It certainly speaks for the lenity of the Tuscan Government that he should not have spent much of it in prison, for his satires from 1833 to 1847 circulated widely in manuscript, and some were printed in Switzerland in his lifetime. They must suffer with posterity for their general relation to temporary circumstances; but Giusti will ever retain the honour of having been the first to apply ordinary Italian speech to the poetical expression of new ideas and new needs, thus enlarging the domain both of language and of literature.

The best English translations from Giusti are the brilliant renderings by Mr. W. D. Howells, especially that of the striking poem of St. Ambrose, where an Italian is represented as moved to sympathy with the Austrian soldiers by the beauty of

"A German anthem that to heaven went
On unseen wings, up from the holy fane;
It was a prayer, and seemed like a lament,
Of such a pensive, grave, pathetic strain,