F S F S the effect produced on the writer s mind by the composition of the work seems to have been beneficial. He had seen the ideal of a great national future rudely shattered; but he did not despair of his country, and sought relief in now turning to gaze on the ideal of a great national poet. At Milan, whither he repaired after the fall of Venice, he was engaged iu other literary pursuits besides the composition of Ortis. The friendship formed there with the great poet Parini was ever afterwards remembered with pride and gratitude. The friendship formed with another celebrated Milanese poet soon gave place to a feeling of bitter enmity. Still hoping that his country would be freed by Napoleon, he served as a volunteer in the French army, took part in the battle of the Trebbia and the siege of Genoa, was wounded and made prisoner. When released he returned to Milan, and there gave the last touches to his Ortis, published a translation of and commentary upon Calli- mackus, commenced a version of the Iliad, and began his translation of Sterne s /Sentimental Journey. The result of a memorandum prepared for Lyons, where along with other Italian delegates he was to have laid before Napoleon the state of Italy, only proved that the views cherished by him for his country were too bold to be even submitted to the dictator of France. The year 1807 witnessed the appear ance of his Carme sui Sepolcri, of which the entire spirit and language may be described as a sublime effort to seek refuge in the past from the misery of the present and the darkness of the future. The mighty dead are summoned from their tombs, as ages before they had been in the master-pieces of Greek oratory, to fight again the battles of their country. The inaugural lecture on the origin and duty of literature, delivered by Foscolo in January 1809 when appointed to the chair of Italian eloquence at Pavia, was conceived in the same spirit. In this lecture Foscolo urged his young countrymen to study letters, not in obedience to academic traditions, but in their relation to individual and national life and growth. The sensation produced by this lecture had no slight share in provoking the decree of Napoleon by which the chair of national eloquence was abolished in all the Italian universities. Soon afterwards Foscolo s tragedy of Ajax was represented but with little success at Milan, and its supposed allusions to Napoleon rendering the author an object of suspicion, he was forced to remove from Milan to Tuscany. The chief fruits of his stay in Florence are the tragedy of Ricciarda, the Ode to the Graces, left unfinished, and the completion of his version of the Sentimental Journey. His version of Sterne is an important feature in his personal history. When serving with the French, he had been at the Bou logne camp, and had traversed much of the ground gone over by Yorick; and in his memoir of Didimo Cherico, to whom the version is ascribed, he throws much curious light on his own character. He returned to Milan in 1813, until the entry of the Austrians ; thence he passed into Switzerland, where he wrote a fierce satire in Latin on his political and literary opponents; and finally he sought the shores of England at the close of 1816. During the eleven years passed by Foscolo in London, until his death there, he enjoyed all the social distinction which the most brilliant circles of the English capital confer on foreigners of political and literary renown, and ex perienced all the misery which follows on a disregard of the first conditions of domestic economy. His contributions to the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, his dissertations in Italian on the text of Dante ani Boccaccio, and still more his English essays on Petrarch, of which the value was enhanced by Lady Dacre s admirable translations of some of Petrarch s finest sonnets, heightened his previous fame as a man of letters. But his want of care and fore thought in pecuniary matters involved him in much embarrassment, and at last consigned him to a prison; and when released, he felt bitterly the change in his social position, and the coldness now shown to him by many whom he had been accustomed to regard as friends. His general bearing in society if we may accept on this point the testimony of so keen an observer and so tolerant a man as Sir Walter Scott had unhappily not been such as to gain and retain lasting friendships. He died at Turnham Green on the 10th of October 1827. Forty-four years after his death, in 1871, his remains were brought to Florence, and with all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of a great national mourning, found their final resting place beside the monuments of Macchiavelli and Alfieri, of Michel angelo and Galileo, in Italy s Westminster Abbey, the church of Santa Croce. To that solemn national tribute Foscolo was fully entitled. For the originality of his thoughts and the splendour of his diction his country honours him as a great classic author. He had assigned to the literature of his nation higher aims than any which it previously recognized. With all his defects of character, and through all his vicissitudes of fortune, he was an ill- judging but always a sincere and courageous patriot. He was, if ever Italian deserved those titles, the precursor and prophet of the unity and independence which his country now enjoys. Ample materials for the study of Foscolo s character and career may be found in the complete series of his works published iu Florence by Le Monnier. The series consists of Prose Uttcraric, in 4 vols., 1850; Epistolario, in 3 vols. , 1854; Prose politicks, 1 vol., 1850: Pocsie, 1 vol., 1856; Lcttcrc di Ortis, 1 vol., 1858; Sagr/i di critici storico-lcttcrario, 1st vol. 1859, 2d vol. 1862. To this series must be added the very interesting work published at Leghorn in 1876, Lcttcre inedite del Foscolo, del Giordani, e delict, Signora di Stael, a Vinccnzo Monti. The work published at Florence in the summer of 1878, Vita di Ugo Foscolo, di Pcllcgrino Artusi, throws much doubt on the genuineness of the text in Foscolo s writings, as given in the complete Florence edition, whilst it furnishes some curious and original illustrations of Foscolo s fami liarity with the English language. ( J. M. S. ) FOSS, EDWARD (1787-1870), a solicitor by profession, was the author of a considerable number of works on legal antiquities, the most important of which are his Judges of England, in 9 vols., and his Biographia Juridica, a Bio graphical Dictionary of English Judges. The accuracy and extensive research of the author have made these especially the larger work of great historical authority. FOSSANO, a city of Italy, in the province of Cuneo, on the Stura, about 40 miles from Turin. It is a well-built prosperous place, with a cathedral, an academy of science and letters, a public library, a philharmonic academy, and a veterinary college. Silk and leather are manufactured, and a trade is maintained in grain and cattle. In the 1 1th century Fossano was a little borough, but in the 13th it was peopled by a body of refugees and raised to considerable importance. The Astigiani family surrounded it with walls shortly afterwards ; and in 1314 Filippo d Acaia laid the foundation of the great foutHOwered castle, which still forms one of its most striking features. The population in 1871 was 7272 for the town, aud 1C, 544 in the commune. FOSSANO, AMBROGIO STEFANI DA, better known as Ambrogio Borgognone, or simply II Borgognone, was the foremost painter of the Milanese school, so far as it is pos sible to speak of a Milanese school independently of Leonardo da Vinci. It is well known how, when Leonardo left Florence to settle at Milan, the influence of his power ful genius presently transformed and dominated the art of those parts of Lombardy. Borgognone was approximately contemporary with Leonardo, but represented, at least during a great part of his career, the tendencies of Lombard art anterior to the arrival of that master the tendencies which he had adopted aud perfected from the hands of his predecessors Foppa and Zenale. We are not precisely
