James Montgomery Stuart

“ The treaty of Campo Formio (17th Oct. 1797) , by which Napoleon handed Venice over to the Austrians, gave a rude shock to Foscolo, but did not quite destroy his hopes. The state of mind produced by that shock is reflected in the Letters of Jacopo Ortis (1798) , a species of political Werther,—for the hero of Foscolo embodies the mental sufferings and suicide of an undeceived Italian patriot just as the hero of Goethe places before us the too delicate sensitiveness embittering and at last cutting short the life of a private German scholar. ”

“ The mighty dead are summoned from their tombs, as ages before they had been in the masterpieces 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. ”

“ 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. ”