Count Fosco

“ To speak briefly and to the point, the Count de Foix was perfect in person and in mind; and no contemporary prince could be compared with him for sense, honor, or liberality."
In good truth, this despotic nobleman illustrated admirably the familiar text, "When a strong man armed keepeth his court, those things which he possesseth are in peace." If he ruled his vassals severely and taxed them heavily, he protected them from all outside interference or injury. None might despoil their homes, nor pass the boundaries of Béarn and Foix, without paying honestly for all that was required. ”

“ His eyes were merciless as he leaned down to speak, shaping each word with slow care so that Ross could understand the promise—that frightful promise:
"Woods rat, Foscar goes to his burial fire. And he shall take a slave with him to serve him beyond the sky—a slave to run at his voice, to shake when he thunders. Slave-dog, you shall run for Foscar beyond the sky, and he shall have you forever to walk upon as a man walks upon the earth. I, Ennar, swear that Foscar shall be sent to the chiefs in the sky in all honor. ”

“ He took a house in South Bank, Regent's Park, which he named Digamma Cottage—from his having contributed to the Quarterly Review an article on the Digamma—and fitted it up in extravagant style.
Foscolo could scarcely live at peace with anybody, and, as the result of one of his numerous altercations, he had to fight a duel. "We are," Lady Dacre wrote to Murray (December 1823) , "to have the whole of Foscolo's duel to-morrow. He tells me that it is not about a 'Fair lady': thank heaven!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have disposed at some length elsewhere of Foxe's shameless calumny of Sir Henry Bedingfeld, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and custodian of the Princess Elizabeth at Woodstock when she was suspected of connivance in Wyatt's rebellion. In espousing Elizabeth's cause, and in casting aspersions on one who was responsible for her safe custody, Foxe was but following his general plan of campaign, the not very subtle plan of representing all those of his own party to be saints and martyrs, the enemy deserving every abusive term that came to his facile pen. ”

“ The young found hope and life in the new stage on which they were permitted to act a part; and though ridicule and blame might be attached to many of their public actions, still the more sanguine lovers of their country hoped that, when the first springtide of enthusiasm should ebb, prudence, unanimity, and strength would be the first born of national independence. Foscolo, however, was not among those. Irascible and misanthropic, and sensitively alive to the sufferings of his fellow-creatures, he saw the evils around him, and desponded. ”

“ Ross rubbed one numbed hand against the other, setting his jaw. Foscar had stung his young follower with that contemptuous "child," so the boy would be eager to match all his skill against the prisoner. This would not be as easy as his taking Tulka by surprise. But if he refused, Foscar might well order [Pg 183] him killed out of hand. He had chosen to be defiant; he would have to do his best.
"Take—ax, knife—" Foscar stepped back, waving at his men to open out a ring encircling the two young men. ”

“ Foscolo, Ugo, an Italian patriot and author, born at Zante; his literary career began in Venice with the successful performance of his tragedy "Trieste," but on the Austrian occupation of the town he joined the French army; disappointed in the hope that France would unite with and free Italy, he returned to literary work in Milan, and in 1809 was called to the chair of Eloquenco in Pavia; but the conquering Austrians again forced him to become a refugee, first in Switzerland and finally in England, where he died ”

“ And the impression made upon him by Foch is so remarkable that his letter is likely to become one of the small classics of the war—endlessly reproduced whenever the story of Foch is told.
"General Foch," he reminds his parents, "is a former commander of the School of War, where he played, on account of his great fitness, a very remarkable role.
"He is a man still young [he was almost 63!] , slender and supple, and rather frail; his powerful head seems like a flower too heavy for a stem too slight. ”

“ All these letters are full of the indignant struggles, and the sorrow, as well as of the opinions which ruled the heart of Foscolo, as he found himself driven a wanderer from his home, sometimes lamenting his own misfortunes, sometimes those of his country.
"How many of our fellow-citizens repent their flight from home," he writes, "and mourn! for what can we expect except indigence and indignity—or, at the best, that brief and sterile compassion which uncivilised nations offer to the stranger exile? And where shall I seek an asylum—in Italy? ”

“ It is impossible that Foscolo, despite his assertions, and despite, perhaps, his hopes, should not have been aware that the strongest chain that can be imposed on the freedom of a nation is its having a foreign {Pg 371} prince at the head of government. Still he vindicated the cause he espoused, by demanding national institutions and a national army. The style of the oration is forcible, but too rhetorical; and, though full of truths that intimidated the oppressors and did honour to the free spirit of the writer, calmer representations and closer reasoning would command more of our admiration. ”

“ How could such a man condescend at other times to rage with abuse, and to delight himself in images of infernal torment!
The dates of these fluctuations of feeling towards his native city are not known; but it is supposed to have been not very long before his abode with Can Grande that he received permission to return to Florence, on conditions which he justly refused and resented in the following noble letter to a kinsman. The old spelling of the original (in the note) is retained as given by Foscolo in the article on "Dante" in the Edinburgh Review (vol. XXX. no. 60) ”

“ It was a long while doubtful whether the great general would be implicated in the scheme. His habitual reserve—a habit less of caution than of constitutional delicacy—had led him to few intimacies, and nothing like even one close friendship; he moved little in society; he corresponded with none, save on the duties of the service. Fouché‘s well-known boast of, ‘Give me, two words of a man’s writing and I’ll hang him,’ were then scarcely applicable here.
To attack such a man unsuccessfully, to arraign him on a weak indictment, would have been ruin ”

“ After a long inquiry he was brought to trial for the second time, and although all the evidence clearly pointed to his guilt the judges could not obtain a confession from the accused, and so merely banished him to Candia for the rest of his life, with a pension of two hundred ducats a year. In 1456 the council received information from the rector (governor) of Candia to the effect that Jacopo Foscari had been in treasonable correspondence with the duke of Milan and the sultan of Turkey. ”

“ On the whole, Foscolo’s prose is turgid and affected, and reflects the character of the man who always tried to pose, even before himself, in dramatic attitudes. This was indeed the defect of the Napoleonic epoch; there was a horror of anything common, simple, natural; everything must be after the model of the hero who made all the world gaze with wonder at him; everything must assume some heroic shape. In Foscolo this tendency was excessive ”

“ FOSCOLO, UGO (1778-1827) , Italian writer, was born at Zante in the Ionian Isles on the 26th of January 1778. On the death of his father, a physician at Spalatro, in Dalmatia, the family removed to Venice, and in the University of Padua Foscolo prosecuted the studies begun in the Dalmatian grammar school. The fact that amongst his Paduan masters was the abbé Cesarotti, whose version of Ossian had made that work highly popular in Italy, was not without influence on Foscolo’s literary tastes, and his early knowledge of modern facilitated his studies in ancient Greek. ”

“ In the meantime Fox received another humiliation. He had received a petition for relief from the sufferers at Newfoundland. It was objected to from all quarters of the House: general indemnification could not be made to all the sufferers by the war, why then partial? Sir Francis Dashwood, Lord Barrington, and Nugent supported Fox faintly; Ellis and Rigby warmly; Lord George Sackville with panegyric, for which he was reproved by Lord Strange, who, with G. Grenville, Stanley, and Lord Frederick Campbell, treated Fox and his petition harshly. ”

“ In domestic politics Fox had no time to do more than insist on the abolition of the slave trade. He, like Pitt, was compelled to bow to the king’s invincible determination not to allow the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. When a French adventurer calling himself Guillet de la Gevrillière, whom Fox at first “did the honour to take for a spy,” came to him with a scheme for the murder of Napoleon, he sent a warning on the 20th of February to Talleyrand. ”

“ One plan goes awry. Very well! we'll find a better.
But Foch had not trained the German general staff. They made war otherwise. And well he knew it! Well he knew what happened to them when their "blue prints" would not fit unexpected conditions.
He knew that they expected to take Nancy easily, that they were looking for some effort to defend it, but not for a French attack.
They did not know his maxim: "The best means of defense is to attack."
He attacked. His Twentieth corps fought its way through the center of the Bavarian army, into German Lorraine. ”

“ Apart from its impressive style, the book is weak and unwholesome, but it powerfully depicts an unquestionable tendency of the age, and as such has a right to live, apart from its influence on Leopardi, George Sand, and other more recent writers of genius. Foscolo's melancholy, fretful and egotistic as it is, is not pessimism; is not grounded in the nature of things, but is always remediable by a change in external circumstances. ”

“ Fox, whose equanimity he had at last succeeded in disturbing, and whose cross-examination of the prisoner he had still to fear, continued his own examination by demanding why, when the ring was discovered in Adelaide’s casket and he saw what inferences would be drawn from the fact, he had not made an immediate public explanation of his conduct and the reasons he had had for putting his hand there.
“I’m not a muff,” shot from the prisoner’s lips, in his old manner. “A man who would take such an oath, in such a way, and at such a time, is not the man to talk about it until he is forced to. ”

“ Even the King could hardly restrain his emotion.
“A terrible tale, indeed,” said he. “Our hearts are heavy for you, Cock, and it will go hard with this Reynard when he falls into our hands!” Then, addressing his courtiers, he asked for volunteers to go to the Fox’s retreat and bring the murderer to justice. For a time there was no response, for few of the animals relished the task, but at last the Bear, who had an old grudge against Reynard, offered to go. “Leave this to me,” said he. “If the Fox won’t come quietly, I’ll drag him here by his tail. He shall not escape!” ”

“ He lives with the horse, stinks, talks, and thinks of nothing but the stable, and is not a very good companion’ (Trevelyan, Early Life of Charles James Fox, p. 276) . After a short time at Westminster School, Fox was gazetted to a cornetcy in the 1st or king's dragoon guards in 1770, from which he was promoted lieutenant into the 38th regiment in 1773. This regiment was then quartered at Boston in America, and Henry Fox served all through the war of American independence. ”

“ I do not blame the reasons of state, through which nations are sold like flocks of sheep; it was ever so, and so will it ever be: but I grieve for my country, which I have lost. 'He was born Italian, and will one day regenerate his country:' others may believe this,—I never can. I replied, and shall always reply, 'Nature made him a tyrant, and a tyrant cares not for his country, nor does he possess one.'"
Ruminating on all these violent and bitter feelings, the offspring of patriotism and adversity, Foscolo took the road to Tuscany. ”

“ During the violent conflict over the Middlesex election (see Wilkes, John) he took the unpopular side, and vehemently asserted the right of the House of Commons to exclude Wilkes. In 1772 during the proceedings against Crosby and Oliver—a part of the “Wilkes and liberty” agitation—he and Lord North were attacked by a mob and rolled in the mud. But Fox’s character was incompatible with ministerial service under King George III. The king, himself a man of orderly life, detested him as a gambler and a rake. And Fox was too independent to please a master who expected obedience. ”