Leopardi, GIACOMO, the most distinguished poet of modern Italy, was born at Recanati, in the March of Ancona, 29th June 1798. Both his parents were noble; but both were poor. The conditions of Leopardi's early life were certainly uncongenial, though his inherited temper disposed him to exaggerate everything distasteful to his own instincts. His father had the predilections of a scholar; but in religion and politics he was a reactionary, and in the management of his family unsympathetic and arbitrary. From the first there was no real bond of sympathy between father and son, and the mother, though kindly and conscientious in the discharge of her duties, does not seem to have touched her son's heart. All through his boyhood Leopardi was an omnivorous reader; and his faculty of acquisition can be compared only to that of the younger Scaliger. By the age of sixteen he had read through all the Latin and Greek classics, and could write with accuracy French, Spanish, English, and Hebrew. That he also read with insight is proved by the fact that at sixteen he wrote a commentary on Plotinus, of which Sainte-Beuve could say that 'one who had studied Plotinus all his life could find something useful in this work of a boy.'
Leopardi was unhappy at home; and, conscious of his own extraordinary gifts, he eagerly desired to visit Rome, where he hoped to find the ideal world of the scholar and man of letters. From conscientious though petty scruples, his father long opposed this wish; but at length, in the strangely mistaken hope that Giacomo might at Rome be led to enter the church (for which he had been originally intended), he gave his permission (1822). A year's residence in Rome wrought in Leopardi a disillusion, which gave the final bent to his fundamental views of life. It was the time, it is to be remembered, when Italy was demoralised by the French domination; and in Rome itself the tone even of the best society was despicable. An acquaintance with Niebuhr and Bunsen, both of whom spoke of him as a prodigy, was almost the sole redeeming experience in the capital of Italy. It was with feelings of relief, therefore, that in 1823 he returned to Recanati. For the next ten years, partly of choice, but also largely of necessity, he devoted himself to literature. From his earliest days he had been of feeble and sickly constitution, and as he grew older his ill-health became more frequent and overmastering. As a confirmed invalid, he lived successively in Bologna, Florence, Milan, and Pisa, and finally quitted Recanati in 1830. In 1833 he accompanied his devoted friend Ranieri to his house in Naples, and there in constant bodily anguish and hopeless despondency he lived till 1837. He died on the 14th of June in that year.
Leopardi claims recognition at once as a scholar, a poet, and a thinker. Had his health permitted, and had he so chosen to devote his powers, there can be no question that he would have taken his place in the front rank of the students of antiquity. Immediately subsequent to his death the original productions of Leopardi were classed with the highest creative efforts the world has seen. His Operette Morali, consisting mainly of dialogues in which he expounds his peculiar philosophy, were compared for originality and power with the writings of Pascal, the writer whom he at least most closely resembles in tone of mind as well as in physical constitution. As a poet it was asserted that Dante alone of all the Italians was his equal in expressiveness of character and genius. Of late years, however, a more sober estimate has been formed of Leopardi's claims both as a poet and thinker. It is now generally recognised that his narrow range of sympathy and the essentially feeble spring of his nature debarred him from the highest creative effort. The pessimism of which he is the recognised exponent in poetry, and which is equally the burden of his prose, was unquestionably the genuine expression of Leopardi's deepest nature as well as of his reasoned conviction. The note of pessimism has often been sounded by other poets besides Leopardi; but it remained for him to extract its full poetic context from a philosophy, the first and last word of which is the 'void and nothingness' of all human life and effort.
The works of Leopardi were edited in 1845 at Florence by Ranieri in six volumes. The most noteworthy of his writings are, in poetry, his Cante and Canzoni, and a piece entitled 'Continuation of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice'; and, in prose, the Dialogues and Essays classed under the title Operette Morali. His Essays and Dialogues were translated into English by Charles Edwardes in 1882, his Poems by Frederick Townsend in 1888. See Gladstone's Gleanings, vol. ii.; Sainte-Beuve, Portraits Contemporains, tom. iii.; and Antona-Traversi, Studi su Giacomo Leopardi (Naples, 1888).