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Anguillari, is perhaps the finest version of ancient poetry to be found in any language.

From the time of Ovid the reign of good taste and simplicity was no more. Words harmoniously balanced, antithesis, point, and an unsound floridness of diction, took their place. Statius was born at Naples, under Domitian, whom he flattered by the dedication of his two heroic poems. He has been so long the agreeable companion of some of our lighter hours, and so little justice has, in our opinion, been rendered him by critics and scholars, that we cannot forbear claiming for him a distinguished place amongst the writers of antiquity. Ambition was the sin by which he fell; as he could not reach the Eneid, it would have been happy for him if he had not attempted it. Yet the faults of the Thebaid are more than redeemed by the exquisite poetry of the Silva. Every piece of that miscellaneous collection attests the purity of his taste, and the gentleness of his character.

The subjoined lines addressed to his wife, inviting her to meet him at Naples, present so lovely a portraiture of that city, that we must be permitted to copy them. We wish that modern Naples corresponded to it alike in every feature.

Hic auspice condita Phoebo

Tecta, Dicharchei portus, et littora mundo
Hospita; et hic magnæ tractus imitantia Romæ,
Quæ Capys advectis implevit moenia Teucris.
Nostra quoque et propriis tenuis, nec rara colonis
Parthenope; cui mite solum trans æquora vectæ
Ipse Dionæâ monstravit Apollo columbâ.
Has ego te sedes (nam nec mihi barbara Thrace,
Nec Libye natale solum) transferre laboro :
Quas et mollis hyems, et frigida temperat æstas:
Quas imbelle fretum torpentibus alluit undis.
Pax secura locis, et desidis otia vitæ,
Et nunquam turbata quies, somnique peracti.
Nulla foro rabies, aut strictæ jurgia legis:
Mores jura viris: solum, et sine fascibus, æquum.

The night which so long overshadowed the human mind was now come: yet, in the deepest gloom of the middle ages, some faint glimmerings are to be perceived. The reign of Theodoric is rendered memorable by Boethius and Cassiodorus, who inspired their ferocious master, not indeed with a taste for letters, but with a disposition to protect them. Cassiodorus found a refuge from the distractions and violence of the times in a monastery, which he himself founded in his native province of Calabria. There he dedicated the residue of a blameless life to the instruction of his fraternity, in sacred and profane learning. While he taught them to feel the beauties of the ancient writers, he employed them also in transcribing their works; a pious labor to which we are indebted for many precious remains that would otherwise have perished in the general wreck of knowledge.

The iron sway of the Lombards was death to the whole mind of Italy. Yet, in these days of rapine and ignorance, the religious houses were uniformly hospitable to genius and letters. The Benedictines continued mindful of the precepts, and emulous of the example, of Cassiodorus; although their monastery at Monte Cassino had been wholly destroyed by the Lombards. Charlemagne availed himself of the zeal and talents

of the learned churchmen of his age, when he restored the empire of the West; and the eighth century boasts of writers who would not have disgraced the second. Muratori has collected some valuable historical monuments produced by the learned and industrious monks of Monte Cassino. The duchy of Benevento, which in the middle ages comprehended the greater part of the Neapolitan provinces, had still preserved its independence; and the princes who governed them were great protectors of learning. This tranquillity, however, was soon to have an end; and, after the dismemberment of Benevento, a period of tumultuous anarchy succeeded, which drew down upon that devoted country the Saracens of Sicily, and the arms both of the eastern and western empires. A handful of Norman adventurers took advantage of the feebleness and confusion incident to such a state of things, and laid the first foundations of a monarchy, which in later times powerfully influenced the destinies of Italy.

At Salerno, where Robert Guiscard had established his court, a celebrated school of medicine had already been instituted. In the eleventh century it arose to the summit of its reputation; and the Leonine verses, which registered the lucubrations of that period in the art of medicine, contain aphorisms which retain their authority in the present advanced state of the science. It has been strangely supposed that this work was dedicated to Charlemagne; but that prince had been dead nearly 300 years when this compilation first made its appearance. In fact, it was dedicated to a king of England, as it should seem from the first line of the poem. Tiraboschi supposes it to have been Robert, duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror, who had been entertained at Salerno, on his return from the first crusade, by Roger, then duke of Sicily.

The succeeding age was still more illustrated by the study and advancement of jurisprudence. We cannot enter into the much agitated question of the discovery of the Pandects at Amalfi. From this accident, however, may be dated the most beneficial revolution in the science of law. The schools of Milan, Bologna, Padua, and Naples, produced, in rapid succession, the great jurists of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Count Orloff has given an exact chronological nomenclature of the various historians who flourished at this period in the provinces of Naples. Monte Cassino had the honor of producing the greatest amongst them. In these learned retreats also flourished, not only the celebrated Albericus, the great theologian, who so ably defended his dogmas before two several councils to which he was cited by Gregory VII., but an ther ecclesiastic of the same name, one of whose visions, lately discovered among the archives of that monastery, is supposed, on very weak grounds, to have been the examplar from which Dante borrowed the idea of his Divina Comedia. But the south of Italy passed under the mild rule of the Suabian princes, and the lan of literature began to teem with a new produce. Frederic II. laid the foundations of a university at Naples, revived the medical

school of Salerno, and himself cultivated the learning which he protected. His court was frequented by men of talent. It was under his patronage that the harp of Italy preluded its first sounds, and the Sicilian Muses contested the laurel with the Troubadours of Provence.

Thomas Aquinas was educated at Naples. The writings of this theologian, which are still extant, if what no one reads can be said to be extant, fill eighteen large folio volumes; and the ordinary duration of man's life could hardly suffice for the study of them. Fashions pass away, and the study of the angelic doctor has ceased to be the business of the schools, or the occupation of the closet. Yet he was held in high reverence by the sect who adhered to the scholastic philosophy, and who were long known by the name of Thomists. Nor was this estimation unmerited; his great Abridgment of Theology bespeaks a gigantic genius. To estimate such a writer, indeed, without reference to the time in which he lived, would be gross injustice; but it is a vulgar error to suppose that he was the blind and servile adherent of Aristotle. In some respects he was his antagonist; for he attached himself to the Alexandrian school, and adopted the tenets of St. Augustin, Proclus, and the Arabian peripatecians. That he entangled himself in the formularies of the Stagyrite, or at least in those which the schools attributed to that philosopher, and that he should have occasion ally lost himself in the obscure labyrinths of scholastic distinctions, was the fault, not of Aquinas, but of the age. Even now the sway of Aristotle in the schools is not wholly extinct. Let not Thomas Aquinas be contemned for submitting in the thirteenth century to a yoke from which the nineteenth does not seek to be absolutely free.

On the obscure question of the origin and formation of the Italian language we must be here allowed to touch. The use of a vulgar dialect, contradistinguished from the Latin, commenced sooner in France than in Italy, where the Latin not only continued to be the language of law and polity, but that of wit and gaiety. The Troubadours had, even as early as the twelfth century, amused, with their romances and fabliaux, princes at their courts, noblemen in their castles, and warriors on their crusades: but it was in the next age that the Italian idiom acquired shape and consistence It leaped as it were full grown from its birth, and, outstripping the tardy developments of time, attained, in the hands of Dante, to that copiousness and harmony which successive centuries have rather impaired than improved. Ginguené attributes (Histoire Littéraire de l'Italie, tom. i. p. 78), we think erroneously, this rapid perfection to the Provençaux; and derivatively through them to the more distant sources of Arabian literature. But what similitudes of thought, or analogies of diction, can be traced between the grave and austere style of Dante, and the playful, and often unmeaning, levities of those amorous minstrels, Bernard de Ventadours, Peyrol, Peter Vidal, and the other professors of the science gaie? In fact, the gay and brilliant court of Provence expired in the beginning of the thirteenth

century, to the latter part of which Dante belongs. The obscure sonneteers and canzonieri, who preceded the Father of Tuscan song in point of time, might have been tinctured with their style and manner; nor can it be denied that the songs of Provence, vapid as they may seem to our refined apprehensions, were the source whence the poetry of Europe, and particularly that of Spain, derived its habitual language. Dante, however, is of another order. To the speech which he reared to sudden perfection, not an approach was made before his time. We repose upon Muratori's hypothesis. The Italian language was neither borrowed from the Provençaux, nor was it coeval as a lingua volgare with the ancient Roman, that strange paradox of Leonard Aretin, which was afterwards adopted by Bembo. It is, in short, the Latin, staggering under the blows given it by successive invasions of barbarous conquerors, but never supplanted by their idioms, receiving from time to time their inflexions and terminations, and gradually declining into a jargon assuming the form of a distinct language. Such was the state in which it waited only for a creative genius, like that of Homer, to impart to it the beautiful and harmonious symmetries which it has since retained; and in this state Dante found and completed it. It is observable that each of these dialects, as it approaches the line of separation, partakes of the characteristics of the other, the Latin being full of Italian expressions, and the Italian abounding in Latinisms, which gradually wear away as we descend to Petrarch and Boccacio. In truth, all the Italian dialects, as well as those of France and Spain, conspire to refute the common opinion respecting the influence of the Northern invasions upon the language of those countries by inoculating it with barbarous idioms.

Robert of Anjou was the friend and patron of learning in the fourteenth century. During his reign, poetry and the study of Greek were prevailing occupations at Naples. Barlaam, under whose tuition Petrarch made his slender proficiency in that language, was a native of Calabria. Leontius Pilatus also was his pupil. This eminent individual was invited by Boccacio to Florence; and it was his example and his labors that made the cultivation of ancient letters general through Europe. Historical science indeed appears to have advanced but little at this period in the South of Italy; though Gravina's chronicle, which is inserted in Muratori's collection, is an exception. But, in the succeeding century, Italy had wholly shaken off the slumber into which, with the other nations of the West, she had so long sunk; and, under the house of Arragon, Naples became the seat of taste and literature. Antony Beccadilli, surnamed from the place of his birth Panormita, aided by Jovianus Pontanus, founded an academy in that city, which enrolled in its numbers the most accomplished scholars of the age. Amongst these was Sannazarius, no ignoble name in poesy and polite learning.

Sannazarius arrived at high excellence both in Latin and Italian poetry. A sort of conflict was at this time going on between those lan

guages. That of Italy was by no means in ge-
neral use among the learned; and cardinal Bem-
bo attempted, even at a later period, to dissuade
Ariosto from adopting it. But Sannazarius
wrote with equal grace and facility in either.
If his poem De Partû Virginis earned him the
approbation of the pope, and the distinction of
being called the Christian Virgil, his Arcadia
shows to great advantage the elegance, and soft-
ness, and melody, of the Italian diction. San-
nazarius, as well as Statius, is the poet of Naples.
He dwells with delight on its smiling landscapes
and majestic scenery; and his religious poem
closes with an exquisite painting of the spot
to which his fancy clings with affection and
rapture.

Hactenus, ô Superi, partus tentasse verendos
Sit satis optatam poscit me dulcis ad umbram
Pausilypus, poscunt Neptunia litora et udi
Tritones, Nereusque senex, Panopenque Ephyranque,
Et Melite; quæque in primis grata ministrat
Otia, Musarumque cavas per saxa latebras,
Mergellina; novos fundunt ubi citria flores,
Citria Medorum sacros referentia lucos;
Et mihi non solitâ nectit de fronde coronam.

In his eclogues and elegies, also, Pausilypus, the adjacent islands of Nicida, Procida, and Ischia, are scenes in which he delights to revel. This enthusiasm is strictly Neapolitan. In Italian, the chef d'œuvre of Sannazarius is indisputably his Arcadia. It is a series of eclogues in verse, and the scene is laid in Arcadia. Each of them is prefaced by an exordium, in prose; an alteration which, being of regular recurrence, is too apt to fatigue. But, if the merit of human productions is measured by duration of esteem, the Arcadia stands high; for it has been a favorite with the Italians for more than 300 years. We pass by many other cultivators of poetry and letters in this celebrated academy.

But poetry and polite literature were not its only subjects of glory. Galateo (Antony of Ferrara) was the friend of Pontanus and Sannazarius, and he excelled equally in natural philosophy, medicine, geography, and elegant letters. Jerome Tagliava, a Calabrian, disputed with Copernicus the discovery of the earth's revolution round the sun. The science of history began also to make considerable advances under the Arragon princes. Laurentius Valla was munificently patronised at the court of Alphonso. Campano, Carracioli, Albine, Pomponius Lætus, adorned the academy towards the close of the fifteenth century. At this time archæology was the universal passion; and to such an excess was it carried, that every thing modern was in low esteem. Literary men even quarrelled with their own names, of modern, and therefore of barbarous sound, and assumed the classic and sonorous appellations of ancient history, such as Julius Pontanus, Callimachus Experiens, Pomponius Lætus, &c. The national literature suffered from this enthusiasm; and the Italian poetry and eloqnence fell rapidly from the height to which Dante, and Petrarca, and Boccacio, had carried them. The poetry of Nottarno, and the homilies of Carracioli, are proofs of the declension of taste and simplicity. A brighter and more ethereal day now dawned

upon Italy; and literature, as if impatient of its protracted infaucy, advanced in the sixteenth century to sudden maturity and vigor. It seemed to have sunk into repose, exhausted by its efforts at the period of Dante and his contemporaries. It was, however, a renovating interval. The mind of man was undergoing a revolution the most interesting which history records;-a mighty change, which vibrated through Europe. Various causes contributed to it. The exhumation of the great models of antiquity from the sepulchre of ages was not the least. They furnished new standards of ideal beauty in the arts, which at once exercised emulation and awakened genius. The age of Leo brought back that of Augustus, and Rome was once more the centre from which taste and learning

radiated through the world. Talent of every kind was encouraged by that liberal pontiff. The Medicis at Florence, and the princes of the house D'Este at Ferrara, were also patrons of literature. But Naples lingered in this march of intellect. Her Spanish viceroys persecuted merit with as much zeal as the Suabian, Anjou, and Arragonese princes had cherished and protected it. They endeavoured, ineffectually indeed, to plant the inquisition in the Neapolitan provinces, and shed the purest and best blood upon the scaffolds. The universities were deserted, and liberal and ingenious writers were punished by torture and exile

When the tide of knowledge, however, has begun to flow, it is not easily checked. Private munificence supplied the place of public patronage. The marquis de Pescara, the marquis del Vasto, and the illustrious Colonna, were the Mœcenases of the age. It was a private individual, Ferranta, duke of Salerno, who protected the father of the celebrated TASSO. This ornament of the sixteenth century, to whom Italian poesy owes its last polish and highest refinement, was born at Sorrento. He is too well known to require a more specific notice; and, even if our space permitted us to enter into details concerning the great author of Jerusalem Delivered, the able summary and elegant criticism of Ginguené would render it superflous. I may not be known, however, to all our readers, that Tasso was not only a poet, but a metaphysician and philosopher, and the author of several treatises, written with great precision, on morality and ethics. Nor is the full extent of his poetical labors familiar to all. His sonnets, of which there are an incredible number, have met with the same fate as those of Shakspeare. Like Shakspeare's, however, they are interesting portraits of the vicissitudes of his life.

Tansillo, a contemporary poet, exhibits neither the taste nor dignity of Tasso. His poems abound with the concetti and antithesis too frequent in the Neapolitan school. But the poem called the Nurse, which has been translated by Mr. Roscoe, a tender exhortation to mothers upon the nurture of their childen, is exempt from these vices. The obscene poem called Il Vendemiatore, was expiated, before his death, by the Tears of St. Peter, a religious piece, which the French poet Malherbe plagiarised and deformed. For a catalogue of the jurists and

philosophers of the south of Italy, in the sixteenth century, we must refer our readers to the work of count Orloff.

ous.

The state of its literature at the beginning of the seventeenth century, was by no means auspiciThe Neapolitan kingdom was scourged at once by tyranny and famine. The ministers of Philip III. and Charles II., who governed it as viceroys, were intent only upon squeezing from that impoverished kingdom new supplies for their rapacious and needy masters. Commerce was fettered by exactions, industry disheartened, the arts and sciences discouraged. Rebellions were the natural fruit of this crooked policy. Thomas Campanella headed an insurrection in Calabria; and the famous Masaniello was, for some time, master of the kingdom. But the zeal of private individuals, animated by the example of their predecessors in the preceding century, effected much during these iron times. Manso, the friend of Milton, Tasso, and Marini, established a literary society, call the Otiosi. Other societies were framed, and learning was preserved from extinction. The Neapolitan jurists of this period are mentioned with respect in the excellent work of Francesco d'Andrea, Ragionamento a suoi Nepoti, himself the ornament of the bar, and called the Cicero of Naples. We need only mention Andrea (who died in 1698), Gravina, and his pupil Peter Metastasio. He was the first lawyer who called philosophy to the aid of jurisprudence. His interpretations of the Roman code, and of the fragments of the twelve tables, breathe a liberal and enlightened spirit; and his masterly and comprehensive mind brings together the whole history of human legislation, the progressive growth of natural and positive laws, and all the analogies and discordancies in the codes of nations. It is remarkable that two writers, diametrically opposite in genius and character, have been much indebted to Gravina. The world probably owes the great work of Montesquieu to his writings, and Rousseau borrowed from them his theory of the Social Contract. Himself a poet, he fostered and protected the expanding powers of Metastasio, left him an ample inheritance, and expired in his arms.

Julius Cæsar Vanini was equally celebrated for his talents and misfortunes. He was born at Otranto, and studied at Naples. He travelled over Europe, and gave offence in every country which he visited, by the boldness of his opinions, and the freedom of his discourse. Constant to no theory, at one time a fervent Catholic, at another a licentious Latitudinarian, his life was passed in a storm of disputation. The doctors of the Sorbonne burned his work De Admirandis Naturæ Reginæ. At Thoulouse he was accused of atheism; and condemned by the same parliament which afterwards passed sentence upon the unhappy Calas, to have his tongue cut out, and to be burned alive. This infamous judgment was executed on the 19th of February,1619,and in the thirty-fourth year of his age. But in no country has archæology been carried to a greater extent than in Naples. And what country, in spite of barbarous invasions, and the dreadful visitations of earthquakes and volcanoes, presents a wider field for antiquarian

research, or acounds more in those interesting remains which connect the ancient with the modern world? So prevalent was this science, that there is scarcely a province, a town, a church, or a monastery, which has not had its antiquary and its historian. Of these authors the number is too considerable for distinct specification. Amongst the writers of general history we have already mentioned Summonte. It is, however, in literary history that Naples abounds, even to affluence. Manso bequeathed to posterity the Life of Tasso, whom he had befriended and consoled in the last years of his existence. Francesco Andrea compiled the biographies of the celebrated authors of his day: Chioccarelli, those of Neapolitan authors, from the earliest times to 1646: Toppi, Nicodemi, and many others, illustrated the same department.

Poetry, however, and the sister art of rhetoric, degenerated into fustian and conceit. The austere and terrible graces of Dante; the harmonious, but vigorous versification of Petrarca, were succeeded by florid exaggeration, by tumid and gaudy imagery. Naples led the way in this departure from truth and nature. Tansillo, and even Tasso himself, not unfrequently committed these offences against taste; and their example, imitable only in its vices, engendered a tribe of poetasters, the founders of a new school, the school of Marini. But although Marini had the ambiguous honor of giving name to the sect, his genius was of a higher order. He was born at Naples, and nature had gifted him with an ardent imagination, perpetually excited, as he grew up, by the glories of a cloudless heaven, the varied beauties of the scenery, the rich magnificence of earth and ocean, with which he was surrounded. His first poetical attempts were remarkable for the brilliancy of their coloring. They were applauded, but in contradiction to the established decrees of good sense and correct taste. Simplicity and nature had already been exiled from poesy. A genius like that of Marini was alone sufficient to confirm the false direction which had been given it, and to sanction its vices. Literary honors were heaped upon him, and he was highly distinguished by the patronage of the great, both in Italy and France. His Slaughter of the Innocents, a poem, is the most finished of his numerous pieces. It was translated by Crashawe, and Pope has not disdained to borrow several passages from the translation. A countless tribe of imitators arose. It is the infelicity of imitation to catch only the faults of its original. They did not inherit a remnant of Marini's genius.

Occasionally he reminds us of the conceits of Cowley; but the resemblance is rare. One instance of such a resemblance is in our recollection, and we are tempted to quote it. In the Testamento d'Amore a lover receives from his mistress a letter written with her blood. This circumstance gives birth to endless conceits and extravagancies. He wishes to be converted into ashes, that, by being pulverised, he might dry up the lines traced by her hand :

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Che per dar vita altrui ti squarci il core. There were few satirical poets in Italy during the seventeenth century. Salvator Rosa, the painter, was the most distinguished amongst them. He was a native of Naples; his satires have the bitterness and sternness of Juvenal. He writes also with the flowing eloquence of that poet; but he abuses his own fertility, and knows not how to stop. His great fault is saying too much.

In the drama, Porta arrived at great excellence; his genius was indeed universal. His tragedies of Il Georgio, and l'Ulisse, still maintain their reputation. But in the pastoral drama, a Neapolitan barber, Gian Battista Breggazano, shone nearly without a rival. The comedies of Porta also were deservedly admired in his day. In a language so easily wedded to music, the opera is almost of indigenous growth; and, in the age on which we have been occupied, it rose to great perfection. Antonio Basso, Sorrentino, the author of Ciro, and others, whose names alone would extend our article to an unreasonable length, prepared the way for Zeno and Metastasio, from whose hands the Italian opera

received its last touches.

The eighteenth century was the age of the severe sciences, rather than of poetry. Count Orloff has only strung together a barren nomenclature of the Neapolitan poets of this period; names too obscure for commemoration, and scarcely heard of beyond the limits of their own country. Nor is this silence a matter of condolence; the times are gone when cities were built by the sound of a lyre, or armies inflamed by the strains of a Tyrtæus. The spirit of imitation has so long subsisted in Italy, that we may reasonably despair of seeing again the sublimity of Dante, the pencillings of Tasso, the opulence of Ariosto. On the other hand, sonnets, madrigals, elegies, canzoni, were every day starting into sickly existence, and then disappearing

for ever.

Versus inopes rerum, nugæque canoræ.

It is in this age, nevertheless, that we contemplate the human faculties in their grander movements. A sounder logic, and more rational philosophy, were cultivated in Europe. The kingdom of Naples had been transferred to Austria, but the policy of the Spanish administration was still continued. Financial disorders, vexatious imposts, harassed and afflicted this devoted country. But, in spite of her arbitrary and oppressive governments, Naples could boast of many establishments friendly to science and letters.

In Giannone, jurisprudence found one of its greatest ornaments, who was born in the province of Capitanata, and studied at Naples. He began

his celebrated Civil History of Naples at an early period of his life. He was a zealous, not to say virulent, opponent of the usurpations of Rome; a circumstance to which he owes much of his reputation, and almost all his misfortunes. His work, on which he had bestowed twenty years of unremitted labor, appeared in 1723. But the liberality of its tenets soon earned it the honor of a place in the index expurgatorius of Rome. He was, moreover, excommunicated by the archiepiscopal court of Naples, and exiled from his country.

John Baptista Vico was a man of universal talent. Philosophy, politics, poetry, the belles lettres in general, he cultivated with equal diligence. Left in a destitute condition, his genius was nursed in solitude, and quickened by misfortune. All his writings breathe an air of originality his imagination was ardent and active, and derived its aliment from vast and profound reading. Plato and Bacon were a species of household divinities to this indefatigable student. The celebrated work of the Scienza Nuova dintorno Alla Commune Natura delle Nazioni, is a lasting monument of philosophical powers of generalisation, which have been rarely equalled. Its obscurity is apparent, rather than real. It requires, indeed, to be read diligently, and even laboriously; and the author himself deprecates the judgment of those who may presume to criticise it on a slight and careless perusal.

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The reign of Charles III. was the proudest political era that Naples had yet witnessed. The judicious measures of Tannuci, his minister, and the actual presence of the monarch himself, inspired life and activity into the state, and the Neapolitan people might for the first time be called a nation. The discipline of the university was restored, the magnificent building which it now occupies appropriated for its reception, and the Farnese library consecrated to its use. this auspicious period belongs Antonio Genovesi, a proselyte from scholastic theology, the study to which he was originally destined, to the pursuits of a liberal and enlightened philosophy. We contemplate in him, perhaps, the most extraordinary man that ever arose in Italy. He was a disciple of Vico, whose doctrines he elucidated, by a commentary which completely cleared them of the perplexities in which his master had intentionally enveloped them. What Bacon was to Europe in general, Genovesi was to Italy. The spirit of philosophy, almost at his bidding, pervaded every science, and the principles of right reasoning diffused a steady light over the labors of succeeding students, for whom he had first opened a way disentangled from mysticism and error. He was in truth the founder of a school in philosophy, which had all that was great or eminent in Italy among its students. He combined the theories of Locke and Leibnitz, extracting from each that which was most consonant to the interests of man, and the improvement of his mind. If he wandered occasionally into the wilds of a boundless speculation, he was led astray by his unlimited confidence in the perfectibility of the human mind; an error that bespeaks generous and enlarged, though not accurate habits of thinking. Genovesi filled the

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