86 Ugo Foscolo, and the Italian Poets. [JAN. 



larity about their dress and appearance is accounted for in the same way. He 

 would never suffer any servant to enter his presence, without having paid due 

 attention to her dress, and it was his most especial direction that no person of 

 the kind should ever appear before him in black stockings. Again, say the same 

 individuals to me, Foscolo had the habits of a sensualist in nothing but appear- 

 ance. He was remarkable for moderation in his appetites ; his diet was of the 

 simplest and most sparing kind, and he scarcely ever drank more than two 

 glasses, or two glasses and a half of wine. Add to this, he always expressed 

 himself with warmth against gross indulgences of every kind, and few will be 

 inclined to believe, after reading the events of his life, that Foscolo could be 

 guilty of flagrant hypocrisy. 



" l3ut however doubtful it may be whether the accusation above alluded to be 

 correct, no doubt exists of his imprudence in respect to all his pecuniary affairs. 

 At the period of which we are speaking he was in tolerable employment ; he 

 wrote for the Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews, and the encouragement given to 

 his excellent essays on Petrarch, served to increase simultaneously his means 

 and his expectations. So extensive were his designs, that he found constant 

 employment for some young men of ability to translate or improve his language, 

 and it was with one of these, Mr. Graham, that he was guilty of the folly of 

 fighting a duel on account of his favourite servant. But a casual observer might 

 have supposed that he was rapidly advancing in fortune. The establishment he 

 kept up was one which would have swallowed up a revenue far greater than that 

 which he could ever hope to command, had all his designs been completed and 

 crowned with success. His debts, consequently, were always on the increase, 

 and as a large part of his upholsterers' bills remained unpaid, he was soon 

 involved in difficulties which rendered ruin inevitable. To accelerate the 

 approaches of distress, his mind was at times too much oppressed with anxiety 

 to allow of its free action, and thus the great wheel of the machine on which his 

 whole subsistence depended, soon grew unfit for use." 



When the misfortunes of his latter career began to gather darker 

 around him, the more marked and dangerous features of this extraordi- 

 nary being's temperament were more fully and strangely developed: 



" At length an execution was placed on his premises, and he then appears to 

 have resigned himself to despair. A gentleman, whose name I am not at liberty 

 to mention, received a message from him late one evening, intimating the cir- 

 cumstance, and fully expressive of the misery of the writer. The call was 

 promptly attended to, but on the gentleman's arrival at the cottage, he was 

 informed that Foscolo had retired to his apartment. He hastened to the room, 

 and gaining admission with some difficulty, he discovered on the table, near 

 which the poet was seated, a little dagger, which Foscolo always carried in his 

 bosom, but only displayed on great occasions. After a slight inquiry, therefore, 

 into the cause of his present distress, he settled the demand of the person who 

 had placed the execution in the house, and Foscolo was once more at ease. 



" I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. S. C. Hall, who went to reside with 

 him, about this time, as his secretary, for the knowledge of many particulars 

 which respect the state of his mind under these distressing circumstances. He 

 now began, it seems, to experience the most terrible fits of despondency : ' He 

 would sometimes ask me to pass the evening with him,' says the gentleman 

 above named, ' but in the midst of our conversation he would cease speaking, 

 and sit for a couple of hours wrapped in the most gloomy silence/ This, how- 

 ever, was not the only sign which he gave of the miserable state of his thoughts. 

 Mr. Hall, who lived in the small house next the Digamma Cottage, and which 

 Foscolo retained in his hands, was startled by seeing him enter his apartment one 

 afternoon, with a worse than ordinary gloom upon his brow. ' Mr. Hall,' he 

 began, ' I am come to see you for the last time. In two hours I shall be no 

 more. When I was still a youth, Mr. Hall, I was numbered among the great 

 men of my country ; I was even called the first of poets, when there was no hair 



