, con
l'esposizione, stampato nell' anno MDCXXII.' The pseudonym _Squilla_ is
a pun upon Campanella's name, since both _Campana_ and _Squilla_ mean a
bell; while _Settimontano_ contains a quaint allusion to the fact that
the philosopher's skull was remarkable for seven protuberances.[12] A
very few copies of the unpretending little volume were printed; and
none of these seem to have found their way into Italy, though it is
possible that they had a certain circulation in Germany. At any rate
there is reason to suppose that Leibnitz was not unacquainted with the
poems, while Herder, in the Renaissance of German literature, published
free translations from a few of the sonnets in his 'Adrastea.'

To this circumstance we owe the reprint of 1834, published at Lugano by
John Gaspar Orelli, the celebrated Zurich scholar. Early in his youth
Orelli was delighted with the German version made by Herder; and during
his manhood, while residing as Protestant pastor at Bergamo, he used
his utmost endeavours to procure a copy of the original. In his preface
to the reprint he tells us that these efforts were wholly unsuccessful
through a period of twenty-five years. He applied to all his literary
friends, among whom he mentions the ardent Ugo Foscolo and the learned
Mazzuchelli; but none of these could help him. He turned the pages of
Crescimbeni, Quadrio, Gamba, Corniani, Tiraboschi, weighty with
enormous erudition--and only those who make a special study of Italian
know how little has escaped their scrutiny--but found no mention of
Campanella as a poet. At last, after the lapse of a quarter of a
century, he received the long-coveted little quarto volume from
Wolfenbuttel in the north of Germany. The new edition which Orelli gave
to the press at Lugano has this title:--'Poesie Filosofiche di Tommaso
Campanella pubblicate per la prima volta in Italia da Gio. Gaspare
Orelli, Professore all' Universita di Zurigo. Lugano, 1834.' The same
text has been again reprinted at Turin, in 1854, by Alessandro
d'Ancona, together with some of Campanella's minor works and an essay
on his life and writings. This third edition professes to have improved
Orelli's punctuation and to have rectified his readings. But it still
leaves much to be desired on the score of careful editorship. Neither
Orelli nor D'Ancona has done much to clear up the difficulties of the
poems--difficulties in many cases obviously due to misprints and errors
of the first transcriber