y in catching the naive
and pleasant spirit of Anacreon; his canzonetti being distinguished for
their ease and elegance, while his _Lettere Famigliari_ was the first
attempt to introduce the poetical epistle into Italian Literature. He
wrote also several epics, bucolics, and dramatic poems. His _Opere_
appeared at Venice, in 6 vols., in 1768."

Wordsworth says of him, in his _Essay on Epitaphs_, where translations
of two of those Epitaphs of Chiabrera first appeared (see _The Friend_,
February 22, 1810, and notes to _The Excursion_)--"His life was long,
and every part of it bore appropriate fruits. Urbino, his birth-place,
might be proud of him, and the passenger who was entreated to pray for
his soul has a wish breathed for his welfare.... The Epitaphs of
Chiabrera are twenty-nine in number, and all of them, save two, upon men
probably little known at this day in their own country, and scarcely at
all beyond the limits of it; and the reader is generally made acquainted
with the moral and intellectual excellence which distinguished them by a
brief history of the course of their lives, or a selection of events and
circumstances, and thus they are individualized; but in the two other
instances, namely, in those of Tasso and Raphael, he enters into no
particulars, but contents himself with four lines expressing one
sentiment, upon the principle laid down in the former part of this
discourse, when the subject of the epitaph is a man of prime note...."

Compare the poem _Musings near Aquapendente_. In reference to the places
referred to in these Epitaphs of Chiabrera, it may be mentioned that
Savona (Epitaphs III., IV., V., VII., VIII.) is a town in the Genovese
territory; Permessus (Epitaphs V. and IX.) a river of Boeotia, rising
in Mount Helicon and flowing round it, hence sacred to the Muses; and
that the fountain of Hippocrene--also referred to in Epitaph V.--was not
far distant. Sebeto (Epitaph VII.), now cape Faro, is a Sicilian
promontory.--ED.

VARIANTS:

[1] 1837.

Twine on the top of Pindus.-- ... 1810.

[2] 1837.

... Song 1810.

[3] 1837.

And fixed his Pindus upon Lebanon. 1810.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Wordsworth's extended commentary on this sonnet in his _Essay on
Epitaphs_ (see his "Prose Works" in this edition), should here be
referred to.--ED.

[B] In _The Friend_, January 4.--ED.

1810

As