certainly takes pleasure in writing. If he does not know life's other joys, he knows that of being able to impart a beautiful, puissant form to a lucid thought. Nevertheless his existence, much more logical than Schopenhauer's, is in exact accord with his philosophy. Sickly, isolated, not understood, Leopardi lacked the strength to react; but if he allowed himself to be swept along by his sadness, it was at least in full knowledge of the fact. He questions his despair and enters into discussion with it. And this questioning presented us with those fine dialogues which, together with a few thoughts, were gathered together under the title Operette Morali.

Leopardi died in 1837. His writings seem of this very day. Almost all the questions touched upon with unparalleled sagacity in the Dialogue Between Tristan And A Friend are such as still interest philosophers and critics. "I understand," says Tristan, "and I embrace the deep philosophy of the newspapers, which, by killing off all other literature and all other studies of too serious and too little amusing a nature, are the masters and the beacon-light of the modern age." Already, in his day, the flatterers of the crowd were saying, like the Socialists of today: "Individuals have disappeared in the face of the masses." Already sober stupidity affirmed: "We live in an epoch of transition," as if, resumes Tristan, all epochs and all centuries were not a transition toward the future!

The theme itself of the dialogues is the idea of the wickedness of life and the excellence of death. It recurs time and again and Leopardi manages to avoid monotony only by the ingeniousness of his imagination, the beauty of his style, the keenness of his wit. For example, the magnificent passage in which, after having said that although the world is rejuvenated every spring it is continually growing older, he announces the supreme death of the universe: "Not a vestige will survive of the entire world, of the vicissitudes and the infinite calamities of all things created. An empty silence, a supreme calm will fill the immensity of space. Thus will dissolve solve and disappear this frightful, prodigious mystery of universal existence, before we have been able to understand or clarify it."

Without a doubt. But in the meantime we must live, or else die. And if we choose to live, it is reasonable to do our best to adapt ourselves to life. Pessimism has but the slightest of philosophical value. It is not even a philosophy; it is literature, and, too often, rhetoric. This man is a bit ridiculous, tranquilly pursuing his existence, daily adding a page to his litany of death's delights. In short, Leopardi, like many another man, humble or exalted, suffers from not being happy; his originality consists less in taking pleasure in his suffering, which is not very rare, than in finding reasons for this pleasure and expounding them logically and resolutely. His sincerity is absolute.

Considered in opposition to the base reveries of the promissors of happiness, this literature is useful. But it is good that it should be rare, for if we finally got to take pleasure in it alone, it would prove only depressing. Life is nothing and it is everything. It is empty and it contains all. But what does the word life mean? It is an abstraction. There are as many lives as there are living individuals in all the animal species. These lives are developed according to curves and windings of infinite variety. It is the height of folly to bring a single judgment to bear upon the multitude of individual lives. Some are good, others bad, the majority colorless, according to every possible degree. In this order of facts there is no justice, and the reign of justice is particularly chimerical in this case, because the joys and sorrows of a life are related far less to the events by which it is crossed than to the physiological character of the individual.

Abstractions do us much harm by impelling us to the quest of the absolute in all things. Joy does not exist, but there are joys: and these joys may not be fully felt unless they are detached from neutral or even painful conditions. The idea of continuity is almost self-negating. Nature makes no leaps; but life makes only bounds. It is measured by our heart-beats and these may be counted. That there should be, amid the number of deep pulsations that scan the line of our existence, some grievous ones, does not permit the affirmation that life is therefore evil. Moreover, neither a continuous grief nor a continuous joy would be perceived by consciousness.

Whether we deal with the transcendental theories of Schopenhauer or the melancholy assertions of Leopardi, we arrive at the same conclusion. Pessimism is not admissible, any more than is optimism. Heraclitus and Democritus may be dismissed back to back, while fearlessly and with a moderate but resolute hope, we try to extract from each of our lives,—we men,—all the sap it contains, even though it be bitter.

Leopardi was not only the poet and the moralist of despair. At the age of seventeen he had already achieved note as a scholar and a Hellenist, with his Essay Upon Popular Errors Of The Ancients (1815). During the two years that followed he produced several dissertations on the Batrachomyomachia, on Horace, on Moscus, and Greek odes in the manner of Callimachus, the perfection of which was such that it was believed some forgotten manuscript had been brought to light. Niebuhr affirmed in 1822 that the Notes On The Chronicle of Eusebus would have done honor to the foremost German philologists. Leopardi had reached this point when in a flash his personal genius was revealed to him, and then there appeared his Poems, followed by his Moral Tracts. He died at the age of thirty-nine (1837), leaving a series of labors of which each separate division achieves perfection: the scholar, the poet, the writer of prose, the translator, the man of wit are equally admirable in Leopardi. Were it not for the lingering illness that accompanied his deeply sensitive career, he would have been one of the most luminous geniuses of humanity. His originality lies in his having been the most sombre.

II

"The three greatest pessimists who ever existed," said Schopenhauer one day,—"that is to say, Leopardi, Byron and myself,—were in Italy during the same year, 1818-1819, and did not make one another's acquaintance!" One of these "great pessimists," Leopardi, happened just at this time to be writing a little dialogue that might well be reprinted at the beginning of every year. It would always seem new.

Life is bad, says Leopardi, and here is the proof: nobody has ever found a man who would wish to live his life over again exactly as it happened at first:—who would wish even, at the beginning of a new year, to have it exactly the same as the year just past. What we love in life is not life such as it is, but rather life such as it might be, such as we desire it to be.

But since this Dialogue Between The Passer-By And The Almanac-Vendor, if it has ever been translated, has remained buried in unreadable volumes, here is a version of this excellent, though somewhat bitter, page:

The Almanac-Vendor.—Almanacs, new almanacs! New calendars! Will you buy some almanacs, sir?

The Passer-by.—Almanacs for the new year?

Vendor.—Yes, sir.

Passer-by. Do you think it will be a happy one,—this coming year?

V.—Oh, yes, sir! Certainly!

P.—As happy as the one just past?

V.—Oh! Far, far more so!

P.—As happy as the one before that?

V.—Far, far more.

P.—As happy as which other one, then? Wouldn't you be glad to have the coming year the same as any one of the recent years?

V.—No, sir. No. That would hardly please me.

P.—How long have you been selling almanacs?

V.—For twenty years, sir.

P.—Which of those twenty years would you prefer the new year to