Excerpt from The Poems ('Canti') Of Leopardi Giacomo Leopardi was born on June 29, 1798, at Recanati, a small country town in the March of Ancona. He was of noble descent on both father and mother's side, but the family was in somewhat straitened circumstances. His father, Count Leopardi, lived retired from the world, a pedant of narrow views, but of considerable erudition; a bigot who held ultramontane and medieval notions as to the prerogatives and position of the clergy and the Church, whose almost servilely devoted son he was; a father who utterly failed, if indeed he ever tried, to understand his gifted son, or win his sympathy and affection. He destined Giacomo for the Church, and could never forgive him for his refusal to devote his life to her service. The young Leopardi was sickly as a boy even, and his over-studious habits from his earliest years utterly undermined a constitution which would never have been robust. He spent his boyhood's days unchecked in his father's well-stocked library, omnivorously devouring and assimilating all that came to his hands, till at the age of sixteen already he had become a self-taught prodigy of learning. He had read through all the ancient classics, and mastered several European modern languages and Hebrew besides. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.