ETASTASIO, PIETRO ABATE, the celebrated dra matist, was born at Route on the St1 of January 1698.* His birth name was Trapassi. We shall immediately have occasion to mention the circumstance in conse quence of which it was changed. His family had once been opulent, though reduced to poverty by gradual decline. His grandfather, Felician Trapassi, was one of the thirty inhabitants of Assisi, to whom the free dom of the city belonged. The father of the poet, Fe Bei Trapassi, was however unable to subsist in his na tive place, and enlisted for a soldier in the regiment of Corsi. Ile soon afterwards married Francesca Galasti, of Bologna, by whom he had many children. The poet was their second son. Felice, whilst he was in garrison, added something to the scanty pay of a sol dier towards the maintenance of a family, by becoming an amanuensis ; and having fulfilled his military ser vice, and by extreme industry and economy saved a little money, he entered into partnership with a shop keeper at Rome, for the sale of goods which belong to what the Romans call Parte bianca, consisting of oil, flour, pastry, and other culinary materials. Having prospered tolerably in this kind of merchandise, he placed his two eldest sons, Leopoldo and Pietro at a grammar school. Pietro (our subject) soon discovered an extraordinary quickness for learning, and a dispo sition for poetry. He could turn extempore verses on any given subject before he was ten years of age. This faculty he used to exercise after school hours at his fa ther's shop, where crowds would assemble in the streets to hear the young improvisatori. During one of those tuneful fits, the learned civilian and critic, Gravina, accidentally passed, and was so struck by the harmony of the child's verses, and the sweetness of his voice, as well as by the liveliness of the thoughts which he threw out "al improvista," either on persons who .stood near him, or any subject of their suggesting, that he stopt to admire him, and offered him money. The polite re fusal of the little bard to accept of his donation increas ed his admiration of him—he resolved to adopt him, and went immediately to solicit the consent of his pa rents for that purpose. As the civilian did not pro pose to take him from Rome, his father saw no necessi ty for refusing the proffered patronage, and the next morning Pietro was consigned to Gravina's care, who gave him the Greek name of Metastasio, as p.rroec-raris, mutatio, seemed at once to express his former name of Trapassi, and his new situation as an adopted child.
It seems at first sight rather inconsistent, that his patron, who had adopted him on account of his poetry, should have destined him to a study so unpropitious to poetry as that of the law ; but Gravina was himself a lawyer ; and, excepting the church, there was no other profession by which emoluments and honours could be then attained. At fist, Metastasio was set to the pe rusal of pandects, decrees, and edicts—he nevertheless read the poets, by Gravina's permission, particularly Ariosto and Homer ; and having, at the age of four teen, produced his tragedy of Giustino, an astonishing work for a boy, though Metastasio afterwards regretted its appearance among his riper works ; his patron not only tolerated but encouraged his poetical bias. Gravi na took him, when he was 18, to Naples, expressly to af ford hint an opportunity of singing extempore with the most celebrated improvisatori at that time in hair. When he appeared in Naples, he soon became an uni versal favourite. Nothing was to be heard of but his beautiful extemporaneous verses, which his hearers car ried away in their memory—the grace and dignity of his elocution—and the inspired expression of his coun tenance.
With his poetical pursuits, he still continued the study of the law ; and in order to obtain a passport through the only other promising toad to preferment at Rome, Ile took the minor orders of priesthood, by the advice of his affectionate master. At 20 years of age he lost his patron Gravina, who died, aged 54, leaving behind him the character of a moderate poet and orator, but of great learning and classical knowledge, and con siderable acuteness in criticism, though not unble mished by asperity. He rendered his name more cele brated by' protecting Metastasio than by all the works of his own pen. The benefit of his influence on Me tastasio's taste has been doubted, for he was a precisian in his ideas of classical purity, and it is supposed that if he had lived, his advice might have cramped his pu pil's genius with rules of Greek art, and implicit imita tion. However this may be, Metastasio's expressions
of grief for his loss, which were strongly conveyed in poetical effusions, Were never suspected of being insin cere, though his mourning for him was that of an heir, which is sometimes so ludicrously doubtful,—for Gra vina, faithful to his promise of treating him as his own child, bequeathed to him 15,000 Roman crowns, an excellent library, rich furniture, and a small estate in the kingdom of Naples. The specie alone, (equal to between three and four thousand pounds,) was, ac cording to the value of money in those days, a sufficient independence; but among the lessons which his pa tron had taught him, he seems to have forgotten those of worldly wisdom. His legacy was soon spent, not indeed in vicious courses, but in the munificence of good cheer which he shewed to the admirers of his poetry and the frequenters of his table. In two years only an insignificant landed properly remained ; but though his fall was like Timon's, he had nothing of the misanthrope in his bland and benevolent disposi tion. At two and twenty, he set himself to renew the study of the law as a profession ; and, as if he had re solved to secure himself against the seduction of the muses, he placed himself under an advocate of the name of Paglietti, a man who is described as all law," a bitter enemy to poet•y—one who hated the sound of verse, and the very sight of a poet; and was merciless ly intolerant of the slightest deviation from worldly prudence. One may figure a whimsical scene, in con ceiving the shrewd and suspicious lawyer receiving such a noviciate, a youth already known and celebrat ed for poetical genius, but, with his fortune spent, obliged to determine in earnest that he would prosecute his legal studies. The assiduity of Metastasio is said to have at first inspired Paglietti himself with confi dence, that he was thoroughly weaned from poetry ; and we arc told, that many who had before admired his verses, now regarded the rapidity of his progress in legal knowledge with still greater astonishment; but this change was an effort against nature, and could not continue. At the end of a year, we find him making a sly breach of his contract with the rugged advocate, by writing an epithalamium of 100 octave stanzas, at the instigation of the Countess of Althau. Then caine his drama of Endymizm, under the same sedative influ ence. The viceroy of Naples next prevailed on him to write the drama of the Garden of the Hesperides, on a promise that it should be kept a profound secret from his inexorable lawyer. llis next drama was Angelica, the plot of which is taken from Ariosto. The poems which he produced at Naples were universally admired, particularly the Gardens of the Hesperides, but none felt the beauties of that drama so foremly as Signora Ma rianna Benti Bulgarini, commonly called the Romanina, the greatest female singer and actress of her time, who performed the part of Venus in that piece, and was so enchanted with the poetry, that she would not rest till she was introduced to the acquaintance of the author. She felt, on seeing him, (says his biographer), an un common regard for him, and it was believed to be mu tual. Meanwhile his legal friend Paglietti did not re gard him by any means with the same pleasant looks as the actress his admirer, the Romanina. His poetical re putation was now blazoned abroad ; and his disgust at the law, added to the severity of the old advocate, soon became sufficiently strong to make him wish to abandon the profession. Meanwhile the Romanina pressed him to take up his residence under her roof, and her hus band joined in the same request. Metastasio was not insensible to the apparent indecorum of quitting a grave profession, as well as of laying himself under obliga tions to the family of Bulgarini ; but, after a struggle in his own mind, lie gave way to his love of poetry and leisure, and possibly also to his partiality for the lady, and accepted the invitation. To this proceeding, what ever may be thought of his motives, the world was per haps indebted for the direction of his exquisite genius into its proper channel.