Transcribed from the 1886 Cassell & Co. edition by DavidPrice,
CASSELL’S NATIONALLIBRARY.
MY
TEN YEARS’ IMPRISONMENT.
BY
SILVIO PELLICO.
TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN
BY
THOMAS ROSCOE.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
LONDON, PARIS,NEW YORK &MELBOURNE.
1886.
INTRODUCTION.
Silvio Pellico was born at Saluzzo,in North Italy, in the year of the fall of the Bastille,1789. His health as a child was feeble, his temper gentle,and he had the instincts of a poet. Before he was ten yearsold he had written a tragedy on a theme taken fromMacpherson’s Ossian. His chief delight as a boy wasin acting plays with other children, and he acquired from hisfather a strong interest in the patriotic movements of thetime. He fastened upon French literature during a stay ofsome years at Lyons with a relation of his mother’s. Ugo Foscolo’s Sepolcri revived his patriotism, andin 1810, at the age of twenty-one, he returned to Italy. Hetaught French in the Soldiers’ Orphans’ School atMilan. At Milan he was admitted to the friendship ofVincenzo Monti, a poet then touching his sixtieth year, and ofthe younger Ugo Foscolo, by whose writings he had been powerfullystirred, and to whom he became closely bound. SilvioPellico wrote in classical form a tragedy, Laodicea, andthen, following the national or romantic school, for a famousactress of that time, another tragedy, Francesca diRimini, which was received with great applause.
After the dissolution of the kingdom of Italy, in April 1814,Pellico became tutor to the two children of the Count PorroLambertenghi, at whose table he met writers of mark, from manycountries; Byron (whose Manfred he translated), Madame deStael, Schlegel, Manzoni, and others. In 1819 SilvioPellico began publishing Il Conciliatore, a journal purelyliterary, that was to look through literature to the life that itexpresses, and so help towards the better future of hiscountry. But the merciless excisions of inoffensivepassages by the Austrian censorship destroyed the journal in ayear.
A secret political association had been formed in Italy of menof all ranks who called themselves the Carbonari (charcoalburners), and who sought the reform of government in Italy. In 1814 they had planned a revolution in Naples, but there was noaction until 1820. After successful pressure on the King ofthe two Sicilies, the forces of the Carbonari under General Pepeentered Naples on the ninth of July, 1820, and King Ferdinand I.swore on the 13th of July to observe the constitution which theCarbonari had proclaimed at Nola and elsewhere during thepreceding month