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Two Letters from Giuseppe Baretti to Samuel Johnson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Alan T. McKenzie*
Affiliation:
Purdue University, Lafayette, Ind.

Abstract

An annotated transcription, with commentary, of the texts of two letters (21 July 1762 and 3 October 1765) in Baretti's recently discovered commonplace book. The letters offer autobiographical insight into Baretti's various disappointments and persecutions on the continent. The first one provides the original to which Johnson's letter of 21 December 1762 (Chapman, No. 147), one of his best known, is the reply.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 86 , Issue 2 , March 1971 , pp. 218 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1971

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References

Note 1 in page 223 I am grateful to the curator of the Furness Collection, Prof. M. A. Shaaber, for permission to publish this material, to Prof. William E. Miller, assistant curator, for simplifying my access to it, and to Profs. Maurice Johnson of the Univ. of Pennsylvania, David Fleeman of Pembroke Coll., Oxford, and Donald Greene of the Univ. of Southern California for assistance in preparing it for publication.

Note 2 in page 223 James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, rev. L. F. Powell (Oxford: Clarendon, 1934–50), iv, 32—hereafter cited as Life.

Note 3 in page 223 The actions of Baretti's executors are described by one of them, William Vincent, later Dean of Westminster, in his Memoir of Baretti in the Gentleman“s Magazine, 59 (1789), 571, and in Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale (Later Mrs. Piozzi) 1776–1809, ed. Katharine C. Balderston (Oxford: Clarendon, 1942), u, 747—hereafter cited as Thraliana. The query is in N&Q, 2nd Ser., 6 (1858), 187.

Note 4 in page 223 James Prior, Life of Edmond Malone, Editor of Shak-speare (London: Smith, Elder, 1860), pp. 391–92—hereafter cited as Prior; Gentleman's Magazine, 59 (1789), 470; The Manuscripts and Correspondence of James, First Earl of Charlemonl (1784–1799), Historical Manuscripts Commission, xiii, Appendix, Part viii (London: HMSO, 1894), 104; Conor Fahy, “Notes on Charlemont and Baretti,” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 92 (1962), 61–66.

Note 5 in page 223 Prior, p. 161 ; the standard sources for details of Baretti's life are: Luigi Piccioni, Studi e ricerche intorno a Giuseppe Baretti, con lettere e documenti inediti (Livorno: Giusti, 1899); Lacy Collison-Morley, Giuseppe Baretti: With an Account of his Literary Friendships and Feuds in Italy and in England in the Days of Dr. Johnson (London: J. Murray, 1909)—hereafter cited as Collison-Morley; Norbert Jonard, Giuseppe Baretti (1719–1789): L'Homme et l'œuvre (Clermont-Ferrand: G. DeBussac, [1963])—hereafter cited as Jonard; and Giuseppe Baretti, Epislolario, ed. Luigi Piccioni, 2 vols. (Bari: G. Laterza, 1936)—hereafter cited as Epistolario.

Note 6 in page 223 Donald C. Gallup, “Baretti's Reputation in England,” in The Age of Johnson: Essays Presented to Chauncey Brewster Tinker, ed. Frederick W. Hilles (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1949), p. 364; Thraliana, I, 173.

Note 7 in page 223 See, in addition to the biographies, Allen T. Hazen, Samuel Johnson's Prefaces & Dedications (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1937), pp. 4–18, and Arthur Sherbo, “Samuel Johnson and Giuseppe Baretti: A Question of Translation,” RES. 19 (1968), 405–11.

Note 8 in page 223 The Letters of Samuel Johnson with Mrs. Thrale's Genuine Letters to Him, ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford: Clarendon, 1952), No. 138—hereafter cited as Letters. This letter also appears in Life, i, 361–66. See Life, n, 24, for an indication that Boswell saw this letter in Venice in 1765, and Baretti's 1765 letter from Ancona, below, for his reflections on the same topics. Baretti acknowledged Johnson's encouragement in his Preface to A Journey from London to Genoa (1770), p. vi.

Note 9 in page 223 Baretti had been in Milan since the end of 1761 (Epistolario, i, 117). He was born 24 April 1719 and spent his boyhood in Turin. He left there for Milan, where he lived for a while with an uncle, upon his father's remarriage in 1735.

Note 10 in page 223 Chapman calls attention to Johnson's return of this unique form of address in his letters to Baretti (Letters, i, 132, n.).

Note 11 in page 223 Two years later this same Count Firmian was to support, and eventually also to fail, Roger Boscovich. See Elizabeth Hill, “Roger Boscovich: A Biographical Essay,” in Roger Joseph Boscovich: Studies of his Life and Work on the 20th Anniversary of his Birth, ed. Lancelot Law Whyte (London: Allen & Unwin, 1961), pp. 79–89. His relationship with Baretti is treated in Luigi Piccioni, “Amori e ambizioni di Giuseppe Baretti,” Giornale Storico delta Letteratura Italiana, 72 (1918), 107–32. See also Epistolario, i, 125–29. Milan had been Austrian territory since the Treaty of Utrecht (1713).

Note 12 in page 223 Baretti's financial dependence on his brothers eventually became a source of contention and estrangement; Jonard, pp. 423–24.

Note 13 in page 223 A copy of this letter, dated 17 March 1762, is also in the commonplace book.

Note 14 in page 223 Count Imbonati's villa at Cavallasca, where he went with his literary friends of the Trasformati (Collison-Morley, pp, 131–32).

Note 15 in page 223 This was a strong attachment to Rosina Fuentes, the young daughter of one of his old friends; see Piccioni, “Amori e ambizioni di Giuseppe Baretti.”

Note 16 in page 223 Carl' antonio Tanzi (1710–62), minor lyric poet and one of the Trasformati. He was a friend of Baretti's from his earliest days in Milan. See Bruno Maier et al., eds., Lirici del Settecento, in La letteratura italiana: Storia e testi, ed. Raffaele Mattioli et al., XLIX (Milan: Ricciardi, 1959), 427–37.

Note 17 in page 223 That may be so, but the unbosoming here is far more dignified and restrained than that in Baretti's letters to his Italian friends. Four months after this letter to Johnson he wrote the following to Count Biffi in Cremona: “Sapete, conte mio, che ho perduto colei senza la quale la vita è una lenta morte: ahi! ahi! io l'ho perduta per sempre! Io non vedro piu quel dolce viso, non udrô ??? quelle soavi parole, non bacero piu quella dolce sorridente bocca che mi sembrava un'anticipazione del paradiso ! E un mese che l'ho veduta per l'ultima volta, e il mio dolore, la mia afflizione, la mia disperazione aumenta invece di scemare: cosi io stupisco che il mio cuore non scoppi, e con esso si estingua la mia vita. Confortatemi, amico mio, colle vostre dolci lettere, aiutate la mia povera ragione, assistete la mia filosofia, e cercate d'ottenere ciô che non è nemmeno nel potere del tempo di fare” (Epistolario, i, 132; 3 Dec. 1762).

Note 18 in page 223 Baretti never stopped preaching to Johnson on the theme of idleness. See the opening sentence of the 1765 letter below. According to Mrs. Piozzi: “Baretti used to say very properly ‘had I Johnson's Genius, or he had [sic] my Spirit of Application and Drudgery; we might have driven our Coaches and Six long ago’ ” (Thraliana, I, 164).

Note 19 in page 223 Baretti knew Richardson well and always admired him. Alan D. McKillop has suggested that Baretti helped with the Italian background of Sir Charles Grandison—Samuel Richardson, Printer and Novelist (Chapel Hill, N. C. : Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1936), p. 212. See also Epistolario, II, 57. The “funeral Panegyrick of him in a French Journal” was probably Diderot's “Eloge de Richardson” published in the Journal étranger in Jan. 1762; see Denis Diderot, Œuvres complètes, ed. J. Assézat (Paris: Gamier, 1875), v, 211–27 (I am grateful to Prof. T. C. Duncan Eaves for this suggestion). Baretti's correspondent was misinformed. Richardson had died, on 4 July 1761.

Note 20 in page 223 Baretti met Joshua Reynolds soon after his arrival in London and remained friendly with him all his life. Reynolds came to his assistance (as did also Johnson, Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith, and others) at the time of his trial for the murder of a ruffian in 1769, and Baretti's translation of the Discourses into Italian was published in Florence in 1778. It occasioned a violent quarrel between Baretti and Luigi Siries, the editor; see Frederick W. Hilles, The Literary Career of Sir Joshua Reynolds (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1936), pp. 51–59. Reynolds wrote a parody of Baretti's Journey from London to Genoa in 1770 or 1771. It was published for the first time as Appendix A to Derek Hudson, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Personal Study (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1958).

Note 21 in page 223 A letter to Hollis of 22 June 1763 in the commonplace book and frequent mention of Baretti in Hollis' Diary, the MS of which is now at Harvard, indicate how close Baretti was to this “strenuous Whig.” See my “A New Letter from Giuseppe Baretti to Thomas Hollis,” forthcoming in the April 1971 Harvard Library Bulletin. Francis Blackburne printed an extract of a letter from Baretti to Hollis written at the end of 1761 ; Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, Esq. (London: J. Nichols, 1780), I, 124.

Note 22 in page 223 European Magazine, 11 (1787), 385–87, 13 (1788), 14750. They also appear in Life, i, 361–66, 369–71, 380–82, and Letters, Nos. 138, 142, and 147.

Note 23 in page 223 Baretti had met Boswell in Venice the previous July. At that time Boswell copied Baretti's “last from Venice” ; it survives among Boswell's papers, and is the only other letter from Baretti to Johnson to have been published: Robert Warnock, “Nuove lettere inédite di Giuseppe Baretti,” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, 131 (1954), 73–87. See also Thomas Frank, “Two Notes on Giuseppe Baretti in England,” Annali Jstituto Universitario Orientale-Sezione Germanica, 2 (1959), 239–63; Boswell on the Grand Tour: Italy, Corsica, and France 1765–1776, ed. Frank Brady and Frederick A. Pottle (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955), pp. 98–99; and Life, n, 8. Boswell's letter to Baretti announcing the publication of Johnson's Shakespeare is dated 12 Sept. 1765, and is also printed by Warnock (p. 80).

Note 24 in page 223 Life of Richard Savage (1744); The “Life of Sir Thomas Browne” was prefixed to Johnson's edition of Browne's Christian Morals (1756).

Note 25 in page 223 Frusta Letleraria, No. 25.

Note 26 in page 223 In addition to his Dictionary of the English and Italian Languages (1760), Baretti published A Dictionary, Spanish and English, and English and Spanish (1778). Perhaps at this time he intended a conflation.

Note 27 in page 223 See n. 18, above.

Note 28 in page 223 Loreta is still famous for its shrine of the Holy House of the Blessed Virgin, a house thought to have been transported by angels from Nazareth to its present location in the twelfth century.

Note 29 in page 223 “Recollections of Dr. Johnson by Miss Reynolds,” in Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. George Birkbeck Hill (Oxford: Clarendon, 1897), II, 293; also Collison-Morley, pp. 331–34.