BARETTI, GIUSEPPE. – Polymath, born in Turin on 25 April 1719, died in London on 5 May 1789. He received his first literary education and taste for burlesque poetry from Carlo Cantoni in Guastalla; in Turin he was a pupil of Tagliazucchi. A true literary gypsy, he spent longer or shorter periods in Parma, Mantua, Venice, and Milan, where he was enrolled in the *Trafosfrati*. In 1747–48 he published in Venice an unsuccessful translation of *The Tragedies of P. Cornelius*; in 1750, in Turin, his best *Piacevoli poesie*, and in Milan, in the same year, the *Primo cicalamento* against the royal professor Giuseppe Bartoli, his first battle against the antiquarians he called “time-wasters.” The seizure of the still-unpublished poems of this *cicalamento* was not the least reason for his decision, taken in 1750, to leave his homeland for freer lands. In 1751 he arrived in London, where he was attached to the direction of the Italian Theatre and set about teaching the Italian language while studying English, French, and Spanish—languages in which he became so proficient that he could write in them as fluently as in his own. He became a friend of Samuel Johnson, and soon rivalled his master in the art of rapid, sparkling, aggressive conversation. He published in English didactic and polemical works on the Italian language and literature, the most famous of which is a still-appreciated English-Italian dictionary (1760). After its publication, he accompanied a young Englishman on a journey through Portugal, Spain, and France, and finally returned to Italy.
In Milan he began to write an account of his travels in the form of *Lettere familiari a suoi tre fratelli*:
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**BA**
ida *La frusta letteraria* di G. Baretti, I, Milan 1931)
Baretti, Giuseppe – Engraved portrait by P. Caronni.
**RETTI, GIUSEPPE** – Engraved portrait by P. Caronni.
But when the first volume appeared in 1762, publication was suspended due to certain remonstrances from the Portuguese minister. The following year, Baretti managed to publish in Venice, despite many difficulties, the second volume, after which the work remained incomplete. All the numerous epistolary travel letters of the 18th century are surpassed by Baretti’s not so much for the novelty of the events and the acuteness of his judgments as for the beauty and liveliness of his prose. In Venice, which was the most active centre of Italian journalism, Baretti launched, under the highly significant pseudonym Aristarco Scannabue, on 1 October 1763, a fortnightly periodical entirely written by him, *La Frusta letteraria*, which continued until 15 September 1764. When he proposed to transform it into a monthly, he published the 25th number on 15 January 1765; after which the Venetian government, to rid itself of the troublesome journalist, suppressed *La Frusta*. He then retired to Monte Cardeto near Ancona, under the protection of Cardinal Acciajuoli, and continued his periodical, dating it from Trento, for eight more issues (1 April–15 July 1765), almost all filled with eight violent and dazzling *Discorsi* against Father Appiano Buonafede, who, in revenge for an innocuous criticism that Aristarco had made of his *Saggio di commedie filosofiche*, had attacked him with *Il Bue pedagogo*. This was the most famous and scandalous polemic of the 18th century. (In *La Frusta* one should note Baretti’s essay on ascetical books in Italy [ed. Laterza, I, Bari 1923, pp. 78–83], in which he advocates a clear and elegant style and adherence to history in such matters, against the abuse of pious narratives woven with doubts or false miracles.) He left his “hiding place,” and, still watched by the inquisitors of the Venetian Republic, went to Bologna, Florence, Livorno, and Genoa, from where he returned to London in 1766, carrying in his heart his beloved homeland. And when Samuel Sharp published certain travel letters (1766) slandering Italy, Baretti pounced on him with a book in English in which he defended the customs and culture of Italy of those years (*An Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy*, London 1768). This book brought him such fame that in the same year he was elected secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts for foreign correspondence. He travelled with the family of one of his pupils through France and Flanders, and then alone, once more, visited Spain, completing the *Letters to his Brothers* in English (*A Journey from London to Genoa, through England, Portugal, Spain and France*, London 1770). For this book, Baretti is judged the most original and brilliant Italian describer of Spain and the revealer of the Spanish soul and poetry. He returned to Italy in 1770, but when his attempt to remain there permanently failed, he returned to London the following year and never left England again. He continued to work and publish tirelessly: his critical masterpiece, *Discours sur Shakespeare et sur Monsieur de Voltaire* (London 1777), is cited, a work of European importance in which he extols, in polemic with Voltaire, the excellence of the greatest modern poet; and *Scelta di lettere familiari* (London 1779), for the use of English students of Italian, all written by him under different names (for he claimed—though he exaggerated—that he could find no tolerable letters by others), with the exception of the first, which is by Annibale Caro.
The man, with all his faults, is highly sympathetic. Frank, loyal, sincere, strong in adversity, proud in poverty, generous in prosperity, sometimes gruff but gruff with a good heart, he honourably practised the profession of man of letters without bending his back to princes or patrons; and in an age when ignoble adventurers were dishonouring Italy, he upheld his country’s name high in England.
Of the two praises usually accorded to Baretti—that of herald of innovative ideas and that of a writer who was among the first to contribute to the renewal of our prose—the first is highly debatable, the second undeniable. More than a critic, he was a formidable polemicist, a terrible scourge of the “champions of the quill,” an inexorable executioner of the “versisciolta,” the “raccolta,” the spineless scholars, the impotent Arcadians. But as a travel writer, a versatile connoisseur of foreign cultures, a defender of Italy, a polemicist worthy of crossing swords with Voltaire, a mind endowed with keen common sense, he holds primacy among our prose writers and polymaths of the 18th century.