Bianchi, Anthony

, a native of Venice, deserves some notice in a work of this description, on account of his poems, which were the production of nature, without any aid from instruction or cultivation. He lived about the middle of the last century, and was a gondolier or waterman’s boy when he wrote, 1. “II Davide, re d'Israele, poema-eroico-sagro, di Antonio Bianchi, servitor di gondola Veneziano, canto XII.” Venice, 1751, fol. and reprinted the same year with an oratorio entitled “Elia sur Carmelo,” ibid. 8vo. In this, although we do not find a strict attention to the laws of the epic, nor the most perfect purity of language, yet there are many truly poetical, |

nervous, and highly animated passages. The same may be said of his, 2. “II Tempio owero il Salomone, canti X.” Venice, 1753, 4to, with historical and theological notes, which are believed to be from the same pen. In his first poem, he promised two others, one a heroi-comic, under the title of “Cuccagna distrutta,” the other “La Formica contro il Leone,” but it does not appear that either was published. He gave, however, a specimen of his critical talents, in a volume entitled “Osservazioni contro-critiche di Antonio Bianchi, sopra un trattato della commedia Italiana, &c. Venice, 1752, 8vo. Joseph Antony Costantini, the author of this treatise on Italian comedy, wrote an answer, and asserted that the” Observations“were not written by Bianchi, and that the poem of David was not his. Bianchi, however, in the preface to his second poem,” The Temple of Solomon," offered every kind of proof that he was the author of both. We have no farther account of this extraordinary young man, although it is probable from the merit and character of his poems, that he found patrons who procured him leisure and competence. ¹