Original (English)

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 years old he had written a tragedy on a theme taken from Macpherson’s Ossian.  His chief delight as a boy was in acting plays with other children, and he acquired from his father a strong interest in the patriotic movements of the time.  He fastened upon French literat