Nicolo Ugo Foscolo, an Italian poet and miscellaneous writer, born in the island of Zante, of a Venetian family, Jan. 26, 1777, died at Turnham Green, near London, Sept. 14, 1827. He was educated in Venice, and at the university of Padua. His first tragedy, Tieste, was produced at Venice in 1797, and was so unsatisfactory to the author that he himself published the severest criticism of it. When Venice was surrendered by Bonaparte to Austria he retired with other patriots to Milan, and wrote a political romance called Lettere di due amanti, afterward republished under the title of Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis. In 1799 he volunteered in the Italian contingent of the French army, took part in the defence of Genoa under Massena, and returned to Milan.When in 1802 Napoleon assembled the consulta of Italian deputies at Lyons to provide a new constitution for the Cisalpine republic, Foscolo was appointed to report upon the state of the country; and in an elaborate discourse he contrasted the abuses of the military government which had been established with the free government which had been promised. In 1808 he was appointed professor of Italian eloquence in the university of Pavia, but the political independence evinced in his lectures soon caused his chair to be suppressed.

At this period he published his beautiful lyric poem I sepolcri, his tragedy of Ajace, and an Italian translation of Sterne's Sentimental Journey." On the fall of Napoleon he retired to Switzerland, and in 1816 to England. He Wrote for the reviews articles on Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and other Italian authors, delivered lectures on Italian literature, published an Essay on Petrarch in a separate volume (1823), and edited the Divina Commedia of Dante (1825). His Epistolario (3 vols.) and a new edition of his Poesie were published at Florence in 1856. His remains have been removed from Chis-wick, England, to the church of Santa Croce, Florence.