CESARE

CANTU (1804-1895)  , Italian historian, was born at Brivio in Lombardy and began his career as a teacher . His first literary essay (1828) was a romantic poem entitled Algiso, o la Lega Lombarda (new ed., Milan; 1876), and in the following year he produced a Storia di Como in two volumes (Como, 1829) . Thedeath of his father then left him in charge of a large family, and he worked very hard both as a teacher and a writer to provide for them . His prodigious literary activity led to his falling under the suspicions of the Austrian police, and he was mixed up in a political trial and arrested in 1833 . While in prison writing materials were denied him, but he managed to write on rags with a tooth-pick and candle smoke, and thus composed the novel Margherita Pusterla (Milan, 1838) . On his release a year later, as he was interdicted from teaching, literature became his only resource . In 1836 the Turinese publisher, Giuseppe Pomba, commissioned him to write a universal history, which his vast reading enabled him to do . In six years the work was completed in seventy-two volumes, and immediately achieved a general popularity; the publisher made a fortune out of it, and Canti'1's royalties amounted, it is said, to 300,000 lire (I2,000) . Just before the revolution of 1848, being warned that he would be arrested, he fled to Turin, but after the " Five Days " he returned to Milan and edited a paper called La Guardia Nazionale . Between 1849 and 185o he published his Storia degli Italiani (Turin, 1855) and many other works . In 1857 the archduke Maximilian tried to conciliate the Milanese by the promise of a constitution, and Cantu was one of the few Liberals who accepted the olive branch, and went about in company with the archduke . This act was regarded as treason and caused Cantu much annoyance in after years .

He continued his literary activity after the formation of the Italian

kingdom, producing volume after volume until his death .. For a short time he was member of the Italian parliament; he founded the Lombard historical society, and was appointed superintendent of the Lombard archives . He died in .March 1895 . His views are coloured by strong religious and political prejudice, and by a moralizing tendency, and his historical work has little critical value and is for the most part pure book-making, although he collected a vast amount of material which has been of use to other writers . In dealing with modern Italian history he is reactionary and often wilfully inaccurate . Besides the above-mentioned works he wrote Gli Eretici in Italia (Milan, 1873); Cronistoria dell' Indipendenza italiana (Naples, 1872-1877); Il Conciliatore e i Carbonari (Milan, 1878), &c . (L .