Metastasio was, with his accustomed modesty, disturbed by the fear, lest his honourable conduct would be disapproved of by his friends and the world; and he was agreeably surprised when, on the contrary, it met with the general approbation it deserved. "I should be insincere," he writes to the same friend, "if, affecting philosophy, I pretended to be annoyed by the kind approval which my country has universally yielded to my renunciation of Marianna's bequest. It delights me in the first place, and like a vow, confirms me in my opinion of the justice of the act; and in the second, it surprises me, as being the testimony of the affection of so great a mother for the least of her sons."
This, during the space of ten years, from the time of his first arrival in Vienna, was the only event that disturbed Metastasio's life. These ten years are the period during which his poetic powers flourished most vigorously, and during which his best as well as the greater number of his works were produced. The favour they met confirmed his situation at court, while they caused him to labour unintermittingly. It is difficult to give one not versed in the Italian language a correct idea of the peculiar merits of his poetry, and the excellences of his dramas. They are not absolute tragedies: their happy conclusions, the introduction of airs, and their being compressed into three acts, give them a lightness and a brevity unlike the heavier march of tragedy. They are to a great degree ideal, and yet possess the interest which passion and plot, described and developed with masterly skill, necessarily impart. His command of language is singularly great, and he adapted poetic diction to dramatic dialogue with wonderful felicity. A long and profound study of the genius of his native tongue gave him such extreme facility, that the perfection of art takes the guise of the most unadorned nature; and the flow and clearness of his verses so excite our sympathy, as to make us feel as if the thoughts and sentiments which we find in his pages were the spontaneous growth of our own minds. The magic of his style renders sensible and distinct the most delicate and evanescent feelings, so that it has been remarked[49], that many of the movements of the human soul, which the ablest writers have scarcely been able to indicate in prose, and which, from their subtlety, are almost hidden from our consciousness, are brought home to us in his verses with a lucid felicity of expression, that leaves no portion of them either obscure or vague. He thus formed a language peculiarly his own. In his airs the words flow in so unforced a manner and with such extreme propriety, that they appear to place themselves: not one can be changed, not one omitted. There is no pedantry, no affectation; simplicity is his principal charm; it seems as if a child might utter them,--they are so unstudied; and yet no other poet possesses to an equal degree the art of clothing his ideas with the same easy grace.