[Count]. Italian man of letters, born at Turin and educated there and at Berlin, where he studied philology. In 1862 he was appointed professor of Sanskrit at Florence, but having married a cousin of the Socialist Bakunin and become interested in his views he resigned his appointment and spent some years in travel. He was reappointed, however, in 1867; and in 1891 he was transferred to the university of Rome. He became prominent both as an orientalist, a publicist and a poet. He founded the Italia letteraria (1862), the Rivista orientale (1867), the Civitta italiana and Rivista europea (1869), the Bollettino italiano degli studii orientali (1876) and the Revue internationale (1883), and in 1887 became director of the Giornale della società asiatica. In 1878 he started the Dizionario biografico degli scrittori contemporanei. His Oriental and mythological works include the Piccola enciclopedia indiana (1867), the Fonti vediche (1868), a famous work on zoological mythology (1872), and another on plant mythology (1878). He also edited the encyclopædic Storia universale della letteratura (1882–1885). His work in verse includes the dramas Cato, Romolo, Il re Nala, Don Rodrigo, Savitri, &c. He published in his later years a series of lectures on Italian poetry (1907), and a Dictionnaire Internationale des écrivains du monde latin (1905–6). He died at Rome on the 26th of February 1913.
