So
this village of Macchia is spelt indifferently by Albanians as Maki or
Makji.
They have a fine Elizabethan contempt for orthography - as well
they may have, with their thirty alphabets.] a flame-like patriot in
whom the tempestuous aspirations of modern Albania took shape. The ideal
pursued during his long life was the regeneration of his country; and if
the attention of international congresses and linguists and folklorists
is now drawn to this little corner of the earth - if, in 1902,
twenty-one newspapers were devoted to the Albanian cause (eighteen in
Italy alone, and one even in London) - it was wholly his merit.
He was the son of a Greco-Catholic priest. After a stern religious
upbringing under the paternal roof at Macchia and in the college of San
Demetrio, he was sent to Naples to complete his education. It is
characteristic of the man that even in the heyday of youth he cared
little for modern literature and speculations and all that makes for
exact knowledge, and that he fled from his Latin teacher, the celebrated
Puoti, on account of his somewhat exclusive love of grammatical rules.
None the less, though con-genitally averse to the materialistic and
subversive theories that were then seething in Naples, he became
entangled in the anti-Bourbon movements of the late thirties, and
narrowly avoided the death-penalty which struck down some of his
comrades. At other times his natural piety laid him open to the
accusation of reactionary monarchical leanings.
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