Background
James Lacaita was born at Manduria in southern Italy, he practised law in Naples, and having come in contact with a number of prominent Englishmen and Americans in that city, he acquired a desire to study the English language.
James Lacaita was born at Manduria in southern Italy, he practised law in Naples, and having come in contact with a number of prominent Englishmen and Americans in that city, he acquired a desire to study the English language.
He first settled in Edinburgh, where he married Maria Carmichael, and then in London where he made numerous friends in literary and political circles, and was professor of Italian at Queen's College from 1853 to 1856.
Through the intervention of the British and Russian ministers James Lacaita was liberated, but on the publicationof Gladstone's famous letters to Lord Aberdeen he was obliged to leave Naples. He first settled in Edinburgh, where he married Maria Carmichael, and then in London where he made numerous friends in literary and political circles, and was professor of Italian at Queen's College from 1853 to 1856.
In the latter year he accompanied Lord Minto to Italy, on which occasion he first met Cavour.
In 1860 Francis II of Naples had implored Napoleon III to send a squadron to prevent Garibaldi from crossing over from Sicily to Calabria; the emperor expressed himself willing to do so provided Great Britain co-operated, and Lord John Russell was at first inclined to agree.
He was actively interested in a number of English companies operating in Italy, and was made one of the directors of the Italian Southern Railway Co.
He died in 1895 at Posilipo near Naples. An authority on Dante, he gave many lectures on Italian literature and history while in England; and among his writings may be mentioned a large number of articles on Italian subjects in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1857 - 1860), and an edition of Benvenuto da Imola's Latin lectures on Dante delivered in 1375; he cooperated with Lord Vernon in the latter's great edition of Dante's Inferno (London, 1858 - 1865), and he compiled a catalogue in four volumes of the duke of Devonshire's library at Chatsworth (London, 1879).
Lacaita married Maria Clavering Gibson-Carmichael, daughter of Sir Thomas Gibson-Carmichael. Their son Charles Carmichael Lacaita was a Member of Parliament and botanist.
