CABINET CYCLOPÆDIA. (continued 6)

With some few reverses, attendant on an entire change of actors, and his ignorance of the peculiar abilities of the company, to which he was not accustomed, his career on this new stage was equally successful. He wrote several comedies in verse, which became peculiar favourites. This success was the occasion of his being invited to Rome during the carnival: but his dramas did not succeed so well there. The actors, unaccustomed to his style, were unable to give them with any effect, and the Roman audience called out for Puncinello.

In 1750, he received an offer from the French court of an engagement for two years, on very advantageous terms. Goldoni hesitated a little about accepting it. A few years before, his brother had returned to Venice, a widower, with two children. Goldoni gave up to him all his property in Modena, and adopted the children, having none of his own. He made a good income in Italy; but he had no provision for old age: still he was unwilling to leave his native country—whose climate and people were dear to him—where he was honoured, loved, and applauded. He made some enquiries with regard to the possibility of getting a pension from the Venetian government; but this appearing a vain hope, he considered it right to close with the offer of the king of France. He hesitated the more before taking this step, as, although the engagement in question was but for two years, he felt that, once in Paris, and acquiring an honourable maintenance, it was probable that he should never see Italy again.

During the carnival of 1761, the last pieces he wrote for the Venetian theatre were represented: one, the last acted, was a sort of allegorical leave-taking, which was so understood by the audience; and the acclamations and adieus of the public moved him to tears. He left Venice in April 1761, accompanied by his wife. His mother was dead; his niece he placed in a convent, under the superintendence of a respectable family at Venice; his nephew was soon to follow him. As he passed through Italy, on his way to France, he was received at the various towns with distinction and kindness. He spent some little time at Genoa, with his wife's relations, and then they proceeded by slow stages to Paris.

Goldoni's débût as an author in the French capital was not a happy one. The Italian comedians there were not accustomed to regular comedies, which they were to learn by heart, but to the old style of their native farce, where the plot and arrangement of the scenes were all that was written, and they filled up the dialogue themselves. Goldoni wrote two or three pieces for them on this plan without success. His stay in Paris was, however, decided by the post of Italian master to the daughters of Louis XV. being bestowed on him. He knew so little of French, that he gained as much knowledge from the princesses as he imparted to them. His salary was very slender, but it was increased in the sequel; and his nephew also was provided for by the post of Italian teacher in the military school.

Goldoni was charmed by the French actors; and his ambition was excited to write a comedy to be represented by the excellent comedians who then flourished. His desire was fulfilled to the utmost. He brought out "Le Bourru Bienfaisant," into which he endeavoured to instil the spirit of French dialogue and plot with great success; so that Voltaire praises it as the best French comedy written since Molière. He wrote another on the same plan; but it fell to the ground, and he at last desisted from adding to the immense number of pieces of which he is the author.

He lived tranquilly and content with his moderate means. His niece was married at Venice; his nephew settled happily at Paris. The revolution did not, fortunately, disturb the repose of his last years. The National Convention confirmed his pension to him, and continued it to his widow after his death. Goldoni died in the year 1792, at the age of eighty-five. No man was ever more born for the career which he pursued. His heart was excellent, and his disposition gay. He never allowed himself to be cast down by adversity, and met the attacks of his enemies with good humour, or such replies as caused the laugh to be on his side. He is numbered by his countrymen as among the best of their authors,—an opinion confirmed by all those sufficiently cognisant with the Italian language and manners to enter into the spirit of his compositions.

ALFIERI

1749-1803.

The Italian poets of the early ages were eminently distinguished for their patriotism. The haughty spirit of Dante burst forth into indignant denunciations against the oppressors of his country; the gentler, but not less fervent, Petrarch was never weary of adjuring its rulers to bestow upon it the blessings of justice and peace; and the latter years of Boccaccio's life were ennobled by his public services, and his earnest endeavours to implant a love and reverence for literature in the minds of his countrymen. The pages of Roman history and the writings of Roman poets made them proud of the country which had given them birth, and which added to its moral grandeur, of having been once the sovereign and civiliser of the world,—the natural affection inspired by its being, from its fertility, the diversity of its woods, lakes, and mountains, and surrounding sea, the most beautiful country upon earth.

The national spirit died away in after times. The devastating wars carried on in the Peninsula by France and the emperor, the rise of minor principalities, and the struggles of rival states, so excited the passions and absorbed the interests of the Italians, that they became incapable of enlarged views for the good of their country. The depressing influence of courtly servitude checked the free spirit of the writers; Ariosto and Tasso were both conspicuous for personal independence of character; but they did not extend their love of liberty to any exertions for the redemption of Italy. A darker day was at hand. The Peninsula, divided and weakened, became a mere province. A Spanish viceroy reigned over Naples, and the northern portion was controlled by France and Austria. The Italians were taught to take pride in the virtues of slaves; in submission, patience, and repose. The prosperity of the country was gone, its trade destroyed, its armies annihilated. No scope was given to generous ambition; no career offered, by entering on which a man might exercise the peculiar privilege of the free—that of instructing their fellow countrymen: to be inoffensive to the ruling powers was the aim of all. The love of money—not the love of gain, for to gain was impossible, but mere parsimony, arising from the necessity of regarding the domestic expenditure as the only business of life—engrossed the fathers of families; the women were uneducated and degraded, and though they preserved, as is often the case in a depraved state of society, a nature more generous, artless, and kindly than the other sex, yet these virtuous feelings found no scope for their developement, except in the passion of love. While the law of primogeniture interested not only the large class of younger sons, but even the heads of families, who wished to prevent their children from marrying, to establish a system of society, which, beginning by subverting the best principles of morality, ended by destroying all social happiness. While the higher orders were thus occupied by money-saving and intrigue, the lower orders were tamed by hard labour, and rendered submissive by the priests. The writers were the servants of princes: they administered to the pleasures of their countrymen, without uttering one word that could call them from their state of debasement, or inspire a love of the active and disinterested virtues.

Full of talent as the Italians are, and formed by nature for the noblest scenes of action, doubtless "many a village Hampden" was born and died in obscurity and inaction; and yet this expression gives rise to a false notion. The peasants of Italy have no education, and, although infinitely superior in talent, perhaps, to any other peasantry in the world, are incapable of that generalisation of ideas which produces patriotism. But, among the better sort of gentry,—men of simple habits and strong good sense, among the men of science and the professors at the universities,—there were individuals who mourned over the ruin of Italy. These men did not so much dwell on the ancient greatness of Rome, as on the achievements of their countrymen during the middle ages. Literature had been revived by them; the arts had flourished among them: they were proud of the past, but they despaired of the present.

The voice of liberty was silent. The Italians hated and despised their masters, but never dreamed of rebelling against them. Tuscany was slothful under a mild sway, whose tyranny was never felt, except by the few who believed that they were not merely fruges consumere nati, and were bitten with a noble mania for benefiting their race. Piedmont was ruled by a prince, who, by cultivating in his subjects, not a martial, but a military spirit (a very different thing), gave his idle nobles something to do. Lombardy was crushed by foreign bayonets. The voice of liberty was silent, when the French revolution awoke the world, and the hope of freedom spoke audibly in the hearts of all; and, afterwards, when the victories of Napoleon crushed this hope, they could not impose a silence for ever broken. Its language is now felt and understood from one end of the country to the other, and the day must come when the oppressors will be unable to oppose the veto of mere physical force to the overpowering influence of moral courage.

It was while Italy yet reposed submissive and mute, that a poet was born, who dedicated all the powers of his mind to the awakening his countrymen from their lethargy—to strengthening their enervated minds, and spreading such knowledge and such sentiments abroad among them, as would at once reveal their degraded state, and give them energy to aspire to a better.

Vittorio Alfieri was born at Asti, in Piedmont, on the 17th of January, 1749. His parents were noble, wealthy, and respected. To these three circumstances Alfieri attributes many of the prosperous circumstances that attended his literary career. "Since I was born noble," he says, "I could attack the nobility without being accused of envy; since I was rich, I was independent and incorruptible; and the respectability of my parents prevented my ever being ashamed of my rank."

His father was named Antonio Alfieri, and his mother was Monica Maillard de Tournon, whose family, originally from Savoy, had long been established at Turin. His father was a man of blameless life: he had never entered on any public office, and was without a spark of that ambition which might have led him to seek distinction at court. He was fifty, five when he married, and his wife, though very young, was already a widow. Their eldest child was a daughter. Two years after, to the infinite joy of his father, Vittorio was born. He was put out to nurse, at a village called Rovigliasco, two miles from Asti; but such was the tenderness of his father, that he went on foot each day to see the child. This was a strong mark of affection, and testified also his simple and unostentatious disposition: for the Italian nobility usually love repose beyond all things, and their greatest pride is never to go on foot. This solicitude unfortunately cost him his life: he caught cold on occasion of one of his visits, and died after a few days' illness, leaving his wife about to give birth to another son, who, however, died in his infancy. She was an amiable and excellent woman, and still young when her second husband died; so that she was induced to marry a third time. Her husband was a cadet, of another branch of the Alfieri family; but, by the death of his elder brother, he in process of time inherited the wealth of his family, and became very rich. This marriage proved a very fortunate one. The cavaliere Giacinto was handsome and amiable; the couple grew old together in happiness; and the lady, as she advanced in years, gained the love and respect of all by her piety and works of charity and kindness.

On the marriage of his mother, Vittorio and his sister went to live in their father-in-law's house, who proved himself a kind parent to the orphans. Although his health was not robust, Alfieri's childhood was little interrupted by sickness; and his first grief was experienced at the age of seven, when his sister Julia was sent to a convent for her education. Although he was, at first, permitted to see her every day, yet he felt, on her removal from the parental roof, that violence of emotion and boiling of the blood which was apt to seize on him, in after life, when forced to separate from any one to whom he was warmly attached. Thus his sensibility developed itself early; and sensibility and pride, both exalted into passions rather than feelings, were always the prominent traits of his disposition, and which at last, from the excessive influence they exercised over him, generated that gloomy melancholy to which he was a victim.

Alfieri remained at home, under the tutelage of a worthy priest, named Don Ivaldi, with whose assistance he began to learn the rudiments of Latin. His disposition was, for the most part, taciturn and placid: now and then he became loquacious and gay in the extreme, and, at other times, the melancholy already nascent in his heart, filled him with strange and passionate thoughts. He was obstinate when treated unkindly, but readily yielded to affection; and, above all, he was susceptible, to a painful degree, of the sense of shame. When, as a punishment for childish faults, any sort of public penance was imposed on him, he endured such transports of agony as affected his health for weeks.

At the age of nine, his uncle, the cavaliere Pellegrino Alfieri, who was his guardian, returned from a tour in France and England, and visited Asti, on his way to Turin. He found his nephew happy under the domestic roof, but learning little or nothing; accordingly, he thought this a very bad state of things, and insisted that he should be placed at the public school at Turin, where ignorance, rather than knowledge, was taught, but where, as he would be neglected and enslaved, it was to be supposed that his education would prosper better than under the indulgent care of a fond mother. She was obliged to consent, and parted from her son with reluctance and tears. The boy's grief at the moment of separation was vehement; but it was quickly dissipated by the delight of travelling post, and the pleasure he took in bribing the postilions to go at their utmost speed. He was accompanied by a servant only; and, while the old man slept, the little fellow sat proud and gay in the carriage, as it whirled past village and town in quick succession. When arrived at Turin, his uncle received him kindly. He was at first depressed by the change of scene, and missed the caresses of his loving mother; but soon he became so joyous, and even riotous, that the cavaliere Pellegrino hastened to place him at the academy: and here he was, at the age of nine, torn from the domestic circle to which he was accustomed, at a distance from all his friends, isolated and abandoned. The only species of education, such as it was, entered upon at the academy, regarded their literary studies: the feelings were left to form themselves; lessons of morality and the duties of life making no part of the instruction afforded the pupils.

"The academy," Alfieri tells us, "was a large, handsome quadrangular building, with a large court in the middle; two sides of the square were occupied by the students, the other two by the king's theatre and royal archives. The side occupied by us, who were called of the second and third apartment, was opposite the latter; that occupied by the students of the first apartment being opposite to the king's theatre. The upper gallery on our side was called the third apartment, and was devoted to the younger boys and lower schools. The gallery on the ground floor was called the second, and occupied by the pupils rather more advanced in age: a portion of these studied at the university, another edifice adjoining to the academy; the rest received their education in the military college. Every gallery contained at least four chambers, each occupied by eleven youths, over which an assistant, or usher, presided,—a poor fellow, whose only payment consisted in being boarded and lodged free of expense, while he studied theology or law, at the university; or, if he were not a poor student, he was an old and ignorant priest. A third portion of the side destined to the first apartment was occupied by the king's pages, to the number of twenty or twenty-five, who were totally separated from us of the second, at the opposite angle of the court, and close to the galleries of the archives. We, the younger pupils, could not have been worse placed. On one side, was a theatre which we were only permitted to visit about five or six times during the carnival; on the other, the pages who attended on the court, and who, continually hunting and riding, appeared to enjoy much freer and happier lives than the poor imprisoned boys; besides these, we overlooked the proceedings of the first class, which was composed almost entirely of foreigners, Russian and German, with a large proportion of English;—this class was restrained by no rule except that of being in by midnight; and their apartment was a mere lodging house to them, instead of being a place of education."

Alfieri was placed in the third apartment: he had the luxury of a servant to attend on him; but the fellow, unchecked by superior authority, became a sort of petty tyrant over his young master: in all other respects, he was on an equality with the rest of his comrades.

The basis of the system of education consisted in strict imprisonment, little sleep, and unwholesome food. To this was added a certain degree of parrot knowledge of the Latin language: the boys were taught to construe Cornelius Nepos; but so little pains were taken, or, rather, so little power was there in their instructors to enlarge their stores of real knowledge, that Alfieri tells us, that not one of them knew who the men were whose lives they read; nor what the country, government, or times were in which they lived, nor even what thing government was. The boy made progress, however, in what he was taught: his emulation was excited, and his memory was cultivated; but, on the other hand, he grew sickly and stunted in growth, the effects of bad food and too little sleep. He had only his drunken, his dissipated servant to attend on him when he was ill; who often, on such occasions, left him half the day alone, which increased the constitutional melancholy of his disposition. His pleasures were few; and the want of all affectionate treatment blighted his life. It seems strange to us that his mother did not visit him, and that he never went home for a vacation: but such were the customs of the country, and he was brought up in conformity with them.

The spirit of emulation, caused him, in some degree, to distinguish himself, and he advanced to higher classes and attended lectures on philosophy, humanity, and mathematics; but such was the style in which they were taught, that, when he had gone through six books of Euclid, he was unable to demonstrate the fourth proposition; and, though he studied a whole year under the famous Beccaria, he did not comprehend a word of what he was taught. This is the less extraordinary, since, speaking the patois of Piedmont, Italian was as a foreign language; and, though he contrived to obtain a copy of Ariosto, he was unable to understand a word of it. His teachers were, for the most part, equally ignorant; so that while his time was devoted to Latin, his native language was a sealed book to him. He had a few relations at Turin, and when he became really ill, they interfered that he should have more sleep and better food; but he continued a puny and ailing boy.

Some few pleasures diversified his life. His uncle found that the education of his sister Julia was entirely neglected at Asti, and she was removed to a convent at Turin. She was fifteen—in love—and divided from the object of her affections. Her brother became her confidant: he visited her twice a week, and tried to inspire her with constancy and resolution; but youthful spirits were of more avail than the lessons of romance, and, in short time, she was consoled. Another pleasure he enjoyed was, when a relation took him, on one occasion, to the opera buffa, sung by the best comic singers of Italy. The opera was the "Mercante di Malmantile." The spirit and vivacity of the music made a profound impression on him, leaving, as it were, a trail of harmony in his ears and heart, so that for many weeks after he remained immersed in an excessive, but not painful, melancholy. During this time he abhorred and nauseated his usual studies, while a world of fantastic images crowded his mind; and had he known how, he would have composed verses, and have expressed the most lively emotions, had not all language in which to express them been denied to him, through the ignorance of his teachers. This was the first time that music exercised so great an influence over him, and it remained long impressed upon his memory. At all times he was excessively susceptible to the impressions made by harmony, and he found that vocal music, especially female voices, possessed a peculiar power to disturb and agitate his mind. Nothing, he tells us, awakened in him more violent or various emotions; and almost all his tragedies were conceived while in the act of listening to music, or a few hours after. One other pleasure that he enjoyed during this period, was spending a fortnight with his uncle at Cuneo. This little journey did his health good, and occasioned him infinite delight. It was here that he wrote his first sonnet, addressed to a lady admired by his uncle, and who pleased him. As he knew nothing of Italian, or, as it is called, Tuscan, this sonnet must have been very bad. It pleased the lady; but his uncle, who was a soldier, and of an austere disposition, and who, though imbued with sufficient knowledge of history and government, despised poetry, ridiculed the boyish effusion, and put all thought of writing another out of his head.

At the age of fourteen, the circumstances of his life were considerably altered. His guardian uncle died. By the Piedmontese laws, children of fourteen are considered, to a certain degree, of age, and are allowed the entire disposal of their incomes; while a trustee is appointed to prevent their alienating any part of the principal or real property. Alfieri was thus raised at once to independence; and, to add to his comfort, his servant, who had tyrannised over him, and who, unwatched, and unchecked, had fallen into the worst vices, was dismissed. Alfieri parted from him with regret, despite his ill-treatment, and showed the kindliness of his heart by visiting him twice a week, and giving him what money he could spare. He tells us that he can ill account for his attachment to one who had shown so little kindness to him: he could not attribute it to generosity on his part; but partly to habit, and partly to the talents of the man, who, besides being singularly sagacious, was accustomed to tell him long adventures and tales full of imagination and interest.

The first fruit he reaped from the death of his uncle was being permitted to attend the riding school, which had been before denied. He was then of diminutive stature and weak of frame, and little able to control his horse; but perseverance, and a great desire of success, supplied every other defect. To this noble exercise he owed the good health, robustness, and increase of stature, that he soon acquired. The next great event that followed was, his being removed from the second to the first apartment of his college. In the second, the students were mere boys, and they were kept in strict discipline; in the first, entire freedom and idleness was the order of the day. He made his entrance on the 8th of May, 1763. His comrades were almost all foreigners, many were French, a still greater number were English. An excellent table was served in the best style, and all breathed luxury, comfort, and freedom. Much amusement, a great deal of sleep and of riding, gave Alfieri renewed health and spirits. He spent his money on horses or dress. His trustee quarrelled with him for his extravagance, but that did not alter the state of things. With liberty and money he acquired friends and companions in every amusement and enterprise. "Yet," he says, "in the midst of this busy vortex, being little more than fourteen, I was not nearly so unreasonable as I might have been. From time to time, I felt a silent impulse within me to apply to study, and a good deal of shame for my ignorance, concerning the extent of which I never deceived myself, nor others. But, grounded in no one study, undirected by any, not really acquainted with a single language, I knew not how nor to what to apply myself. I read French romances, and conversed with foreigners, and forgot the little Italian I had before contrived to pick up from my Ariosto. At one time I took it into my head to immerse myself in the thirty-six volumes of Fleury's Ecclesiastical History, making extracts in French; but soon I threw it aside, and took to romances and the 'Arabian Nights.'"

Riding, and horses, and fine clothes were his passions. He and his friends went out in troops, leaping over every obstacle, fording rivers, and breaking down the unfortunate animals they rode, till at last no one would let them any. But these active exercises invigorated Alfieri's health, strengthened his frame, and filled him with spirit and resolution; preparing his mind to support, and even to make good use of, the physical and moral liberty he afterwards acquired.

The youth of the first apartment were perfectly free, but they were all young men: Alfieri was as a boy among them, being only fifteen; and it was considered right that his servant should attend him constantly, and act as a check upon him. The man who had replaced his former tyrant was a foolish, good-humoured fellow, who easily yielded to bribery and persuasion, and let his young master do as he pleased. But this did not satisfy the youth's pride; he resolved to be on an equality with his comrades, and, without saying a word to his valet, or to any one, went out alone. He was reproved by the governor, but repeated his offence immediately. On this he was put under arrest for a few days; but no sooner was his prison door opened, than, in open defiance, he went out again unaccompanied; and although, on the renewal of his offence, the term of his imprisonment was prolonged, it was without avail. At length he declared that his arrest must be perpetual, since as soon as he was set at liberty he should exercise the same privilege, being resolved not in any way to be on a different footing from his comrades; that the governor might remove him from the first, and replace him in the second apartment, but that he insisted upon being put in possession of all the rights of his companions. On this he was kept confined for more than three months; nor would he make any request to be liberated, but, indignant and stubborn, had died rather than have yielded. "I slept nearly all day," he tells us; "towards evening I got up from my bed, and, having a mattrass placed near the fireplace, I stretched myself upon it on the ground. Not choosing to receive the usual college dinner, I caused food to be brought into my room, and cooked pollenta and similar things at my fire. I never dressed myself, nor allowed my hair to be touched, and became an absolute savage. Though I was not allowed to quit my room, my friends were permitted to visit me; but I was sullen and silent, and lay like a lifeless body, not replying to any thing that was said; and thus I continued for hours, with my eyes fixed on the ground, and full of tears, though I never suffered one to escape from them."

This obstinacy must have annoyed his masters considerably, and they were, no doubt, glad to make use of the first fair occasion for restoring him to liberty. The marriage of his sister gave them a pretext, of which they availed themselves. Julia married count Giacinto di Cumiano on the 1st of May, 1764: the wedding took place at the beautiful village of Cumiano, ten miles from Turin. Alfieri enjoyed the spring season and his newly recovered liberty with intense delight, and, on his return to college, was admitted to all the privileges of the class of students to which he belonged. The control over his income being now almost entirely in his own hands, he launched out into a variety of expenses, the first of which was the purchase of a horse, a fiery but delicate animal, which he loved so passionately, that he could never after call him to mind without emotion: if it was ill, he could neither eat nor sleep. The delicacy of this beloved horse was the occasion of his buying another; and after that he bought carriage horses, and cab and saddle horses, till he had a stud of eight, to the great dissatisfaction of his trustee; but, as he could set his reprehensions at nought, he gave no ear to them, but plunged into every kind of expense, principally in dress, competing in extravagance with the English members of the university. In the midst of this vanity, the ingenuousness of his disposition manifested itself. He made display among the rich foreigners, who were his associates; but, when he was visited by his poorer friends and countrymen, who, though of noble birth, were yet straitened in means, he was accustomed to change his dress, to put on modest attire, and even to hide his finery, that he might not appear to possess any superiority over them: this delicacy of feeling extended itself to other parts of his conduct, and showed the genuine urbanity and benevolence of his disposition.

In the autumn of 1765, he made a short journey to Genoa with his trustee: this was the first time that he had left Piedmont; and here, for the first time, he saw the sea, the aspect of which transported him with admiration, and so exalted his imagination, that he says, if he had understood any language, or had had any poetry before him, he should certainly have composed verses. During this journey, to his infinite delight, he visited his native town, and his mother, whom, strange to say, he had not seen for seven years. There seems something incomprehensible in a state of society that should admit of the propriety, or, rather, enforce the necessity, of a boy of nine being separated from all maternal care, and left to struggle as he might, during the precarious season of childhood and of adolescence, without a parent's eye to watch over his well-being, and administer to his health and happiness. On his return to Turin, he was not a little proud among his countrymen of his journey to Genoa; but among the English, German, Polish and Russian students he felt the utmost rage and shame to think that they had seen countries so much more distant. This uneasy sense of inferiority inspired him with a passion for travelling, and made him resolve to visit the various lands of which his comrades were natives.

In the first impulse of expectant manhood, he had petitioned to be allowed to enter the army. As he grew older he began to find that his liberty was dearer to him than any military parade; but, as he did not withdraw his request, he found himself admitted, in 1766, as ensign into the provincial regiment of Asti. He had chosen this, as the duties attendant on it were slight, it being only required to assemble for review for a few days twice a year: however, this necessity annoyed him, especially as it forced him to quit the university, where he would have been well pleased to remain; but there was no help, and he left college, after an abode of nearly eight years. He took a small apartment in the same house with his sister, and spent all he could in horses and all sorts of luxuries, as well as in dinners given to his friends. A dislike of military discipline, and a love of travelling, made him soon after ask a year's leave of absence; and he set out for Rome and Naples under the care of an English Catholic, who was about to make that tour, as tutor to two young Flemish gentlemen. It was with great difficulty that he obtained the necessary permission; the king was averse to the nobles leaving the country, and it was only by a thousand petty artifices and intrigues that at last he succeeded in his wishes.

Agitated by an inexplicable disquietude of mind, ignorant of all with regard to literature and the arts, that could make travelling interesting. Alfieri had at this time but one pleasure in a journey, which was, going along the high road with the greatest possible speed. His companions were as little awake to rational inquiry as himself; and the only one among them, he tells us, who had common sense, was his valet, who also acted as courier,—a man named Elia, who served him for many years with the greatest fidelity. The first city at which the party stopped was Milan. They went to see the curiosities, and visited the Ambrosian library. The treasures of the collection were wasted upon Alfieri: when an autograph of Petrarch was shown him (perhaps the Virgil on whose cover the poet has recorded his passionate sorrow on the death of Laura), he, barbarian like, pushed it away, saying, it was nothing to him. This act did not arise from mere indifference; but partly from a grudge he felt against Petrarch, arising from his not being able to understand his poetry; and shame for his own ignorance took the guise of contempt of another's genius. On visiting Florence, the only object that called forth any emotion was the sight of Michael Angelo's tomb; when the recollection of the fame which had been acquired by this master of his art filled him with ideas that he could not define; and the thought rose in his mind, that those men only were truly great, who left some enduring monument of genius behind them. But these notions were vague and transitory; he lived only for the present hour, even while that afforded no one object to occupy or please him.

On leaving Florence, he hurried through Pisa and Siena; but such is the magic of the name, that the approach to Rome made his heart palpitate, and his torpid soul warmed into something like enthusiasm. He was charmed by the magnificent aspect which the eternal city presents as it is entered by the Porta del Popolo; and scarcely had he alighted at the hotel in the Piazza di Spagna, than he hurried off co behold the wonders of the place. Ignorance narrows the intellect, and takes the living colours from the imagination. Alfieri, after all, regarded coldly those objects which render Rome a city of absolute enchantment. He was best pleased with St. Peter's. At each successive visit, the solemn vastness of the mighty aisles of the cathedral made a deeper impression; the splendour of the architecture, the sublime stillness of its incense-breathing atmosphere, and the soft twilight that reigns beneath its dome, kindled his soul to something like poetic inspiration. But even these feelings could only for a few moments appease the restlessness that pursued him, and he hurried away from Rome with all the impatience of one ill at ease in himself. At Naples he grew still more disturbed and melancholy: music, which he loved, only tended to increase his gloom; and his reserve prevented him from forming any intimacies. All day he drove from place to place, in those droll little Neapolitan calesine, which go at such a prodigious rate under the guidance of their Lazaroni drivers,—"Not," he says, "that I wished to visit remarkable objects, for I had no curiosity nor knowledge about them, but merely for the sake of being on the road: I was never satiated of rapid motion, but a moment's quiescence filled me with annoyance." ... "And thus I lived, a riddle to myself, believing that I had capacity for nothing; feeling no decided impulse or emotion, except a continual melancholy; never finding peace nor quiet, yet not knowing what I desired; blindly obeying my nature, although I neither studied nor comprehended it. Many years afterwards I perceived that my unhappiness proceeded from the want, nay the necessity, which I have, to have at once my heart occupied by some worthy object, and ray mind by some ennobling pursuit; for, whenever either of these two fail me, I remain incapable of the other, satiated and weary, and beyond all things miserable."

In the midst of this disturbed and unprofitable state, he nourished the ardent desire to travel on and on, beyond the mountainous boundaries of his country, uncontrolled and alone. For this purpose he applied to the Sardinian minister; and, representing how correct his conduct was, and how capable he showed himself of managing his own affairs, he besought him to obtain leave from their sovereign, that he might detach himself from the tutor, and proceed alone. To his great joy, his request was complied with; and, with infinite delight, he left Naples for Rome, eager to make use of his entire independence, and to find himself solitary and lord of himself, on the high road, more than three hundred miles distant from his native Piedmont.

How little does mere freedom of will satisfy the mind, when not ministered to and filled by thoughts that go beyond the present moment. The aimless uneasiness of Alfieri was not to be dissipated by the mere ability of satisfying his craving for locomotion. He obtained leave of absence for another year, and permission to visit France and England: but the same spirit accompanied him of melancholy and ennui; and all objects were stale and unprofitable to his languid senses. Motive was absent; and his ardent feelings, left to prey on themselves, produced tears and regret but no power of finding a means of exercising them with advantage and happiness. If his ignorance was ever brought home to him, he was rendered uncomfortable, but felt no wish to improve. He tells us that, at Rome, he was accustomed to visit each day the count of Rivera, minister of Sardinia,—a worthy old man, who showed him every kindness, and gave him the best advice. One morning he found the count occupied in reading the sixth book of the Æneid; and when Alfieri entered, he signed to him to approach, and began to recite the beautiful lamentation for Marcellus. Six years before, Alfieri had translated, and known by heart, the greater part of Virgil; but he had now forgotten it, and felt thoroughly ashamed, but with little courage to amend; so that the result of this scene was only that he sullenly ruminated over his disgrace, and never went near the count again. The desire of some sort of interest drove him into a fit of avarice. He was slenderly provided with means for his ultramontane journey; and he resolved to save all he could in Italy, that he might not be restricted when among foreigners. He followed up his system of parsimony with his usual ardour, and carried it to an excess which became its cure, since he got weary of the privations and annoyances he thus brought on himself.

From Rome he proceeded to Venice, passing through Ferrara without a thought of Ariosto or Tasso; and Padua, without visiting either living professors, or the tomb of the illustrious dead in the neighbourhood. What was Petrarch to him? he again asked himself; he wrote in an unknown tongue, of which, after all, he felt ashamed of being ignorant. He was pleased with Venice, and was diverted by its amusements; yet the spring season brought his usual annual fit of melancholy, and he spent many days brooding over he knew not what, and weeping he knew not why. Spurred on by restlessness, he hurried away from Venice: he passed solitarily and ennuied through the beautiful cities of Lombardy, seldom presenting letters of recommendation, and always keeping out of the way of acquaintances: proud and shy, he hated new faces; and besides, his desire of travelling made him avoid the ties of friendship and even of love, though once or twice the smiles of beauty almost softened his heart. All his desire was to hasten to France, and to enjoy the delights he there promised himself. He was destined to be disappointed; for his ill-regulated imagination always exaggerated the pains and pleasures of the future, while it did not possess the better power of exalting and adorning the objects which in anticipation had appeared so desirable, and which in possession grew contemptible and barren.

One of the singularities of Alfieri's character was the extravagant hatred of France which he cherished all his life. He attributed this, in the first place, to a vehement childish dislike of his French dancing-master. Still he read nothing but French books, French was the language he commonly spoke, and he left Italy in eager anticipation of the pleasures of Paris. But Alfieri did not know his own nature; nor was he aware that he could find happiness through the medium of his passions and intellect only, while amusement and even dissipation had the effect of wearying and disgusting him. The circumstance of his first entrance into Paris sufficed to cloud his stay; nay, the feelings of his whole life were influenced by the painful impression then made. It was the month of August, in Italy so sunshiny and festal; a drizzling rain, accompanied by a chilling temperature of air, impressed him most disagreeably; the streets, houses, and people were all mean, dirty, and impertinent in his eyes; his illusions vanished, and, but for a sense of shame, he would on the instant have quitted the city he had come so far to visit. The lapse of a quarter of a century did not erase the profound traces of disgust and aversion that were then trenched in his mind. At the time, the principal effect of his disappointment was a little to diminish his passion for travelling; and to find that, beyond the Alps, he learned to appreciate the beauties of the divine country he had been so eager to quit.

He delayed his departure from Paris till January, and then hurried to London, which delighted as much as Paris had disgusted him; and he thus gives evidence of a fact of which many English, who have travelled, must be aware—that there is something in Italy and the Italians, in the rural beauty of the country, and in the unpretending but highly gifted natives, more congenial to our taste, than in the peculiar habits and manners of the French. Industry does here, in beautifying the landscape, what nature does beyond the Alps; while in France, there is a discomfort and a desolation apparent in the midst of its civilisation and plenty, which is singularly disagreeable. In this country, the roads, the inns, the horses, the women, all charmed Alfieri; the appearance of general competence, the activity of life, and the cleanliness and comfort of the houses, diminutive as they struck him to be, made an agreeable impression, which each successive visit renewed. Yet he led a strange life—avoiding society, although in the midst of it. He had been accompanied from Paris by a friend; and he amused himself, each morning, by driving him about town, and acting the coachman for him at night, sitting on the box for hours, and taking pride in his dexterity in extricating his carriage amidst the difficulties and confusion attendant on the vast multitude of equipages that throng round places of amusement during the London season. This did for a little while; then, in obedience to his wandering propensity, he made a tour to Portsmouth, Bristol, and Oxford. He was pleased with all he saw; and began to entertain a wish to settle in a country whose aspect was so agreeable, where the manners were simple, the women modest and beautiful, the laws equitable, and the men free. The enthusiasm he felt, made him disregard the melancholy generated by the gloomy climate, and the ruinous expense of living. He observes, and with justice, that Italy and England are the only countries in which it is desirable to live: the former, because there nature vindicates her rights, and rises triumphant over the evils produced by the governments; the latter, because art conquers nature, and transforms a rude ungenial land into a paradise of comfort and laughing abundance.

In June, he left England for Holland; and at the Hague for the first time became really in love, and at the same time his heart opened itself to friendship. The lady whom he admired, and who returned his affection, was unfortunately a married woman, but an Italian education and habits prevented any scruples of conscience from interrupting the felicity he enjoyed. His friend was Don José d'Alcunha, Portuguese minister in Holland. Alfieri describes him as clever and original, with a cultivated understanding and firm unbending character: with tact and efficacy the Portuguese awoke in his new friend shame for his idle, aimless life. It was a curious circumstance, he tells us, that he never felt a strong desire for mental improvement, except at such periods as when he was passionately in love, and his time so employed that he could bestow none of it on literature. In process of time, when he became worthily attached, he may have perceived in this, the beneficent action of the passions in our nature, when their objects are what they ought to be—ennobling and permanent.

After a period of great happiness, he was forced to separate from the lady to whom he was attached,—she being obliged to join her husband, who had gone to Switzerland; and Alfieri suffered the mildest of the punishments that result from loving one to whom you cannot consecrate your life. But though a separation, attended neither by disastrous incident nor infidelity, is the gentlest penance for such an error, it visited the young Italian in no gentle manner. It was a natural wish, as any one will acknowledge who has attended to his own sensations, on first being subjected to passionate sorrow, that which he formed—for being bled: prevented by his friend and a faithful servant from allowing this bleeding to be fatal, his grief became gloomy and taciturn; Holland grew hateful to him; and he returned to Italy with the utmost speed—never resting till he found himself at Cumiano, in his sister's villa, after a three weeks' journey, during which time he saw nothing and said nothing, communicating only by signs with his faithful servant, Elia, who never lost sight of him, and bore with exemplary patience his caprices and heedless tyranny.

This state of melancholy regret augmented his love of solitude, and engendered, moreover, a desire to study: he passed the winter at Turin, in his sister's house, seeing absolutely no society, and spending his time in reading. He turned over the pages of Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvetius, and Montesquieu; but his chief delight was derived from the perusal of Plutarch's lives. His mind was strongly excited by the heroic virtues of the great men of whom he read, and tears of mingled admiration and indignation gushed from his eyes. He felt the misfortune it was to be a native of Piedmont; and to have been born in a country, and at a time, when no scope was afforded for word or action, scarcely any for thought and feeling.

In the spring of 1769 he set out on another and a longer tour. He had been disappointed in a matrimonial project, proposed to him by his brother-in-law. The young lady was rich and beautiful, but she preferred a handsome young courtier to a man already remarkable for the eccentricity of his conduct and the sombreness of his disposition: for Alfieri, withdrawn from the common routine of society by his passionate and earnest nature, could but awkwardly and reluctantly fulfil the thousand minute duties which an Italian is accustomed to pay to his lady; nor, on this occasion, did love inspire him with that devotion of heart which might have proved acceptable in lieu of petty attentions. He was now twenty, and, according to the laws of his country, of age—so that his entire fortune was at his disposal: this consisted of an income of 2500 sequins, or about 1200l. a year, and a large sum of ready money; and, to augment the value of his possessions, he had acquired the habits of rational economy, which sprang from the scantiness of the allowance which his prudent trustee had made him. Thus he set out with "money in his purse," and no love in his heart, except the tender recollection of his half-extinguished Flemish flame; and if with a head not much fuller of ideas, yet with a thousand sentiments awakened, which afforded matter for thought. As he drove along, he read Montaigne, or reflected on what he read—a little galled by finding that he could not construe the Latin quotations, and still more so by being obliged to skip the Italian ones. Vienna and Berlin were hastily visited, and seen without pleasure: he had beheld the results of liberty in England, and he had read of them in Plutarch, and his natural sense of independence made him revolt from the military despotisms of the north. Instinctive good sense served him better than the philosophy of Voltaire, and he recognised the cloven foot of arbitrary power in the barrack capital of the philosopher of Sans Souçi. He hurried away from these mockeries of liberalism, and found more pleasure in the simplicity of the Swedes: the contrast which barren nature afforded, in these frozen regions, to the luxuriance and glory of Italy interested and pleased him; the velocity of his sledge, as he proceeded through the silent pine forests, and over the ice-covered lakes, fostered an agreeable melancholy; and he describes his spring journey from Sweden to St. Petersburgh with a vividness and beauty which it would spoil to abridge. Embarking at the first breaking up of the frost on the Gulf of Bothnia, his boat had to struggle through the floating ice; and the novelty of his situation was a source of amusement. "This is the country of Europe," he says, "most agreeable to me, from its savage rudeness; fantastic, gloomy, and even sublime, ideas are created in the mind by the vast, undefinable silence that reigns there, making you feel as if transported away from the globe." St. Petersburgh disappointed him; nor would he see the empress Catherine, whom he regarded as the murderess of her husband, and whose conduct—having failed in her promise of bestowing a constitution on her subjects—was unredeemed, in his eyes, by any mitigating circumstances.

From Russia he traversed Germany to Holland, and again visited England. His time, during his second visit to this country, was engrossed by an attachment for a lady of rank, who proved herself not only unworthy of the affection of the husband whom she betrayed, but the lover to whom she was false. The more violent passions of Alfieri were all roused to their utmost vehemence by the various chances of this adventure, which was attended by all those hairbreadth escapes, menacing dangers, and final ruin and misery, which usually wait upon intrigue in England. First it was love, accompanied by the "sin and fear" which attends on mystery and deceit; then separation came to drive him to despair. The London season over, the lady went to her country house near Windsor; and Alfieri could only visit her clandestinely, on such nights when her husband was absent in London. His impatience and agony during the periods of separation were only appeased by excessive exercise: he rode about all day, performing such feats of horsemanship as endangered his life. Leaping a five-barred gate, with his thoughts wandering to his lady, instead of being fixed on his bridle-hand, his horse fell on him, and dislocated his shoulder; but that did not prevent a visit to Windsor on the following evening, the last that he was destined to make. The servants observed and watched him, and the husband of the lady had intelligence of her infidelity; "and here," he writes, "it is impossible not to laugh at the contrast between English and Italian jealousy, so different are the passions in different characters, in another climate, and, above all, under other laws. Every Italian would now expect to hear of blows, poison, stabs, or, at least, of the imprisonment of the lady, under such violent provocation: nothing of all this happened, though the English husband adored his wife after his manner." It was much according to the present customs, that the English husband, besides instituting legal proceedings against his wife and her lover, called out the latter. The duel was, however, a very harmless proceeding: Alfieri could not fence, and his adversary was satisfied by merely drawing blood by a scratch in the arm, carefully abstaining from inflicting the wound or death which he had it in his power to bestow. A far deeper and more painful wound was reserved for the Italian, when he learned how grossly the lady had deceived him. A groom of her husband had formerly been her lover: he still lived in the house; and, fearing that his lord would risk his life in an encounter with Alfieri, he hastened to inform him that the lady was totally unworthy such a chivalrous encounter. All these disgraceful circumstances came out on the trial. Alfieri, maddened and enraged, was yet unable, at first, to separate from his treacherous mistress. They travelled together in England, he furious at his own weakness, and perpetually struggling to vanquish it; till, seizing on a moment when shame and indignation were stronger than love, he left her at Rochester, on her way to France with a relative, and returned to London. In after times, the chief impression left on his mind from this adventure was, a feeling of mixed respect and gratitude towards her husband, who spared both his life and his purse, neither killing him, nor demanding damages: the first the English noble, apparently, had at his mercy; but it is unlikely, under all the circumstances, that the latter should have been awarded him, to any great extent.

After tempests like these, it was long before the impetuous and sensitive soul of Alfieri settled into any thing like calm: paroxysms of rage, love, grief, and despair succeeded one to the other, and his only relief was derived from locomotion. He left London, and after visiting his friend Alcunha at the Hague, he hurried on to Paris; he traversed France, and entered Spain, struggling with the passion that warred within him, and devoured by the gloomiest melancholy. At Barcelona he bought two Spanish horses, and with these resolved to proceed on his journey to Madrid. His carriage went on first, under the care of the servants and muleteers; and he followed, chiefly on foot, his beautiful Andalusian trotting beside him with the docility of a dog. This mixture of idleness and change—of solitude and independence—soothed his disturbed mind. He was given up to endless reverie, now engrossed by melancholy and moral trains of thought; now possessed by images wild, terrible, or gay. He knew no language, and could express nothing that he felt—all was confused and vague, and mingled with violent transports of grief and despair. He spoke to no one; and his taciturn, self-devouring misery irritated him almost to madness. His faithful servant, Elia, who followed him during all his journeys, had nearly become the victim to an explosion of the pent-up volcano. In combing the count's long tresses,—which it was the fashion then to wear,—he accidentally pulled one hair; and Alfieri, starting up like lightning, hurled a candlestick at his head, which struck him on the temple and inflicted a wound. Elia's Italian nature was roused, and he flew on his master. Other people interfered, and no more harm was done. Alfieri told his servant that he might kill him if he chose: he deserved it, and would take no precautions against his vengeance; and he praises his own courage in thus exposing himself, and the magnanimity of the man for not rising in the night and murdering him as he slept. The whole scene is inexplicable to our northern imaginations, and borders on the excesses of savage nature. "It would be difficult for any one," says Alfieri, "to understand the mixture of ferociousness and generosity on both sides, who has not had experience of the manners and hot blood of the Piedmontese."

After a journey through Spain and Portugal more savage, wild, and solitary than was even his wont. 1772. Ætat. 23. Alfieri returned to Turin; and here he seemed to be in greater danger than he had ever been of losing all the exaltation of character and feeling that clung to him despite his excesses, his ignorance, and the total absence of all mental culture. He took a magnificent house, and fitted it up with luxury and taste. He had a circle of friends, who formed themselves into a society, with laws and regulations. One of their amusements was a sort of literary budget, to which the various members contributed writings for the recreation of the general society. Alfieri wrote several papers, which obtained a good deal of applause: he had a turn for satire, and that is always a popular style of writing in a coterie. These compositions were all in French.

A worse degradation than this sort of vegetative dissipation awaited the count: he became a cavaliere servente. The lady was of rank, a good deal older than himself, but of extraordinary beauty. She was noted for her gallantries; and Alfieri, who was not in love, her style of beauty even not being exactly to his taste, was drawn in, at first, by mere idleness, and a belief in the excessive attachment she bore him. Soon a most vehement passion engrossed him. Friends, diversions, even horses, were neglected; from eight in the morning till twelve at night he was continually with her—discontented with his servitude, but unable to stay away.

It is difficult to understand, and impossible to sympathise with, the sort of frenzy he describes. He did not esteem the lady, and he despised himself for the humiliating state to which he was reduced. The situation of a cavaliere servente is, we are told by high English authority in such matters, "no sinecure." To be constantly in attendance is its chief duty. A cavaliere sits with his lady, drives with her, walks with her, goes to assemblies and the opera with her: he follows her like her shadow, and no matrimonial exigence can equal the total abnegation of all independent occupation to which the cavaliere must submit. The lady, indeed, may equally become weary; but an Italian woman is used to this excess of indolence. Her life is monotonous, her passage from one amusement to the other invariable, sameness forming the essence of her existence: nothing animates it except love, scandal, or quarrelling: these, and the natural vivacity of southern blood, which can diversify the indolence which would otherwise mantle over and incrust every faculty. But all this was torture to the fiery spirit of the count, who, born for better things, struggled with his fetters, and roared like a lion in the toils. His slavery lasted for two years. At one time, the nervous irritation produced a violent and inexplicable malady, which the wits of Turin declared he had invented exclusively for himself. He was unable for several days to swallow aliment in any shape; and the convulsions brought on by any attempt to force it on him almost deprived him of life. At another time, he acquired resolution enough to scheme a journey to Milan, and actually set out; but scarcely had he passed the gates of Turin than his heart failed him, and he returned, burning with indignation against himself, to resume his chains. His friends saw and pitied his miserable state, and their compassion aggravated his sufferings, while it did not enable him to rise above the enthralment. Day after day, month after month, he formed new resolves to extricate himself, and for a long time in vain.

At length, in the February of 1775, being now twenty-six years of age, he, in desperation, came to a determination to break off the disgraceful intercourse. His old remedy of change of place had proved of no avail, so he resolved to remain on the same spot; to shut himself up in his own house, which was opposite that of the lady, but to receive no letters, hear no messages, and to be induced by no failing of the heart ever to behold her more. In token of his fixed purpose, he cut off his long hair, and sent it to a friend, as a proof that he could not present himself in society so shorn and disfigured.

And now a better day dawned on the tempest of passion that darkened his soul. In Lisbon he had been acquainted with the abate Caluso, a man of learning and talent, who had, in some degree, awakened in him a desire for knowledge, while, with the utmost forbearance and kindness, he tried to lighten the shame inspired by every glimmering light that displayed his excessive ignorance. They had passed many long evenings together, and Alfieri preferred his instructive but unpretending conversation to the gaieties of society; and here he felt an awakening of that dormant power of composition which afterwards was to expand into worthy and perennial fruit. In Turin, also, he was acquainted with several literati; and now, a voluntary prisoner, and passing many long hours in entire solitude, unaware and almost unsought, a true, strong, and enduring love of knowledge sprang up within him, never after to be weakened or destroyed. The first token of the spirit of composition, was a sonnet in commemoration of the freedom he had acquired. Some years before, in Paris, he had bought a collection of Italian poets, and by reading them had gained a slight knowledge of versification, and of his native language; yet so ludicrously imperfect was this, that, when he showed his sonnet to a literary man, the first advice he received was to learn to spell. Orthography, grammar, and rhythm were alike defective in his production. He was not discouraged. This same friend, father Paciaudi, had given him the "Cleopatra" of cardinal Delfino. Alfieri fancied that he could write a better tragedy himself; and he began one on the same subject. He consulted his friends upon it, and tried to gain some instruction as to style and poetic laws, of which, hitherto, he had remained in profound ignorance. His house became a sort of academy; while he, desirous of learning, but proud and indocile, wearied himself and all around him by his alternate fits of industry and despondency. At length, a tragedy and a farce were the result of his endeavours, and both were acted on the same nights, at the theatre of Turin, with applause, on two consecutive evenings, and were given out for a third representation. But Alfieri by this time began to discover the entire want of merit of these productions: which prove, as we may judge from the passages he has preserved, that ideas and feelings are of no avail in composition, where there is a total absence of style, and an absolute incapacity of finding language in which to clothe the naked and unformed conceptions of the brain. On the third night, therefore, Alfieri prevented the representation; and on the same night he was seized by so vehement and burning a wish to deserve the applause of an audience, that, he tells us, no fever of love had ever assailed him with similar impetuosity.

"And thus," he says, "at the age of seven and twenty, I entered into the difficult engagement with the public and myself to become a writer of tragedies; and these were the props I had to sustain me in my undertaking,—a resolved, obstinate, and untamed spirit; a heart boiling over with all sorts of emotions, among which predominated the transports of love, and a profound and indignant abhorrence of every species of tyranny; a very slight recollection of the French tragedies I had seen acted, having read and studied none; an entire ignorance of the rules of the drama; and a total incapacity to command the language of which I made use;—all this was surrounded by a husk, not so much of presumption, as of petulance, and an impetuosity of character which stood in the way of my ever, except with reluctance, acknowledging, investigating, or giving ear to truth."

The first thing he found he had to do, was to apply himself to a spelling-book and grammar: this necessity was not admitted without a struggle; but the ardour of his enthusiasm enabled him to triumph over these petty but perplexing and irritating obstacles; and he gave himself up to the study of language with a mixture of impatience and perseverance that kept his mind in a perpetual tumult. He was under the necessity of driving away all French words and forms of speech from his mind, and of imbuing his thoughts in the idiom of Tuscany,—a work of unspeakable labour, uniting the studies of a man with those of a child, and sufficient to have overcome the resolution of any temper less ardent and ambitious than his own. After all, it must be acknowledged that it was to a great degree an insuperable difficulty; and, though overcome, in appearance, by Alfieri, yet in composition he had always two labours,—that of giving birth to ideas, and that of examining with the attention and scepticism of a foreigner the words in which he clothed them. This, perhaps, is the cause, that although, in process of time, his prose style became unexceptionable, and that of his tragedies full of fire and strength, his lyrics are such lamentable failures.

For nearly a year he was given up to the ungrateful task of clearing away the rubbish of another language, and placing the foundation stones of a pure and classic Italian. He retired to a village near Turin, that his attention might not be called off; and there, with a literary friend, he laboured at all that nauseates a schoolboy, with the still greater disgust of mere verbal difficulties which is felt by a man. After a year of much industry, he began to be aware that he should never attain his object as long as he merely translated himself from the French, which had become the language of his thoughts; and he resolved to pass six months in Tuscany, to learn, to hear, speak, think, and feel Tuscan only.

In this journey he sought the acquaintance of the first literary men, and exerted himself strenuously to acquire the knowledge of which he was so deficient. He never deceived himself by fancying his deficiencies were less than they were. He was born endowed with genius; uncultivated and empty of all knowledge as his mind was, yet it was filled with thought and feeling, and, during his solitary journeys and long incommunicative days of reverie, he had studied his own character. At one time he had kept a journal, in which he put down not only his actions, but their motives, investigating his moral nature in its inmost recesses. This was an exercise of mind which, joined to his natural talent, peculiarly adapted him to developement of feeling and motive, which is the essence of the tragic art; and it was towards this species composition that, from the first, he felt himself irresistibly impelled.

He had now fully entered on his dramatic enterprise. Several months before, he had written his tragedies of "Philip" and "Polinices," in French prose, which with unwearied industry, he put into Italian verse three or four several times; endeavouring to form a rhythm adapted to dialogue, and to concentrate and simplify his style as much as possible. While studying Italian, he had also applied himself to re-learning Latin; and the tragedies of Seneca suggested other subjects. "Antigone," "Agamemnon," "Orestes," and "Don Garzia," were all conceived, and in part written, while he was indefatigable in the labour, it cannot so well be said of polishing his language, as of modelling and remodelling it, as his greater use of Tuscan, and his critical taste suggested.

He had now an aim in life, from the pursuit of which he never deviated, but followed it up with incredible enthusiasm and perseverance. His labours were great in literature, yet confined chiefly to the formation of style; and he translated Sallust, and other Latin authors, for the sake of improving in force and conciseness. 1777. Ætat. 28. He did not continue in one place: after a few months spent at Florence, he returned to Turin, recalled by the love of his friends and his stud: but during the following spring he obtained the necessary permission of the king to quit Piedmont and return to Tuscany, for the purpose of imbibing at the purest source that energetic and concise language, which he considered yielded in elegance and force of expression to no other in the world.

As the city where the purest Tuscan is spoken. Alfieri visited Siena, and spent the summer there. He there formed an intimacy which served to encourage him in his laborious pursuits; for he tells us he was never capable of arduous and sustained undertakings, except when the feelings of his heart were exercised by an intercourse of friendship or love. Francesco Gori was of ignoble birth, and his ostensible pursuits were those of traffic, which he pursued more for the sake of pleasing his family than for gain. In the obscurity of his warehouse he occupied himself with classical literature, and nurtured an admirable and delicate taste for the fine arts. Extreme philanthropy formed the essence of his character, and a warm-hearted sympathy, that led him to forgive and love all mankind. The idle and opulent nobles of the city could not, by their worthlessness, excite his hatred or contempt. With Tacitus in his hand, and the pure love of liberty in his heart, how could he hate the victims of tyranny? he might exclaim, with a poet of modern days, whose political principles were equally derived from the sensibility of his heart,—

Self-knowledge deracinated pride in himself, and contempt for others; and thus, humbly occupied in his shop, he could extend forbearance to all, except the primal causes of the degradation of his countrymen; while his only happiness was derived from books, and his chief grief from comparing himself and his times with the men and times of which he read.

There is a simplicity in Italian manners that renders the friendship between count Alfieri and Gori, the mercer, by no means extraordinary. To the sympathy produced by an agreement in opinions was added the respect which Alfieri felt for the virtuous qualities of his unpretending friend. Their talk was of the ancient glory of their country, and of the literary ambition of Alfieri. In the course of conversation, Gori suggested the conspiracy of the Pazzi as a good subject for a tragedy. Alfieri was ignorant of the history of the republic of Florence, and had never heard of the Pazzi. Gori placed the Florentine annals of Machiavelli in his hands. Machiavelli (whatever his motives were for writing "The Prince") was an enthusiastic republican. He tells us in his letters, that while writing the history, he delighted himself by exposing the conduct of the princes who had ruined Italy: his spirit of freedom found an echo in Alfieri's heart, and so sharpened his hatred of despotism, and his love of liberty, that, throwing aside his tragedies, he wrote a treatise on tyranny,—a work of eloquence, but rather a juvenile ebullition of feeling, than an argumentative essay.

On the advance of winter, Alfieri transferred himself to Florence; and here an event happened that altered the colour of his future life, through the influence of a constant attachment, which, accompanied by esteem for the good qualities and talents of its object, remained fixed in his heart to the end of his life.

Louisa de Stolberg, countess of Albany, was at that time twenty-five years of age, beautiful and full of talent. Her rank and wealth gave her a distinguished place in society. She was the wife of the last of the Stuarts who made pretensions to the throne of England, who unfortunately disgraced his illustrious house, and even the private station to which he was reduced, by habits the most deplorable. Alfieri now regarded his future prospects as fixed: he had long determined never to marry, considering that, under the despotic government to which he was a subject, the ties of husband and father would add weight to the chains imposed upon him: attached for life to a woman whom he esteemed worthy of him, and beyond all things ambitious of distinguishing himself as an author and a defender of the cause of liberty, he began to put into execution the schemes which had long presented themselves to his imagination, for acquiring entire personal freedom. The nobles of Piedmont were in a peculiarly enslaved state: they could not quit the territories of their sovereign except by especial leave, granted for a limited time; nor could they publish any writings in a foreign country, without the licence of their native prince, under penalty of a fine, and even imprisonment, "if" (so the law was expressed) "it was necessary to make a public example." These shackles were intolerable to a man of independent mind, bent upon giving testimony of his abhorrence of despotic rule: but few men would have freed themselves at the cost that Alfieri paid. He came to a resolve to make a donation of the whole of his property to his sister Julia, reserving to himself only the annual income of 1400 sequins, or about 600l. a year, the half of his actual receipt. To execute this design, the king's permission was necessary, who readily gave it, "being," says Alfieri, "as willing to get rid of me as I was to emancipate myself from his authority."

The transfer, however, was not completed without a good deal of annoyance; and Alfieri was irritated, at one time, into making a declaration, that, if his brother-in-law would not receive the donation, he must the count's abandonment of his whole property; and that he would resign his claim to every possession rather than be fettered by the laws attendant upon keeping it. In the exaltation of his imagination, he almost imagined that this latter offer would be acted on; and, finding himself reduced to merely a few thousand sequins of ready money, he fell into his second fit of avarice, selling his horses, and all his superfluous plate, furniture, and even dress, renouncing the Sardinian uniform, to which he had adhered, from boyish vanity, even after quitting the service. He spent a good deal of money in books; but this was his sole expense; while his abstemiousness of living, directed by economy, became of the most rigid kind. Thus, even in extremes, resolved never to marry, resolved to be an author, he completed sacrifices, which a thousand circumstances might afterwards have caused him to regret, but which, he assures us, he never for a moment repented. He did not confide the secret of this change in his affairs to the countess until it was past recal; for, as their ultimate effect was to render their union more stable and permanent, he felt that she might consider it right, as a mark of her disinterestedness, to oppose them. When all was over, her blame was of no avail, and she forgave the mystery he had practised.

These various annoyances, joined to the perturbations of love, and the ardour of his literary application, occasioned an illness from which he only recovered when the season of summer brought that healthiness of feeling, that lightness of spirit, and that energy for composition, which summer and its heats always imparted to his constitution. During this summer, Alfieri, as he tells us, "in a frantic delirium of a love of freedom," wrote his tragedy of the "Pazzi," and that of "Mary Stuart" (Mary Queen of Scots); the latter at the request of the countess of Albany. During the following year he completed these and made the first sketch of "Rosmunda," "Ottavia," and "Timoleon." Since his tragedies have become so numerous, and many of his best are written, it will be as well to glance over them, and to give some account of his progress and success in an art to which he devoted his life and fortune.

Energy and conciseness are the distinguishing marks of Alfieri's dramas. Wishing to bring the whole action of the piece into one focus, he rejected altogether the confidantes of the French theatre, so that his dramatis personæ are limited to the principals themselves. The preservation of the unities of time and place also contributed to curtail all excrescences; so that his tragedies are short, and all hear upon one point only, which he considered the essence of unity of action. Thus, in the "Merope," there are but four interlocutors, the queen and her son, his foster-father, and the tyrant. Instead, therefore, as is the case in the French dramas, of the action being carried on by a perpetual talk about it, at once tedious and unnatural, the interest is always at its height between the parties themselves; and it is singular, in the "Merope" in particular, with what talent and success he keeps the action in perpetual progress, and the passions developed by such slender means. It was the turn of Alfieri's character to consider it a duty in an author rather to conquer difficulties than to acquire facilities. He would read no other tragedians, for fear of imitating them, and abstained from a perusal of the great master of the art, Shakspeare, from the same mistaken notion. Genius need not fear to be imitative; but genius, unaided by cultivation, and by a study of what has gone before, can never surpass what is already written: it were as if a scientific man were to refuse to be initiated in the discoveries of science, that he might pursue his labours in a new and original path. Thus he might, we will say, re-invent gunpowder and printing, but never a new law and a new power. To use a more homely illustration, it were as if an agriculturist refused to manure the ground, and was bent on forcing the native soil, to produce by labour what would arise with greater fertility and ease if aided by extraneous nutriment. It is a law of mechanics, never to waste power, but to proportionate on all occasions the means to the end. If, instead of refusing to read the finest dramatic works, Alfieri had studied in them the genius and essence of the art; he might; instead of simply restricting his invention to the bald and inconclusive expedient of contracting the personages of his drama, have invented some original method of combining the simplicity of design consequent on an observance of the unities, with a more natural and inforced arrangement of plot, and with a greater variety and truth of character.

The great distinction between Shakspeare and almost every other dramatic writer arises from his developement and variety of character: all his personages are individuals. In other authors, we have a lover, an ambitious man, a tyrant, or a victim of tyranny; but in Shakspeare it is not the passion that makes the man, but the peculiar character of the person that gives reality and life to the passion. Thus Richard III. and Macbeth are both ambitious; but how differently do their respective dispositions modulate their conduct and feelings! The cruel, remorseless Richard can never, in a single line he utters, be mistaken for the weak, vacillating usurper, whose cruelties result from the necessities of his situation, and not from inborn ferocity of character. Juliet, Imogen, and Rosalind, are alike girls in love; but how variously do they display their sentiments! the ardent Italian, the fond, devoted wife, and the sprightly, spirited daughter of an exiled prince, are all individuals characterised by distinctive marks; so that a painter would give to each a physiognomy utterly dissimilar the one from the other. If Alfieri had read Shakspeare, he might have discovered and appreciated this incomparable mark of his excellence; and his knowledge of the human heart would have led him to imitate a model which, if succeeded in, could not, from its very nature, bear any resemblance to mere plagiarism. He himself felt that one tyrant should not quite resemble another, nor one lover be but the mirror of another: but so it is with him, with few exceptions—situation, not character, forms the interest of his pieces.

Besides this, Alfieri was not an imaginative poet: his sonnets and longer poems are failures; his tragedies are vacant of ideal imagery; his sensible objects are never animated by a soul infused into them by the speaker; his daggers and poisons, and all the other tragic paraphernalia, are the mere things themselves—the poet's eye never gives "to airy nothing a local habitation and a name." His inventive powers consisted in being able to conceive situations of passion and interest, and giving to his personages feelings and language at once natural, powerful, and pathetic.

His mode of writing his tragedies shows, indeed, how spontaneous was his conception of the action of a piece, how mechanical the effort by which he clothed it in verse. He was accustomed to throw off the design of the intended action in a sketch of a few pages, and then to lay it by: after an interval, he read this sketch, and, if it pleased him, he arranged the plot into acts, and scenes, and speeches, putting down every idea that presented itself, and the whole in prose; and again he put aside his labour for future consideration. If, on reading it over, he felt his imagination warmed and excited, and the ideas renew themselves in his mind vividly and forcibly, then he completed his work by versifying it. This is not the routine which a genuine poet follows: something of the improvisatore's art is inherent in him, and he writes "in numbers, for the numbers come."

"Philip" was the first of Alfieri's tragedies: it was originally written in French prose; and he was so well pleased with its conduct, that he was never weary of composing and recomposing it in Italian verse, till he was satisfied that the language was equal in vigour to the ideas it expressed. The subject of "Philip" is the death of don Carlos, prince of Spain; and the contrast of character in the three principal persons is finely conceived and well executed. There is the obdurate, deceitful, cruel tyrant. His son, educated near him, in perpetual fear and suspicion, is never his dupe: he sees through all his subterfuges, and perceives the snares laid for him in his pretended mercies; and love, while it causes him to expose himself to his father's vengeance, only renders him doubly watchful and cautious. Isabella, on the contrary, a daughter of France, at the same time that, from feminine delicacy, she is more restrained in her feelings, yet is unsuspicious, unguarded, and ready to give credit to the professions of those around. Her heart opens itself readily to hope; while that of her lover is impassive to every delusion, and he regards with terror and grief the peril to which, in her generous trustingness of nature, she heedlessly exposes herself.

As the genius of Alfieri led him to depict the passions in their simplest though most energetic form, unaccompanied by the influence of manners, the metaphysical subtleties of Shakspeare, or the wild, but deeply interesting intricacy of plot of Calderon and our old dramatists, so classical subjects were treated by him with peculiar felicity. "Agamemnon" and "Orestes" are among his best dramas: the dignity and tenderness of Electra, the remorse and struggles of Clytemnestra, and the haughty, rash disposition of Orestes, have more of truth, of nature, and grace than is to be found among any modern tragedies on similar subjects: but this very simplicity becomes, to a certain degree, baldness in modern subjects; and though the conspiracy of the "Pazzi" was written, he says, with a delirious enthusiasm for liberty, there is a want of developement and relief that renders it more like the sketch of a tragedy, than one filled out in all its parts. "Virginia," equally pregnant with the spirit of liberty, has more grace and more pathos.

While the mind of Alfieri was thus fully occupied by the composition of his dramas, he was happy in the enjoyment of the friendship and love of the persons dearest to him in the world. He was the amico di casa of the countess of Albany; that is, he spent his evenings in her society, and attended her in mornings during her visits and excursions: he kept up a constant correspondence with Gori, at Siena; and the abbate Caluso, the friend who had first awakened his desire for literary composition, many years before, at Lisbon, and to whom he was warmly attached, came from Turin, and spent a whole year at Florence, that he might enjoy his society. But the tranquil course of happiness is seldom allowed to human beings, especially when they feel and acknowledge their perfect well-being, and repose content on the accomplishment of their desires. The conduct of the unfortunate prince, who was the countess of Albany's husband, poisoned every enjoyment, and, at last, forced his wife to separate herself from him. Given up to the most degrading vice,—in his drunken fits his ferocity and madness endangered her life, and she lived night and day, haunted by the terror inspired by his outrages. Alfieri exerted himself to obtain permission from the government for their separation; and, that being obtained, she retired to a convent in Florence, and afterwards, under the sanction of the pope, she removed to another convent at Rome.

Alfieri found that thus he had succeeded in saving the life of his friend; but the separation necessary to prevent any injurious opinions being formed as to the motives of his interference, was a cruel reward for his exertions. Florence grew hateful to him in her absence; he became incapable of every occupation, and his whole thoughts were bent on contriving their re-union: it was matter of difficulty, but not insuperable to his earnest endeavours. After some months, the pope allowed her to quit her convent, and to take up her abode in the palace of cardinal York; and Alfieri, having already quitted Florence and spent some time at Naples, ventured at last to fix himself at Rome also, having, as he tells us, paid court, made visits, and employed a thousand servile and humiliating arts, from which his nature revolted, to obtain the sufferance of the pope for his residence in the same city as the countess. No honours, no glory, no worldly advantage, could have induced him to submit to what he considered the excess of meanness and degradation; love alone exalted the debasement in his eyes.

Now again he was happy: he lived at the villa Strozzi, near the baths of Dioclesian. He spent the long mornings in study, never leaving his house except to ride over the solitary and uncultivated country around Rome, whose immense and lonely expanse invited him to reverie and poetic composition. He spent the evenings with the countess, retiring at eleven to his tranquil home, which, divided from all others, rural though in the city, and surrounded by objects of antique grandeur and natural beauty, was an abode such as Rome only in the world can afford, and peculiarly adapted to the noble poet's temper, character, and occupations.

His imagination received its happiest inspirations during this period. Besides continual labour on his former compositions, he wrote the tragedies of "Merope" and "Saul," both conceived and executed with a fervour of inspiration that allowed him no pause between the various operations into which he divided the composition of a tragedy. The "Merope" was written in a sort of indignant burst, to prove that the tragedy of Maffei on the subject, could be easily surpassed. The "Saul" emanated from reading the Bible, in the study of which he at that time occupied himself, and which awoke in him a desire to write several dramas on scriptural subjects; had it not been that, fond of forming resolutions and of adopting voluntary chains, since he cast away and abhorred all others, he had determined to limit his tragedies to twelve. The "Saul" and "Merope" caused him to exceed this number by two; but he would not be allured to go beyond.

The "Saul" is, there can be little question, the chef-d'oeuvre of Alfieri: character forms the basis of the interest, and the situations are deeply pathetic. Saul, in some degree, reminds the reader of king Lear. The Hebrew king is not, like Shakspeare's dethroned monarch, thrust from his state, and turned out by his children, a victim to the pitiless elements, and, more bitter still, the sense of undeserved injury from those whose duty it was to foster and shelter him. The children of Saul, and his son-in-law David, surround him with protestations of duty and a heartfelt wish to soothe him by their affection and care; but he is struck by God; prosperity has departed from his house, victory from his banner; and his vacillating reason discerns rebellion and dethronement in the very submissions of those around him. He struggles with the sense of ill fortune, and the sad consciousness of the occasional aberrations of his intellect; now lamenting the days of his prosperous youth, now melted to tenderness by the caresses of his children; and again, seized upon by suspicion, envy, and pride, he wildly and madly casts from him every support and hope, to find himself, in the end, alone, defeated, lost; till in a transport of shame and despair, he ends a life so tarnished and abhorrent. "Saul" is the best of Alfieri's tragedies; and, if we were called upon to point out his best scene, we should select the second act of that play.

1782. Ætat. 33.

Alfieri felt proud and happy when he had completed his fourteen tragedies. "That month of October," he writes, "was memorable to me, since I enjoyed a repose no less delicious than necessary, after so much labour: full to the brim of vainglory, I breathed no word of my achievements to any but myself, and, with a sort of veiled moderation, to her I loved; who, through her affection for me, probably, seemed well inclined to believe that I was capable of being a great man, and always encouraged me to do all I could to become one." His works, also, were becoming known. A few of the nobility of Rome formed themselves into a company, and acted his "Antigone," in which he took the part of Creon: the representation was crowned with success. He was, besides, in the habit of reading his tragedies in society, partly for the sake of the mute criticism displayed by the attention and interest they excited in his audience; and, under the superintendence of his friend Gori, four among his dramas were printed at Siena.

But this very celebrity was the cause of the disaster that hung over his head, and, by drawing attention to him, engendered enmity and disturbance. His familiar intercourse with the countess, and the daily habit of his life, in forming a part of the society she gathered around her, began to excite censure: this roused at once his fears and indignation. His mode of life was in strict accordance with the notions of propriety, as they rule manners in Italy. Injurious and to be deprecated as the system of society is, no individual thinks, when he follows the example of the whole of his countrymen, that he should be selected as an object for blame. However, in a moral and religious view, the so-named friendship of the countess and Alfieri was blameable, yet they scrupulously attended to the rules of decorum, which form the whole of an Italian's conscience, generally speaking, and believed that they had every right to be happy in each other. As we have said in another place, we are not inclined to bestow vehement blame on individual conduct, resulting from a system of manners which has endured for ages, while that system itself merits the utmost abhorrence, and, we are happy to be able to say, is in progress of being extirpated in Italy: until it is, there can be no hope of moral regeneration, or for the happiness and improvement of its inhabitants.

However, it must be remembered that though, especially in those days, no one would have been so unreasonable or barbarous as to prevent a lady from having a cavaliere servente, yet the peculiar cavaliere she selects is usually forbidden; and as much misery is often produced by an interference in the lady's choice as by a total prohibition to be allowed a friend at all. In the present instance, the husband of the countess complained to his brother, the priests of the holy city were roused to a perception of the scandal, and the pope induced to consider it right to interfere. Alfieri found only one mode of mitigating the violence of the menaced storm, which was to meet it: he voluntarily quitted Rome, and, to prevent any actual measures of prohibition and banishment, went into voluntary exile.