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 1200_l_. 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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,--

"I hate thy want of love and truth:

How should I then hate thee?"

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 600_l_. 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.

[Sidenote: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.

Affections and habits which had subsisted so long could not be thus

rudely torn up without intense suffering. After several years of

happiness, Alfieri found himself cast from the shelter he had selected,

wherein to place his warm and sensitive heart, upon solitude,

uncertainty, and bitter regret. Poetry and composition became

distasteful to him; he could not even enjoy his friend Gori's society,

whom he visited immediately upon quitting Rome: he was ashamed to annoy

him by his melancholy, and his restlessness and desire for travel

returned. He visited Venice, and wandered for some time in Lombardy, and

then again returned to Siena, to attend to the printing of six other

tragedies, although he had become indifferent even to the lately

engrossing desire of fame; and then he suddenly resolved to visit

England, for the sole purpose of buying horses.

[Sidenote: 1783.

Ætat.

34.]

He had long put himself on short allowance with regard to these

favourite animals; but, having saved a large sum of ready money, during

several years, at first of parsimony, and then of economy, he determined

to spend it on the purchase and maintenance of a number of English

horses of the best breed. A journey thus undertaken, with but one

object, was executed with a mixture of impetuosity and persevering

patience characteristic of Alfieri. He went to England; he bought his

horses, fourteen in number, to equal that of his tragedies; he

transported them safely across the straits of Dover, conducted them with

unwearied care through France, and led them across Mont Cenis with a

success--they being injured neither in wind or limb--on which he for the

moment prided himself scarcely less than on his dramatic labours.

On his return to Italy, he remained a few weeks at Turin; and the king

showed a disposition to employ him under government. His minister

sounded the count: but he refused to entertain any proposition on the

subject; for, although he acknowledges that the sovereigns of the house

of Savoy were not tyrannically inclined, but showed every inclination to

benefit their subjects, his uncompromising, and even fierce, spirit of

independence spurned every shackle, and he felt to breathe more freely

when he had quitted the territories of Piedmont. The countess of Albany

was now on her way to Baden for the summer. She passed northwards along

the shores of the Adriatic, while Alfieri proceeded south, by Modena and

Pistoia, to Siena. He had resisted the temptation of crossing the narrow

portion of Italy between them, and obtaining a brief interview; but when

she had arrived at Baden, and he at Siena, this fortitude gave way, and

he suddenly left his horses, and his friend Gori, and posted with all

haste to Alsatia, there for three months to enjoy her society.

During the two years of absence which he had endured. Alfieri had

forgotten poetry, study, glory, and his tragedies. But the countess's

presence awoke every dormant energy, and scarcely had he arrived, before

he conceived and wrote "Agis," "Sofonisba" and "Mirra." The last

deserves to be particularly mentioned as one of the best of his dramas,

particularly as he overcomes difficulties of the most appalling

description. "I had never thought," he says, "either of Myrrha or Biblis

as subjects for the drama. But, in reading Ovid's "Metamorphoses," I hit

upon the affecting and divinely eloquent speech of Myrrha to her nurse,

which caused me to burst into tears, and, like a flash of lightning,

awoke in me the idea of a tragedy. It appeared to me that a most

original and pathetic piece might be written, if the author could

contrive that the spectator should discover by degrees the horrible

struggles of the burning but pure heart of the more miserable than

guilty Myrrha, without her betraying the half, nor scarcely owning to

herself so criminal a passion. My idea was, that she should do in my

tragedy what Ovid describes her as relating, but do it in silence."

There is something touchingly beautiful in the first description of

Myrrha, in a scene between her mother and her nurse. She is described as

so gentle, docile, soft, and pliable of nature--so fearful of doing

wrong--so sweetly earnest to please her parents--and now to be labouring

under a melancholy so dark and gloomy, as to deface her beauty, and bow

her in appearance to the grave. As the action is developed, the notion

that she is under a supernatural curse adds to the awe and pity of the

reader; but, at last, it must be confessed, her violence and frenzy pass

the bounds of modest nature, and the passion she nurtures fails in

exciting our sympathy. This is the fault of the subject; inequality of

age adding to the unnatural incest. To shed any interest over such an

attachment, the dramatist ought to adorn the father with such youthful

attributes as would be by no means contrary to probability: but then a

worse evil would ensue; and the more possible such criminal passion

becomes, the more violently does the mind revolt from dwelling on it.

While at Baden, Alfieri received the afflicting intelligence of the

unexpected death of his friend Gori. This misfortune disturbed his

enjoyment of the last days of his visit, which of themselves were sad,

from the approximation of so painful and bitter a separation. With

reluctance and grief he left the countess and returned to Siena; but his

sorrow was too acute to admit of a prolonged stay in a town where he had

enjoyed the company of a friend lost for ever. He removed to Pisa; while

the countess took up her abode at Bologna. The Apennines only divided

them, but he dared not cross them. The gossip of the small Italian towns

is unconceivably eager and pertinacious; and it was necessary for her

future liberty to guard their conduct from all remark. Early in the

following spring, the countess departed for Paris, resolving to fix

herself in France, where she had friends, relations, and resources. In

the month of August she again visited Baden, and Alfieri joined her.

Again his mind was vivified and warmed by happiness, and again two

tragedies were the result of the inspiration. The subjects were the

Brutus of the monarchy of Rome and the Brutus who died at Philippi. In

the first he displays great force and energy; but the second, we must be

permitted to say, is a complete failure. To make a perfect equality of

sacrifice between the two heroes, as Lucius Junius Brutus caused his

sons to be decapitated, so he makes his descendant, Marcus, assassinate

his parent. The idea that Cæsar was the father of Brutus is so totally

devoid of foundation, and so little in consonance with the simple

majesty of the character of the patriot, that it deteriorates from the

interest of the drama, and, instead of exalting him, the discovery, the

resolution he declares nevertheless to persist in the assassination, the

sympathy and admiration he gains, is all so feeble, so puerile, and so

false, that it is astonishing that Alfieri did not detect his mistake.

To us, who possess the most admirable portrait ever drawn of magnanimous

and single-minded virtue in Shakspeare's delineation of the character of

Brutus, this failure becomes more glaring, and gives further proof of

the Italian poet's error in not studying the pages of the greatest

writer the world ever produced.

After some months spent at Colmar, the countess returned to Paris; while

Alfieri remained at the former place, writing letters and sonnets,

mourning over his separation, and correcting his tragedies. He passed

two or three years at this place, the countess joining him during the

summers. In that of 1787, he had a most dangerous illness. His friend,

the abbate Caluso, came from Turin to visit him; and but for this

illness, he had been perfectly happy. On the approach of winter that

year, he accompanied the countess back to Paris, and established himself

there. The death of her husband restored her to liberty; but a number of

circumstances led them to continue for some time in France. Whether they

were married now, is a secret that never has been revealed; but their

union was acknowledged, and it was understood that their constant,

inviolable attachment had received from time a sanction which prevented

any blame from being cast on it by their relations and friends. Alfieri

mourned over the necessity that brought him back to his abjured

Gallicisms; but he was somewhat consoled, during a three years'

residence in Paris, by superintending and bringing out an edition of his

tragedies, on which he bestowed the last labours of correction with

regard to style, and brought the language as near to his standard of

perfection as he was capable of attaining.

The disagreeable and, to his sensitive temperament, irritating task of

correcting the press, seems to have exercised an injurious influence

over his temper and genius. According to his own account, it dried up

his brain, quenched the fire of youthful enthusiasm, and prevented his

ever again writing with equal vigour and felicity. After terminating the

correction of his tragedies, he fortunately betook himself to writing

the memoirs of his life, which are the groundwork from which the present

pages are taken. It is written unaffectedly, and with great frankness

and self-knowledge; the style is unstudied, and the egotism of feeling

which produced it imparts extreme interest to the details. After

bringing down the history of his life till the year 1790, when he was

forty-one years of age, he still felt an utter inability to any high

flight in literature, and he occupied himself in translating the

"Æneid" and the Comedies of Terence. He had long enthusiastically

admired the versification of Virgil, and tried to model his own upon it,

adapting it, at the same time, to dramatic dialogue. This circumstance

is curious, since no style can be so opposite; the mellifluous,

dignified, and graceful flow of the Latin poet being a contrast to the

rough and concise energy of the modern Italian. This observation

regards, however, only his tragedies; less praise must be bestowed on

his other productions in verse: his translation of the "Æneid" is

feeble in the extreme; his longer original poems are devoid of even

secondary merit; and his love sonnets are, to say all in a word, the

very antipodes of his immortal master, Petrarch. Alfieri is a great

tragedian: it is impossible to read his best dramas without being

carried away by the eloquence and passion of the dialogue, and deeply

interested by the situations of struggle or peril in which his

personages are placed. The rapidity of the action, and the earnestness

and life with which every scene is instinct, renders it impossible to

close the volume till the catastrophe ends all. Alfieri was also an

excellent prose writer: his treatise on "Princes and Literature" is full

of power; the style is correct, flowing, yet simple, and without

meretricious ornament. The pure spirit of independence burns like a holy

lamp throughout, and gives a charm to every sentiment and expression.

But never was line so distinctly drawn between the poetry of

circumstance, so to speak, and ideal poetry: In all the pages of Alfieri

there is not one imaginative image; and we feel this most in his lyrics,

since ideality is the soul of lyric poetry. He seems never to have been

conscious of this defect. He would readily have admitted that Dante and

Petrarch were superior to him in genius; but he seems unaware that they

possessed a quality of which not one glimmering ray is to be found in

the whole course of the flood of rhymes to the composition of which he

alludes frequently as being the overflowings of poetic inspiration. It

is possible that Alfieri might have been a great novelist, had he ever

turned his attention to that species of composition. Or had he continued

to invent, instead of drying his brain up with the irksome task of

correcting what he had already written, he might have bestowed on us

tragedies finer than any we have of his, or, at least, several equal to

the "Saul." But, with all his philosophy and self-examination, he did

not understand the texture and capabilities of his intellect.

To return to his life in Paris. The disquietude arising from the French

revolution added to the irritable state of Alfieri's mind. We all see

the visible universe through a medium formed by our individual

peculiarities; but it is curious to find the advocate of liberty lay

most stress on his fear lest the tumults of Paris should interrupt the

completion of Didot's edition of his works. Probably his intense

abhorrence of the French prevented his fostering rational hopes for the

ultimate advantages to be gained by the overthrow of the time-worn and

corrupt monarchy of France, at the same time that it prevented his ever

being blinded by any illusion as to the real character of the events

passing around him. He prides himself on never having seen or conversed

with any one of the revolutionary leaders, and on having always regarded

the rise of a lawless democracy as the stepping-stone to military

despotism. From the first, he was eager to get away from these scenes of

bloodshed and horror, and in the spring of 1791 accompanied the countess

of Albany to England. This country did not please her; and he, grown

querulous and subject to the gout, was quickly disgusted by the climate,

and annoyed by the peculiar habits of life of the English. A great

portion of his and the countess's fortune was in the French funds; and

the fall of the assignats made it advisable for them to live in the

country where they still bore a value. This circumstance induced them to

return to Paris; and, resolving to fix themselves there, they took a

house, furnished it, and Alfieri collected a voluminous library: but the

whirlwind that swept over unhappy France included them in its

devastations. They became alarmed by the increase of lawless violence;

and when, on the 10th of August, 1792, Louis XVI. was dragged from the

Tuilleries and imprisoned in the Temple, they determined to fly from a

city, where it appeared that no one of rank or wealth could remain in

safety. The impetuosity of the poet's character was of great advantage

on this occasion. With infinite difficulty passports were obtained for

the countess and himself; and they fixed on the 20th of August for their

departure. The impatience of Alfieri caused them to anticipate their

journey, and they set out on the 18th. With a good deal of difficulty

they passed the barrier of St. Denis, and hastened to a place of safety.

Two days after, on the 20th, the municipality of Paris sent to arrest

the countess: had she remained, she would have been thrown into prison,

and, in all probability, have fallen a victim during the massacres of

the 2d of September. Not finding her, their income arising from the

French funds was sequestrated, their furniture, horses, and books

confiscated, and though foreigners, they were both declared emigrants.

Alfieri chiefly lamented his library, and the edition of his works. Some

years after, a French general, then at Turin, with a good deal of

ostentation, offered to obtain the restoration of his books, a list of

which he sent him. Alfieri has left about 1600 volumes: the list

contained the names of 150 of the least valuable. He refused to avail

himself of what he ironically calls a "French restitution;" and surely,

if national contempt and hatred is ever pardonable, it was to be excused

in an Italian, who saw his country over-run by soi-disant liberators,

who displayed their friendly intentions by a thousand acts of plunder

and arrogance.

Burning with an unquenchable hatred for all things French, Alfieri

returned to Florence with the countess of Albany, in which city he

remained till his death. In the tranquillity of his position, his love

of study awoke with renewed force. But whether it was that his fiery

temperament burnt itself quickly out, or that the ardour of his studies,

joined to ill health and intemperate abstemiousness, exhausted him.

Alfieri appears to have grown prematurely old. The spirit of invention

was dead within him; and nothing can be more deplorable than that which

he mistook for such, under whose influence he wrote laughterless

comedies and toothless satires, the most dolorous and innoxious that can

be imagined. Still, though original invention was dead, industry,

perseverance, and fervour in the pursuit of learning were as warm as

ever in his heart. He brought to a conclusion his translations of

Terence, the "Æneid," and Sallust: the latter is an excellent specimen

of style; but his poetic translations are languid and unworthy. As to

the unlucky "Misogallo," in which he accumulates, in prose and verse,

the whole force of his detestation of the French, it remains a monument

of how little men know themselves, and the mistakes to which genius is

liable, when it exchanges the nobler pursuit of the good and beautiful,

to soil itself by the pettier passions of our nature.

While thus employed, a more genial pursuit occupied him for a short

period, which he calls waste of time, but which, by linking him in

agreeable intercourse with his fellow creatures, and wearing away the

rust produced by despondency and over-excited feelings, would have made

his latter years happier; but Alfieri, ever bent on fighting with

difficulties, and thwarting his natural tendencies, cast from him the

medicine offered to his diseased mind. Some friends of his, possessed of

histrionic talent, got up his tragedy of "Saul:" Alfieri filled the part

of the unfortunate king. Others of his plays were afterwards

represented, in which he also acted; but he always preferred the part of

Saul, which confirms our opinion, that it is, of all the characters he

has pourtrayed, the best fitted for the stage, and the nearest approach

to those unrivalled princes of the drama, the heroes of Shakspeare.

After some months had been occupied by these representations, Alfieri

gave them up, and devoted himself exclusively to study. He had many

plans for composition: the chief of these were what he called

tramelogedie, or tragic melodramas, only one of which, "Abel," he found

energy to write, and this is an entire failure. He entered on a new

field, to which his genius was not adapted--the mingling of human beings

and spirits, of the passions of the heart and the airy creations of our

fancy; a species of composition which is to be found in perfection in

Calderon, and which Goëthe, Byron, and Shelley have made familiar to us

in modern times, and, according to their various capacities, adorned

with the mystery, fire, and glowing imagery peculiar to each.--But of

this creative power, that peoples our world with beings not of it,

though in it,--Alfieri was wholly destitute. We have already remarked

how entirely his writings are wanting in the more ideal attributes of

imaginative poetry.

At the age of forty-six he applied himself with desperate ardour to the

study of the Greek language. Forty-six is no advanced age: how many men

are in their prime at that epoch! but it was not so with Alfieri; his

very memory failed him, but he persevered with his accustomed energy,

battling with difficulties as if they had been opponents, inspired with

a sense of opposition. Thus he read the most difficult authors, with the

notes of the scholiasts, learning an infinite multitude of verses by

heart, and acquiring, in the end, by dint of unwearied industry, a

considerable knowledge of the language.

His health was infirm and his quiet disturbed by the progress of the

French armies. They came, they said, to liberate Italy, and, under this

pretence, destroyed its native governments, introduced their own crude

institutions, and then, on pretence of the opposition their tyranny met,

despoiling the Italians of their works of art, endeavouring even to

supplant their divine language, and treating with contempt and insolence

their peculiar manners and customs; so that any welcome given by the

Italians to these pretended friends only showed more plainly their

insulting pretensions and rapacity. When the French first appeared in

Florence, Alfieri and the countess hurried away as if it had been

visited by the plague. They established themselves at a villa in the

environs, having removed all their property from their house in the

city; and here they remained till the French were temporarily driven

from Tuscany. On their second invasion, Alfieri had no time to retreat,

and he satisfied his feelings of scorn and hatred by never speaking to a

Frenchman, or admitting the visits of the leaders of its armies.

His melancholy increased with the irritation caused by political events,

by unwearied study, and the physical weakness produced by his systematic

abstinence. He was happy in the society of the countess of Albany, and

that of his dear friend, the abbate Caluso: but many long hours he spent

by himself in gloomy reverie. The bitterness and asperity of his mind

was thus increased, and his dislike of society prevented the beneficial

action of sympathy and mutual forbearance. He considered himself, to a

great degree, a disappointed man in his literary career, and was

ignorant of the universal applause bestowed upon his tragedies. He

divided his time with the most scrupulous exactitude, and his horses

were still dear to him. Many hours were spent in the aisles of Santa

Croce, or other churches of Florence, listening to the music, and

absorbed in reverie.

During the last years of his life, he was visited each spring by a fit

of the gout, and each summer by a desire to employ himself upon original

composition, to which he devoted himself with an ardour which brought

on, each autumn, a dangerous illness. His six unlucky comedies were the

principal objects of these ill-fated labours; and his life was at last

their sacrifice. A theorist in all things, he imagined that, as the gout

proceeded from inflammation, it could be starved out of his frame; and

he commenced a system of abstinence that deprived him of the nutriment

necessary to support life. The countess in vain implored him not to

adhere to so senseless a plan: it has often happened that, by resisting

the prescriptions of physicians, and the aid of medicine, a man has

conquered inherent disease, and lived to an old age; but as soon as he

begins to administer remedies to himself, and to act from theories,

instead of from that long and arduous practice necessary to give the

smallest insight into the delicate structure of our physical nature, he

must become the victim: thus it was with Alfieri; hard study and

abstinence reduced his life to a mere flickering spark; he became a

skeleton in appearance; each day he took less nourishment, and the

weaker he grew, the more resolutely did he apply himself to study, as

the sole solace of his worn-out and burthensome existence. In the month

of October, 1803, he was attacked by gout in the stomach. The physicians

wished, by means of blisters and sinapisms, to draw it to the

extremities; but a childish dislike to the inconvenience which would

ensue, and the impossibility of taking his daily walk, if these remedies

were applied to his legs, caused him to refuse them. Opium was given

instead, and his pain was moderated; but still he sat up; and his mind

was rather excited than calmed by the narcotics administered: he

remembered as in dreams, but with the utmost vividness, various

incidents of his past life, or passages from his own writings and those

of others; and these he repeated to the countess, who sat by him

watching. No idea of approaching death seems to have entered his mind;

and the priest, who came to offer the usual offices of the catholic

religion to the dying, was sent away with an invitation to return on the

morrow; whether because he believed that by that time he should be

beyond such interference, or as a mere excuse for delay, cannot be told.

As he grew weaker, he sent for the countess, and when she came he

stretched out his hand, saying "Stringetemi la mano, cara amica; mi

sento morire." "Press my hand, dear friend; I am dying." These were his

last words. He died on the 8th of October, 1803, at the age of

fifty-five.

He was buried in Santa Croce, and the countess of Albany erected a tomb

to his memory, sculptured by Canova. It is not one of his happiest

efforts; but the inscription, which has been called pretending, appears

to me simple and affectionate. "Louisa de Stolberg, countess of Albany,

to Vittorio Alfieri," is surely no impertinent obtrusion of the name of

his dearest friend; and it may be remarked, that, while the countess has

been censured for recording her name so prominently. Alfieri, in the

epitaph he himself composed for her, makes it her chief praise that she

was "quam unice dilexit,"--the only love of the poet.

This account of the life of a man who was endowed with the chief

attribute of genius,--that of spontaneously forming and manifesting

itself, despite every obstacle or adverse circumstance,--may be

concluded by the quotation of the sonnet in which he describes his own

person; a faithful translation of which, which we also append, appeared,

some years ago, in "The Liberal." It may be quoted with the more

propriety at the end of his life, since it was written when time had

robbed him of the graces of youth; giving instead those characteristic

marks stamped by the action of his disposition and pursuits.

"Sublime specchio di veraci detti

Mostrami in corpo e in anima qual sono.

Capelli or radi in fronte, e rossi pretti;

Lunga statura e capo a terra prono;

Sottil persona su due stinchi schietti;

Bianca pelle, occhi azzurri, aspetto buono,

Giusto naso, bel labbro, e denti eletti,

Pallido in volto più che un re sul trono.

"Or duro, acerbo, ora pieghevol mite.

Irato sempre e non maligno mai,

La mente e il cor meco in perpetua lite,

Per lo più mesto, e tal or lieto assai,

Or stimandomi Achille, ed or Tersite;

Uom, se' tu grande o vii? Muori, e il saprai."[51]

[Footnote 51: "Thou lofty mirror, Truth, let me be shown

Such as I am, in body and in mind.

Hair plainly red, retreating now behind;

A stature tall, a stooping head and prone;

A meagre body on two stilts of bone;

Fair skin, blue eyes, good look, nose well design'd;

A handsome mouth, teeth that are rare to find,

And pale in face, more than a king on throne.

"Now harsh and crabbed, mild and pleasant soon;

Always irascible, no malignant foe;

My head and heart and I never in tune;

Sad for the most part, then in such a flow

Of spirits, I feel now hero, now buffoon;

Man, art thou great or vile?--die, and thou 'It know."]