his soul felt as if confined by the bonds of society; he
panted for something more free in government, more elevated
in sentiment, more devoted in love and more perfect in
friendship. In search of this ideal world he posted through
various countries more with the rapidity of a courier than
of one who travels for amusement or instruction. During a
journey to London he engaged in an intrigue with a married
lady of high rank; and having been detected, the publicity
of a rencounter with the injured husband, and of a divorce
which followed, rendered it expedient and desirable for him
to quit England. He then visited Spain and Portugal, where
he became acquainted with the Abbe Caluso, who remained
through life the most attached and estimable friend he ever
possessed. In 1772 Alfieri returned to Turin. This time he
became enamoured of the Marchesa Turinetti di Prie, whom he
loved with his usual ardour, and who seems to have been as
undeserving of a sincere attachment as those he had hitherto
adored. In the course of a long attendance on his mistress,
during a malady with which she was afflicted, he one day wrote
a dialogue or scene of a drama, which he left at her house. On
a difference taking place between them the piece was returned
to him, and being retouched and extended to five acts, it was
performed at Turin in 1775, under the title of Cleopatra.
From this moment Alfieri was seized with an insatiable
thirst for theatrical fame, and the remainder of his life
was devoted to its attainment. His first two tragedies,
Filippo and Polinice were originally written in French
prose; and when he came to versify them in Italian, he
found that, from his Lombard origin and long intercourse
with foreigners, he expressed himself with feebleness and
inaccuracy. Accordingly, with the view of improving his
Italian style, he went to Tuscany and, during an alternate
residence at Florence and Siena, he completed his Filippo
and Polinice, and conceived the plan of various other
dramas. While thus employed he became acquainted with the
countess of Albany, who then resided with her husband at
Florence. For her he formed an attachment which, if less
violent than his former loves, appears to have been more
permanent. With this motive to remain at Florence, he could
not endure the chains by which his vast possessions bound him to
Piedmont. He therefore resigned his whole property to his
sister, the countess Cumiana, reserving an annuity which
scarcely amounted to a half of his original revenues. At
this period the countess of Albany, urged by the ill-treatment
she received from her husband, sought refuge in Rome, where
she at length received permission from the pope to live
apart from her tormentor. Alfieri followed the countess to
that capital, where he completed fourteen tragedies, four
of which were now for the first time printed at Sienna.
At length, however, it was thought proper that, by leaving
Rome, he should remove the aspersions which had been thrown
on the object of his affections. During the year 1783 he
therefore travelled through different states of Italy, and
published six additional tragedies. The interests of his love
and literary glory had not diminished his rage for horses,
which seems to have been at least the third passion of his
soul. He came to England solely for the purpose of purchasing
a number of these animals, which he carried with him to
Italy. On his return he learned that the countess of Albany
had gone to Colmar in Alsace, where he joined her, and
resided with her under the same roof during the rest of his
life. They chiefly passed their time between Alsace and
Paris, but at length took up their abode entirely in that
metropolis. While here, Alfieri made arrangements with
Didot for an edition of his tragedies, but was soon after
forced to quit Paris by the storms of the Revolution. He
recrossed the Alps with the countess, and finally settled at
Florence. The last ten years of his life, which he spent in
that city, seem to have been the happiest of his existence.
During that long period his tranquillity was only interrupted
by the entrance of the Revolutionary armies into Florence in
1799. Though an enemy of kings, the aristocratic feeling
of Alfieri rendered him also a decided foe to the principles
and leaders of the French Revolution; and he rejected with
the utmost contempt those advances which were made with
a view to bring him over to their cause. The concluding
years of his life were laudably employed in the study
of the Greek literature and in perfecting a series of
comedies. His assiduous labour on this subject, which he
pursued with his characteristic impetuosity, exhausted his
strength, and brought on a malady for which he would not
adopt the prescriptions of his physicians, but obstinately
persisted in employing remedies of his own. His disorder
rapidly increased, and he died on the 8th of October 1803.
The character of Alfieri may be best appreciated from the
portrait which he has drawn of himself in his own Memoirs
of his Life. He was evidently of an irritable, impetuous
and almost ungovernable temper. Pride, which seems to
have been a ruling sentiment, may account for many apparent
inconsistencies of his character. But his less amiable
qualities were greatly softened by the cultivation of
literature. His application to study gradually tranquillized
his temper and softened his manners, leaving him at the same
time in perfect possession of those good qualities which he
had inherited from nature--a warm and disinterested attachment
to his family and friends, united to a generosity, vigour and
elevation of character, which rendered him not unworthy to embody
in his dramas the actions and sentiments of Grecian heroes.
It is to his dramas that Alfieri is chiefly indebted for the
high reputation he has attained. Before his time the Italian
language, so harmonious in the Sonnets of Petrarch and so
energetic in the Commedia of Dante, had been invariably
languid and prosaic in dramatic dialogue. The pedantic
and inanimate tragedies of the 16th century were followed,
during the iron age of Italian literature, by dramas of
which extravagance in the sentiments and improbability in
the action were the chief characteristics. The prodigious
success of the Merope of Maffei, which appeared in the
commencement of the 18th century, may be attributed more
to a comparison with such productions than to intrinsic
merit. In this degradation of tragic taste the appearance
of the tragedies of Alfieri was perhaps the most important
literary event that had occurred in Italy during the 18th
century. On these tragedies it is difficult to pronounce a
judgment, as the taste and system of the author underwent
considerable change and modification during the intervals
which elapsed between the three periods of their publication.
An excessive harshness of style, an asperity of sentiment and
total want of Poetical ornament are the characteristics of
his first four tragedies, Filippo, Polinice, Antigone and
Virginia. These faults were in some measure corrected in
the six tragedies which he gave to the world some years after,
and in those which he published along with Saul, the drama
which enjoyed the greatest success of all his productions--a
popularity which may be partly attributed to the severe and
unadorned manner of Alfieri being well adapted to the patriarchal
simplicity of the age in which the scene of the tragedy is
placed. But though there be a considerable difference in his
dramas, there are certain observations applicable to them
all. None of the plots are of his own invention. They are
founded either on mythological fable or history; most of them
had been previously treated by the Greek dramatists or by
Seneca. Rosmunda, the only one which could be supposed of
his own contrivance, and which is certainly the least happy
effusion of his genius, is partly founded on the eighteenth
novel of the third part of Bandello and partly on Prevost's
Memoires d'un homme de qualite. But whatever subject he
chooses, his dramas are always formed on the Grecian model
and breathe a freedom and independence worthy of an Athenian
poet. Indeed, his Agide and Bruto may rather be considered
oratorical declamations and dialogues on liberty than tragedies.
The unities of time and place are not so scrupulously observed
in his as in the ancient dramas; but he has rigidly adhered
to a unity of action and interest. He occupies his scene with
one great action and one ruling passion, and removes from it
every accessory event or feeling. In this excessive zeal for
the observance of unity he seems to have forgotten that its
charm consists in producing a common relation between multiplied
feelings, and not in the bare exhibition of one, divested
of those various accompaniments which give harmony to the
whole. Consistently with that austere and simple manner which
he considered the chief excellence of dramatic composition,
he excluded from his scene all coups de theatre,
all philosophical reflexions, and that highly ornamented
Versification which had been so assiduously cultivated by his
predecessors. In his anxiety, however, to avoid all superfluous
ornament, he has stripped his dramas of the embellishments
of imagination; and for the harmony and flow of poetical
language he has substituted, even in his best performances,
a style which, though correct and pure, is generally harsh,
elaborate and abrupt; often strained into unnatural energy or
condensed into factitious conciseness. The chief excellence
of Alfieri consists in powerful delineation of dramatic
character. In his Filippo he has represented, almost with
the masterly touches of Tacitus, the sombre character, the
dark mysterious counsels, the suspensa semper et obscura
verba, of the modern Tiberius. In Polinice, the characters
of the rival brothers are beautifully contrasted; in Maria
Stuarda, that unfortunate queen is represented unsuspicious,
impatient of contradiction and violent in her attachments.
In Mirra, the character of Ciniro is perfect as a father
and king, and Cecri is a model of a wife and mother. In the
representation of that species of mental alienation where
the judgment has perished but traces of character still
remain, he is peculiarly happy. The insanity of Saul is
skilfully managed; and the horrid joy of Orestes in killing
Aegisthus rises finely and naturally to madness in finding
that, at the same time, he had inadvertently slain his mother.
Whatever may be the merits or defects of Alfieri, he may be
considered as the founder of a new school in the Italian drama.
His country hailed him as her sole tragic poet; and his successors
in the same path of literature have regarded his bold, austere
and rapid manner as the genuine model of tragic composition.
Besides his tragedies, Alfieri published during his life many
sonnets, five odes on American independence and the poem of
Etruria, founded on the assassination of Alexander I., duke of
Florence. Of his prose works the most distinguished for
animation and eloquence is the Panegyric on Trajan, composed
in a transport of indignation at the supposed feebleness of
Pliny's eulogium. The two books entitled La Tirannide and
the Essays on Literature and Government are remarkable for
elegance and vigour of style, but are too evidently imitations
of the manner of Machiavel. His Antigallican, which was
written at the same time with his Defence of Louis XVI.,
comprehends an historical and satirical view of the French
Revolution. The posthumous works of Alfieri consist of satires,
